首先，最稳的依然是加密朋克，它基本就是NFT中的“比特币”了，“不作为”就是最大的“作为”，“不作为”也能保持它在生态中的地位。它的未来不会有太大的问题。

被寄予了最大希望的是无聊猿。在当下的NFT领域，无论是资金实力还是团队实力，它都是当仁不让的第一，也是最被寄望杀出一条血路的项目。目前看来，它的各个策略都还是比较成功的，没有大的纰漏。

如果这个项目都没法出圈，暂时来说我也看不到其它团队有这种可能了。

红豆（Azuki）这几个月似乎看不到有什么重大的举动，但在价格方面虽然有一定跌幅却依旧比较稳健，这倒是让我有点意外的。

我想这可能是项目本身的艺术画风和在这个领域树立起的独树一帜的风格给大家留下了深刻的印象，所以社区的共识依旧比较高。

红豆要走的路和无聊猿有着明显的差异，它所规划的方向也是前人没有走过的，因此困难只多不少、挑战也颇为巨大。

我猜测会不会也是因为创新不易再加上其它一些老牌项目不停地动作却不停地出错，导致项目不仅没能加分反而减分，让红豆团队在没有找到足够的创新想法之前干脆在这段时间不作为以避免意外出错？

假如真是这样，如果大家都躺平那还好说，但如果有其它项目或者新项目突然放大招把人气吸引过去，是有可能后来居上的。

月鸟（Moonbird）从上线时我就对它持比较谨慎的态度，根本原因是这是个很明显由资本主导的项目。一开始就由资本主导的特性让它看上去更像一个资本带动下的传统项目，似乎少了点加密生态的基因。

在它后来的发展过程中，我们也看到了项目方在种种操作中所展现出的随性以及和社区之间的不协调。

有不少读者经常问及哥布林，坦率地说这个项目目前的状况不太乐观。项目团队虽然一直在尝试各种方案（比如推出交易市场和聊天网站），但我觉得这些方案都不够新，恐怕还是要有一些更有创新的方案才行。

不过当下的环境创新非常的不易，这是所有项目包括前面提到的顶流项目都面临的挑战。

尽管如此，团队的努力和付出还是给我留下了很深的印象。

我觉得对哥布林来说，现在更重要的是能熬过这个熊市，撑到下个牛市的到来。在这个过程中，尽力做好团队和社区的互动并维护好社区的氛围。如果能熬过熊市，未来或许能找到新思路、新方向，焕发新生。

近期突然冒出一个热门项目Nakamigos。项目的突然蹿红主要和团队的神秘感有关。不过这种由神秘感带来的热度是很难长久持续的。在这个漫漫熊市，任何激情、新鲜感最终都会被萎靡的行情消磨殆尽。所以对这类项目我会继续观察，看看项目团队是不是能持续建设。

从投资的角度来考虑，现在的NFT领域对资金量有限的散户是不太利的。由于资金量小，一般的散户恐怕只能投均价不高（价格低于1个以太坊）的NFT。但这些NFT如果撑不过这个熊市，那大概率就归零了。所以风险不小。

如果从抵抗风险的角度看，我觉得加密朋克是最能抗风险的，不过它到下个牛市的收益空间可能未必最大。

如果想取得尽量大的收益又希望在一定程度上能抵抗风险，那无聊猿恐怕就比较合适了。

有读者问在变异猿和红豆之间选哪个，如果现在给我这笔钱让我选，我会选变异猿。因为我觉得无聊猿这个大生态未来还会有新的叙事可以期待，但红豆暂时没有。

对一般有想法投资NFT，但资金体量有限、抗风险能力也有限的投资者而言，我觉得可以关注无聊猿的入门款：猴子地（Otherdeed）。

本来很早我就在文章中说过想写一篇关于猴子地的文章，但总是因为各种原因给耽误了。总的来说，我觉得猴子地会走一条和无聊猿/变异猿稍有区别的路，算是无聊猿规划的另一个生态。因此还是值得期待的。

除了上面这些项目之外，投资者还想投资什么项目那就在风险可控的前提下按自己的兴趣和喜好选就好了。

最后，还是想提醒大家：NFT的风险在某种程度上是更不可控的、但一旦项目跑出来它的收益也会是远超预期的，所以大家在做决定前要更小心、更谨慎。

『免责声明：本文不构成投资建议，仅供广大爱好者科普学习和交流，请理性看待，树立正确的理念，提高风险意识，及遵守所在国家和地区的相关法律法规。』

推特

The question at hand is whether the current price for Bitcoin is at the “bottom”. Bitcoin is the purest and most battle-tested form of crypto money — and while it may not fall the most, its role as crypto’s reserve asset will ensure that it’s Bitcoin that leads us out of the shadow of darkness. Therefore, we must focus on Bitcoin’s price action to divine whether this market’s bottom has occurred or not.

There are three cohorts that were forced to puke their Bitcoin into the righteous hands of the true believers: the centralised lending and trading firms, Bitcoin mining operations, and ordinary speculators. In every case, misuse of leverage — whether it was in their business operating model or they used it to finance their trades — was the cause of the liquidations. With short-term US Treasury yields moving from 0% in Q3 2021 to 5% at present, everyone has suffered bigly for their uber-bullish convictions.

After walking through how leverage destroyed each cohort’s position as rates rose, I will then explain why I think they have no more Bitcoin left to sell — And why, therefore, at the margin, we likely already hit the lows of this cycle during the recent FTX / Alameda catastrophe.

In the final section of this essay, I will then lay out the way in which I plan to trade this possible bottom. To that end, I recently participated in a webinar with my macro daddy Felix Zulauf. At the end of the broadcast, he said something that hit home. He said that investors and traders need to be concerned with recognising the tops and bottoms, but that most focus on the noise in the middle, and that calling a bottom is usually a fool’s errand. Since I’m embarking on that very fool’s errand, I intend to try to call it in a way that protects my portfolio, with the maximum amount of cushion to be wrong on the level and/or timing.

With that in mind, let’s dive in.

Bankruptcy Order of Operations

Most of us are probably not as gifted as Caroline Ellison, so we had to learn maths the hard way. Do you remember PEMDAS? It’s the acronym that describes the order of operations when solving equations:

• **P **— Parentheses

• **E **— Exponents

• **M **— Multiplication

• **D **— Division

• A — Addition

• S — Subtraction

The fact that I still remember this acronym many decades after first learning it speaks to its sticking power.

But equations aren’t the only thing with a static order of operations — bankruptcies (and the contagion that follows) occur in a very specific order, too. Let me start by explaining what that order looks like, and why it occurs in that sequence.

Before I do, though, I want to acknowledge that no one wants or intends to go bankrupt. So, I apologise in advance if I come across as insensitive to the strife of those who lost money because of Sam “I mislabeled my bank accounts” Bankman-Fried (SBF). But, this scammer just keeps opening his mouth and saying dumb shit that he needs to be called out for — so the rest of this essay will be peppered with references to our “right kind of white” boy and the sad melodrama he is responsible for. Now, let’s get back to it.

Centralised lending firms (CEL) usually go bankrupt because they either lent money to entities that can’t pay them back, or they have duration mismatches in their lending books. Duration mismatches occur because the lenders receive deposits that can be recalled by their depositors on a short time frame, but they make loans using those deposits on a longer time frame. If the depositors want their money back or demand a higher rate of interest due to changing market conditions, then the CEL — absent an injection from some white knight firm — becomes insolvent and bankruptcy quickly follows.

Before a CEL becomes insolvent or goes bankrupt, they will attempt to raise funds to ameliorate the situation. The first thing they will do is call all loans that they can. This mainly affects anyone who borrowed money from them with a short time horizon.

