Sneaky Vampire Syndicate: Exploring Cross-Chain Functionality
The NFT world has gone through an immense growth phase, with all of it starting on the Ethereum blockchain. Within the last 2 years we have seen a parabolic growth with regards to the NFT space and a mass onboarding of people coming into the scene. As much as this has plenty of positives it has also brought plenty of drawbacks and flaws with the space as a whole.
The majority of all NFT’s are built and traded on Ethereum (hereinafter referred to as ETH). As we have progressed through 2021 we have seen many other chains get used for NFT’s as well! This has been an extremely refreshing take on the scene and on its own has created entire sub-communities within NFT’s itself. A glaring problem with the NFT “boom” was the impact it had on ETH, and its gas prices. Gas prices during the NFT “bull market” was something that was a major hindrance to most people, as it made what is meant to be an experience for everyone to enjoy, a particularly expensive one.
Gas Wars
When you are trying to reach as large of an audience as possible, cost factors and monetary situations play a big role. “Gas Wars” became a common occurrence within the market and we often saw that the majority of people were priced out of very popular projects. The gas fees were often way above the mint price, which is clearly not how it should be.
One thing we were discussing internally prior to our launch at SVS was how we can give everyone a fair chance at our mint, irrespective of their financial situation, and how we could launch while eradicating a “gas war”. Our developers came up with a brilliant solution to first provide a reserve function, then give people chance to mint in an allotted period, therefore being able to pay lower gas fees. Further detail can be found in our developers Medium: Mitigating gas wars, bots and network congestion for Ethereum NFT projects.
This has been one of our aims since minting: How can we alleviate gas costs whenever possible?
Fees on the Ethereum Blockchain & The Use of Bridges
Irrespective of “gas wars”, we have noticed that with the evolution of many NFT projects and their inclusion of additional mechanics such as staking, breeding, claiming rewards has brought on issues for the average user. The main problem with this is that if it is on ETH, the fees are generally considered rather expensive for most users. The whole ethos of SVS was to continue to grow and add value to the community; and scalability is a very important factor of this. This is why we started exploring the uses of bridges; this would allow for our main project and the NFTs themselves to remain on the Ethereum Blockchain, whilst utilizing other blockchains (with lower fees) for performing certain actions, making the end cost much lower.
Our inclusion of making use of other bridges rather than ETH for some aspects of SVS will allow us to continue to adopt more ideas and bring them to life. We are working tirelessly on bringing the best we can to our community, and up to now this was hindered by what we could feasibly do on the Ethereum Blockchain without fees being unreasonable. Using other chains will allow for the expansion to mechanisms and functionality that would not have been possible without.
Polygon Bridge for SVS Ghost Copies
A first example of where we have made us of this is our recent addition including Polygon airdrop for all holders.
A common issue that came up within the community during our AMA’s was that our holders staking tokens couldn’t view their Vamps/Bats in their OpenSea account since they were already staked. This is not something that could be gotten around traditionally; as when staked the tokens are sent to the staking address, meaning they are no longer in the original wallet.
Our talented developers finished a Polygon contract to airdrop ghost copies of everyone’s SVS to their wallets! This can now be unhidden (by default OpenSea hides the majority of Polygon NFT’s) so they show up on your profile. The token can’t be sold or transferred. The contract controls the transfer, so once you un-stake your token on Ethereum the Polygon version is sent to the burn address. When you stake again they will reappear in your wallet. The same thing was done for the Sneaky Bats!
This simply means that a direct copy of your token is given to your address when staking; then removed when un-staking, meaning you are never without your Vampire or Bat! This is not something that would be possible on the Ethereum Blockchain due to the high fees, but as Polygon has very minimal fees this was feasible — and this is where going cross chains begins!
As we continue to grow as a community and as a team, we hope that we can continue to innovate and bring as much value as we can to every single one of you. Thank you for joining us on this journey and we can’t wait to keep the momentum rolling!
