Heroglyphs

Greetings Heroes,

It has now been a few weeks since the Heroglyphs whitepaper has dropped. What a journey it has been to see so many different members of the Ethereum community unite around this new and exciting movement. Ken’s Playbook, Dune Dashboards, Parsec Dashboard, and other resources have come to life to help users navigate the protocol. Heroglyphs attempts to help incentivize many different facets of the ecosystem, with a central focus on helping revitalize the roots of Ethereum.

Central to Heroglyphs are what we will refer to as 'Complete Validators'. By running a Complete Validator, you are helping ensure that the Ethereum network remains decentralized, secure, and robust. Many individuals have either left, or avoided the idea of validating, as this requires a lot of extra effort, capital, and attention. The argument can be made that it is more profitable, and capital efficient to put your ETH into Liquid Staking Protocols, rather than have illiquid ETH locked up in a validator. These concerns have driven many people towards Liquid Staking Protocols, which have offered a simple service with great products. However, this has led to the largest LST’s controlling over 30% of all the Staked ETH posing a major centralization risk, and this risk could become a danger to the entire Ethereum Network.

The Heroglyphs protocol has now bootstrapped a new incentivization mechanism for Complete Validators to be rewarded for their valiant efforts in keeping Ethereum decentralized.

The following will help you gain a deeper perspective into the ethos of Heroglyphs, and understand why the protocol is designed the way it is.

Principles:

Our values include:

Decentralization above all else
Favorizing expansion of Heroglyph Assets. It should be extended outside of the EVM into SVM -> MVM -> HVM. Utilize bridges or messaging protocols in order to spread the value everywhere.
Giving back to the forgotten architects, the ETH Core Devs. They helped build this infrastructure to enable wealth and sovereignty, and they too shall be rewarded.
Pseudo/anonymous Identity remains an important value helping decentralization.
Building tools on top of Heroglyphs rather than creating your own empire, you will be supported in part of the Heroglyphs journey.
Being creative is paramount. Free your mind, and allow your creativity to flow.
Giving more than you take. We can help each other as equals.
Believing in ideas, not in empty ideologies.
Appreciating others – our humanity makes us stronger.
Being mindful in everything we do. High standards are good to apply on oneself, but to scale our project we must be patient with others.
Harnessing our inner strength no matter what it is. Weaponizing it to remain undefeated for the mutual benefit of all.
Allying together will always prevail. Together we are strong.
Memorializing that fiat has no bottom, and crypto has no top. All that is required is conviction sprinkled with patience.
Seeking victory is accepting what is better for the greater good. Ego-death is your rebirth
Not getting caught up in a moving circus of conferences. Conference-driven development is a big detriment to productivity
As AK writes: Comparison is the thief of joy
As MRC writes: In the West we idolize high status work and neglect life. In Europe we despise all sorts of work in favor of leisure. But in Japan and Taiwan we still have craft — the ability to find work in any type of work as integrated with life. it's not about status or earnings, but the value of work well done.
As Mark Twain writes: History doesn't repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.

Let us learn from previous errors to avoid new mistakes.

Motivations:

Make Solo Validating Great Again!

Other than the pursuit of making Ethereum more diverse, decentralized, and giving back to the forgotten heroes, we believe in the quest of ‘Purity’.

The Fair launches in 2020 were an important theme in what so many call “DeFi Summer”. We have seen the community straying away from such a beautiful concept with some resorting to unethical behaviors. Things such as farming one’s own project in a rogue way with no disclosures, sniping token supplies with bots, opaque point system disclosures, sybilling one’s own network, flawed rarity in NFT mints, or other shadowy greed-filled tactics have polluted our space.

All of this for what? Nothing more than an electronic number, and recognition among your peers.

Our personal Holy Grail: How do we create an asset that prevents the sins listed above? Heroglyphs do not prevent all forms of manipulation, but one can create “immaculate” tokens, and see if this can show us a fruitful path.

How could you create an immaculate token with Heroglyphs?

Simple: You launch an h-erc20/herc20 by starting the supply at 0 and having the entire emission going entirely to Complete Validators securing the Ethereum blockchain. Controls can be added to decide whom you think should be an eligible recipient of the token. Additionally, emissions can be reduced over time from inception, following a curve similar to Bitcoin halvening. All of these parameters are simple to implement.

