Crypto Unicorns Treasury Report 2023 Q3
Originally released on 17 Oct 2023 on Governance News channel on Crypto Unicorns Discord server
The quarter began with a balance of $ 14,411,560 on July 1, 2023, and concluded on September 30, 2023, with a balance of $ 10,636,856.
Let’s look at the operations that make up these changes.
✨ Highlights
2,250,010 USDC was withdrawn from the ETH Treasury to cover Q3 Operational Expenses.
200 ETH was received upon exiting our veBAL LP position.
2,700 USDC were paid to ad and marketing-related vendors.
50,000 USDC was paid to MEXC for the listing of the RBW/USDT pair.
33,000 USDT and 1,077,006 RBW was deposited to the MEXC RBW/USDT pair liquidity.
500,000 RBW was deposited to the Bitmart RBW/USDT pair liquidity.
20,000 USDT was deposited to the Bitget RBW/USDT pair liquidity.
30,000 USDT and 10,000 USDT security deposits were returned from Bitmart and BTSE.
11,000 USDC was paid to Flowdesk for market-making operations for RBW across various CEX and DEX.
39,900 USDC was paid to CLS as we move the market-making operations for RBW across various CEX and DEX from Flowdesk to CLS.
140,000,000 UNIM was minted and 185,750,010 UNIM and 2,212,847 RBW were moved to the Game Bank. The remaining UNIM not minted were augmented by the excess UNIM purchased during the QE operations.
40 ETH was spent to acquire 556 Unicorns, 563 Lands and 51 Shadowcorns for marketing campaigns.
12 ETH was earned from NFT sales, with 6 ETH coming from secondary sales and another 6 ETH from LVM sales.
📊 Summary of Holdings
As of September 30, 2023
After reviewing our holdings at the end of the quarter, let's have a look at our holdings at the start of the quarter. We will work from here through the end of all operations in the third quarter of 2023.
As of June 30, 2023
⚙️ Operations Spending
To continually build the Crypto Unicorns IP, Laguna Games makes a quarterly withdrawal from the treasury. These withdrawals take place at the end of each quarter. (For example, the budget withdrawal for Q3 Operation Expenses happens by the end of September or early October.)
This is 249,990 USDC less than the previous quarter’s draw.
1) Q3 Operations Expense Exchange for Fiat
We drew 2,250,010 USDC from the Ethereum Treasury for the Q3 Operations Expense.
2) Token Conversions for Operations
As most operations require different types of token to perform and as some vendors can only be paid using particular token, a few conversion operations took place as shown below.
3) veBAL LP
To maintain a liquid treasury, we have exited our veBAL LP position on Balancer.
4) Gas Fee Maintenance
We regularly replenish the gas fees for many of the wallets integral to the game's operation, most importantly the game server support functions that assist in clearing faulty transactions related to breeding, evolution, and hatching.
This includes not only gas fees but also conversion "fees". These are the amounts deducted during transactions such as bridging, swapping, wrapping, etc.
5) Game Bank Maintenance
The game bank is periodically refreshed to ensure smooth gaming operations. Because the Game Bank allocation is kept to a bare minimum - just enough to sustain live operations - we need to refill the Game Bank whenever UNIM and RBW fall below the threshold.
Note that the previously, the UNIM used to replenish the Game Bank has always come from purchasing UNIM from existing supply - a process that extended through the early parts of Q3 of 2023 - specifically on July 11, 2023. UNIM purchased from the previous operations and the newly-minted 140,000,000 UNIM were used to augment the Game Bank balance.
As indicated in the 2023-Q2 Treasury Report, UNIM necessary to refill the Game Bank will be minted moving forward.
6) White Hat Bug Bounty Reward
To ensure the safety of our smart contracts, we invite ethical security hackers (aka White Hats) to scrutinize our contracts for exploits through the security bug bounty program. While this has been active for a while, we have fortunately, yet to receive any game-breaking reports. However, a very minor report has been verified and rewarded during Q3.
📽️ Marketing Spending
We continue to explore different marketing strategies. Q3 marks the a period of shift when a community member, .mitchv, formally joins the team full-time as the marketing lead.
1) Payment to Ad and Marketing Vendors
2) Campaign and Partnership Rewards
With several marketing campaign and partnerships on-going and in-store, we have continued to purchase Crypto Unicorns assets to be added in marketing bundles. We continue to refine and explore the best practices to further increase the conversions and acquire high Lifetime Value (LTV) users.
3) RBW/USDT Listing
As part of our strategy, we’ve recently listed on the MEXC exchange. We've taken a tiered approach, initially, listing on smaller exchanges before progressing to higher-tier exchanges to gradually gain more volume.
Listing operations involve paying an exchange a listing fee and providing the exchange with liquidity deposit. Additionally, liquidity deposits will need to be maintained and replenished to meet the each of the exchanges’ liquidity requirements. The related transactions are outlined below.
The process of listing on exchanges is linked to market-making. We've recently tested Flowdesk as market-maker for our CEX and DEX operations, but have recently shifted to Coin Liquidity Solution (CLS) in Q3. We’re looking to find the best partner as we look to build the best strategies to increase RBW adoption.
💰 Earnings
Having discussed our investing and spending activities, let's delve into the treasury inflows.
1) NFT Sales
Secondary and primary NFT sales continue to generate revenue. Primary sales generated less revenue during the quarter as the NFT prices in the open market proved to be more accessible compared to the LVM in the current market environment.
2) Liquidity Pool Positions
Our yield positions in Q3 of 2023 have changed slightly. As previously remarked, we have exited our Balancer veBAL LP position. Apart from this every other position remains unchanged.
We’ve received 955 from our new Uniswap UNIM LP position in Q3. Apart from this, no other claims were made and none of the previously-claimed rewards were converted to stable coins during this quarter either.
📗 Ecosystem Fund
Ecosystem Fund Grant recipients receive grant payments on a monthly basis. These grants are based on approved governance proposals for the ecosystem fund. Here are the active grant proposals within Q3 of 2023:
Bug Bounty Program Renewal (renewed August 2023)
Community Support and Educators (renewed August 2023)
Knowledge Base, Price Bots, and Tools v2 (renewed July 2023)
The table below shows how much RBW were disbursed in Q3 of 2023.
The Bug Bounty Program and the Community Support and Educators renewal proposals (formerly the Mod Reward Program) were passed in the middle of August 2023. For this reason, the payouts for August is significantly less than usual. We can expect this list to grow in the Q4 report with the number of new grant proposals being posted on our governance forum.
We will continue releasing treasury reports at the end of every quarter to maintain transparency and provide necessary additions when needed. We can expect an even more emphasis on marketing as we focus on acquisition. UNIM will no longer be purchased from the market moving forward. Rather, any UNIM required for game operations will be minted.
This concludes the operations of Q3. Despite the flurry of releases during the quarter, we see less treasury transactions this quarter. We are looking to raise our Series A in Q4 with the hopes of further reducing the burn for the CU Treasury in 2024.