Alpha Nodes - Week 5 In Review
The past week has been full of amazing accomplishments and internal goals being met. We are coming up on the incredible milestone of $1,000,000 paid out in rewards, and are so close to rolling out Phase 2 for you all.
Yes, I know, you all expect a Medium this week with a sneak preview of our Marketplace, our NFTs and everything to come in Phase 2. We wish we could provide that to you but instead we’d like to give some transparency on what we’ve been working on and where our time has gone the past week. Our quality will speak for itself, and we would rather manage your expectations and then drop a bomb on everyone rather than sneaking out any previews. Our Alphas with conviction and patience will be immensely rewarded (especially if you buy any paper-handed dips), and upon Phase 2 launch those who sold will absolutely want to FOMO back in. Providing a visual preview to our community would be great, and definitely drive hype, but it would also show our competitors a bit of our hand. We want to ensure that when our Phase 2 launches we can keep our IP completely unique and special for our 10,000 shareholders.
Week Number 5
The past week has been full of hard work and finishing up the structure to our new business entities and paid contractors. At the end of Week 4 we filed for our Alpha Shares LLC in Wyoming, which has allowed us to sign formal partnership, contractor and employment agreements with individuals and companies. This was absolutely necessary for building out our team, and we have just finalized everything. John (BadShogun) our CTO and Lead Engineer has built out quite the proficient engineering team for the contract work, and an amazing tenured team for the front-end and design. We have been in constant contact with our NFT artist, and progress is coming along perfectly. The base character has been completed, all of the categories and traits have been chosen, and now the process of approval and feedback on all layers is ongoing. The Genesis NFTs are currently being created first.
A few of our advisors and community leaders have gotten sneak peeks of our rebrand, and the feedback has been really impressive. The designer we’ve employed for this task has experience designing websites for billion-dollar brands. We don’t cut corners, and when we release this UI/UX to the public, it’s going to blow you all away. There are too many projects in the crypto space that spend months on a rebrand or new website, just for it to be unintuitively designed. We will be a AAA brand, and our new front-end experience will represent that.
Also, we had a great AMA with James Pelton earlier in the week that summarizes our project and future plans for anyone that’s new. Go check it out on Twitter!
What Still Has To Be Done?
We have made a significant amount of progress in such a short period of time, but what’s next? Wen moon? Wen launch? Great questions. Let’s put some bullet points down here on what’s been done, and what still needs to happen.
- H̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶N̶F̶T̶ ̶A̶r̶t̶i̶s̶t̶
- B̶r̶a̶i̶n̶s̶t̶o̶r̶m̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶i̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶e̶t̶c̶.̶ ̶
- D̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶ ̶P̶2̶ ̶C̶o̶n̶t̶r̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶F̶r̶a̶m̶e̶w̶o̶r̶k̶
- D̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶ ̶P̶2̶ ̶F̶r̶o̶n̶t̶-̶E̶n̶d̶ ̶F̶r̶a̶m̶e̶w̶o̶r̶k̶
- C̶a̶l̶c̶u̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶k̶e̶n̶o̶m̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶j̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶(̶e̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶s̶,̶ ̶c̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶N̶F̶T̶,̶ ̶e̶t̶c̶.̶)̶
- H̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶D̶e̶s̶i̶g̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶P̶2̶ ̶W̶e̶b̶s̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶R̶e̶b̶r̶a̶n̶d̶
- N̶a̶i̶l̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶i̶g̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶r̶ ̶p̶a̶l̶e̶t̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶g̶o̶ ̶c̶h̶o̶i̶c̶e̶
- F̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶L̶L̶C̶
- S̶c̶h̶e̶d̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶d̶o̶z̶e̶n̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶u̶l̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶l̶a̶w̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶C̶P̶A̶s̶
- R̶e̶t̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶o̶r̶n̶e̶y̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶C̶P̶A̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶m̶i̶l̶i̶a̶r̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶D̶e̶F̶i̶
- F̶o̶r̶m̶ ̶a̶g̶r̶e̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶r̶a̶c̶t̶s̶ ̶/̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶n̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶L̶L̶C̶
- M̶a̶n̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶g̶i̶n̶e̶e̶r̶s̶,̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶r̶s̶,̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶i̶g̶n̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶n̶e̶r̶s̶
- Complete full contract development
- Complete front-end development
- Test everything on testnet
- Submit all contract work for security Audit
- Release Genesis NFT Mint
- Release Base NFT Mint
- Alpha Shares Fully Unleashed
- Announce first NFT Marketplace Partner
As you can see, we have scratched off a number of tasks and are headed full force into our Phase 2 launch. We have completed the vast majority of the hard work, and from here on out it’s going to be a lot of micromanagement to ensure our vision comes together exactly how we see it. There are many moving parts, but our founders are experienced in managing a team.