Imagine you are a trading firm that borrowed money from Celsius — but within a week, Celsius asks for those funds back, and you have to oblige. As a trading firm, getting recalled in a bull market is no biggie. There are plenty of other CELs who will lend you funds so that you don’t have to liquidate your existing positions. But when the bull market fades and there’s a market-wide credit crunch, all CELs typically recall their loans at around the same time. With no one to turn to for additional credit, trading firms are forced to liquidate their positions to meet capital calls. They will liquidate their most liquid assets first (i.e., Bitcoin and ETH), and hopefully their portfolio doesn’t contain too many illiquid shitcoins like Serum, MAPS, and Oxygen (*cough* Alameda and 3AC *cough*).

After a CEL recalls all the short-term loans that it can, it will begin liquidating the collateral that underpins its loans (assuming it actually asked for any *— looking at you, *Voyager). In the crypto markets, the biggest collateralised lending category prior to the recent implosions was loans secured by Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining machines. So once things start to go south, CELs start by selling Bitcoin, as it’s the asset most used to collaterlise loans AND it’s the most liquid cryptocurrency. They also turn to the mining firms that they have lent to and ask them to pony up either Bitcoin, or their mining rigs — but if those CELs don’t operate a data centre with cheap electricity, the mining rigs are about as useful as SBF’s accounting skills.

So while the credit crunch is ongoing, we see large physical sales of Bitcoin hitting the centralised and decentralised exchanges from both a) CELs trying to avoid bankruptcy by selling the Bitcoin they have received as collateral, and b) trading firms who have seen their loans recalled and must liquidate their positions. This is why the price of Bitcoin swoons BEFORE CELs go bankrupt. That’s the big move. The second move down — if there is one — is driven by the fear that occurs when firms which were once thought to be unshakable suddenly start posturing as zombies that are on the cusp of liquidating their assets. This tends to be a smaller move, as any firms at risk of bankruptcy are already busy liquidating Bitcoin so that they can survive the crash.

The above chart of Binance’s BTC/BUSD trading volume illustrates that volumes spiked during the two credit crashes of 2022. It is in this span of time that all these once storied firms bit the dust.

To summarise, as CELs transition from solvency, to insolvency, to bankruptcy, these other ecosystem players are affected:

1. Trading firms who borrowed short-term money from CELs and saw their loans recalled.

2. Bitcoin mining firms who borrowed what was typically fiat collateralised by either Bitcoin on their balance sheet, future Bitcoin to be mined, and/or Bitcoin mining rigs.

The two largest muppet crypto trading firms, Alameda and 3AC, both grew to such a gargantuan size because of cheap borrowed money. In the case of Alameda, the polite way to put it is that they “borrowed” it from FTX customers — although others might call it theft. In the case of 3AC, they hoodwinked gullible and desperate CELs to lend them funds with little-to-no collateral. In both cases, the lenders believed these and other trading firms were engaged in super-duper-smart arbitrage trades that rendered these firms immune to the vicissitudes of the markets. However, we know now these firms were just a bunch of degen, long-only punters in meth mode. The only difference between them and the masses was that they had billions of dollars to play with.

When these two firms got into trouble, what did we see? We saw large transfers of the most liquid cryptos — Bitcoin (WBTC in DeFi) and Ether (WETH in DeFi) — to centralised and decentralised exchanges that were then sold. This happened during the big move down. When the dust settled and neither firm could boost the asset side of their balance sheet higher than the liability side, their remaining assets consisted almost purely of the most illiquid shitcoins. Looking through the bankruptcy filings of centralisd lenders and trading firms, it is not entirely obvious what crypto assets remain. The filings lump everything together. So I can’t demonstratively prove that all Bitcoin held by these failed institutions was sold during the multiple crashes, but it does look as if they tried their best to liquidate the most liquid crypto collateral they could right before they went under.

The CELs and all large trading firms already sold most of their Bitcoin. All that is left now are illiquid shitcoins, private stakes in crypto companies, and locked pre-sale tokens. It’s irrelevant to the progression of the crypto bear market how a bankruptcy court eventually deals with these assets. I have comfort that these entities have little to no additional Bitcoin to sell. Next, let’s look at the Bitcoin miners.

Bitcoin Mining Firms

Electricity is priced and sold in fiat, and it is the key input to any Bitcoin mining business. Therefore, if a mining firm wants to expand, they either need to borrow fiat or sell Bitcoin on their balance sheet for fiat in order to pay their electricity bills. Most miners want to avoid selling Bitcoin at all costs, and therefore take out fiat loans collateralised by either Bitcoin on their balance sheets, yet-to-be-produced Bitcoin, or Bitcoin mining rigs.

As Bitcoin’s price rises, lenders feel emboldened to lend more and more fiat to mining firms. The miners are profitable and have hard assets to lend against. However, the ongoing quality of the loans is directly connected to Bitcoin’s price level. If the Bitcoin price falls quickly, then the loans will breach minimum margin levels before the mining firms can earn enough income to service the loans. And if that happens, the lenders will step in and liquidate the miner’s collateral (as I described in the previous section).

We anecdotally know this happened because the massive downturn in asset prices, particularly in the crypto bear market, have — along with rising energy prices — squeezed miners across the industry. Iris Energy is facing a default claim from creditors on $103M of equipment loans. September saw the first Chapter 11 bankruptcy from a major player, Compute North, with other big firms including Argo Blockchain (ARBK) seemingly teetering on the edge of solvency.

But, let’s look at some charts to examine how these waves of crypto credit crunches affected the miners and what they did in response.

Glassnode publishes an excellent chart which shows the net 30-day change in Bitcoin held by miners.

As we can see, miners have been net selling a large amount of Bitcoin since the first credit crunch in the summer. They must do this in an attempt to stay current on their big fiat debt loads. And if they don’t have debt, they still need to pay electricity bills — and since the price of Bitcoin is so low, they have to sell even more of it to keep the facility operational.

While we don’t — and never will — know if we have hit the maximum amount of net selling, at least we can see that the mining firms are behaving as we would expect given the circumstances.

Some miners didn’t make it, or they had to downsize their operations. That is evident in the change in hashrate. I took the hashrate and first computed a rolling 30-day average. I then took that rolling average and looked at the 30-day change. I did this because the hashrate is quite volatile, and it needed some smoothing.

In general, the hashrate has trended higher over time. But, there are periods where the 30-day growth is negative. The hashrate declined right after the summer meltdown, and then most recently plunged due to the FTX / Alameda fallout. Again, this confirms our theory that miners will downsize operations when there is no more credit available to fund their electricity bills.

We also know that some high-cost miners had to cease operations because they defaulted on their loans. Any lender who took mining machines as collateral will likely find it difficult to make use of them, since they aren’t already in the business of operating data centres. And since they can’t use them, the lenders must then sell these machines in the secondary market, and that process takes time. This also contributes to the hashrate falling for a period of time.

This is a chart of the price of a Bitmain S19 or other comparable mining machine with under 38 Joules (J) / Terahash (TH) efficiency. As we can see, the collateral value of an S19 has plummeted alongside the price of Bitcoin. Imagine you lent USD against these rigs. The miners you lent to tried to sell Bitcoin to provide more fiat to service your loan, but in the end couldn’t do so because marginal profitability declined. The miners then defaulted on their loans and handed over their machines — which are worth almost 80% less now than when the loan was undertaken — as repayment. We can guess that the most feverish point of loan origination was near the top of the market. Muppet lenders always buy the top and sell the bottom … every single fucking time!

Now that CELs have collections of mining rigs that they can’t easily sell and can’t operate, they can try to sell them and recover some funds — but it’s going to be single digit cents on the dollar, given that new machines are trading 80% off from a year ago. They can’t operate a mining farm because they lack a data centre with cheap electricity. And that’s why the hashrate just disappears — because of an inability to turn the machines back on.