In order to help Validators choose what tokens to mine, a ‘default’ tokenlist can be utilized, similar to how Uniswap identifies verified tokens on their frontend. There could also be the possibility for a “warning” while claiming, similar to how many DEX’s do this for custom, unverified, or newly-listed tokens.

This could be the best combination of what PoW-based blockchain offers without excessive waste of resources in the quest of GPU-ASIC optimization.

Attack Vectors:

Mitigating the risks.

One of the three most asked questions is: “BuT H0w d0 U iDentiFy SoL0 VaLiDAtoR?” The simple answer is that we do not know -- No one has solved the generalized anti-sybil problem.

But we can help mitigate this problem with a wide array of tools. We believe that similar to any great PvP game, we will have to refine the “meta” of Heroglyphs. Some will be generalized solutions, while others that may not scale.

Best choice for a solution is through amalgamation. Some options are as follows.

Withdraw address is an EOA.

Cons: Users who use multisig are excluded, and this encourages bad wallet security.

Check if users has a Worldcoin ID

Cons: Intrusive, misaligned and easily purchasable off chain.

Check if POAP in claiming wallet

Cons: Easily attacked as POAP’s are transferable

Check BrightID score

Cons: Difficulty to scale but highly effective and more aligned than Worldcoin

Genesis NFT Key & others SBTs

Cons: Easily to attack, and are transferable.

Whitelisting & Blacklisting enabled by Token Curated Registry (TCR), enforced via Kleros.

Cons: Some centralized lists do not contain all eligible parties.

Your Solution, anon. The world has not found the best solution yet.

Another concern worth noting, is the Salmonella attack. Theoretically someone can hijack a popular Ticker and make Validators “mine” a token which contains bad behaviors or security risks. For example, upon approval it could perform detrimental actions like draining a wallet similar to what the Salmonella Attack has done in the MEV world.

It is believed that adding a tokenlist should solve most of these issues regarding claiming for Complete Validators; however, that requires new entrants to get on this type of list before appearing by default on UI’s running Heroglyphs.

Community:

We are DAOist at heart.

We have observed quite a display over the past few years of what does, and does not work with DAO's. Some of the pitfalls include core teams mistreating their community members, a lack of on-chain governance, a lack of business controls, and a quest to raid value out of valuable organizations that were in a zombie state.

We would like to find a neutral ground by deploying things like prop.house or rounds.wtf for each Genesis Community to reward outstanding contributions in various fields voted by the Genesis Key NFT holders.

Proceeds from the current NFT mint have gone towards locked liquidity in pools on various chains & DEXs. This has the intent to remain neutral, and spread any Smart Contracts risks.

Public Goods:

Giving back to our community.

As Heroglyphs is focused on supporting decentralization, it is also important to help those pushing the spirit and vision forward. The Heroglyphs protocol will be giving 2% of all proceeds towards protocol builders & public spaces. In the first round, funds have been distributed to Protocol Guild, and to DCTRL Hackerspace.

Protocol Guild is aligned to help incentivize core Ethereum protocol developers, something that gets overlooked regularly by new projects built on top of Ethereum, which may not provide support to the base protocol. Protocol guild is an excellent complement to the Ethereum Foundation, but needs continuous support in order to remain sustainable.

DCTRL Hackerspace is one of the longest running, community-funded crypto hackerspaces in the world. Founded in early 2014, the space has a rich history.

Various notable figures within the crypto community have passed through its doors, such as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin himself, crypto advocate Erik Voorhees, Bitcoin educator Andreas Antonopolous, Ethereum Foundation’s Tim Beiko, Richerd from Manifold.xyz, Ethereum Classic advocate Bob Summerville, Benny Giang formerly Crypto Kitties, along with many other industry players.

The space also has had run-ins with more controversial characters such as notorious Bitcoiners Peter Rizun, and Roger Verr who presented and debated leading up to the Bitcoin Blocksize war. Most notably, the deceased co-founder of QuadrigaCX Gerald Cotton, and co-founder Sifu were frequent visitors at the space (as featured in the Netflix documentary “Trust No One”.

