Presenting Babylons — The First Community Owned NFT Marketplace on Binance Smart Chain
This second article will outline the purpose of Babylons platform and its governance token $BABI, elucidate how we got where we are, our vision of the future, and how you can be part of the Babylons NFT marketplace.
Please see the bottom of the article for more information on how to join the early Babylons community and the mission that we are in. Before we start by telling you about the origin story behind Babylons, let’s give you an overview of the entire article.
1) Origins
2) Our Vision
3) Babylons Platform
4) Governance Token — $BABI
5) Genuine Stake Reward Structure
6) Weekly Reward Mechanism
7) Roadmap
8) Artist Ambassador Program
9) Babylonsian Artists’ Fund
10) Environmental Charity Fund
11) VR/AR NFT Gallery
12) NFT Crowdfunding
13) Team
14) Honorary Mentors
15) Status Quo
16) Disclaimer
17) Conclusion
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ORIGINS
Before the formation of the idea behind Babylons, collectively as a team, we had already started to plant the seeds of the idea consciously or unconsciously coming from various backgrounds such as arts, technology and economics. As the concept of non fungible tokens came to surface together with revolutionary economic models and decentralized project management systems, we all got intrigued into the idea of merging multiple disciplines and industries that we were already into. Thus, we started to dream of a Babylonsian future even though we did not have the term “Babylonsians” back then, we all had the idea. After years of research and friendships, we managed to bring together a team and mentors who tailored the idea of Babylons and a Babylonsian future as it is today. We are so excited to share with you what we did so far along with the fine-tuned version of the very first and truly community owned NFT marketplace secured by Binance Smart Chain. Here is our take, or in other words, here is what the community sought for years and especially recently, brought to you by us, and for all.
OUR VISION
NFTs are an important and immediate challenge and opportunity for supporting public goods and services especially of the creative variety through the value generated “out-of-the-ether’’ and at least propose a partial but solid solution for the tragedy of the commons problem well known in economic science. We aim to pull the conception of legitimacy for NFTs into a good and community-driven direction in order to create an actual chance to found a rock-hard channel of financing to artists, charities and much more to ensure that multiple groups benefit from them simultaneously.
Babylons is designed to be a community-governed fully Decentralized and Autonomous Organization (DAO) so that the community who uses the platform, who likely to owns NFTs as well, will also partially own the platform by utilizing Babylons’ governance token $BABI. It will allow members to have a voice in the future decisions regarding the further development of the Babylons project. Babylons is, at the same time, cheap, fast and scalable at any cause since it is built on top of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) rather than Ethereum (ETH) which is what the majority of similar platforms use, despite the fact that it is extremely expensive and slow compared to BSC. We believe low costs will enable the masses to be involved in the NFT space since all costs related are more than %90 cheaper than ETH, which again is the blockchain the most popular NFT platforms use, thus discouraging a big part of the society with lower incomes to get involved in the game. It happens to be the scenario on DeFi, and is most likely to happen on NFTs after comparing the numbers of Pancakeswap and Uniswap lately. Time to consider ETH alternatives is now.
Second biggest problem that we see within the NFT ecosystem after ETH domination is the lack of giving back to the community. Main purpose of the Babylons project is to support its community, creators, artists, collectors, and investors. In this context, two spectacular systems have been developed: a tailor-made Genuine Stake Reward Structure and a fine-tuned weekly reward mechanism to be discussed in detail later on this article.
We believe Babylons will be a significant asset to artists, charities and other public good providers far beyond our own virtual corners of the world. There are definitely more ideas and all are welcome, but let’s present to you in detail what we think, through active coordination, is optimal and feasible and how we plan to continue with our operations while merging with the community and giving them the ownership and governance rights to grow naturally and together.
BABYLONS PLATFORM
At the first glance, Babylons shines out as an NFT marketplace with low-cost minting, weekly rewards, and a DAO governance model that puts the ownership and the decisive power in the hands of the community. But let’s have a look what Babylons platform allow people to do:
- Create their own NFTs
- Get their digital goods highlighted
- Sell their own NFT
- Buy and collect others’ NFTs
- Showcase their NFTs on a customized profile page
- Get verified as artists and collectors
- Get their commission payback simply by holding $BABI tokens
- Be eligible to weekly $BABI rewards by creating volume on the marketplace
- Manage features by using the future voting mechanism in the DAO governance model
- Set a percentage as a royalty for secondary sales allowing the creators to get their fair share from the added value on the second-hand market.
