A Year of Flight
One year ago, our team laid out our flight plans and we set out to further develop what we believed to be the best aspects of decentralization. Within the first days of our existence, we shared a vision of a more perfect union between token holders and project developers, and laid the groundwork for the past eleven months of progress.
From our first Medium post, we explained that decentralization relies on delivery, but also integrity. Simply, it is a balanced effort of both the team and the community working together to develop technology that actually empowers all users. Decentralization is fragile, but worth fighting for. A community and their speech are worth protecting.
We expect that of all projects. Now, on the anniversary of Aviator’s launch, we want to show exactly how we are putting the power back into your hands, working together as a team and a community. But first! Some updates.
Tokenomics Status Update
Our token distribution has naturally shifted since our launch, and our scheduled inflation through team token distributions is now completed. We are proud to be the only project of our size to fully utilize a DAO voting system for absolute control over treasury funds. This means that nothing is allowed to leave the treasury without a majority vote in our DAO, as promised in our active DAO Constitution.
In an industry that has increasingly become overpopulated by short-sighted projects with enormous allocations pre-set for VCs and insiders, we are proud to have only offered a maximum of 5% to our team.
Liquidity Relocking
When we launched a year ago on July 13th, 2023, we provided an initial liquidity of 6,000,000,000 AVI and 3 WETH to Uniswap V2 before locking it for exactly one year in UNCX. This liquidity has grown substantially over time as our project has grown and currently represents over 1,000,000.00 USD in tradeable liquidity, an increase of 16,000%, with a fair market token value increase of 26,000%.
Our project-provided liquidity will unlock on July 13th, 2024. At this time, the following will occur:
- Liquidity will be unlocked from UNCX.
- The Aviator Treasury will collect LP fees provided through the Uniswap protocol.
- Collected AVI shall be transferred to the Operations Wallet.
- Collected ETH shall be transferred to the project’s Coinbase account to be re-invested into project development.
- Liquidity will be migrated from Uniswap V2 to Uniswap V3 [0.3% fee structure] using Uniswap’s liquidity migration tool.
- Liquidity will be relocked for one year in UNCX.
During this process, absolutely no action is required by token holders. There will never be any token migration event, and you will never be required to connect your wallet to any website to use the tokens you already own.
You may find that your wallet will ask you to approve spending for AVI if you sell it on Uniswap V3. This is because different versions of the Uniswap protocol each require their own approval for each token you wish to spend.
For those wondering, LP for when AVI is deployed on BASE has already been set aside here.
Product Development Updates
SkyBridge
Our developers are working diligently in preparation for the mainnet release of SkyBridge. Hacken is currently auditing our final smart contracts, and we are ecstatic to launch soon. At this time, we have decided not to publish a launch date in advance. Instead, news of the launch will be shared once it is already live.
Aviator Arcade
We have been making great progress on Aviator Arcade. Our team has been fleshing out our in-house games and are preparing for another Game Jam event this summer — keep an eye out!
Smart contracts for Aviator Arcade are nearly completed at this time and will undergo a security audit before launch. Meanwhile, we are planning to recruit more and more developers to build on the platform. Remember, early developers receive a permanent 5% bonus on their games!
Community Rewind
Our team took a lot of time to reflect on the past year and all that the community has accomplished for Aviator. We were truly astonished by the commitment and dedication community members have shown in spreading the word about Aviator!
Rumble Royale
Some of our most popular community events have been our Discord Rumble Royale giveaways. We initiated these Rumble events to celebrate community milestones and to have a fun time with our members. During these events, we have given away over 20,000.00 USD worth of AVI tokens. Additionally, some very special community members have generously donated AVI to select Rumble Events. The fact that community members donated their AVI to give back further underscores the passion and kindness within our community.
Based Foxes NFT
A community member took the initiative to create 3,000 unique NFTs for Aviator holders. They airdropped 1,800 NFTs to wallets holding AVI. This non-official community effort brought the AVI community together with laughter and enjoyment as everyone shared their favorite NFTs. People have used these NFTs as profile pictures and even created humorous memes, poems, and videos integrating AVI to introduce new people to the project.