Going forward, if we believe that most — if not all — mining loans have been extinguished, and there is no new capital to be lent to miners, then we can expect miners to sell most — if not all — of the block reward they receive.

As the table above shows, if miners sold all the Bitcoin they produced each day, it would barely impact the markets at all. Therefore, we can ignore this ongoing selling pressure, as it is easily absorbed by the markets.

I believe that the forced selling of Bitcoin by CELs and miners is over. If you had to sell, you would have already done so. There is no reason why you would hold on if you had an urgent need for fiat to remain a going concern. Given that almost every major CEL has either ceased withdrawals (pointing to insolvency at best) or gone bankrupt, there are no more miner loans or collateral to be liquidated.

Small Scale Speculators

These punters are your run-of-the mill traders. While many of these individuals and firms definitely imploded, the failure of these entities would not be expected to send massive negative reverberations through the ecosystem. That being said, their behaviour can still help us form a guess as to where the bottom is.

The Bitcoin / USD perpetual swap (invented by BitMEX) is the most traded of any crypto instrument. The number of open long and short contracts — called the open interest (OI) — tells us how speculative the market is. The more speculative it is, the more leverage is being used. And as we know, when the price changes directions quickly, it leads to large amounts of liquidations. In this case, the all-time high in OI coincided with the all-time high of Bitcoin. And as the market fell, longs at the margin got liquidated or closed their losing positions, which resulted in OI falling, too.

Taking a look at the sum of OI across all major crypto derivatives centralised exchanges, we can see that the OI local low also coincided with the sub $16,000 stab of Bitcoin on Monday November 14th. Now, the OI is back to levels not seen since early 2021.

The timing and magnitude of the reduction of the OI leads me to believe that most of the over-leveraged long positions have been extinguished. What remains are traders using derivatives as a hedge, and those using very low leverage. This gives us a bedrock to move higher.

Could the OI fall further as we enter the sideways, non-volatile part of the bear market? Absolutely. But the OI’s rate of change will slow, which means chaotic trading periods featuring large amounts of liquidations (particularly on the long side) are not likely to occur.

Timing Re-entry

What I Don’t Know

I don’t know if $15,900 was this cycle’s bottom. But, I do have confidence that it was due to the cessation of forced selling brought on by a credit contraction.

I don’t know when or if the US Federal Reserve will start printing money again. However, I believe the US Treasury market will become dysfunctional at some point in 2023 due to the Fed’s tightening monetary policies. At that point, I expect the Fed will turn the printer bank on, and then boom shaka-laka — Bitcoin and all other risk assets will spike higher.

What I Do Know

Everything is cyclical. What goes down, will go up again.

I like earning close to 5% by investing in US Treasury bills with durations shorter than 12 months. And therefore, I want to be earning a yield while I wait for the crypto bull market to return.

What to Do?

My ideal crypto asset must have beta to Bitcoin, and to a lesser extent, Ether. These are the reserve assets of crypto. If they are rising, my asset should rise by at least the same amount — this is called crypto beta. This asset must produce revenue that I can claim as a token holder. And this yield must be much greater than the 5% I can earn buying 6- or 12-month treasury bills.

I have a few super-powered assets such as GMX and LOOKS in my portfolio. This is not the essay where I go into why I will be opportunistically selling my T-bills and purchasing these during the upcoming months of the hopefully sideways bear market. But if you want to start down the path towards finding the right asset to both participate in the upside and earn income while you wait for the return of the bull market, pull up a site like Token Terminal and look at which protocols generate actual revenue. It is then up to you to investigate which protocols have appealing tokenomics. Some may earn a lot of revenue, but it is very hard for a token holder to extract their share of that revenue to their own wallet. Some protocols pay out a majority of revenue continuously, directly to token holders.

The best part about some of these projects is that all things DeFi got shellacked during the two downward waves of the 2022 crypto credit crunch. Investors threw out good projects along with the bad as they rushed to raise fiat to repay loans. As a result, many of these projects trade at a truely bombed out price to fees (P/F) ratio.

If I can earn 5% in treasuries, then I should at least earn 4x of that — i.e., 20% — when purchasing one of these tokens. A 20% per annum yield means I should only invest in projects with a P/F ratio of 5x or lower. Everyone will have a different hurdle rate, but that is mine.

I could purchase Bitcoin and or Ether, but neither of these cryptos pays me enough yield. And if I’m not getting sufficient yield, I’m hoping that the price appreciation in fiat terms will be stupendous when the market turns. While I do believe that will occur, if there are cheaply priced protocols where I get the return profile of Bitcoin and Ether plus yield from the actual usage of the service, happy days!

Investing at what you think is the bottom is certainly risky. You are out there all alone, spreading the good word of Satoshi against the sweet siren song of the TradFi devil and their harpies. But be not afraid, intrepid and righteous warrior, for to the faithful the spoils of war shall accrue.

Inside the Inhabitants Universe, DOTs are conceived and gestated in a server of co-mingled artificial intelligence. Individual DOTs are uploaded into Digital Creches, where a MintPass 2 can be paired and a DOT can be claimed. Utilizing the “carrier and shield” design of the MintPass 2, the DOT delivery process is safe, reliable, and (mostly) predictable.

Each DOT is unique and will not reveal its traits until a MintPass 2 digital token is burned, creating an Evolution 1 DOT. Before you join us on this journey, please familiarize yourself with the below instructions to ensure a smooth DOT minting and evolving experience.

Fragments

DOTs utilize a new point system called Fragments, which are the key to their evolving mechanics. The purpose of Fragments is to incorporate a simple value system that is easy for the community to understand. Further, it is intended to improve the experience through flexibility, by allowing tokens to be re-used to create new outcomes for our collectors.

Evolving an existing DOT requires MintPass 2, DOTs, or a mix of the two digital tokens, which will be burned as part of the evolution mechanic. As the evolution level of a DOT increases, so does the complexity of which ecosystem pieces can be combined to upgrade to the next level.

MintPass 2 and DOT digital tokens are each assigned their own Fragment value, and tokens can easily be mixed and matched to evolve DOTs in The Vault. See Evolving DOTs* *below for more information.

Minting DOTs

Step 1: Connect your wallet

Click the CONNECT button to connect your wallet. When prompted to either mint or evolve DOTs, choose the **MINT DOTS **option.

If you receive an error message, please ensure your connected wallet holds at least one MintPass 2 digital token. An increasing number of these tokens are required to mint a new DOT, depending on the target evolution.

Step 2: Choose which DOT evolution to mint

There will be six evolutions that can be achieved through minting in The Vault, beginning with Evolutions 1 and 2. Minting of Evolutions 3 through 6 will progressively open as the DOTs story is told. Unavailable options will show a lock symbol and grayed-out text.

Choose the evolution and quantity of DOTs you want to mint, then click the MINT NOW button. There is no cap on the number of DOTs you can mint in one transaction. Follow the prompts in your wallet to complete the transaction.

Step 3: View the results of your DOTs mint

Results of your DOTs mint will be viewable in The Vault after a successful minting transaction confirms on the blockchain. If images have not loaded, press the **REFRESH DOT DATA **button. Please do not refresh the browser window itself.

Once the screen is closed, results are viewable on either the Pixel Vault Market or a third-party marketplace.

Evolving DOTs

Step 1: Connect your wallet

Click the CONNECT button to connect your wallet. When prompted to either mint or evolve DOTs, choose the **EVOLVE DOTS **option.

If you receive an error message, please ensure your connected wallet holds the token combinations required to evolve a DOT.

Step 2: Choose DOTs to evolve

Begin by selecting an evolution level for your DOT(s) in The Vault. Evolution 2 DOTs are the first to be unlocked, and Evolutions 3 through 6 will open at a later date.