In the future we plan to automate donations via CLR.fund, Gitcoin, Endaoment, and other innovative projects that are at the intersection of Public Goods and philanthropy.

Coordination Game:

Malicious whales will get harpooned when they come to surface.

‘Go to market’ strategies are generally the main focus for developers and financiers as they have the experience towards building, or are looking to extract as much value as possible. Our approach is different. We are looking to reward Validators, satisfy speculators, provide gifts to loyal community members, and make it less favorable for those who jeet.

We wanted to make this launch as fair as possible. Unfortunately, the only way we determined to do this would have been through the use of quadratic mining, which would help to smooth out whales against Solo Validators. Due to time constraints and risks of sybil attack, we decided against this approach in Phase 2. We are trying to simplify things, as we could build the world's greatest Rube Goldberg machine, but if no one understands how it works it will not be effective.

The approach with Heroglyphs is to push the limits of what is possible, by giving data points to any builders looking to use the protocol with tangible real use. Some may criticize this approach, but in this digital battlefield of blockchains, we have the ability to test and push the boundaries of what is possible. If the protocol is able to fairly mint the next PEPE or WIF by leveraging Solo validators, this would be a historic win.

The reason why we have decided to launch 14 tokens instead of 1, is to mitigate the concentration of whales with outsized resources. Think of how a single solo validator competes against a major operator with hundreds of validators. So, we constructed a coordination game where the shrimps have the advantage over whales, who need to operate their entire fleet of validators and assets.

After the initial launch of Heroglyphs, an entity started to farm $BADGES with ~3000 validators. Some modifications were made to the IDs to prevent major scaling inside the game, by adding an entry queue for minting ID. This was put in place so that an onboarding of this magnitude would be ridiculously expensive. We are looking to revisit this issue in the future by changing the meta and nerfing any industrial actors trying to exploit the system.

Tokenomics:

Initially there will be 14 different tokens spread across several chains. Each of these assets have various randomized attributes designed to accrue yield for solo validators. Emissions schedule, total supply, initial liquidity pool seed, chains, plus various other things, make up the attributes of the tokens.

Behold Research Analysts and Crypto Interns: this has become a challenging task for the Game Masters crafting this out, which has left them confused at times with the requirements and dynamics of the abominations they created.

There will be a few constants however:

Each genesis token is fairly created. Any premints are entirely locked into liquidity pools matched with proceeds of Key mints. Heroglyphs sees this as a net positive for their respective ecosystems via additional TVL / Liquidity.
Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Base will all have Balancer Superpools for the Genesis Tokens. Superpools can contain up to 8 tokens in them, so 2 pools will cover all of the genesis tokens. The composition of the Superpools on each chain may be different for ease of trading, and arbitrage opportunities.
Each tribe behind the NFT is in charge of seeing their memecoins die or surviving. There will be no official team in charge of them, as they are relinquished of any ownership and all IP related to them are CC0. Snapshots for each of the Genesis NFT’s have been deployed in the event they should choose to use it.
Ajna markets will be ready shortly after launch, to provide lending/borrowing service via oracleless pools.
Some tokens are “pre-launch”, meaning they will need to be transferred to their respective chains at later dates. MOLANDAK & OOGA BOOGA are examples of tokens who are going to be migrated once their respective mainnets are available. More will be announced on this in Phase 3.
$BONK launched in a dire period for Solana and required coordination from several ecosystem participants to become successful. We are trying to reproduce the same effect, but for several EVM chains all at the same time.
There is no team allocation for any of the Genesis tokens.
There will be community token allocations to be distributed and earned through platforms like prop.house / rounds.wtf. Allocations can be voted onchain by Genesis NFT Key holders.
Genesis tokens are exempt from the Harberger tax which goes to the protocol.

The game theory behind each of these tokens will be interesting to see. Some tickers will have Icedrops, others may have full airdrops. Will we see the validators become 3,3 oriented? Or hedge their income by borrowing against them on Ajna? Someone said Pendle?

Icedrop:

May the odds ever be in your favor.