The Shill Team
Our Shill Team consists mostly of community members who post daily about Aviator on Twitter and other social media platforms. This dedicated group has been tirelessly promoting Aviator every single day by posting, reposting, and engaging with new users. They share their tweets and articles in the Telegram channel, and the community consistently shows its support. Many of these members have formed close friendships while working together to spread the word about Aviator.
Our goal would be for anyone interested in Aviator to join, so we can multiply our efforts in reaching as many people as possible. You can do so by joining the Telegram shill team group: https://t.me/Aviator_Shill.
In summary, everything mentioned above demonstrates how incredible the community is — and we’re just getting started — year two of Aviator promises to be even better! We hope to see this energy and enthusiasm continue for many years to come. Thank you to everyone for all the memories we’ve made in this past year! We’re excited to see what more this community can accomplish — as you are all an integral part of the Aviator team!
What’s Next?
Within the next few days, a new DAO proposal will be published to re-approve the marketing wallet budget for Q3 2024.
We have evolved a lot over this past year and as a result, we will be updating and re-publishing a new version of our project Whitepaper (The Flightpaper) complete with new and updated information on SkyBridge, Aviator Arcade, project addresses, and more in an effort to present everything as comprehensively as possible.
We have hired a new seasoned UX professional to help us rebuild our website and applications from the ground up, focusing on accessibility and ease of use for SkyBridge and Aviator Arcade. This is a part of a broader goal to unify our brand and messaging across the board. We are conducting several focus group style interviews with community members who have utilized the SkyBridge testnet or other third-party bridges. If you are interested in being interviewed, please send us an email to: contact@aviator.ac!
Soon, we will be hosting documentation for all things Aviator on our website. This will cover both user documentation and developer documentation for developers interested in building for Aviator Arcade, integrating SkyBridge technology into their applications, or deploying their assets using SkyBridge. Additionally, new APIs are being deployed for third-party developers to utilize in their Aviator Ecosystem projects.
So what does it really mean to be an Aviator? Be independent, fight for what you believe in, and create your own destiny. Wear your patch with honor. There are no roads to follow in the sky; a pilot is free.
“…You are a pilot.” — Aviator
Links
Website: https://aviator.ac/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aviator_ac
Telegram: https://t.me/aviator_ac
Discord: https://aviator.ac/discord
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DecentralizedAviators/
Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/aviator-ac
Snapshot DAO: https://snapshot.org/#/aviator-dao.eth
Links: https://aviator.ac/links
CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/aviator
CoinGecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/aviator
Etherscan: https://etherscan.io/token/0xd2bdaaf2b9cc6981fd273dcb7c04023bfbe0a7fe
DEXTools: https://www.dextools.io/app/en/ether/pair-explorer/0x460b1cfb76a34d51f8ca8886371ef78e3f2b6b84
Uniswap: https://app.uniswap.org/#/swap?outputCurrency=0xd2bdaaf2b9cc6981fd273dcb7c04023bfbe0a7fe
Bonus Content!
The Kerasu Plan: An Interview with Kerasu
There’s a lot of marketing hype out there in the current market, for example there’s a lot of memecoins that are pumping and dumping quickly without so much of a product behind it because of money being poured in marketing. Do you expect this for AVI or in other words how important do you think marketing is to the success of AVI?
First off, marketing is essential to the success of any product or company — there is no arguing with that. When we discuss Aviator, it’s important to distinguish between Aviator the company, the products we develop, like SkyBridge and Aviator Arcade, and our governance token, AVI. The AVI token does not represent, constitute or involve the exchange of cryptocurrencies for any form of securities, investment units and/or form of ordinary shares in the project, platform, company, or any other entity and participants do not receive dividends, revenue rights, or profit-sharing participation. Token functionalities, including rewards and governance utilities, are decentralized, programmatic, subject to change, and not guaranteed. So, when it comes to AVI the token, I have zero expectations beyond its continued governance functionality in our DAO and future utility in Aviator Arcade.
Now to get to the root of your question as it pertains to Aviator, the company and brand. As I said, marketing is vital to the success of any company or product, but there is a difference between sensationalized ‘hype’ marketing and educational marketing. Both of these can be effective, but if you only use one methodology, namely ‘hype’, you’re likely not seeking to build something long term with sustainable growth (and you’re also likely blowing your entire marketing budget in a short period of time). Using both methods in tandem with a balanced approach yields the best result in my opinion because it piques interest, but also provides a follow-up for users who want to learn more and dive into the ecosystem. In web3, many are used to ‘hype’ marketing, but they’re not as familiar with the latter. We aim to build a company that is here for generations to come and in order to do that, we seek to provide a user-experience that is fun, accessible, unique, and timeless. Bridges will be necessary as long as there are multiple chains and gaming will be relevant indefinitely. Marketing will attract users, but ultimately, it’s the experience those users have with our products that will keep them coming back and referring our products to their friends.
