DOJICREW is a project consisting of 11,111 NFTs with a few twists and turns but let’s focus on the Courier. In their words:

The Courier App is a piece of advanced technology which allows your DOJI/Xs to own other NFTs. This works for both ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens, and is completely separated from the users wallet, and tied solely to the DOJI/X token.

Neat! An NFT can own another NFT which can be separated from the DOJI/X and the DOJI/X holder can now own the other NFT as well!

A few weeks ago a little birdie asked me to look into DOJICREW as they knew the project gifted a MAYC in one of their upcoming mints. After some smart contract and wallet chasing I learned DOJICREW NFT #7293 had MAYC #7293.

I could’ve should’ve searched twitter instead.

https://twitter.com/DOJICREW/status/1443731696222814231

At this time 6,114 DOJI/X had been minted. Still 1,179 mints to go. At 0.044Ξ a pop it would cost 51.876Ξ to mint the 1,179 DOJICREW to get to #7293. The MAYC floor was ~37Ξ leaving 339 DOJICREW mints to reach ev for the MAYC. Game on.

I set up telegram alerts, made spreadsheets, and started thinking.

Mass minting DOJI was the first option. I didn’t have enough ether readily available and how much was I willing to spend on this anyway? With the MAYC floor near 40 I could wait until more DOJICREW were minted but that doesn’t seem like much of an edge. Just a crowded trade with people firing transactions and hoping.

Next I considered sending flashbots bundles that would interact with a custom contract. The contract would revert if the target DOJICREW wasn’t minted. It’s important to note that a transaction sent through the flashbots RPC which would revert does not get sent to miners. Because my contract will mint DOJIs and revert if I miss the target DOJI, I won’t lose money unless I get the target!

Another feature to remember is flashbots transactions are always first in the block. The DOJI contract limits the number of DOJI minted in a transaction to 50. If there are 51 DOJI between the latest minted token and #7293, my transaction would revert. This means I need a block where there are fewer than 51 DOJIs until #7293. Yes, I could’ve bundled multiple Doji mint transactions together but I thought there was a decent chance that someone would give me a block to get my flashbots transaction through.

The third option was to monitor the mempool. This would involve checking for transactions sent to the DOJICREW contract which would mint a DOJI and that the transaction would mint DOJI #7293. I decided against this option because if someone was mass minting multiple transactions of DOJI they’d likely use a flashbots bundle or send the transactions with the same gwei so trying to sneak my transaction in the middle of theirs wasn’t worth the cost of capital.

I chose flashbots.

In the meantime the DOJICREW team redeemed the Otherdeed land. The MAYC floor price decreased. My urgency and the ev faded.

For the next few weeks I’d write some code, work on other projects, wonder why my code broke, learn foundry, buy node hardware, start syncing the node, wonder why things broke, write more code, write more tests … all while monitoring the MAYC floor and the current DOJICREW mint count.

My family had a long planned vacation scheduled for a week starting May 7th 2022. I wasn’t quite ready with the flashbots script or custom contract but there hadn’t been much movement on DOJICREW lately so I thought it’d be fine. I can unplug from crypto, touch some grass and get back at it later.

That vacation didn’t go as planned. Instead, I’ll get out almost unscathed from the UST/Luna death spiral, watch some Azuki founder drama, and see that someone keeps minting these damn DOJI! Sorry family, gotta work on this project. By Tuesday I send the contract deploy transaction (not mined until Thursday because of consistent high gas) and as of Thursday I finished my flashbots bundle script.

I look at my script on Friday, test it, verify it against the mined contract but think…

The chances someone chooses to mint this DOJI while crypto is dying are slim. Re-check the script when you get home on Saturday and then let it run.

I wake up on Saturday morning to Telegram alerts that DOJIs were minted. A lot of them. necrotic.eth took out two loans, minted 450 DOJI, repaid their loans. The last group of 50 necrotic included #7293. The last DOJI necrotic minted in block 14772223 was #7262. DOJI #7293 was minted in the next block, 14772224.

My flashbots bundle would’ve worked!

But I didn’t run the script. I didn’t trust the script. I didn’t trust myself.

When I miss an opportunity in crypto I tell myself “there will be another trade, there’s always another trade”. What does it matter if I won’t take that next trade? What does it matter if I won’t run the damn script? I had done all the work but didn’t run the script.

Run your script.

