Announcing The ICP Squad NFT Pre-Order Process

Since our initial project announcement, we’ve refined the pre-order/whitelist process in response to community feedback during our Community Conversation interview with DFINITY Foundation.

We originally planned to leave the pre-order form open for one week with a 20k cap. Since then, we’ve adjusted plans to leave it open for at least four weeks with no cap. The purpose of this post is to explain our reasoning for this change and to provide more details for how it’ll work. If some of these concepts don’t make sense, it may be helpful to review our Gameplay Guide.

Background

Before making this change, we collected over 400 votes from early Discord members last weekend and listened to their feedback. Here’s the original text of the proposal our community voted on and approved with an 88.8% approval rate:

Proposal: Inclusive Whitelist Pre-Order With No Cap

During our community call, someone made this comment, and it stuck with us:

“I thought you were making an inclusive game, so why are you then making the whitelist exclusive to just the first 20k people?”

Our original plan was to cap the whitelist to 20k, but we’ve had these concerns:

1. If we hit our cap, we’d have to be turning people away simply because they were too late. This directly conflicts with the goals and principles we shared about this project in the announcement post, which doesn’t sit right with us.
2. Even with a 20k limit, many NFT projects have sold 10k in less than 1 hour. There still would be a risk of people rushing to make the whitelist before the cap is hit.
3. Our game is designed for Character NFTs to be used by the player, not flipped for profit by speculators. Speculators love hard caps, and this defeats our goal of keeping a low floor price for characters.
   

The solution of this proposal is simple.... We keep the whitelist pre-order form open with no cap.

1. When you fill out the whitelist form and send the 1 ICP, you’ll get an email with the # of your position on the whitelist.
2. We’ll regularly go through and validate the whitelist entries, removing all bots and cheaters. (The game gives no advantage for having more than one character, so don’t even try)
3. The first 20% of entries on the whitelist will get several great accessories airdropped to their wallet in addition to their Level 3 character. You’ll need to be one of the first 50% of entries to guarantee to get one accessory in addition to your character. This ensures the rarity of accessories as a proportion of players and rewards people for promoting the project from now until the artwork drop (basically building some engage-to-earn aspects into the whitelist pre-order process itself).
   

The more players in the game

• The more market stability and liquidity the game’s NFTs will have.
• The easier it’ll be to attract involvement from all major Internet Computer apps.
• The more funds we’ll have to build out the game properly.
• The more exposure and engagement we’ll drive on the Internet Computer.

New Pre-Order Process

We’ve been surprised and greatly encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive feedback from our community regarding the ICP Squad NFT game! We believe that we owe it to them not to rush things and take the time to execute the pre-order process properly.

Most projects use the term “whitelist”. However, since in this case it requires 1 ICP, we’ll just use the more accurate term “pre-order list” to avoid confusion.

Start Date

Originally we planned to use a Google Form to collect entries, but there are many ways these can be filled in wrong or misused. We’ve decided to invest in creating a landing page that connects to a Stoic/Plug ICP wallet to provide a more seamless and foolproof pre-order process. This change will push our start date to the end of September or early October.

Since the pre-order form will be open for so long, we plan to announce when it’s open without providing any upfront notice. This will minimize the initial rush, and we hope that everyone who enters within the first 2-4 days will be early enough to snag some accessories.

Release Order

To reward our early community builders, we’ll be releasing access to the pre-order/whitelist URL in stages. First will be our Discord ICP Squad OGs; a few hours later, it’ll be open to our Genesis role Discord members (capped at 20k), and then it’ll be published on our website and Twitter for everyone to access.

Entry Process

1. Log in using your Plug/Stoic wallet (URL not released yet).
2. Fill out the entry form.
3. Pay the 1 ICP pre-order fee.
4. The screen will display the number of your position in the pre-order list, and you’ll be able to mint your character when the artwork drops.

