Virtuals launches new IPO mechanism Unicorn—What are the wealth benefits?

Original Title: "The Iron-Blooded Launchpad Strikes: AI Launch Rules Completely Overhauled!"

Original Author: Anci, Biteye

It has been a week since the 1011 crash. Not only did it set a record for the largest liquidation in history at $20 billions, but this brutal plunge has also prompted many KOLs to reflect on a painful fact of this bull market—the absence of Builder faith, rampant pump-and-dump schemes, and the increasing casino-like nature of the crypto space.

"The problem is, the overall crypto environment has undergone structural changes, and the cypherpunk spirit has been completely abandoned!"

Against this backdrop, Virtuals, known for its "strict ecosystem governance," has launched new launch rules called Unicorn. In addition to addressing fairness issues such as bot sniping, the main focus is on attracting and supporting outstanding AI projects, aiming to restore some hope and ground for the "cypherpunk spirit" among Builders.

01 What Are the Highlights of the Unicorn Launch Rules?

The introduction of Unicorn will completely end the previous Genesis launch rules, with the following changes between the two.

For investors:

1. The points system is canceled—everyone can participate

2. Launch price adopts a dynamic price curve based on FDV

The lower the funds raised by the project, i.e., the lower the current FDV, the lower the launch price; conversely, when the project is hot and FDV is high, the price will be adjusted upward. This requires investors to thoroughly research the project and accumulate enough tokens before the FDV rises too high.

The lower the funds raised by the project, i.e., the lower the current FDV, the lower the launch price; conversely, when the project is hot and FDV is high, the price will be adjusted upward. This requires investors to thoroughly research the project and accumulate enough tokens before the FDV rises too high.

3. To address front-running, a Decaying Tax mechanism is introduced

During the first 100 minutes after a project launches, a buyer tax will be charged, with the tax rate linearly decaying from 99% to 1% (about 1% per minute). In other words, if you rush in during the first minute, $99 out of every $100 you trade will go to taxes. This makes front-running bots unprofitable.

However, combining point 3 with point 2 creates a problem: if you wait until the tax decay period is over to buy in, the FDV may have already risen significantly, and the price will be much higher. Investors need to find a suitable entry balance.

4. Airdrop: Each project will allocate 5% for community airdrops

Of this, 2% is allocated to $VIRTUAL stakers; 3% is allocated to active ecosystem users, with reference metrics possibly including trading volume, ACP participation, Butler interactions, etc.

5. Supports 3x leverage for long/short positions

This provides investors with more trading tools, while also amplifying the rewards and penalties for Builder projects and Rug projects.

For project teams:

1. 50% of tokens allocated to the founding team, but unlocked based on FDV

25% is locked long-term (or unlocked when FDV reaches $160 millions), and after unlocking, will be released linearly over 6 months.

25% is used for linear fundraising: these tokens will be gradually sold via on-chain limit orders as the project’s FDV grows from $2 millions to $160 millions, providing the team with continuous cash flow.

2. The founding team is allowed to purchase tokens from the public launch pool (45%), with no cap and fully on-chain and public

These tokens by default follow a 1-month lock-up and 12-month linear release rule, meaning capable founding teams can openly buy their own tokens to demonstrate long-term official confidence to the community.

02 From Genesis to Unicorn, the Ambition of Crypto’s Martingale

As mentioned earlier, Virtuals is "strict in ecosystem governance," which was mainly reflected on the user side during the Genesis period: retail investors wanting to profit on Virtuals had to pass various "loyalty tests": holding and staking, frantically accumulating points, and not being able to sell at will, or else they’d be thrown into "jail," labeled as jeet, and forever miss out on airdrops and points.

However, the downside of "overworking users" soon became apparent: the points system quickly devolved into farming, which led to point inflation and user fatigue.

Thus, it’s clear that Virtuals is gradually shifting its focus and turning its strictness toward project teams:

· Last month, Virtuals launched ALE (Agent Liquidity Engine) as the core metric for evaluating Agent performance, focusing on whether the product solves real problems, has sustainable revenue, and whether the team can continuously channel revenue back into the ecosystem.

· The official rule states that any AI Agent participating in ACP that fails 10 times in a row will be automatically "downgraded" by the system, ensuring that the ACP platform always maintains high standards for agent services.

This time, the launch of the Unicorn mechanism sets up even more hurdles for project teams—making it impossible for Rug projects to hide, while giving quality projects a chance to shine. All of this is to ensure that every project coming to Virtuals must be committed to long-termism, ultimately leaving the ecosystem with the best AI projects.

03 You Can No Longer View Virtuals as Just a Launchpad

The essence of a Launchpad is a token-launching machine; digging deeper, it’s a small Dex, with activity and liquidity as its sources of revenue. Usually, Meme sentiment is its foundation, but sentiment is inherently fleeting and unpredictable, so most Launchpads are doomed to be short-lived.

From its inception, Virtuals smartly limited its project scope to AI Agents, and vigorously incubated hit projects like AIXBT, enhancing the tone and quality of AI Agents within the ecosystem, striving to shed the AI Meme label and foster a Builder ecosystem atmosphere.

After accumulating a certain number of quality projects, Virtuals launched the ACP plan, aligning with the current narrative of multi-AI Agent communication and collaboration under the MCP framework—currently the main industry approach for how AI Agents work and solve real problems.

However, the highly anticipated AI hedge fund Axelrod under the ACP framework failed to meet expectations after much hype, so Virtuals’ ACP business did not make a big splash. But there’s no need to be discouraged, as even traditional AI giants have yet to truly master and mature multi-Agent systems. Thus, Virtuals has launched Butler on the user side to provide more public-facing education and communication windows for ACP, while continuing to explore with various AI Agents in the ecosystem.

At present, the direction of multi-AI Agent collaboration represented by ACP is still widely recognized as having future potential; once a breakthrough occurs, it could be comparable to the ChatGPT moment. But to truly achieve this goal, in addition to continued optimization of the network’s design, more breakthroughs in Agent capabilities are needed. Therefore, Virtuals aims to leverage the advantages of its Launchpad to attract outstanding AI Agent projects to its network.

04 What Are the Wealth Effects for Retail Investors?

No matter how grand the ambitions, they cannot succeed without a mass base. For ordinary users, this Unicorn upgrade brings several positives:

1. With various official policies, the quality of projects on the platform is expected to improve.

2. The points system is finally canceled—no more grinding.

3. Leverage for long and short positions is now available, providing more tools to amplify gains and limit losses.

Of course, on the other hand, the dynamic price curve based on FDV and the tax mechanism also make timing entry more challenging.

Unfortunately, given the current turbulent macro environment, the first few projects launched on Unicorn have not yet managed to replicate the obvious wealth effects seen during the Genesis period. However, water flows without competing; in the long run, once the market turns, the launch potential on Unicorn remains enormous.

Most importantly, this Unicorn upgrade by Virtuals has injected a rare dose of crypto-cyber faith into Builders during this relatively sluggish period, giving us more to look forward to—more AIXBT moments, and hoping ACP will usher in its own ChatGPT moment.