For those that minted the Genesis NFT’s, there will be an “Icedrop”. 1% of the total supply is reserved for minters, with claims taking place next month. Jeets will not be eligible. Icedrops are essentially a vested airdrop with a cliff. Additionally, a novel distribution method will be revealed.

Genesis Key NFT’s:

NFT’s are on ArbitrumOne.

MOLANDAK_KEY:
0x518AD4c19FeA481f743B8dE33Ff1ec1796f94023

lueygi_KEY:
0xF5E0DFEf32e0e6dB9882af1750c08e9497459100

PORIGON_KEY:
0xE077E5f63C34B611a913B3FCBFADAA3b25991733

OVERPOWERED_KEY:
0x84Bc8D2a2c6281F15afC18C896766D64EF93bf02

ARBINAUTS_KEY:
0x6F2Ffdd387f01A0573Ca40628EaCF9dBe5240731

69_KEY:
0xbcEDcFf31C68B1fb362FaEBe36917B35643DE471

ONEPUNCH_KEY:
0x01d7Ef2ab555C800f0818edfc6A9744B79771DA1

SANICSUPERSPEED_KEY:
0xb8F977f9cb94ca72d71eC6466785605319c83F0C

KABOSU_KEY:
0x32E707B2Fa13851Ae5A8D5d610B236aB3ad5687f",

SCRIBES_KEY:
0x30dA1A8b1673Db2eEE02c72682097290b11325Fd

HOLYTRINITY_KEY:
0x1910bFE60B28b751b19Ba1C266674eB61b7e6D2B

GNOBBY_KEY:
0xbc75c6a9021a97c3343DC5c52eA2E13E5F1f852c

GARFELDO_KEY:
0x7d35995Ec68BcA71849068e0FC91EB75641c9aA8

BigBang_KEY:
0xf4E131ba5E4678bd00e8DBd508f5820fE453A51D

BERA_KEY:
0xC38F5a1aA46853Be3BfbFcF00562E01856867ba7

Milady:
0xD37e64dD683BeDD72259e861D53c29bE51Ee8E04

Genesis Tokens:

Tokens are on various chains. Immunity refers to the time period the ticker is protected from being hijacked.
UPDATE: Emissions are now execution based, with a 24hr time bonus. So each time a Validator proposes a block (with correct configuration), the protocol will emit a set amount of tokens, plus a linear time-based bonus capped at 24 hours.

MOLANDAK
0xA170Eaa9a74ab4b3218C736210b0421aF35C3c00
Chain: Arbitrum
Supply: 888 888 007 000 000
Emission: 8 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 60%
Features: Pre-Release tradable tokens. The position will migrate to Monad once it goes live. The Stablecoins will be swapped to Native Gas to create the LP, and be locked forever.
AMM: https://balancer.fi/

LUEYGI
0xcCF580E697B8bBA73748BA881C1872DD4fB01cdA
Chain: Avalanche
Supply: 19 830 914 000
Emission: 6 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 50%
Features: Everyone knows Luigi ;)
AMM: https://app.poolside.party

PORIGON
0xC3323b6e71925b25943fB7369EE6769837e9C676
Chain: Polygon
Supply: 1 000 000 000
Emission: 9 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 10%
Features: Stop gooning around.
AMM: https://balancer.fi/

OVERPOWERED
0xfe5B10F053871e66a319a57a16CF4e709f51367F
Chain: Optimism
Supply: 9 000 000 000
Emission: 91 Days (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 90 Days
Pre-mint: 25%
Features: It is over 9000+
AMM: https://velodrome.finance/

ARBINAUTS
0x836975C507bfF631FCD7FBa875e9127C8A50dBa6
Chain: Arbitrum
Supply: 1 969 160 900 000
Emission: 5 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 50%
Features: The ants are set to the moon.
AMM: https://www.poolside.party/

69
0x74262b38609a4155EaB4eEcFDcD0E339Da2cF1b2
Chain: Mantle
Supply: 69
Emission: 30 Days (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 5%
Features: Extremely low supply token inspired by the 42 token: https://42-coin.org/
AMM: https://merchantmoe.com/