Click the CONTINUE button to move onto the selection screen to choose which DOTs to evolve.

Up to 8 upgraded DOTs can be created in a single transaction. The DOTs being upgraded can be comprised of different evolution levels, but they must be lower than the target evolution level. For example, Evolution 2 and Evolution 3 DOTs can both be upgraded to Evolution 4 DOTs in the same transaction.

Click the CONTINUE button to move on to the Fragment selection page.

Step 3: Choose your Fragments

As a DOT evolves, the number of Fragments required will increase exponentially.

Evolution 1 DOTs can only be minted. See Minting DOTs for additional details on minting Evolution 1 DOTs.

An exact number of Fragments are required to move forward with the evolution process. Existing DOTs can only be burned to evolve (i.e., Evolution 2 to Evolution 3), and burning DOTs to devolve (i.e., Evolution 3 to multiple Evolutions 2) is not possible.

Click on the CONTINUE button to confirm your choices.

The final confirmation screen will appear. Review the Fragments you wish to burn, as this process is irreversible. If ready to move forward, click the **PROCEED **button and follow the prompts in your wallet to complete the transaction.

Step 4: View the results of your DOTs evolution

Once the evolution transaction receives blockchain confirmation, the results will be viewable within The Vault.

Once the screen is closed, results are viewable on either the Pixel Vault Market or a third-party marketplace.

Anomalies:

DOTs value their individuality. They are constantly tweaking, testing, and experimenting with their robot bodies to subscript their personality onto their physical forms. Subscripting generally sticks to the traits prevalent in Evolution 2 and beyond, but an anomaly may occur that permanently changes a DOT in its existing and future forms.

One anomaly event occurs in between minting windows for each evolution cycle. The first anomaly event will apply to Evolution 2 DOTs, continuing through Evolution 6. All DOTs at the latest evolution level **without **an anomaly trait are eligible. Once a specific DOT receives an anomaly, it will perpetually hold that trait for all subsequent evolutions. Further, that particular DOT will no longer qualify for future evolution events.

When an anomaly occurs, the background turns holographic, and the DOT reflects one of three physical changes. Anomaly events will be random using Chainlink VRF, seamlessly updating all qualifying DOT digital tokens with the new metadata. Overall, there will be a limited supply of anomalies, and the final amount will be determined by the total number of DOTs eligible for each anomaly event.

If there are any questions, please get in touch with us through our dedicated support channels.

• Twitter: @pvsupport_

• Discord: discord.gg/pixelvault

Thank you for your continued participation in the Inhabitants Universe.

Note: Images are for illustration purposes only and are subject to change.

PigPen Governance Going Live Thursday

A historic event for DeFi and Animal Farm is just around the corner, as the PigPen will undergo its first ever community governance vote to determine how frequently (weekly, monthly, or quarterly) BUSD injections are distributed to users with AFP tokens staked in The PigPen. Voting power for users is determined by how many AFP tokens are staked (1 AFP = 1 Vote). It is important to understand that the tokens cannot be in a wallet or in the form of an LP, they must be staked into The PigPen in order to give you voting power.

Mechanics of the Voting System

While PigPen governance voting brings decentralized power to Animal Farm users, the brilliance of the system is largely based on its implementation. An API and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) have been set up to host governance voting by taking a ‘snapshot’ of the PigPen contract in order to record how many AFP tokens each user has staked in PigPen at the time of the proposal. Users then vote, with each staked AFP in the PigPen equalling one vote. This ensures those with the most stake and greatest share ownership of the platform have a greater impact on the proposal results. Voting options will include multiple choice, the ability to support different choices with a set percentage of their voting power, and much more.

Forex Shark and team want to ensure users have sufficient time to stake their tokens by having an official countdown before any proposal is made. Users must have a stake in the PigPen ***before *the proposal is made or they will have missed the snapshot and have no voting power. **Any stakes made after the proposal will not be counted toward the vote.

Once the proposal is made, it is important for users to have enough time to analyze the idea, evaluate the pros and cons and cast their votes. A predetermined amount of time will be given to users based on the nature of the proposal. After this time period is over, the votes are tallied and recorded on the blockchain. This can even be used to call specific functions or deploy a transaction, for example staking assets in a desired protocol based on the results of the vote.

Where do Proposals Come From?

In the true nature of decentralized finance, everyone in the community can suggest a proposal, at which point they will go through a 3 stage process. First is the initial community input and suggestions where users can talk through the idea and really dig into understanding its purpose and potential impact on the ecosystem. This step may involve social media polls and other tools to measure community sentiment. The second step is an audit by the team to determine if the proposal aligns with the project’s objectives. The team will be looking to make sure all proposals meet some basic criteria in order to filter out incomplete or less effective ideas. To increase the chance of approval for any submitted proposal, users should consider the requirements of the idea’s sustainability; the value it could bring to to existing users; how attractive it could be to new users; any elements of security; how well it works within non-custodial decentralization; and its relationship to, and impact on over all game theory. Once the process is complete, the Dogs deployer wallet can make the official, final proposal.

Safety and Security via PigPen Vesting

Forex Shark and team have gone to great lengths to make this PigPen Governance and community proposal system safe and secure in order to prevent bad influences from manipulating the system. The primary defense against manipulation is the heavy vetting process each proposal will go through, ensuring all proposals which make it to the final voting stage are designed to have a positive impact on the project. Another major defense against people trying to manipulate the system is the PigPen vesting period. The PigPen uses its 2% daily unlock (50 day vesting period) as a shield to stop users utilizing malicious attacks such as flash loans and very large buys/sells to manipulate the system without having a stake in the votes results. Anyone who tries to do this will have to remain in the system and be impacted by the results of the vote for at least 50 days.

Updates to the User Interface

The Animal Farm user interface will see a number of upgrades going live this Thursday. All of the dashboards with text saying ‘Coming Soon’ will go live. There will be more resolution and detail for the statistics on the existing dashboards, and wherever users see a number of tokens or LP pairs, they will soon also see the USD value associated with those tokens. The Governance Voting system will be added to the UI. Lastly, users will see projected earnings for their individual positions as well as projected global earnings over a day, week, month, and year.

Auto DogPound Reward Update

A management contract was successfully deployed last week to better distribute the BNB rewards into The Dog Pound. The Auto-Compounding pool will see an increase in BNB rewards of 10%, while the Linear pool will see a decrease of 10%. This will distribute 20% more BNB per staked AFD token into the Auto-Compounding pool relative to the Linear. This is being done because the Auto pool not only provides significantly more value to the user, it also provides significantly more value to the ecosystem as a whole since the BNB which is allocated to the Auto pool goes directly towards buying AFD and adding fresh liquidity to the AFD/BNB pair. This implementation will further reward stakers who make the most of the tools available on our platform, creating a better and more sustainable ecosystem.

Join the Animal Farm Community

Come join us in Telegram and other social media for a front row seat to this bullish event. The admins and community members look forward to your participation, ideas, and questions. Do not miss out on this occasion to witness the launch of one of the most popular and advanced Crypto Farms ever created!

https://t.me/The_Animal_Farm

https://twitter.com/animalfarmdefi

https://discord.gg/PPcuC8desY

Show Your Support

This medium article was written by a member of the community. If you found this information useful, please use the wallet address below and show your support. Donations are appreciated in any denomination or amount.

Wallet address 0xf8CF542E2D4b28a928ab69E8E1Ae7873e2948284

Good Old SBF is at it again. I want to start covering other stories, but the FTX collapse keeps on generating headline after headline, so I might as well continue.