DOJICREW is a project consisting of 11,111 NFTs with a few twists and turns but let’s focus on the Courier. In their words:

The Courier App is a piece of advanced technology which allows your DOJI/Xs to own other NFTs. This works for both ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens, and is completely separated from the users wallet, and tied solely to the DOJI/X token.

Neat! An NFT can own another NFT which can be separated from the DOJI/X and the DOJI/X holder can now own the other NFT as well!

A few weeks ago a little birdie asked me to look into DOJICREW as they knew the project gifted a MAYC in one of their upcoming mints. After some smart contract and wallet chasing I learned DOJICREW NFT #7293 had MAYC #7293.

I could’ve should’ve searched twitter instead.

https://twitter.com/DOJICREW/status/1443731696222814231

At this time 6,114 DOJI/X had been minted. Still 1,179 mints to go. At 0.044Ξ a pop it would cost 51.876Ξ to mint the 1,179 DOJICREW to get to #7293. The MAYC floor was ~37Ξ leaving 339 DOJICREW mints to reach ev for the MAYC. Game on.

I set up telegram alerts, made spreadsheets, and started thinking.

Mass minting DOJI was the first option. I didn’t have enough ether readily available and how much was I willing to spend on this anyway? With the MAYC floor near 40 I could wait until more DOJICREW were minted but that doesn’t seem like much of an edge. Just a crowded trade with people firing transactions and hoping.

Next I considered sending flashbots bundles that would interact with a custom contract. The contract would revert if the target DOJICREW wasn’t minted. It’s important to note that a transaction sent through the flashbots RPC which would revert does not get sent to miners. Because my contract will mint DOJIs and revert if I miss the target DOJI, I won’t lose money unless I get the target!

Another feature to remember is flashbots transactions are always first in the block. The DOJI contract limits the number of DOJI minted in a transaction to 50. If there are 51 DOJI between the latest minted token and #7293, my transaction would revert. This means I need a block where there are fewer than 51 DOJIs until #7293. Yes, I could’ve bundled multiple Doji mint transactions together but I thought there was a decent chance that someone would give me a block to get my flashbots transaction through.

The third option was to monitor the mempool. This would involve checking for transactions sent to the DOJICREW contract which would mint a DOJI and that the transaction would mint DOJI #7293. I decided against this option because if someone was mass minting multiple transactions of DOJI they’d likely use a flashbots bundle or send the transactions with the same gwei so trying to sneak my transaction in the middle of theirs wasn’t worth the cost of capital.

I chose flashbots.

In the meantime the DOJICREW team redeemed the Otherdeed land. The MAYC floor price decreased. My urgency and the ev faded.

For the next few weeks I’d write some code, work on other projects, wonder why my code broke, learn foundry, buy node hardware, start syncing the node, wonder why things broke, write more code, write more tests … all while monitoring the MAYC floor and the current DOJICREW mint count.

My family had a long planned vacation scheduled for a week starting May 7th 2022. I wasn’t quite ready with the flashbots script or custom contract but there hadn’t been much movement on DOJICREW lately so I thought it’d be fine. I can unplug from crypto, touch some grass and get back at it later.

That vacation didn’t go as planned. Instead, I’ll get out almost unscathed from the UST/Luna death spiral, watch some Azuki founder drama, and see that someone keeps minting these damn DOJI! Sorry family, gotta work on this project. By Tuesday I send the contract deploy transaction (not mined until Thursday because of consistent high gas) and as of Thursday I finished my flashbots bundle script.

I look at my script on Friday, test it, verify it against the mined contract but think…

The chances someone chooses to mint this DOJI while crypto is dying are slim. Re-check the script when you get home on Saturday and then let it run.

I wake up on Saturday morning to Telegram alerts that DOJIs were minted. A lot of them. necrotic.eth took out two loans, minted 450 DOJI, repaid their loans. The last group of 50 necrotic included #7293. The last DOJI necrotic minted in block 14772223 was #7262. DOJI #7293 was minted in the next block, 14772224.

My flashbots bundle would’ve worked!

But I didn’t run the script. I didn’t trust the script. I didn’t trust myself.

When I miss an opportunity in crypto I tell myself “there will be another trade, there’s always another trade”. What does it matter if I won’t take that next trade? What does it matter if I won’t run the damn script? I had done all the work but didn’t run the script.

Run your script.