ONEPUNCH
0x1F63D0EC7193964142ef6B13d901462d0E5CbB50
Chain: Linea
Supply: 201 510 500 000
Emission: 4 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 75%
Features: Don't you think Saitama looks like our Lubin?
AMM: https://www.lynex.fi/

KABOSU
0x9e949461F9EC22C6032cE26Ea509824Fd2f6d98f
Chain: Base
Supply: 200 500 090 020 420
Emission: 18 Years (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 18 years
Pre-mint: 98%
Features: Making sure her name is forever immortalized onchain. RIP Kabosu
AMM: https://balancer.fi/

SCRIBES
0x750351a9F75F98f2c2E91D4eDb3BeB14e719557E
Chain: Scroll
Supply: 500 000 000 000
Emission: 5 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 39%
Features: Highly valued members of ancient Egyptian society writing on papyrus.
AMM: https://ambient.finance/

frxBULLAS
0x3Ec67133bB7d9D2d93D40FBD9238f1Fb085E01eE
Chain: Fraxtal
Supply: 333 333 333 333 333
Emission: 90 Days (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 39%
Features: You are not bullish enough.
AMM: https://www.ra.exchange/

GNOBBY
0x1a8805194D0eF2F73045a00c70Da399d9E74221c
Chain: Gnosis
Supply: 201 704 240 170 000 030
Emission: 9 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 1%
Features: Minerva of Gnosis.
AMM: https://balancer.fi/

GARFELDO
0x344C796cc2474e4b779D0e81765AFB91D7741a42
Chain: Base
Supply: 197 800 060 190
Emission: 30 Days (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 89%
Features: He loves Lasagna.
AMM: https://aerodrome.finance/

OogaBooga
0x4e6b45BB1C7D11402faf72c2d59cAbC4085E36f2
Chain: Arbitrum
Supply: 202 411 777 777 777
Emission: 4 Months (approx. based on execution)
Immunity: 1 Year
Pre-mint: 17%
Features: Identical to Molandak.
AMM: https://balancer.fi/

SANICSUPERSPEED, GNOBBY, MILADY, and BigBang either do not have tokens or LPs at this time, but will all be addressed in Phase 3.

Participation:

You have to be in it to win it!

In order to participate in the minting of the Heroglyphs Genesis tokens, you will need to be a solo validator on Ethereum. The following is the recommended way to participate in the coordination game:

- Create a Heroglyphs ID, preferably from the Validator Withdraw Credential address. If you do not mint it from the Validator Withdraw Credential, the receiver address ID should be set to it.

- Set your Heroglyphs ID to your Validator Index as found on https://beaconcha.in.

- Have the Genesis Key NFTs you wish to mine in the ID receiver address wallet.

- Generate your graffiti on the Heroglyphs website. It must start with #.

- Input your generated graffiti into the graffiti field of your Validator.

If the graffiti is input correctly when you propose a block, you will receive the corresponding tokens in your ID receiver address.

All validators are receiving Medals for each block they attest. Medals are off chain, and are just indicative. Medals can be redeemed for $BADGES, which are soul-bound tokens (SBT). By holding Genesis Key NFTs in your Validator Withdraw Credential, you are eligible to claim the corresponding genesis token(s) by redeeming your $BADGES.

Accessibility:

We witnessed many users minting Genesis Key NFTs without knowing what the requirements for Solo Staking involved, or what the outcome of this mint would be.

We think it is important that everyone is able to run their own hardware without hefty financial requirements. In order to achieve this, we will deploy on Gnosis Chain, provided everything continues to work smoothly on mainnet. Requirements from a hardware perspective for running a validator on Gnosis are close to Ethereum, however it has a dramatically lower upfront cost.

Further explorations are underway with RocketPool to make Minipools compatible to fully work with Heroglyphs. DVT solutions will also be explored to expand accessibility and help get more people running solo validator hardware.

Next Phases:

Heroglyphs wants to spread value to the historical and forgotten collections that built Ethereum.

We think Ethereum is driven by the culture it has and we want to provide value to historical and forgotten collections who helped get us where we are. Hopefully this will be the match that can revive what was once a thriving industry fuelled by royalties and vibes.

We believe that Ethereum can be pushed beyond solely speculation, and can be driven by the culture involved in it.