SBF had a recent interview with Bloomberg, which consisted of 11 hours spent with SBF at his penthouse in the Bahamas. The interview paints a detailed picture of SBF’s demeanour as well as his character and of course, his environment. Sam started by saying the reason he took the interview is because we intends to make this right for everyone affect by the collapse and he cannot do that if he’s busy “covering his ass”. The whole interview is definitely worth a read but a few things stood out the most to me. Most of all SBF’s explanation that he simply “misaccounted” for $8 billion. I get it. It’s a very common mistake to misaccount $8 billion dollars, even among MIT graduates such as himself.

In between fundraising calls and a “rather awkward dinner”, the Bloomberg interviewer continues to prompt SBF to open up more about what really happened to the user funds. Sam seems to be married to the idea that it was his sloppiness all along that caused the FTX collapse. As the topic gets explored in more details, SBF reveals that he still intends to find the missing $8 billion. It is highly unlikely that SBF will ever make everyone whole again, and the interviewer describes him as delusional, or purposefully continuing the narrative that he set up.

Where I think this Interview shines though, is that it offers an insight into SBF’s mind. The way he seems to see himself in his head, at least until the collapse, is as a real life rags-to-riches superhero. He got rich so that he could donate all of his wealth in order to stop world hunger and the impending rise of AI against humanity. I did not make that up. It just happened, that along the way, he lost not only his wealth, but the wealth of millions of other people, who probably weren’t planning on saving the world with their FTX funds.

Even if this chaotic-good alignment were true, this is the mindset of a selfish, delusional megalomaniac, and not a martyr or a hero. If SBF actually gets high on his own supply is another story, however, in a recent interview with Vox, SBF admits that a lot of this save-the-world humanitarian image was mostly just a front.

The interview then continues to explore SBF’s relationship with risk. To no surprise, SBF seems to be comfortable with taking risks that any other person would find absolutely insane. SBF said in another recent interview that he would make bets similar to: “51% you double the earth out somewhere else, 49% it all disappears”. With this kind of leadership, it’s almost a miracle that this company didn’t crumble earlier. In a weird way, it’s almost a good thing that it collapsed when it did. The more FTX would grow, the more catastrophic the collapse. SBF’s high-risk high-reward approach is also shared by Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. SBF and Caroline funded Alameda Research 4 years ago and then eventually used the some of the profit to bootstrap FTX. Caroline also stood out as an avid risktaker commenting on the previous success of Alameda and saying that “the way to really make money is figure out when the market is going to go up and get balls long before that”.

The important thing to remember here is that both FTX and Alameda were built with fast and loose investments. Many of them well outside what a regular trader would consider acceptable risk.

In SBF’s own words:

“FTX was a legitimate, profitable, thriving business. And I fucked up by, like, allowing a margin position to get too big on it. One that endangered the platform. It was a completely unnecessary and unforced error, which like maybe I got super unlucky on, but, like, that was my bad. It fucking sucks, but it wasn’t inherent to what the business was. It was just a fuckup. A huge fuckup.”

The more you unpeel the onion layers that make up SBF, the more it turns out that the former CEO of a multi billion crypto company is not good at math, can’t code, doesn’t really know how to run a business and has gambling problems. The last one could be true but the CEO of a Fintech is unable to do basic maths and write some code? I don’t think so. The media seem to enjoy portraying SBF as some clueless goofball that’s just too stupid to be Machiavellian in any way, but this is where I disagree. I believe SBF is fully aware of how he comes across in the media when he makes these comments. He is building an image for himself — even if that’s the image of a clueless idiot. People generally find it more digestible when a bad situation is the result of incompetence rather than a calculated act.

That’s it for now. Catch you later. Please remember to give it plenty of claps if you did and don’t forget to follow me for more. Thanks!

$NOM, as the native coin, will underpin the Onomy ecosystem, so here’s everything you need to know.

Onomy’s Bonding Curve launches Tuesday, the 6th of December, at 3pm UTC.

The only official link is: https://bco.onomy.io/

What Does $NOM Do?

In short — transaction fees, bridge fees, rewards for helping to secure the network via PoS staking, governance, collateral, and multiple tie-ins within Onomy’s products.

As part of Onomy’s Layer-1 network and Arc Bridge Hub, $NOM is used to cover the fees associated with transactions occurring within the ecosystem. As a Tendermint BFT based chain via the Cosmos SDK, fees are minuscule most of the time, aiding scalability.

$NOM is staked to secure the Onomy Network, which uses Proof-of-Stake consensus. By bridging tokens from the bonding curve and bonding them with validators, delegators are able to earn rewards for securing the network. Staking rewards are programmatically adjusted depending on the staking ratio and inflation rate, which are pre-determined before launch and can only be changed post-launch by DAO-vote. See more about Onomy’s expected staking rewards here.

$NOM will also confer governance rights to holders who can vote on proposals about the direction of the protocol in the Onomy DAO. Possible proposals include the deployment of new features, funding community initiatives, marketing and developer teams, changing the blockchain and/or product parameters, and more.

$NOM is further integrated into products, such as the Onomy Exchange. The Onomy Exchange uniquely does not charge static fees to users who trade — instead, the AMM still collects fees by capturing the spread between the bid and the ask, as a normal market maker does. These earnings are then shared with LPs and used to programmatically buy and burn $NOM and deflate the overall supply over time without any central management whatsoever.

$NOM will also play a central role in bringing Forex markets on-chain.

$NOM Markets and Availability

$NOM will first be obtainable by swapping $ETH for bNOM via the Onomy Bonding Curve, then bridging to the Onomy Network for mainnet $NOM, with the $bNOM being burned.

$NOM can then be used for all of its utility described, and users may bridge $NOM to various blockchains integrated into the Arc Bridge Hub.

The token will also be available on centralised and decentralised exchanges outside of Onomy’s ecosystem in due time.

$NOM Tokenomics

The Onomy Network has a genesis supply of 100M NOM, distributed as such:

• 45% in on-chain Treasury managed by DAO

• 20% Ecosystem to support market makers, validators, exchange listings, incentives, and more

• 20% to Early Backers and Partners

• 15% Team and Advisory

Backer, team, and advisor tokens are vested for 24–36 months, with a 12 month cliff, whereas DAO tokens are only usable following successful DAO governance votes, with the system programmatically funding proposals when approved, with no central key management by any Onomy contributor.

The $NOM supply will increase from inflationary rewards and bridges from the bonding curve.

my sales stats on Etsy

In under 2 years, this is my income on Etsy selling spreadsheet templates (Google Sheets + Excel).

And I’m not a spreadsheet expert by any means.

But I do know how to find digital products that are in demand, and will help people to save time on something that would typically take them much longer to do.

The EtherMail is the first email solution setting the standard for anonymous and encrypted wallet-to-wallet communication. They recently completed a $3 million seed round**. **The next stage is the start of incentivized beta testing, where we participate and receive EMC.

Claiming Steps

**Step 1: Visit site by **clicking here to open EtherMail on your browser

Step 2: Now click on “Signup”, select MetaMask and approve connection

**Step 3: **Wait for a few seconds and the page will redirect to this page below

Step 4: Simply click on “next”, add a secondary email address and click on “next”

**Step 5: **Your EtherMail ID is ready and you will receive 250 $EMC

Step 6: Click “Great” → click on “Retrieve Encryption Keys” → sign in to your MetaMask.

**Step 7: **Click on “Finish”. Now you’ve successfully activated your ethermail.

Step 8: Now you will receive two emails in your inbox, just open the mail with subject “Invite your friends and get 250 EMCs”. You will find your referral link, just share it with your friends and earn 250 EMCs for each friend you invite.

In the end:

All prizes will initially be distributed in EMC prior to the launch of the native utility token. These EMC incentives will eventually be converted to $EMT. At the time of the token launch, the EMC : $EMT conversion rate will be determined.

clap more than 10 times if you loved it😍

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

This is a guest post from the Medium community. Thomas is the editor of Scribe.