As you can see, we have quite a few functions serving unique purposes in Babylons. However, this is definitely not the end of it. We have much in mind both regarding the platform features and add-on utilities and programs to serve a wider public good. Our plans so far besides the ones listed above will be pointed out and discussed starting on the Roadmap section.
Now, let’s dig into the subject of Babylons’ governance token, $BABI a BEP-20 protocol token on the Binance Smart Chain. It will make more sense to talk about the Genuine Stake Reward Structure and the weekly rewards mechanisms later on.
GOVERNANCE TOKEN — $BABI
$BABI is the platforms’ governance token. It is a deflationary fungible and digital asset. Anyone can own the platform partially by utilizing $BABI and vote on future system upgrades and management decisions that will shape the Babylonsian future. Our smart contract based DAO governance model is built to ensure the platforms’ future is shaped according to the will of the Babylonsians.
Let’s list the main features of $BABI token to highlight it’s planned use-cases.
- Receiving weekly airdrops in $BABI as part of the genuine reward mechanism
- Voting within the DAO governance model
- Commission paybacks explained in the Genuine Stake Reward Structure
- Systematically burnt within its deflationary design
- Financing the Artist Ambassador Program and Babylonsian Artists’ Fund
- Incentivizing early and late contributions in network growth
- Funding various marketing activities and further project developments
- Providing liquidity for Decentralized Exchange (DEX) listing at the Token Generation Event (TGE)
- Managing tier-based API data usage system
Further cases are absolutely possible and we believe as the DAO governance model kicks in, together with the community, there will be more functions than the core ones listed above. Detailed tokenomics can be found in our litepaper and will be discussed in upcoming articles, it’s out of the scope of this post.
Let’s now jump into our tailor-made Genuine Stake Reward Structure that most platforms lack and what we believe is a sine-qua-non especially in the NFT space and within DAO models.
Genuine Stake Reward Structure
Each week’s earned commission s will be distributed for various activities such as rewarding the stakeholders (except the locked tokens), financing business operations, storing for scheduled buyback programs and burning for deflationary mechanics as the following:
This Genuine Stake Reward Structure, which is also subject to the governance committee decision, allows Babylons to be truly community owned further than being only community governed. On the path to being a fully active DAO, we believe that the structure in subject matter is essential for mass adoption and being truly community-driven. Burn and buyback programs also are proven to be both vital and efficient mechanics in cryptocurrency and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space in opposition of freely printed/minted fiat and also cryptocurrencies.
Now let’s have a look at our weekly reward mechanism which generously incentivizes both artists and collectors for their active participation in the Babylons NFT marketplace.
WEEKLY REWARD MECHANISM
Each week; 227,500 $BABI tokens will be distributed to active users according to their fair share in the weekly total volume. Both buyers and sellers are eligible. Weekly reward airdrops will be terminated after 250 weeks when all reserved tokens get distributed. Conditions are as following:
We arranged such limitations and planned such conditional activities in order to intercept individuals from accumulating $BABI tokens unjustly due to its early infant stage. But again and of course, these ratios and limitations are subject to the governance committee decisions. However, according to our estimations and calculations these will suffice to keep Babylons fair and just especially in its early stages.
The main goal of this weekly reward mechanism is to distribute the ownership and voting rights to the community members that actively utilizes Babylons for creating, collecting and selling NFTs. Although Babylons is destined for more than what is previously discussed. Let’s have a look at our roadmap to see what more awaits for the Babylonsians in the near future.
ROADMAP
Second Quarter of 2021
- MainNet Launch
- Partnerships with other Binance Smart Chain Projects
- Royalty Fee Mechanism
- Bidding Feature
- Highlighted Section for Curated Artworks
- Artist Ambassador Program
- Babylons Genesis NFT Series
- Artist/Collector Verification System
- Unlockable Content Feature
- Weekly Rewards to Active Users
- Audit
- DEX Listing
- Genuine Stake Reward Structure
- Enhanced Section for Music Market
- Community Governance Activation by Voting
Third Quarter of 2021
- First Big Burn Event
- NFT Crowdfunding
- Babylons Analytics Page
- More Types of File Support (3D, VR/AR, etc.)
