As this growth continues, we want to apply scaling solutions that make these restructurings less frequent. Allowing us to jump seamlessly from milestone to milestone, an ever growing project that self-repairs and is one step ahead of the next arising problem.

In our quest for finding what works, we have identified the pillars upon which Copium stands, Team Management, Community Engagement, and Marketing Growth. All three must operate with minimal downtime, for each relies on its peers to function. We have designed our staffing framework to account for expansion and additional specialization without breaking the flow. As an architect's goal is to design a house that withstands the seasons, we have built a home that adapts to each.

In Team Management, we have made the installment of miss as our full-time Chief of Staff. For those of you wondering how this affects product development, it is to allocate responsibility of team operations to miss and let Tony have more freedom in his product lead position. Alleviating this split focus allows for more concentrated work to take place in both areas. miss will see the running of day to day server operations, instituting team health as a priority and enabling each of our staff members to reach their full potential. The team mum, if you will.

Many of you who are already familiar with the Copium server have interacted with Sierra; it only made sense to have him head up our Community Manager role. He is considered the heart and soul of the courtyard for most. A strong and active member of Copium Wars acting as our community manager gives a voice for our members to be heard. We understand the importance of feedback and have implemented several channels to directly receive this, Sierra being one of the biggest supporters for this move. We look on excitedly towards what he has in store for the rest of you, a larger audience for him to interact with entails grander games and tougher riddles, we expect great things!

It is often a good sign when you need to bring on a dedicated Marketing Manager; Aileen has been feeling right at home since joining. The purpose of having Aileen full time is to further our dedication in continuous growth. Marketing is the most important aspect of reaching new communities and potential players; if our focus is disrupted, we lose on the potential intake of members to our ecosystem. Aileen is invaluable already, showing true form in growing our player base and making meaningful connections with other projects.

We are confident this new organization will make our 27 strong team happier and ready for the impending growth; we can gain a hundred thousand new members to Copium Wars and take them in with minimal stress. This structure allows up to focus on you, the player, not the strings and caveats surrounding it.

All the best,

Copium Team.

Assets

Copium Wars ecosystem will comprise of multiple assets in particular at launch, and there will be:

• Primary NFT (ERC721)

• Multiple types of equipment (ERC1155)

• Copium (ERC20)

• PFP (ERC721)

The initial mint will be structured in meals to ease players into the game. Each meal contains one primary NFT and a varying amount of equipment and copium.

The PFP instead cannot be bought. It can only be minted if the wallet owns a certain number of primary NFTs. Ownership of the primary NFT can be achieved via mint or via game successes.

WL and minting interplay

There will be 30000 meals available for minting. Of these, there will be:

• 10000 Free

• 10000 Discounted

• 10000 Fully paid

Each player will be able to mint a maximum of 5 meals.

The cost in HOPE of a free mint will be defined by the 10000th ranking account's balance in the Leaderboard.

The cost in HOPE of the discounted mint will be defined by the 20000th ranking account's balance in the Leaderboard.

The cost in HOPE to take part in the fully paid pre-sale will be communicated closer to the minting date.

Market forces will determine the fully paid minting cost in ETH via a price discovery mechanism (TBC); we will strive to find a fair and accurate method. The discounted minting cost will be 50% of the full paid cost with also a price cap at a very reasonable level.

Regardless of the final HOPE balance, each eligible individual account will be able to mint only ONE free or discounted meal based on their rank.

Squires will have the right to a free mint regardless of their HOPE balance.

Unused HOPE balance can be used to acquire additional in-game assets.

*All numbers expressed in this article might be subject to change as we get closer to launch.

PS. I almost forgot, here's the leak.

Anyone in crypto for more than two weeks has come across the concept of fair launch.

Initially popularised by Yearn Finance's YFI token, this model of rapidly distributing project ownership has become mainstream.

But what is fair?

In this short article, I will focus on fair launches for NFT projects.

Over the last year and a half, I have seen a variety of fair launches, and I have also executed some of them; I have come to the following conclusion:

Fair must mean fair for both community and developers. Corollary: the distribution among community holders must be balanced.

Launching a project is a delicate balancing act, and if not all parties are correctly incentivised, the project dies.

One example of a failed fair launch is my N project. This project was a free mint without team allocation nor royalties*.

In this case, there were two main shortfalls. When launched, I didn't devise any Sybil resistance; for this reason, a few early minters accumulated an unfair amount of tokens for free and have been spoiling the project since then.

The other problem is that I effectively don't have any financial leverage or incentives to facilitate project growth. So far, I have put time, money and effort toward that goal, but this is entirely pro-bono and not sustainable.

An excellent example of a successful fair launch, on the other hand, is Smol Brains by my friend John Patten. Also, in this case, it was a free mint, but John effectively tackled Sybil attacks via community engagement. He also generates royalties for his other project (Treasure) and has kept a good amount of the distribution to incentivise growth and sustainability of the ecosystem further.

How does this apply to Copium Wars?

Considering all of the above, we have devised the following approach to secure CW long-term sustainability.

Sybil attacks are mitigated by using an engaging and fun pre-game campaign where players collect HOPE (pre-game point system) based on a set of activities. Inspired by the Raid Party system, we have linked the wallet and discord id of each player so that we can have activities on and off discord.

The HOPE system is not only used for Sybil resistance. Instead, it also determines the presale status for each player.

At minting time, the presale list will be partitioned into three groups, free mints, discounted mints and early mints.

Each player will be able to use their HOPE balance to receive one or more slots in each of the three groups. For example, one might use their balance to get one free mint, one discounted mint and two early mints if they have enough HOPE.

After the presale, tokens will be priced using an auction mechanism.

In closing, I want to touch also on the interplay between fairness and gas cost. In some cases, a free mint can be incredibly unfair if it sparks a gas war. In Copium War's case, we eliminate this problem firstly by having the minting on Arbitrum and secondly by having an off-chain reservation system.

Yours,

Tony