I like to say that the world would be better off if poets ran it. One of my favorite quotes comes from my spiritual father, the French writer Sylvain Tesson. He writes:

Image by Kalea Morgan

I was recently asked to speak to a group of second and third-year law students studying the intersection of law and love. Yes, you read that right: law and love. Odd bedfellows! Until you dip below the surface. Here’s what I told them.

I came to law school in 2008 straight off Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, where I worked as a field organizer and volunteer coordinator. The campaign was exhilarating…

Image by Kalea Morgan

I was recently asked to speak to a group of second and third-year law students studying the intersection of law and love. Yes, you read that right: law and love. Odd bedfellows! Until you dip below the surface. Here’s what I told them.

I came to law school in 2008 straight off Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, where I worked as a field organizer and volunteer coordinator. The campaign was exhilarating…

Every no gets you closer to a yes

Everything I ever learned about capitalism, I learned selling comedy tickets to strangers on the streets of New York City.

The first lesson is to never, under any circumstance, sell the product because the product is crap. Sell yourself. Humans trust other humans. People…

Photo by Kanchanara on Unsplash

Airdrops

Photo by Art Rachen on Unsplash

Instead of using your hard-earned money to buy cryptocurrency, what if you could have it given to you for free?

While that might sound a bit far-fetched, there are in fact several sites that will pay users in crypto for completing a number of tasks.

One of the most popular ways to earn free cryptocurrency is by participating in what’s called a “learn and earn” program — which I…

when the NYSE is creating the cryptocurrency trading platform Bakkt in collaboration with Microsoft and Starbucks with physically backed Bitcoin futures contracts.

when Fidelity is offering it to its clients and has been mining it since 2015.

when Steve Wozniak is co-founding a cryptoasset investment firm.

when Katy Perry IG’d this!

Now, it’s time to mention some wallets without a token.

Collect this as an NFT on Mirror

1. Metamask

Metamask has already confirmed to launch of its own token. According to previous experiences and rumours, making a swap on the platform would make you eligible for an airdrop once they create their own token.

2. Argent

Argent is a non-custodial mobile wallet that combines easy access to Dapps and security features such as recovery without seed phrases, trusted contacts and multi-sig. These features are made possible by Argent’s smart contract architecture.

To be eligible for this potential airdrop, install the wallet on your phone and make some swaps on the ETH mainnet and zkSync.

3. Tally Ho!

Tally Ho is a new extension wallet, currently supporting Ethereum and Polygon networks. More Networks are supposed to be added soon. To be eligible for its potential airdrop, use the wallet, make some swaps, and be active in Discord.

4. Phantom

Phantom is a popular browser extension and mobile wallet for the Solana network. This wallet also has an in-app swap feature, so make some swaps and use the wallet to be eligible for its speculated airdrop.

5. Rainbow

Rainbow is a very simple and nice Ethereum mobile wallet available for both iOS and Android. To be qualified for its potential airdrop, use the features of the wallet like making some swaps and minting an ENS domain name within the wallet.

6. CoinStats

CoinStats which is known as a portfolio management app has added wallet features supporting multiple EVM networks. To be eligible for its speculated airdrop, use the wallet, complete the quests and collect sparks. They recently announced their first NFT collection that can be claimed by spending the Sparks.

Follow Alpha Drops for more Airdrops:
🐦 Twitter: https://Twitter.com/aramzcrypto
📢 TG Channel: https://t.me/aramzcrypto
💬 TG Group: https://t.me/aramzchat
🪂 Website: https://aramz.super.site

Who doesn’t want free cryptocurrency, right? Well, now it’s easier than ever to get some free tokens. Wondering how? AIRDROP is the answer.

The Greeny token airdrop is live and it’s giving away free 1000 tokens to each participant. But, the stock is limited and the offer ends soon. So, hurry up before it all vanishes in thin air.

What is the Greeny Token Airdrop?

The Green Uni Network is organising a massive giveaway through an airdrop on its website, where it will be giving away 1000 tokens to all successful campaign participants. All you have to do to win 1000 Greeny tokens is to register for the campaign and perform a number of simple tasks, as mentioned below.

The Greeny Token airdrop will conclude on 3rd July. All registrations before this end will be considered for participation, however, only those candidates who complete all the campaign steps following the rules will be considered for rewards. The airdrop is limited to the first 10,000 participants, so anyone registering after these will not be eligible to receive rewards, which is why joining now would give you an early-bird advantage.

Green Uni Network Airdrop Start date: 20th June, 2022

Green Uni Network Airdrop End date: 3rd July, 2022

What can you do with Greeny Tokens?

Greeny token is the native crypto token for the Green Uni Network, which is a blockchain-based ecosystem for affordable & high-quality European diplomas. The Green Uni Network is a blockchain-based community of modern platforms offering online education and learning programs to students around the globe at a very low cost and with the convenience of learning from anywhere and flexible online payments using cryptocurrencies.

The users of Greeny tokens for payments of educational services within the network will be eligible for special discounts and bonuses. In addition, they will also be able to trade these tokens for other cryptocurrencies. Token holders will also receive loyal rewards based on the number of tokens they choose to lock in the contract.

How to win free Greeny tokens?

As I said, it’s easier than anything. All you to do is follow the steps below:

Step 1: Join the Green Uni Network’s Telegram Channel: https://t.me/GreenUniNetwork

Step 2: Like & Follow Green Uni Network’s Official Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/GreenuniNetwork

Step 3: Like & Follow Green Uni Network’s Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/greenuni.network

Step 4: Like & Follow Green Uni Network’s Official Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/greenuni.network/

Step 5: Subscribe to Green Uni Network’s Official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJGN8iFcOrhQN2BMpg2hPzg

Step 6: Join the Green Uni Network’s Official Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/GreenUniNetwork/

After completing all the steps, submit your details here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfsM9L45EwNkflbqI4wpNftSz9YpcWQZSuseyPGCjpeQozT9g/viewform

Make sure to follow the campaign rules, failure of which might lead to the cancellation of your registration. Don’t forget to Like, share and comment on the Pinned Post on our Twitter channel.

the XEN Crypto

XEN was launched on the Ethereum network on October 9. It is a PoP (Proof of Participation) model, and the whole people build a virtual mining project.

The founder is Jack Levin, former Google employee №21, no pre-minting, no admin keys, immutable contracts, zero supply, 100% transparency and on-chain.

There is no participation threshold for the project. Any player can get it by linking the wallet and paying a small gas fee. After minting, you can choose to pledge it for 1 day or more. The length of the pledge time determines the amount of XEN to be harvested.

When the pledge expires, it needs to be claimed in time, otherwise the number of XEN will gradually decrease, and only 1% will remain after 7 days.

The current total supply of ETH network XEN exceeds 10 billion

On the second day after XEN was launched, someone created the LP liquidity of XEN/ETH, and XEN began to have a price. From the initial 0.005U on the line, it rose to $0.01 in a short time and then continued to fall. The current price is 0.00016 now.

It is said that someone minted 1,000 addresses on the first day, received and sold them on the second day, with an average of 200 dollars per wallet, and properly 200,000 dollars a day. Some people really watch the fun, and some people make a lot of money in silence.

The wallet pledged for one day has changed from the initial income of a few hundred dollars to a few dollars. After deducting the gas fees for minting, receiving, and trading, it is already slow and not worth short-term participation.

If you also want to participate in social experiments, you can choose a longer period of time to see if there are new stories in the future. After all, this kind of participation by the whole people may really bring a new experience and unexpected results.

The income from staking for one day is no longer enough for the GAS fee

XEN has already planned to be deployed on multiple chains. At present, the BSC network has been launched, and more than 1.5 million wallet addresses have been minted within 8 hours.