Bonus Rewards

The bigger this project becomes, the more we promote the Internet Computer Ecosystem! Once you join the pre-order whitelist, you’re now a member of the ICP Squad. Share, like, comment, and post about the project to grow the size of the pre-order list so that you can improve your odds of winning these rewards:

• Level 3 Character | First 20k or first 60% of entries (whichever is larger)
• Initially, we planned on making all Season 3 Characters Level 3. However, after we posted Proposal 1, many community members expressed concern about starting the game with too high of a population of Level 3 characters (essentially removing its meaning). Therefore, we’ve decided to make a compromise that doesn’t break our original promise but leaves room for the possibility of some Level 2 characters. Since we believe all pre-order participants deserve a discount, there will be no Level 1 characters, but if the list grows past 20k entries, there will be some Level 2 characters.
• At least (1) Accessory | First 50% of entries
• We must keep accessories rare in proportion to players in the game to preserve their value, but we also want to reward those who promote the project. You must be within the first 50% of entries on the pre-order list to be sure of getting at least one accessory in addition to your character.
• Multiple Accessories | First 20% of entries
  

End Date & Next Steps

As stated in our initial announcement, “The funds raised will be used to complete the artwork for the entire collection, fund the development of the gameplay features, and start the DAO fund.”

We plan to keep the pre-order form open as long as possible and close it when we can drop the artwork. Our current estimate is that this will take 4-8 weeks from the start of the pre-order start date due to the technical complexities of dynamically resizing layers to make character features and accessories interchangeable across different head shapes. Most other NFT projects use fixed templates and don’t use shadows and highlights in their SVG artwork, so we have our work cut out for us.

Once the artwork is ready, pre-order participants will be able to access the minting app and select colors, a hairstyle, a facial expression, and other features to mint a character that is unique and fits their style. At this point, all NFTs will be tradeable, and the core team will switch focus to finishing out the gameplay mechanics. Once the MVP gameplay is launched (which we hope to complete this year), new characters will be mintable for set flat rates, and work on Season 1 will begin!

What’s the benefit of joining the Pre-Order list?

1. You will be getting a high-level character for 2-4 ICP less than it’ll cost once the gameplay is launched.
2. You will be getting Season 0 assets, which won’t be mintable ever again once Season 1 starts. This gives them a visual rarity and offers a stat bonus as outlined in the gameplay guide.
3. You will get to customize your own NFT character and then use it as an Avatar on social media to show your support of the Internet Computer and look good doing it.
4. If the pre-order list grows big enough, you will get the chance to have some valuable bonus rewards sent to your wallet in addition to your character.
5. You will forever be part of the ICP Squad, which is a group of people who love the Internet Computer, and that is priceless!

FAQs

This “no-cap inclusive” approach is unusual; why are you doing it this way?

One of the key goals of this project was to make it accessible to everyone. While we want to reward early supporters (like every NFT project), we set out to build something that didn’t exclude others with high entry fees and hard caps. This means having a hard cap during launch wouldn’t be consistent with the nature of the project, so this unusual approach is our best attempt to launch this unique type of project properly.

Why is this project/team so different?

ICP squad is a community devoted to promoting the Internet Computer, and volunteers lead it from all over the world. We wanted to create something that brought the ecosystem together and which boasted features only possible on the Internet Computer, so we thought outside the box and came up with the Engage-To-Earn game model, and there’s nothing else out there quite like it!

How will this affect the value of your NFTs?

Our dual NFT approach makes our NFT utility different than most projects. Think of the character NFTs as being memberships to join the game and show your support of the Internet Computer. The price of these is meant to be kept low so that others can easily join in the fun, and they will also be attractive avatars people will want to use on social media to promote the Internet Computer.

The Accessory NFTs are both prizes and functional gameplay pieces with a supply that is always lower than the number of players, so the idea is that this will preserve their supply against demand and keep their value high. These are the assets with high floor prices where players can enjoy speculative trading and collecting.

Like with other NFT games, this means that the more players there are, the more liquid the market is and the more value it brings to everyone involved. In our Engage-To-Earn gaming model, the whole Internet Computer ecosystem is the playing field, so it’s also directly benefited as the ICP Squad game grows.

Connect with the ICP Squad:

Twitter | DSCVR | Distrikt