When it comes to memes, I believe that the memetic nature of our mascot and brand identity will serve as a Trojan horse in the sense that it will attract users who are naturally drawn to memecoins and NFTs, but once they do their research, will encourage them to utilize SkyBridge to bridge and arbitrage those memecoins and NFTs between Ethereum and BASE. While memecoins are culturally significant and a vital part of onboarding folks into web3 in many cases, most of us who have been around for a while understand that there are many use cases for web3 beyond memes. Aviator seeks to be a pioneer in bridging the gap between web2 and web3 gaming by offering a familiar and accessible gaming experience, while benefiting from the innovations of decentralization and blockchain technology. Developers who couldn’t get their games onto a popular platform, or that felt disincentivized because of the smaller royalties or hosting fees, will be able to launch their games with Aviator Arcade for competitive royalties and no hosting fees.
For those who are potentially interested in the project, what would you say is the single most interesting thing about this project? Why?
I would never be able to narrow it down to just one thing, but I will say this:
Aviator revolutionizes Web3 with Aviator Arcade™, a DeFi gaming platform on BASE offering low fees, no hosting costs, and rewards in AVI and SkyBridge™ which enables seamless standard ERC-20/ERC-721 transfers with top-tier security (10/10 Hacken audit). Brought to you by ex-Shib members and industry professionals with a long-term vision.
I started out as a community member, but what the description above depicts and the passion the team has, made me want to be a part of the team itself.
In terms of your marketing, what type of competition does AVI face, and how do you think AVI stands out compared to the rest?
AVI is most often compared to GALA games, and while readers can do their own research into their company and the games they offer, my personal opinion is that our team is more unified and our games will be more accessible and diversified. When I think of our primary competitor, I think of Steam. Again, we are seeking to onboard user demographics from both Web3 and Web2 by creating a gaming ecosystem that feels as seamless as what folks are used to, while offering innovative solutions and incentives powered by Web3. Beyond that, we are extremely unique in that in addition to providing a gaming platform, we also provide a bridge to that platform which opens us up to so many users and partnerships that we may not otherwise have access to. Future versions of the bridge are likely to add Aerodrome to our list of competitors. Add in how memeable and likable our mascot is and you’ve got a perfect storm in terms of brand identity and product market fit.
Are there upcoming events, milestones, etc that you are currently working on? Anything that you can tell us now about it?
There is so much happening right now, but most notably we recently launched the testnet of SkyBridge, which is able to bridge any standard ERC-20 and ERC-721 token from Ethereum to Base (and later future chains), along with our bug bounty hosted by Hacken, who also audited SkyBridge, giving it a 10/10 score. We are currently undergoing a secondary audit following our public testnet phase to ensure maximum security. Afterwards, we will be launching SkyBridge on the BASE mainnet alongside AVI with supersonic functionality that will allow near-instant transfers to and from Ethereum and BASE.
Aviator also is participating in Coinbase’s OnChain Summer campaign for BASE in ways we’ve not yet revealed, but will certainly be impactful. We are also working through the questing rewards process following the approval from our DAO to utilize AVI tokens from the treasury, but I want to remind readers that working through institutional bureaucracy takes time.
Looking forward, in terms of milestones, I am excited to offer our community the opportunity to play and test some of our games prior to the launch of the Arcade. We will also be announcing a partnership with an influencer on a platform not often associated with Web3 that we will be working with on a long-term basis.
Beyond that, there is all of the marketing that will come along with the launch of SkyBridge such as press releases with notable publications, buzz generated by influencers, partnerships, videos, commercial ads, new AMAs, and much more.
Thank you all so much for being a part of the Aviator community and for your continued support. It warms my heart to know that you’re all passionate about what we’re building and that genuine friendships have been formed along the way. I smile everytime I see someone post: I_TRUST_THE_KERASU_PLAN
Love, Kerasu