Players have moved the gameplay on the ETH network to the BSC chain, and XEN, whose pledge expires tomorrow, does not know whether there will be a new wealth effect, or it will directly return to zero.

Later, XEN will also be launched on Avalanche, Polygon/MATIC, Arbitrum, Optimism, Cronos, Fantom and other networks.

XEN on different networks cannot be exchanged in equal proportions, but can be exchanged in a certain proportion and cross-chain with each other.

More than 1.5 million XEN minting addresses on the BSC network

The heat comes and goes very quickly. XEN has been online for 4 days, and it has gone through a round of bulls and bears.

The XEN received on the second day can be sold for over $600 at the first time, and then it drops rapidly. After 6 hours, it is only 80 dollars. By the third day, there are only 8 dollars left, which is not enough for gas fees.

As the wealth effect wears off, fewer and fewer people participate in the short-term.

Of course, there are also players who have pledged online for 100 days, 200 days, 300 days, and so on. I wonder if there is still heat at that time, or no one cares.

The XEN project has burned 4076 ETH

Project founder Jack Levin is a serial entrepreneur who started many projects after leaving Google.

Since 2010, he has been in contact with bitcoin for peer-to-peer payment, and in 2011, he has been mining bitcoin. But he believes that POW mining is a waste of electricity, and proof of work is an outdated way. He hopes to explore the blockchain in other ways, and launched XEN’s attempt.

XEN is a free token provided by the blockchain, based on self-custody, trustless consensus and decentralization, and can be participated by all people. No pre-minting, no centralized ownership, no control, open source smart contracts.

Everyone has the same opportunity in front of XEN, and as time goes on and the consensus grows, XEN has the potential to play a more important role.

Of course, all this will be revealed in time, whether it is to create a better experience, or to try to zero, it is uncertain.

Initially someone pledged to get $668 a day

In the Crypto world, any innovative gameplay may be spread out of the circle.

From BTC, ETH, to DOGE, SHIB, etc., as well as PEOPLE, XEN, every new attempt is a national carnival, constantly refreshing the gameplay and bringing a new experience.

If you have good ideas, the crypto world is a great platform for experimentation.

The above is just my personal opinion, no investment advice. I’m ChuxiaoLian, and I’m following the metaverse and web3.

New to trading? Try crypto trading bots or copy trading

BNBMiner.app Dapp Mobile

BNBMiner.app is the first BNB mining simulator Smart contract where users can utilize PoS to** mine BNB coins by staking their BNB**. As with all Proof of Stake (PoS) protocols, the more you stake, the faster and more profit you receive!

By utilizing Proof of Stake technology, users of BNBMiner.app share profits of 1% of their stake, in daily (APR). This APR gets distributed to your account each and every block (averaging every ~3 seconds)!

Because BNBMiner is a Dapp, there is no central authority running it, just a Smart Contract that distributes the **BNB rewards directly to your Dashboard **on average each ~3 seconds, when a block is found.

The best part is, because** it’s non-custodial you may withdraw your rewards at any time just by clicking the **“Withdraw Rewards” button and confirming the transaction.

BNBMiner.app Dashboard

The Real Profit Starts with Compounding, Why?

For those of you who haven’t heard of Compounding before, it’s the act of taking your profits, and re-investing them in order to generate even greater returns. In the case of BNBMiner.app, there is a simple “Compound” button that generates a transaction to do this for you in 1 click!

Just to give an example of the power of Compounding, if you choose to withdraw your earnings every day for a year, you would earn a total of ~365% (APR) annually. That’s not a bad at all return on investment, or ROI.

That being said, with the power of Compounding, you could potentially increase your Staking earnings from a seemingly good 365% to an amazingly good 3,678.34% (APY) if you chose to Compound your earnings every day for 1 year! That’s 10x more profit, just by using this one simple trick (that they don’t want you to know about).

Idk about you, but that’s the only real way I know how to profit during a Bear market, and the best part is, you aren’t earning a random shitcoin. With BNBMiner.app you are actually using Proof of Stake to earn BNB tokens, the main token of the Binance Exchange (the World’s Largest Cryptocurrency Exchange) and the Binance Smart Chain/BNB Chain!

This token (BNB) has even outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) in the charts during this bear market!

So it’s safe to say, if you’re looking for a steady investment to earn you stable and sustainable interest during this Bear market, look no further than Proof of Stake (PoS) mining with the BNBMiner.app. Just stake your BNB through the Dapp using Metamask or any other Web3 wallet, to start earning 1% on your deposit daily!

BNBMiner.app Dapp Desktop

To get Started Visit:

https://bnbminer.app/

TL;DR: In this article I talk about how I used my personal android phone to make around 5$ per day (without doing anything), using a single app.

What does Passive Income mean?

> It can be defined as: “money you collect from activities, where you have no active or direct involvement.”

For me, personally, it was always about taking advantage of my knowledge to think outside the box and make money. How could I, as a Software Engineer make money with what I had learned at the time (preferably without actually “having to do anything”).

I know, **catchy **right?

The Place

The year is 2019. I was still in university, crawling through my 3rd year of a Bachelors degree in Computer Science. At the same time, I was also doing an internship at a Marketing Automation Company, which means that I had fewer classes than all the other previous semesters, hence more time than usual to put my knowledge into practice.

I’ve used computers from a very young age (and too much, to be frank). Nonetheless, regarding software development, all the knowledge I had was related to low level languages (C, Assembly), high level languages (Java, C#), building/designing web applications and some knowledge in computer networking. Oh, and obviously from all those years, a lot of “google searching” skills 😏.

That’s to say, I had no prior experience with mobile applications or Android applications in general.

The Research

If you google “How to make Money as a Software Developer” the top results are one of the following options:

a) Get a Job
b) Freelancing
c) Becoming an online teacher

As I mentioned, I was doing college + an internship. Getting a job was not really an option. Freelancing could be possible (but I wasn’t “Free” 😆). Becoming an online teacher was also an alternative, but it would take a lot of my time. Besides, I wanted Passive Income and having to work for it for a long period of time is the opposite direction of that.

So, a quick change of scenery — ”How to make Passive Income as a Software Developer” — , yield the following results:

a) Making your own application and sell it
b) Blogging
c) Chatbots

These are great ideas and all if, as I previously mentioned, you have time to spare. Plus, it takes a really long time for it to actually start generating profit.

No, no… there must be another way… a faster way.

The Idea

In the previous years, I had heard from a friend that, a lot of apps claim to pay you money simply by watching ads. Imagine, every time you are watching a video on YouTube, browsing a News website or even watching stories on Instagram, and an ad pops up… BAM… you earn 0,05$ (despite you being forced to watch it against your will).

Their idea is simple. You do watch ads. Only instead of the company keeping all the revenue for themselves, you also get a cut for “helping” them out. And you say:

> “Well. If it’s that simple. Why don’t you just create your own app, fill it with ads and use it yourself to make money? Are you a chicken 🐔? ”

Well… the problem, of course, is that: is not that simple. From my research, at the time, apps that didn’t have a “real” purpose and would only “show ads” (and not do anything else really), after a certain period of time, stopped generating money for the developers who made these apps. And since they would stop receiving the money 💰, they would also stop paying to whoever uses their app.

The thing is: ads are limited. A single “user” can only see too many. If they are abused (for instance, among other factors, watched to many times from the same device), the developer of the app does not receive any money after a period of time. Which makes sense right? 🤔

I did however find apps that followed the purposeless way. By having a simple app with a single button: you would click it; watch an ad; get some sort of points; you would then redeem those points for money; and voilà. Next day, you would get the money.

