Merchants NFT by Gobi Labs
Welcome to the Gobi Dessert, will you stay a while?
This article is broken down into two sections. Section One deals with “what” this mint is, and Section Two answers “why” we did it this way for those of you interested enough to learn more.
Section One: What.
The important things to understand here are Gobi Labs, our Merchants slow mint, the GOBI token & the Guild Ceremonies.
What is Gobi Labs?
We are a group of product focused, Solana native people who build out consumer facing web3 products that focus on revenue. The key words here are consumer facing and revenue.
Over the last 8 months, we’ve built out a DEX (Marco Polo), a vertical Merch business with a SaaS model (Ormuz), the first ever on-chain sports book (Colosseum), as well as backend goodies that allow our products to interoperate. All products have revenue already and we’ve been around since my apes wouldn’t mint in August of 2021.
What are Merchants?
In our world, the Merchants wander & protect the Gobi Desert, in exchange they tax everything within the desert. These taxes are collected by & redistributed within Guilds, with monthly ceremonies that rewards Merchants for their participation. We’ll explain more below, but first the mint details:
Total Supply: 6,000
Presale: 1,200 (SOLD OUT)
MAPS holders: 1,000
AMM: ~300 (AMM price will be set higher than mint)
Slow Mint: 3,500 (Begins Jan 31, 2023)
How will the slow mint work? We’ve always prioritized equal opportunity, which is different than equality. Anyone who goes into our Discord & gets a “Traveler” role is eligible to redeem up to 10 unrevealed Traveler NFTs. Then, on January 31st 2023, we’ll have a “mint” site that will allow anyone with a Traveler to mint it into a Merchant.
Please note that Travellers have a life expectancy of 3 months (until May 1, 2023) and will be voided after that. You can get your 0.5 SOL back at any point AFTER the 3 months, we will open a window to refund BUT but if you don’t mint by May 1st, 2023 AND you don’t refund in that window, your traveller becomes VOID and the Merchant will be added to the Team’s treasury.
Travellers will have no access to gated discord, receive no staking rewards & won’t receive medallions until they become Merchants.
Anyone with a “Traveller” role in our Discord can redeem up to 10 NFTs for 0.5 SOL each.
Starting Jan 31, you can mint them into Merchants for access & rewards for another 3.5 SOL (4 SOL total mint).
You can buy & sell Travellers on secondary markets in addition to holding & minting.
What about Pre-Sales & MAPS holders? If you bought the pre-sale, you’ll be airdropped your travellers on the 31st, in addition to retroactive GOBI tokens (4 per day per pre-sale) from the day you bought pre-sales. This includes the +1 per 5 you bought as a “thank you” gift from us during the FTX crash. Your mint, is free. Here’s an example:
If you bought 10 on Jan 1, 2023, then you would get air-dropped:
12x (10+2) Travellers + 1440 GOBI (48/day x 30days - assuming for 31st of Jan)
Your mint will be FREE.
For MAPS holders, you should’ve gotten airdropped 1,500 GOBI already per map and will get your traveller on the 31st as well. Your mint is 3,000 GOBI per traveller, which you can buy on Marco Polo. This makes your total mint cost 1,500 GOBI which as of writing is ~1 SOL.
IN ADDITION…
Both pre-sales & MAPS holders will get airdropped 1x Medallion NFT per MAP / pre-sale on the 31st for the first Guild Ceremony, which is going to be 1,000 SOL — which they can redeem in Guild Ceremonies.
Guild Ceremonies
These happen once a month, for the first 5 days of every calendar month. But what are they you ask?
As Merchants, you get to tax the entire Gobi Desert, which for now includes Marco Polo, our NFTs, all things Ormuz & the Colosseum with other stuff coming in 2023. These taxes are pooled by Guilds, where Merchants can redeem them during the ceremony by sacrificing medallion NFTs & GOBI tokens.
For now, these are the confirmed guilds:
1. Trader Guild
Funded monthly until July 1, 2023 by:
- 30% of DEX profit
- 30% of royalties for MAPS + Merchants
Cost per redemption:
- 200 $GOBI (will change month to month based on price of GOBI)
- 2x Medallions
2. Fabric Guild
Funded monthly until July 1, 2023 by:
- 20% of Ormuz profit (HJ, X, SaaS)
Cost per redemption:
- 300 $GOBI (will change month to month based on price of GOBI)
- 3x Medallions
3. Gladiator Guild
Funded monthly until July 1, 2023 by:
- 5% of Colosseum Profits
Cost per redemption:
- 500 $GOBI (will change month to month based on price of GOBI
- 5x Medallions
The first redemption, on Feb 1, 2023 is only available for Pre-Sale & MAPS holders, and will contain 1,000 SOL in the Traders Guild. The rest will kick in March 1, 2023 for the month of February 2023.
How do you get Medallions? For every Merchant that is staked from the 5th day of the month until the last, you will be airdropped 1x Medallion NFT on the following 1st day of the next month.
You can use them in any guild ceremony, you can hold them for one down the road when you think the pie will be bigger, or you can buy & sell them on secondary markets. The choice, is all yours.
Here’s a quick recap of the Guild Ceremonies, more information will be released closer to Feb 1, 2023.
1st to 4th day of the month: You can lock medallions & pay GOBI to redeem guild rewards by opting in.
5th day of the month: You have 24 hours to unlock & change your mind before they get burned! Then, the rewards get distributed.
5th day — last day of the month: You have to leave your Merchant staked, to be airdropped a Medallion NFT for the following month. You get 4 GOBI per day per staked!
Repeat. All information will be public, including how much taxes each guild collected & how many Merchants are opting in.
The GOBI Token
Last but not least, we gotta talk about the GOBI token. Most of the details you can find on our website, or the individual product site. Most utility involves forms of cash-back, discounts or freebies. But there’s one component of the token that matters the most to Merchants which is Governance.
Starting in June 2023, Merchants themselves will decide how the Guilds tax. This means if enough votes get casted, the Gladiator Guild would tax the Colosseum more while the Fabric Guild taxes the Ormuz less. The proposals will be submitted by the Gobi Labs team, but the decision will be made by you guys.
It’s your money, so we hope you guys participate. More details will be announced later - and as for Section Two, the “Why,” we’ll save that for another day 😉
Until then, please make you subscribe as we’ll post all updates here exclusively and make sure to follow us on Twitter & join our Discord for the Mint!