Pak’s Merge: The Fungible Reloaded (with fun speculations, of course)
Yet another record breaking drop
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The Pak Ecosystem has been rapidly evolving, beautifully and explosively. It’s only been seven and a half months since The Fungible and the ecosystem has developed with different dynamics and rhythms, with the Pak Wikipedia page live and well.
From Dec. 2-4, Pak sold ~$92 million in just over 48 hours, including $51 million during the 30-minute pre-sale of Merge on Niftygateway. Tokens were minted and dropped to individual accounts on Dec. 7 and Urn DAO successfully purchased the Alpha with 12k mass.
How Merge works: an open edition where units of mass are bought (starting at $299) and masses merge into 1 NFT if in the same wallet. Always.
And Merge is essentially two NFT drops (more on this later).
If a wallet with a Merge NFT in it were to purchase another Merge NFT, the NFTs combine into one NFT. And the smart contract has a true burn feature which removes the smaller mass from the collection. The collection will only decrease in edition size.
A total of 266k masses were purchased but there will only be 29k NFTs (1 per account/wallet), setting yet another sales record. Niftygateway’s wallet is “whitelisted” by the Merge smart contract so it can hold multiple merge NFTs centrally (so that it doesn’t all combine into one, violently):
Pak is the cynosure of the digital art world, leading the way in NFT sales and on-chain innovation. The Merge drop mechanism is as viciously elegant as we’ve been primed to expect and inclusive as before: low price, no gas (nor gas wars) at all, favoring Pak collectors (early access), and open to almost anyone with a phone number and credit card.
Unique Buyers on Pak Open Editions (first-day price)
X (Aug 2020): 7 | $1618
The Fungible (Apr 2021): 3,080 | $500
Lost Poets (Sep 2021): ~3,500 | 0.32 eth but less from the bonus (source)
Merge (Dec 2021): +28,000 | $299
It’s been seven and a half months since The Fungible and we continue to be astounded. What The Fungible had going for it was a surprise, a freshness, including Sotheby’s participation, multiple major interviews on CNBC/Clubhouse, and the beginning of NFT fungibility that is Burn.art and $ASH. The Fungible was the first major NFT drop by a major global auction house that allowed many people to purchase their first NFTs and first Sotheby’s pieces. Cube units combined and there was a hidden leaderboard, and Cube NFTs could be turned into $ASH via a bonding curve. It was intellectually arousing.
''Reloaded'' is also an apt word because much of the tenor of the action is repeated in Merge (a beautiful sentence, source here). With Merge, we are again on NiftyGateway, breathtakingly buying a Pak open edition, one staged to increase in price over time with innovative and simple built-in scarcity. We are again telling others about NFTs, and hopefully, with a little more success.
With the Merge drop, the sheer fact so many buyers told their friends and family coupled with the easy accessibility, means that many collectors had the experience to take home, literally, discussed around dining room tables and spontaneously on rides to soccer practice.
And many of the people we told may only know Pak through us, so to them, we are all Pak’s #1 Fan. With Pak, flippers become collectors and grown-ups turn into children. And the more one shares of Pak pieces:
Pak pioneered the concept of open editions in NFTs, with their first open edition (or infinite edition) NFT drop in Aug. 2020 (Wikipedia). With Merge, it’s a drop that has such beautiful mechanisms other NFT projects will surely ape into as well.
The mastery of mechanisms hasn’t abated. Pak is saving the world from 10k pfps lizard avatars and money grabs. Pak is combatting the forces of virtual FOMO, low-effort avatars, poor road maps, and perhaps, importantly, an NFT trading mentality and addiction that overly focuses on price and flipping for quick gains.
Given this is a Pak drop, there are many cliffhangers.
The Merge NFTs have many visual properties, a few of which will be immediately recognized. The top 100 masses have a black background and yellow circle, and 50 randomly assigned NFTs will have blue backgrounds. The largest mass is a black circle and is appropriately called The Alpha. Alpha can change if a larger mass subsumes it or comes into existence from subsuming.