Click Cash — Example of an Android App that would pay per ad click

After trying with a few apps (ones that indeed payed me through PayPal and, of course, others that didn’t), I realized that I just needed to find the right app. An app not like these ones, because these eventually end up dying 💀. And finally, I would make some sort of automation simulating a “normal user behavior”, in order to generate a Passive Income for myself.

The Plan

And so I went on a quest… I had an idea, I just needed to find the right app to throw my idea at. And I found it!

This one however, had a different/interesting approach. This one also made money from ads (presumably), and similarly would give out coins by playing a simple game of Math (that is, if you won the game).

> “Math?”

Yep, that’s right. Math. You would play against other people on a 1v1 match (with a duration of 1 minute) and whoever could answer 20 math problems faster would win 4 points. There were also other game modes, but I’ll stick to this one throughout the article.

After gathering enough points you could exchange them for **$real$money$ **(e.g.: 5000 points would be 5$). Only, there’s a catch. I know, surprising right?

In order to play a 1v1 game you would need to spend what they called “tickets”. And in order to win those said “tickets”, you would need to win games. A vicious cycle indeed. On top of that, remember what I said previously about ads? The developer still needs to eat. So, after a game is finished, you would have a very interesting ad ☁️ waiting for you on the other side (with a duration of **over 30 seconds **most of the times and a button to close it that can only be seen through a microscope).

Nonetheless, I didn’t let that stop me. Oh, no sir!

> “There must be a way to make at least some money from this.”

After thinking about it for a bit and doing some calculations, I figured something out, which I will explain with the fluxogram below:

Simple fluxogram detailing “The Plan”

Looking at the diagram above, if I spent 1 hour playing (60 minutes, which is the equivalent to 60 games), I would make 4 times the amount I spent. So, per 60 games, 60 x 4 = 240 coins. Then I would need to buy more tickets. So, 240 - 100 = 140 coins. This means a total of: 140 coins per hour.

Since I needed 5000 coins to withdraw 5$ (minimum required), I would need a total of 5000 / 140 = 35 hours (or a day and a half) to make this amount. And you must be thinking to yourself:

> “Only 5$ for 35 hours of playing the game, in a row? What about the ads? That also takes time! You didn’t even consider it… Are you dumb?”

Wait, wait, hear me out… 😅

Two things. About the ads, you’ll understand how I dealt with them when I talk about this in The Tools section. Regarding the second thing, well… you see, there was also a daily leaderboard for which the person with the highest number of won games (1st place) would also win extra coins.

And… of course, that was going to be me! 😏

The Tools

For this plan to work, I only needed 2 particular tools. Firstly, as I previously said, ads take a long time (30 seconds between each game), which would make it so, the 35 hours would turn into 52 hours, roughly. So I had multiple options:

1) decompile the app, get rid of the ads and recompile it again;
2) every time a game ends I restart the app;
3) using an ad blocker.

An ad blocker it is then.

Secondly, I would need to make a bot in order to do all the steps I’ve described in the fluxogram, without having to actually play those games (I may be good at Math, but I’m not that fast; and also, I wanted to make sure I got those 4 coins every time).

Blokada

Fortunately this app didn’t have an ad-blocker detector. So I could use a tool like Blokada to block all incoming ads and play games over and over… without having to watch a single ad. In a nutshell, this app works like a VPN, which makes it so, every time a request leaves the app:

• It first goes to a Blokada server;

• And then, if it’s not an ad, it allows it to passthrough to where it was headed. If it is… “Where do you think your going, ugh?”

Automate

This is by far the best tool I could’ve have found to make Android bots. It is free, it has no ads, it has a beautiful supportive community, very well structured documentation and has a huge toolkit/variability of configurations to play with. I look like a total fanboy at this point. Anyway, this is where I started to make my automation.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the original flow I created back then 😢. I’ll try my best to explain the “blocks” I used, in order to perform this automation. Take a look at the image below:

Blocks of the Automate App

Every bot or “flow” starts with a “block” named “Flow beginning”. Then, you have multiple other blocks to choose from, each one with specific properties, depending on what you are trying to achieve. But sticking to the ones I used the most, I’ll describe each one individually: App Start, Interact, Variable Set and For Each.

Android apps are composed by “Activities” and the App Start allows it so you can start an app on a specific activity. So imagine that the screen/window of a 1v1 match game is called “1v1Activity”, but when you open the app you have to go through “MainActivity” first. With this block, you can open a specific activity directly and start the bot from there.

Next, THE most important block is Interact. As the name suggests this is what is used to “interact” with the user interface 🤓. For instance, when a new problem appears like so:

1v1 Duel on the Math Cash App

We can select the numbers “54” and “49”, and use the Variable Set to store the result. The cool part about the Interact block is that, it provides a tool to inspect all elements in the interface and returns the XPath to the element, so that you can inspect or click it.

Finally, with the **For Each **block, I could iterate through the result (in this case 54 + 49 = 103) and click the buttons “1”, “0”, “3” and “Enter”, by using the Interact block again.

It’s that simple!

If you don’t understand it, don’t worry, the best part comes next 😄.

Time to Test It

Now that I had the bot ready, it was time for me to test it. Funny thing I forgot to tell you: this app also came with a “Practise Mode”, which required no tickets to play. How funny is that? Right? Right? Well… if you don’t get the irony in that, allow me to explain!

You see, in order for me to test the bot, if this mode didn’t exist, I had to spend my tickets (so I could play a game). The problem is that, for us programmers, rarely anything works on a first try. As a consequence, I would waste all my tickets just trying to get the bot to work. However, with this, I had a staging environment 🎪!

The Results

“Ok, but how much money did you actually made though?”

Before I tell you how much money I did make, let me first tell you, in the end, it worked like a charm! And it felt so good when it did 😍.

I would: check my socials in the morning; went on and did my day, leave my phone in “do not disturb mode” the rest of the day, so the bot wouldn’t get interrupted (damn you people that send me messages, I’m trying to make some money here!); start the flow and it would go on and on and on playing games, collecting coins; finally, when I had enough coins I would swap them for cash. Next morning I would wake up, check my PayPal and there it was:

> “You have received 5$”.

Now the important part: I made a total of around 25$ in a single week (5 days). All things considered, it was perhaps possible to make even more, if I had left the bot running 24h — 7 days a week.

Hold the horses… because unfortunately, all good things may come to an end!

I was being careful with trying to maintain a “normal user behavior”, trying not to turn the bot ON for long periods of time and making just enough points to “cash out”. I even slowed the bot down, because of it being “to fast” and winning a game in just a few seconds. The problem was I couldn’t make it to slow, since other people were also using bots and it became a competition— to see who could make their bot faster.

Not so long after getting the first payments, I received an email that stated something along these lines:

>* “Hello [NAME], I’m [NAME], the owner of the Math Cash app, and I’ve detected some suspicious behavior in your account. Please stop using a bot or you won’t receive any more payments from now on.”*

Of course I could try and be even more careful, or push my luck for a little bit longer, or just create a new account (this would imply I also created a new PayPal account). Despite having other options, I decided to stop. In the end, my priorities had changed and the goal was no longer “trying to make money using my knowledge”, but rather “trying to gain more knowledge about automation”.

The End

At this point you can be asking to yourself:

> “What about people that really installed the app to play? You were turning an honest app to your advantage!”.

And you would be right. Simply, the truth is, you could not win even if you tried. There were so many bots already in place, that made it impossible to win a single game, without cheating. Am I that evil 😕?

Although this story was short, I continued along the years to explore other apps and try and find ways to make passive income from them. Some worked, others didn’t, and to be honest, it didn’t really matter anymore. I learned so much about how android apps worked (at this point), how to inspect their behaviors and how to reverse engineer apps (which is where I ended up today), that the way I see it: it’s better than money.

Thank you for reading, I hope this can somehow inspire you to invest time into your own curiosities, shenanigans and passions 😸.