Proposed next updates for Clam Island

Hello again Clammies!

It’s been just over two weeks since the Bivalvia Update went live. Overall, we believe the update has been a success and brought some welcome changes to the ecosystem.

However, the changes are not without controversy. We are, of course, referring to the Pearl burn limit, which stops Pearls from being burned in any given week if the GEM claimed for that week has exceeded 2.5% of the total GEM supply.

Our justification for applying the limit has been explained in detail previously. However, as GEM price has fallen again in the context of the bear market and the general bearish sentiment on P2E ecosystems, there has been a fair amount of high GEM yield Pearls minted, which are now congesting the Pearl burning pipeline with the new weekly limit in place. This has consequently turned Pearl burning into a weekly race when the limit is first reset, and also means that many Pearls will not be able to be burned for max yield unless they wait an unknown amount of time until the Pearl burn congestion is eventually cleared.

This situation is of course not ideal, and we have heard the voices from the community on this topic. As always, we appreciate your feedback and your willingness to participate in meaningful and productive discussions to continuously evolve and improve the ecosystem.

It is clear that some sort of limit on GEM inflation is required. However, it is also clear that leaving most Pearls dead in the water is not ideal. In the grand scheme of things, there will come a time when trading Pearls and Clams on third party is more common, and things like the likely time before a Pearl can be redeemed will be taken into account in such secondary market trading. However, for now, we are small, with a small community and no active NFT trading, so primary use case for Pearls must be made available.

Proposed Gem Limit Amendments + Community Draws

The community has suggested a number of ideas on what that might look like in the post-Bivalvia Clam Island. We have taken some of these suggestions on board and integrated it with some of the planned future updates to create what we believe to be an exciting revision as to how the modified ecosystem will function. Without further ado, here’s what we propose:

1. The Pearl redemption limit will now be 0.2% of total GEM supply for every Pearl traits rotation, with the application of a spillover. For example, if the current per-trait rotation limit is 100,000 GEM, the current traits are oval and blue, and someone burns an oval blue Pearl for 300,000 GEM, then no oval blue Pearls can be burned for max yield for two more cycles after the current one.
2. Burning Pearls that do not match the current traits will give you only 25% of max yield, but there will be no redemption limit — i.e. the limit in item 1 above does not apply, nor does the minted GEM count towards the limit. This is because burning a Pearl for 25% max yield will, on average, have a net deflationary effect on GEM.
3. After a Pearl has missed its first available max yield burn rotation, you will have the option to burn it for Clams instead, based on its max yield. You can combine more than one Pearl to exchange for a Clam. The total max GEM yield of the combined Pearls must exceed the GEM cost of a Clam for the exchange to occur. Any excess max GEM yield will be added to a Clam draw balance.
4. When the GEM yield balance in the Clam draw exceeds 2x of the lowest grade Clam price, anyone will be able to trigger a draw. When triggered, a Clam of the highest grade that costs less than half of the current Clam draw GEM yield balance will be made available for claiming by one lucky winner through the rewards portal. The winner will be randomly drawn from Clam Island VIP citizens (more on that shortly).
5. Pearls can also be directly entered into a Pearl draw, which burns the Pearl. Anyone can trigger a Pearl draw when the max GEM yield balance in the draw exceeds 2x of the lowest grade Pearl price. When triggered, a Pearl of the highest grade that costs less than half of the current Clam draw GEM yield balance will be made available for claiming by one lucky winner. The winner will be selected from those that entered at least one Pearl into the draw, and the chances of someone winning is weighted based on the max GEM yield of the Pearl/s they entered. Pearls from before the Arcidae Update will be weighted as if their max GEM yield was at least 10,000.

Revamped Citizenship Program

If you have been paying attention so far, you’ll notice that we mentioned something about VIP Citizens. As you know, our citizenship program is on pause at the moment pending an overhaul and relaunch.

After careful consideration, here is how we propose the overhauled citizenship program will work. There will be three tiers of Citizens, each with their own mintable, non-transferable NFT badges:

1. Temporary Resident — hold at least 1 Clam in wallet to mint. The same Clam cannot then be used to mint another Temporary Resident badge. The badge entitles someone to join the referral program (more on this below);
2. Citizen — burn one live clam (current lifespan > 1) and 5 Pearls to mint. The next Clam will be discounted by 10%. Entitles the badge holder to join citizens channel on discord and participate in competitions for community rewards, similar to the old citizenship program. Gets exclusive access together with VIP Citizens to burn Pearls for matching traits in the second 30 minutes in every rotation;
3. VIP Citizen — must hold a Citizen badge and stake at least 15 SHELL in a 6 month+ locked pool. Withdrawing from the pool even after it is unlocked will mean the loss of VIP status. Gets exclusive access to burn Pearls for matching traits for the first 30 minutes in every rotation.

Referral Program

This is a topic that has come up a few times in our community chat. While a good tool for promotion, we wanted to minimise the chances of the referral program being abused, since our program would revolve around discounts to the purchase of Clams. By integrating it with the Citizenship Program (i.e. you must be at least a Temporary Resident), it means that we have a small but effective threshold to someone being eligible to refer others.

A successful referral requires the referred wallet to purchase a Clam of any grade. Each such purchase will allow the referring wallet to purchase a Clam of the same grade at a 10% discount.

There is a chance that some players will use this system to obtain a discount for when they want to purchase a new Clam, by “referring” to a new wallet that they create. However, since it is 10% is not too significant, we expect the overall benefit to the platform will outweigh the potential abuse.

Decisions, decisions

Everything outlined above represents only our current proposal. We expect and encourage everyone to discuss and provide feedback in our Telegram or Discord openly. We will commence work on implementation one week from the date of this article, but until then and even beyond (assuming it is practically feasible), the proposal is open to review and all sensible suggestions will be considered.

As always, don’t forget to subscribe, follow us on Twitter and join us on Telegram / Discord for all the up-to-date info.