Original Article Title: "Iron Blood Launchpad Takes Action, AI Launch Rules Completely Rewritten!"

Original Article Authors: Anci, Biteye

The 1011 crash has been a week since it happened. Not only did it set a record for the largest liquidation in history at $20 billion, this brutal crash also made many KOLs reflect on a heartbreaking fact of this bull market—Builders' faith is absent, with plates scattered everywhere, and the cryptocurrency market is becoming increasingly like a casino.

"The problem is, the Crypto environment has undergone a structural change, and the cypherpunk spirit has been completely abandoned!"

—@tmel0211

"Why is it that every time a MEME goes viral, no matter what happens next, the market crashes hard? Think about it seriously. I hope everyone can remember to use it well in the future."

——@TingHu888

In this context, Virtuals, known for "governing the ecosystem with strict rules," has introduced a new launch rule, Unicorn, which not only addresses issues such as bot sniping and fair launch, but also focuses mainly on attracting and supporting excellent AI projects. This can be considered as leaving some hope and ground for Builders to reclaim the "cypherpunk spirit."

What are the highlights of the Unicorn Launch Rule?

With the launch of Unicorn this time, it will completely end the previous Genesis launch rule, and the two have the following changes in comparison.

For investors:

1. The point system has been eliminated, and everyone can buy

2. In terms of the launch price, a dynamic pricing curve based on FDV is adopted

The lower the funds raised by the project, i.e., the current FDV, the lower the launch price; conversely, when the project is hot and the FDV is high, the price will be adjusted upward. Here, investors need to thoroughly research the project, be able to accumulate enough chips when the FDV has not risen too high.

The lower the funds raised by the project, i.e., the current FDV, the lower the launch price; conversely, when the project is hot and the FDV is high, the price will be adjusted upward. Here, investors need to thoroughly research the project, be able to accumulate enough chips when the FDV has not risen too high.

3. Introduce a Decaying Tax Mechanism to Address Front-Running

For the first 100 minutes of the project launch, a buyer tax will be implemented, starting at 99% and linearly decaying to 1% (approximately 1% reduction per minute). This means that if you front-run into the project in the first minute, $99 out of every $100 you transact will go towards taxes. This discourages front-running bots.

However, combining Point 3 with Point 2 creates another issue: waiting until after the tax decay period to buy may result in the FDV being significantly higher, leading to a surge in price. Investors will need to find an optimal entry point.

4. Airdrop: 5% Community Airdrop Allocation for Every Project

2% allocated to $VIRTUAL stakers; 3% allocated to active ecosystem participants, with criteria such as trading volume, ACP involvement, Butler interaction, etc.

5. Support for 3x Leveraged Long/Short Positions

Providing investors with more trading tools while also amplifying rewards and penalties for Builder and Rug projects.

For project teams:

1. 50% of Tokens Allocated to the Founder Team, Based on FDV Unlocking

25% Long-term lockup (or unlocked when FDV reaches $160 million), with a further 6-month linear release post-unlocking.

25% allocated for linear fundraising: These tokens will gradually be sold through on-chain limit orders as the project's FDV grows from $2 million to $160 million, providing ongoing cash flow to the team.

2. Allow the Founder Team to Purchase Tokens from the Public Sale Pool (45%), Uncapped and Fully On-Chain Public

These tokens default to a 1-month lockup and 12-month linear release, allowing strong founding teams to publicly acquire their own tokens, demonstrating long-term confidence to the community.

02 From Genesis to Unicorn: The Ambition of the Crypto World

Earlier, it was said that Virtuals "govern the ecosystem rigorously," and this strictness during the Genesis period was mainly manifested on the user side: retail investors who wanted to earn money on Virtuals had to pass various "loyalty tests": various holding and staking requirements, diligently accumulate points, and couldn't sell easily; otherwise, they would be tightly monitored, labeled as jeet, and henceforth be excluded from various airdrops and points.

However, the downside of "rolling users" quickly became apparent, and the points system quickly turned to farming, which in turn brought about points inflation and user fatigue.

Therefore, we can clearly see that Virtuals is gradually adjusting its direction and is shifting its strict focus to the project side:

· Last month, Virtuals introduced the ALE (Agent Liquidity Engine) as a core metric to measure Agent performance, focusing on whether the product solves real problems, has sustainable revenue, and if the team can continuously reinvest revenue back into the ecosystem.

· It is officially stipulated that AI Agents participating in the ACP, if failing consecutively 10 times, will be automatically "downgraded" to ensure that the ACP platform always maintains a high standard of intelligent agent service.

Furthermore, the introduction of the Unicorn whitelist mechanism is even setting up obstacles for the project side—leaving Rug projects with nowhere to hide and giving high-quality projects a chance to shine. All this is only to ensure that all projects coming to Virtuals must have a long-term perspective and ultimately leave the ecosystem with the best AI projects.

03 Can't View Virtuals with Launchpad's Perspective Anymore

The essence of Launchpad is a coin issuance machine; delving further, it is a small-scale Dex, where activity and liquidity are its sources of revenue. Usually, meme sentiment is its foundation, but sentiment is inherently fleeting and elusive, so most Launchpads inevitably cannot escape the fate of being short-lived.

Virtuals cleverly defined the project scope within the AI Agent realm at its inception, incubated high-demand projects like AIXBT, enhanced the tone and quality of AI Agents within the ecosystem, worked hard to shake off the AI Meme label, and created a Builder ecosystem atmosphere.

After accumulating a considerable number of high-quality projects, Virtuals launched the ACP plan, aligning with the current narrative of multiple AI Agents communicating and collaborating under the MCP framework—this is also the primary approach in the industry regarding how AI Agents work and address real-world issues.

However, the performance of the AI hedge fund Axelrod under the previously high-profile ACP framework did not meet expectations after building up anticipation. Therefore, Virtuals' ACP business did not make much of a splash. But there is no need to be discouraged. After all, the path of multi-agent systems has not been truly proven and matured even by traditional AI giants. Therefore, Virtuals had to introduce Butler on the user side to provide more user-friendly education and communication windows for ACP, while exploring various AI agents within its ecosystem.

Currently, the direction represented by ACP, focusing on the collaboration of multiple AI agents, is still widely recognized as a future potential. Once a breakthrough is made, it will be comparable to the ChatGPT moment. However, to truly achieve this goal, besides ongoing optimization of the network's design, there needs to be further enhancement and breakthrough in agent capabilities. Therefore, Virtuals aims to leverage the advantage of Launchpad to attract excellent AI agent projects to its network.

04 What Is the Wealth Effect for Retail Investors?

Even the most magnificent achievements cannot do without a mass foundation. For ordinary users, there are still many positives to Unicorn's upgrade this time:

1. Under various official policy stimuli, the quality of projects on the platform will improve to a certain extent.

2. The points system has finally been abolished, so no more need to accumulate points.

3. Providing leverage for both long and short positions, offering more tools to amplify profits and set stop-loss orders.

Of course, on the other hand, the dynamic price curve based on FDV and the tax mechanism have also increased the difficulty of timing the market entry.

Unfortunately, it is happening in the current turbulent macro background that the projects launched on Unicorn after its launch have not yet successfully replicated the significant wealth effect of the Genesis period. However, one must be patient. In the long run, once the market sentiment changes, there is still huge potential for new projects on Unicore.

Most importantly, this Unicorn upgrade by Virtuals has injected rare cyberpunk faith into Builders in this relatively sluggish period, giving us more expectations—anticipating more AIXBT moments and also anticipating the ACP to experience the ChatGPT moment.

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