- Multi-Language Support
- Launch of Babylons Artists’ Fund
- Launch of Environmental Charity Fund to Fight Global Warming Crisis
- NFT to NFT Swap Mechanism
- Aggregator and API service for NFTs minted on BSC
Final Quarter of 2021
- Rebranding
- Fractional Ownership of NFTs
- Cross-Chain Support
- Centralized Exchange (CEX) Listing
- Virtual Reality NFT Gallery
- AI-Backed Price Discovery Algorithm
- Mobile App
- Social Features
- Shifting towards a fully active DAO
There will be more comprehensive articles regarding the different segments in the roadmap but for now, let’s briefly explain a few of them to quench your curiosity of what is awaiting the community and clarify important parts before we publish specific articles on them.
ARTIST AMBASSADOR PROGRAM
This program is one of the very first big steps on the community side of the project Babylons. We have already signed up with more than 30 unique artists from 15 different countries creating various forms of art to be the first artists ever to mint NFTs on BSC using Babylons. The Babylons Genesis NFT series by these artists will start to drop on the Babylons marketplace right after the mainnet launch which is very very soon, and surely sooner than expected. Since these NFTs within the Genesis Series will likely be the first ever 100 pieces minted on Babylonsian history, we expect them to increase in value dramatically, so hurry up! We will announce these artists one by one and more information on when these NFTs will drop on the marketplace will be announced shortly after the very much anticipated Ambassador Artist announcements! Just wait and see the genesis NFTs on the marketplace yourselves, it is hard and nearly impossible to express with words what these artworks have to offer in various shapes.
These ambassador artists and their self-curated NFTs will represent the perspective of Babylons. We believe in quality rather than quantity so we curated the marketplace place with global pioneers and visionaries of their respective fields. We also have came to agreement with various collectives in arts, entertainment and technology fields but more on this later. Our community will grow even more rapidly as our ambassador artists’ NFTs and themselves start to appear together with various partnerships and collaborations to follow.
As the platform starts to create profit and distribute it back to the community, in time the governance tokens dedicated to marketing will also unlock periodically which will be used for a variety of purposes including ambassador artist airdrops and much more as mentioned above in the roadmap and discussed further below. To boost the early community growth, we will incentivize earlier NFT contributors from the Artist Ambassador Program with a larger proportion of the reserved $BABI tokens.
We plan to use the $BABI token to encourage both existing and new NFT creators to adopt Babylons as the go-to platform.
BABYLONSIAN ARTISTS’ FUND
Some of these marketing tokens and platform revenues will be utilized to finance artists, thus their artworks to create even a greater public good as it is possible, searching for underground artists in need and basically funding and having them on board with the other fellow Babylonsians already in the community. There will be online events to have a broader exposure to the masses to both promote Babylons artists laying the foundation of Babylonsian ideology and to attract new and emerging artists to get on board regardless of where they are. We also have plans of physical events and organizations for localized community growth in various places on Earth expanding our exposure, however due to the global pandemic, we can only dream and plan for now but not yet get together and potentially risk people’s lives. But hey, virtual events can be so much fun either!
Since we designed Babylons with the artists founding the backbone, we will be publishing a more comprehensive guide on the Babylonsian Artist’s Fund in a separate article to be discussed in detail.
ENVIRONMENTAL CHARITY FUND
It is a fact that distributed ledger technologies, blockchains and even each energy consuming software thus hardware is a burden on the environment since we are already struggling with a hardcore global warming crisis. Although fiat money authorities are less efficient and use much more energy proven with actual facts and analyses as well. We already explained this in our previous article but we would again like to clear the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about the actual environmental impacts of blockchains, cryptocurrencies and especially NFTs lately. If not, at least we want to briefly output what we think of this matter and what we do and plan to do about it.
Even if we say blockchain is bad for the environment which is not fair to say since its very existence disturbs and aims to stop the main authorities from causing the environmental crises in the first place. Still, BTC and ETH are responsible for most of the energy consumption in the blockchain world which we are not also fond of because they became infeasible. That’s why we are using a much greener blockchain BSC, which uses less energy for each contract deployed on the blockchain and requires significantly less computing power, thus less energy consumption.
