Writen by：Strata Protocol
Solana network was taken down again by bots. Let’s talk what happened, why, and what both the community and Solana devs are doing.
First, the why. Public NFT mints have economics that incentivize bots. These mints have a fixed price with a positive EV. The same as concert tickets get sniped and scalped, bots are profiting on Solana. So where’s the problem?
As you might imagine, there’s a lot of competition to get these NFTs. How do you win this competition? More transactions. If a bot submits 10mm transactions they have a much better chance at getting through than the average consumer. In fact, the consumer has no chance.
At a low level, Solana is effectively getting DDOS’d. So what are devs doing? 1. QUIC. This is half of the solution. The idea is to isolate the explosion to the NFT mint in question. 2. Fees on contested accounts. This will have a similar effect to gas wars on Eth
Network changes take time. You can’t rush changes, so what can we do in the mean time? As we know it there are 4 solutions to bots. The first, whitelist tokens. Give out exactly as many tokens as the mint and there is no reason to spam.
Second, @solport has an anti botting solution that still allows fixed price. This solution involves layers and layers of obstacles that hinder bots ability to participate.
Third, @genesysgo has a solution that involves pushing NFT mints to an isolated side chain. This limits the explosion radius and allows the rest of the network to function.
Fourth, @StrataProtocol dynamic pricing mint. The real problem is not botters, botters will ALWAYS exist. It’s economic incentives that make it profitable for botters to spam transactions. How do we stop that? Price discovery.@DivineDogsNFT just proved this method out
In a dynamic pricing mint, the price rises as NFTs are purchased and falls over time. Transaction spam leads to a raise in price that will slow transactions until the price falls again. Think of it as a real time market on your mint.
Cool, we have 4 solutions. Problem solved right? Wrong. These solutions are opt in. How do we get more mints using this tech? 1) Spread the word. When the community talks, businesses listen.
Launchpads. The majority of NFT mints happen through NFT launchpads. Launchpads, like everyone else in the space, are inundated with feature requests. We’ve already spoken with a few that are looking at plugging in dynamic pricing, we will continue pushing this front.
If you are running a launchpad, please contact us and we will work with you implement these solutions. You can check out the @DivineDogsNFT mint to see testimonials, your users will like this solution better than the frustration of a botted mint.
Barrier to entry. If you’re launching a mint, using dynamic pricing is extremely easy. Head to http://app.strataprotocol.com to convert an existing CandyMachine to a dynamic pricing CM in minutes.
Dynamic pricing is not just a solution to NFT minting. Dynamic pricing can be put in front of ANY fixed price mechanic, without any program changes. Dynamic pricing is a tool that outputs tokens. These tokens can be the input to a mint, merch sale, or any other contract.
The ultimate solution to botters exists at the blockchain level. This will take time. In the meantime, there are a number of solutions that can stem the bleeding. Ours is not the only solution, and we’re excited to see more come out. Let’s fix this as a community.