Clam Island Community Call Recap
Ahoy there Clammies!
We had our second community call on #ClamBakeThursday in our Telegram channel, and it was good to see some keen community members participating! Lots of information were shared and questions answered.
By popular demand, we are providing a summary of the call here. However, we are, intentionally, NOT detailing every piece of information covered in the call. If you want to get ALL the juicy alpha and sneak peaks, you’ll just have to join our next community call!
There is no regular schedule set for the community call. We will host them when the timing is right, and when there is demand for it again in our community.
Anyway, on to the topics covered last week!
Arcidae Update
This update is, of course, on the top of most community members’ list. You can read about it here and here. Our current assessment is that we are about 2/3 of the way there. However, as usual, security is paramount, and this is why we prefer not to commit to a specific timeframe. The Arcidae Update introduces changes and new contracts (such as a TWAP contract to handle setting Clam prices in USD worth of $GEM) into an already complex ecosystem. Fun fact — did you know that Clam Island has 15 different smart contracts interacting with each other? Bonus points if you can name another project that has more!
Regarding how the Arcidae Update will be applied to old Clams and Pearls, the short answer is that it won’t. We designed our system so that changes to Clam and Pearl pricing affects only Clams and Pearls minted after the changes are applied. This ensures the integrity of the ecosystem. Since it could take weeks on average to farm all Pearls from a Clam and wait for the right timing to burn Pearls for $GEM boost, having the $GEM boost fixed at the time of minting makes a lot more sense. This is how we can say that a Pearl can give you 1.5x $GEM boost on average compared to its GEM price to produce, and also how we can make sure that $GEM inflation remains controlled in a predictable manner.
That said, we also want to reward our early supporters. To that end, our current plan is to allow existing Clams to be traded in for a new Clam after the Arcidae Update is deployed. However, the caveats are:
- If you already claimed your old Clam’s $GEM boost, you will have to pay it back to trade it in for a new Clam;
- Your new Clam will have a new set of completely randomised traits. That is to say, a rare Clam traded in will not necessarily mean that you will get a new rare Clam.
- you could end up with a new Clam that has a lifespan that is higher or lower than the old one, but your remaining lifespan is “reset” in the sense that the new Clam would not have produced any Pearls yet (and remember, especially after the Arcidae Update, $GEM boost from Pearls is how you earn your profit). However, this also means that the redeemable $SHELL for the new Clam is “reset” to 1;
The advantage of trading in is that the entire profit model now revolves around the $GEM boost that you can get from a Pearl, and we are also increasing the profitability. The exact amount will be announced before the Arcidae Update goes live, but it is definitely higher than an average of 1.5x the Pearl production price!
Marketing
This is another subject that everyone is interested in. In short we have:
- the revamped citizenship program, where our loyal followers can band together and help spread the word on Clam Island organically;
- an external influencer marketer that will be starting soon to help us gain on average 10 micro influencers per month, each with ~15,000 followers;
- a marketing advisor who will be starting soon to help us with media buying (paid social media ads) on various platforms including reddit and Twitter;
- multiple partnerships with other projects / businesses in the works, which will be announced when appropriate; and
- an incoming landing page that will allow us to tell a user more about our project, backing and team, with Clam Island app being moved to a subdirectory.
One of our key target markets is those that are less familiar with DeFi and perhaps even crypto. However, given the status of the pending Arcidae Update, we did not want to bring in new users, explain a novel concept to them, only to tell them that the mechanism is changing in a matter of weeks. It therefore makes a lot more sense for us to focus our marketing efforts after the Arcidae update is live. This is why you would not have seen many new users on Clam Island. That said, the fact that the ecosystem has stayed mostly stable despite there being a general lack of new players, is a testament both to the ecosystem design and to the strength of the Clam Island community.
User onboarding
Given that we want to target people outside of the DeFi regulars, it makes sense for us to have our onboarding process as smooth as possible. To that end, we are in the process of implementing an LP zap function, which will allow a user to zap from BNB into any of our pools in the Bank without having to deal with adding liquidity on PancakeSwap, and a a fiat onramp.
This will be combined with the availability of introductory explainer videos as well as in-app tours, one of which you can already see on our home page.
Last but not least, we are also working on the mobile UI. This is a non trivial task that will probably take at least 1–2 months to complete, especially since we want to deliver a true mobile-centric experience for the users on mobile. Our internal UX designer have just returned a first draft of the UI, some of which we shared during the community call to very positive feedback.
IPFS / third party marketplace compatibility
This is being worked on by separate team members to those working on the Arcidae Update. We expect that the IPFS data sync for our NFTs, which will bring with it compatibility with third party NFT marketplaces, will be completed around the same time or shortly after the Arcidae Update.
$SHELL utility
This subject has been touched on before, but the current plan to give $SHELL token more utility is to create a locked $SHELL pool, where withdrawals and rewards are locked for a minimum of three months. Those that deposit a minimum amount in the locked $SHELL pool will gain access to exclusive items and other benefits in the future, starting with the ability to purchase (with $GEM) a boost of a Clam’s multiplier after the Arcidae Update.
You may recall that after the Arcidae Update, a Clam will have a boost multiplier instead of a fixed $GEM boost, and the multiplier will be applied to the $GEM boost of every single Pearl that it produces. By purchasing an additional boost of that multiplier, you can stack your $GEM yield and earn a lot more $GEM than you spend on the purchase.
Wrapping things up
We hope that the above gives you an idea about all the things we are working on in the background. If we seem a bit quiet on Telegram / Discord, we assure you that’s because we are busy working on the platform!
Don’t forget as well that we are constantly improving our UI/UX even as we work on all the items above. If you have any suggestions or bug reports, please do let us know! The best place for suggestions will be our Discord, while the best place to report bugs or other issues would be https://t.me/clamislandreportissue.
As always, please follow our Twitter, Telegram and Discord for the latest updates.