Emerging NFTs
Merge’s mass consolidation mechanism is but the first layer and there are many classes/traits Pak can change. Currently, there are 5 color classes and the bigger mass’s traits survive any merges.
Three weeks after the Merge sale ended on Dec. 4, Pak will release the burn structure for Merge based on secondary sales dynamics (variables will be calibrated to strike balance and not depress the $ASH yield). The timing for this to fall on ChristMass (Dec 25) is probably no accident. Claimable NFTs that are burnable for $ASH will come next in 2022 (mass.black) along with their potential burning, which is another layer of value:
The Urn.art DAO, founded by Silver Surfer, won The Alpha and there is much that could happen during the treasure hunt, mass.black, etc.
“Decentralization of ownership is an important concept and now it's becoming mainstream with everything else it will bring.. That's what we should be happy about. Because now, we're talking about this, and we will say, ‘I was early’ ”
– Pak, Dec. 2 on The Lost Spaces
The Urn platform (unrelated to Pak) is also exciting because it will reward $ASH holders with points that can be used to claim future drops on its platform. The Intern token (which was sold to fund the DAO) can also be staked for valuable things to come.
Merge is the biggest NFT drop in history with the # 1 NFT creator who has constantly innovated and pushed the medium and presented value dilemmas to their collectors. Alpha is the biggest and most valuable NFT in the Merge collection, and it will, appropriately, be governed by a DAO.
And now that you’ve made it this far, here are some fun speculations on what is to come with Merge and fungibility (100% speculative and warning: involves math):
Speculation: Merge NFTs will not be burnable at all let alone on the existsing bonding curve. Merge already has a mechansim for reducing collection size which is a “true burn” method different than sending to dead address (what Burn.art does), and the only affiliated NFTs burnable for $ASH high-tier are the NFTs claimable after an “unusual treasure hunt” that is mass.black.
So Merge essentially is two NFT drops, the first was already sold on Niftygateway and the second is free* and burnable high-tier.
Merge has 100 classes based on the last two digits of the token ID (independent of token mass) which appears to be well distributed (not speculation). This is the inclusiveness part that levels the playing field and also may rule out theories that have sweet spot or require some minimum # of mass to be burnable since it doesn’t help the small, first time collectors. Pak has noted “there will be a social side…maybe we do a quest together and maybe certain classes behaves like a faction” (Dec. 7 in Pak Discord).
Well how are things going to be arranged?
Speculation: Each of the 100 classes is a (solar) system of interactions between masses, with the gravitational force felt by them equal to:
The magnitude of the force (and potential energy) is directly proportional to the masses of the two objects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two objects. The gravitational constant G, that is required to balance, is set by the creator, Pak based on secondary dynamics. If, after many merges, only 2-3 tokens of a single class remain, that would be a different system than if 80-90 tokens of a given class still exist.
Do you know what a solar system looks like? Does this look familiar?
Speculation: as things move in ellipsoid (circular) orbits in solar systems, the hunt for burnable NFTs will naturally move mass owners around. At different spokes in the system, there are claimable NFTs that can only be claimed if you orbit past it and claim it. This requires information sharing between members of the same class and coordinating synchrony.
Well, in the above case wouldn’t the biggest mass in the class see everything? Yes, but…Speculation: the biggest mass can only claim the burnable NFTs by absorbing or buying the smaller orbiting mass that has already claimed NFT (which transfers with the merger). This way, things merge
The Fungible: Reloaded - if you look closely, the sphere is inside the outlines of a cube.
Oh, and there are two $ASH exclusive NFT collections coming either this week or next. And with Merge, I expect more follow-ups and reveals. Going along with the Matrix theme, there might well be The Fungible Revolutions and The Fungible Resurrections. Who knows?
Hold onto your (Pak) ERCs, we’re in for a ride!
Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed it!
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Deep. Read it 3 times and still trying to get my head round it .
Very fun astronomical speculation!