FAQs
“How many $ALPHA tokens to create a node?”
- First and foremost, we are not a node project or a NaaS protocol. The origins of Alpha included functionality of a NaaS protocol, but really only the user experience of our interface will resemble that of a node protocol. (You go to a dashboard, view pending rewards, and can claim or compound).
- You do not create nodes with your $ALPHA tokens, but rather you will use them to mint an NFT, of which there will only ever be 10,000. These 10,000 NFTs represent shares of ownership in the Alpha brand, and the technologies we create under our umbrella — the first being our NFT Marketplace. As a fractional owner / shareholder, you earn dividends proportional to the volume of fees generated on our platform. This means you will be a part of a passive income protocol that generates it’s rewards with real value creation, not because of a transfer of wealth like traditional node projects.
- OpenSea, the largest marketplace by volume, does on average $100 million per day in trading volume and collects a 2.5% fee. That’s roughly $2.5M per day in gross income. They split these profits up to return to their VC firms, PE firms, and private investors that benefit as a shareholder from OpenSea’s business activities. In essence, our Alphas receive the same benefit. We will not be raising private capital, VC or PE funds. Our Alphas are our investors, and the profits go back to you.
“Am I guaranteed an NFT at launch?”
- As stated above, there will only ever be 10,000 NFTs. No less, no more. Just like any limited collection, some people get nervous that they may miss out on the opportunity to mint one. That is a completely valid concern, and one we will attempt to address.
- We will do everything we can to make our launch as fair as possible. We know that by the time we launch, there is a good chance we will have enough holders and interest that we could mint out very quickly. We have processes in place upon launch to prevent any bad actors, and allow everyone a fair chance to snag an NFT. These precautions and any limitations will be announced closer to launch.
- This being said — These NFTs will be very, very exclusive. Due to their scarce nature, they are bound to be highly desired and increase in price the more successful our Alpha brands become. We do not want this to be something anyone can enter into. This is a chic protocol where our NFT holders will be proud to be an exclusive member. There will always be an opportunity to purchase an NFT through the secondhand market, and those prices will be determined by the demand.
“How will you compete with other marketplaces?”
We will be the go-to marketplace for hyper-functional NFTs.
- From the start we have been building our marketplace with the flexibility to adapt to the constantly changing crypto landscape. OpenSea launched in December of 2017 and DeFi reportedly hadn’t even been invented until August of 2018. The platform OpenSea offers is fantastic for well-known and established NFT collections, but as we all know, these NFTs are becoming far more utilitarian rather than just a profile picture. OpenSea’s terms of service don’t allow for an NFT to be a yield bearing asset — ours will. We will be catering to the additional functionality that is absolutely necessary in this evolving space and allow developers of new (or existing) DeFi applications to use our marketplace to seamlessly integrate NFTs into their ecosystem.
- We have already been over the pitfalls projects face when being forced to use a 3rd party marketplace, and we aim solves the issue we’ve mentioned in our other Medium articles about secondary marketplaces undercutting the value of the native token. When a protocol uses a 3rd party marketplace to buy / sell their NFTs, then all the buy pressure is relieved from the native chart but all the sell pressure remains. If investors are able to purchase an NFT position using a gas token like ETH, AVAX, FTM, etc. rather than the native project token, then there will no longer be buy pressure. If there is general downwards price pressure on the price per token, then the floor price of the NFTs on these 3rd party marketplaces will consistently be undercut and cause a downward spiral as investors attempt to exit their positions. By allowing a project to utilize their own token on a secondary marketplace, we aid their ecosystem and solve these issues. In turn, the marketplace fees will be converted into $ALPHA which puts buy pressure on our $ALPHA chart.
What To Expect
The dev team is working as hard as we can to get this pushed out to our community, and we have been surprisingly on track with very few hiccups. We estimate that our contracts and full front end + website will be complete within the next 14 days. We will perform a few tests, and then submit all contracts to a third party for a professional security audit. During this time we will be polishing up any additional features and making final tests. We will do our best to expedite the audit process, and we do have some handy connections there. After audit, it’s launch time baby.
We are just as excited as you all, and we can’t wait to show everyone what we’ve been working on. As said previously, we will not be giving out any public sneak peeks until just prior to our Genesis auctions. It will all be worth the wait.
Stay Alpha.
