1. History of $NINJA 1.0
Ninja Protocol and the $NINJA token were created on May 1st, 2021 by an anonymous developer going by the pseudo-name "Yuzu".
Roughly 2.2M $NINJA tokens were distributed for free via airdrop to early community members who created artwork and supported the discord with boosts.
$NINJA token was hard-forked on June 23rd, 2021 into a new fractional $NINJA by contributors who participated in the Solana-Season Hackathon.
The original $NINJA tokens were renamed to $OLDNINJA and stopped being supported by Ninja Protocol.
Ninja Protocol started as a simple gamified token experience with a "meme token" $NINJA at the center of the ecosystem.
Users entering through a web3 gated discord were filtered for bots by a combination of automated/manual methods. As users accumulated more tokens through various activities involving luck and skill, it would open more paths to earn $NINJA tokens.
The gamification of token accumulation also offered a way to "Pay-2-Win", where users could opt to take a shortcut to the top by buying above tiered thresholds to attain the benefits given.
A series of simple feedback loops based around "desire" created a network effect where status within the community effectively became tokenized.
From this gamified token experience, we set out a goal to expand the ecosystem in terms of both social and web3 user experiences.
We laid out a roadmap utilizing various web2 media platforms along with applications built on top of Solana.
The MVP of the Ninja Protocol's hackathon submission was a landing page that serves as the profile page for $NINJA holders and an NFT gallery that displays their collection.
As NFTs grew in popularity in the form of PFPs (Profile Pictures), we saw the need for users to be able to prove that they own the NFTs that they are displaying.
Our solution was to create a landing page where users would connect their wallets and verify ownership in order to upload the images as their profile picture or banner background.
Post-hackathon the focus of Ninja Protocol shifted towards moving the gamified token experience from the web3 gated community to an actual game environment.
This pivot came after onboarding a contributor who was also a game developer.
What started as a simple tokenized ARPG concept led to the development of what is now the NINJA-MMO.
As the "GameFi" sector picked up steam during Q3 2021, Ninja Protocol started to gain traction and the need for clearer tokenomics became a critical issue.
The original tokenomics of the $NINJA token was based on another Solana token that simply had a 50M supply cap. There was no further design to the tokenomics before the tokens were released via airdrop to the public.
In September of 2021, contributors at Ninja Protocol released the first version of the $NINJA tokenomics.
The main utilities of the $NINJA token during this phase were.
Passive rewards of $NINJA token for holding $NINJA token.
Whitelists and airdrops for Ninja Protocol NFTs.
Early access to Ninja Protocol application and games.
From the 50M $NINJA tokens in existence the tokens were split into the following four categories.
On September 26th, 2021 core contributors of Ninja Protocol decided to lock 50% of the token supply belonging to the protocol along with 50% of the token allocation for the "Team-Chest" for three years.
The other 50% of the tokens allocated for Ninja Protocol contributors were also locked away for one year with a vesting schedule to be announced with unlock.
Tokens are not locked by a smart contract. Locked tokens are being stored on secure paper wallets that have been dormant since the lock date.
The primary factor for locking up the majority of the supply was that the tokenomics were still under debate. The $NINJA token had begun taking traction and amassing large trading volume.
With the transition to $NINJA 2.0 tokenomics, the entire locked supply of $NINJA tokens will become unlocked and the 50M $NINJA token supply will be fully circulating.
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