It is also a fact that NFTs and blockchain in general have very little energy consumption when compared to governments and banks. Plus, the positive impact of NFTs as artworks on people and their visions, might just be bigger than its impact on the environment with respect to the main generators of this problem (traditional system). By utilizing the $BABI token, Babylons genuine DAO governance model and the community-driven Genuine Stake Reward Structure for such environmentally charitable causes, we believe that we can create more awareness for the subject matter as well as actually and sustainably within the DAO governance model, compensate more than our fair share for what we as humans did for years to the environment bringing the global warming crisis into this critical level.
VIRTUAL REALITY NFT GALLERY
We are extremely hyped about this huge value add-on to the Babylons project. We are already in touch with a few collectives and companies that are concurrently working on high-end VR games and specialized 3D environments. Through these friendly but strategic partnerships and collaborations, we are proud to say that plans are already on the table to bring on a cross-chain VR NFT gallery where every NFT owner can truly experience the NFTs they own, they can showcase their precious and highly-valued NFTs in an environment that is specifically built for NFT enthusiasts by the pioneers and visionaries of the digital art world. We cannot express our excitement level about the VR NFT gallery, but we will have to hold our horses for now and save this subject for another article. Stay tuned though! We will be updating the community through various media channels about developments on the VR side of the Babylons project.
NFT CROWDFUNDING
Online fundraising and especially crowdfunding mechanisms are proven to be successful in both traditional and next-generation start-ups scenes. Especially decentralized crowdfunding mechanisms such as Initial Decentralized Exchange Offerings (IDOs) and Initial Farm Offerings (IFOs) provided funding to a large number of projects. This entire ecosystem became an integral part of the start-up scene, especially but not exclusively on the blockchain side. Some of these crowdfunded projects are still live and contributing hugely to the public good of the society, however some are dead. It is a niche-area where world-class expertise is required. Benefiting from our existing relationships with our mentors and partners, we have also planned to offer $BABI tokens in such manner as well, giving the global community a fair opportunity to invest in Babylons platform itself, not into an investment asset but into a fully active governance token with the explained uses cases and privileges above.
Furthermore, we decided to share the expertise of our mentors, partners and ours with the fellow entrepreneurial souls out there. Thus, we are happy to announce that we also have plans to bring such launchpad mechanisms in terms of multiple collectible NFTs rather than the traditional and fungible tokenizing systems. This will again be a pioneering experimentation in the NFT space. Please read our disclaimer below to fully be aware of the risks involved when real monetary value meets such infant technologies. More information guiding the NFT crowdfunding launchpad will be released in time.
Let’s present to you our all-star founding team next, followed by our honorary mentors!
TEAM
- Furkan Özalp — Chief Executive Officer
- Alp Arda Seyhan — Chief Strategy Officer
- Ataberk Sevim — Chief Technology Officer
- İsmail Küçük — Head of Blockchain
- Yunus Emre Çandır — System Architect
- Egemen Hocaoğlu — Community Manager
- Mert Uzbaşlı — Lead Designer
HONORARY MENTORS
- Şant Manukyan — https://twitter.com/santmanukyan/
- Ian Friend — https://twitter.com/ifriend05/
- Stratrade — https://twitter.com/stratrade_/
- HEK Attorney Partnership — https://www.hek.com.tr/en/team/
STATUS QUO
Coming to the end of this article, we thought it would be good to recap what we have done to date and tell you briefly what to expect in the upcoming days ahead. As explained before we have already signed up with other blockchain projects. In addition to that we had guaranteed a significant amount of investments from a group of investors. These strategic partnerships will come to daylight soon enough. We will also publish the details regarding the investment rounds in time. These are all very exciting developments and we cannot wait to announce to you all the good news. However, as a truly community-owned NFT marketplace, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight our artists, their NFTs and the Babylons platform itself since they are the backbone of the whole project. That’s why we will first be launching the Babylons V1 platform with the core functionalities active, and after sometime but not too late, we will release detailed information on investment rounds and release the $BABI tokens themselves when all rounds are finished. Roadmap will be followed afterwards taking into consideration of the Babylonsian governance committee decisions on the long run.
We had a successful testing period running for weeks now on BSC testnet, and it’s almost time for the mainnet launch with our brand new platform design. Yay! So what to expect next then? All the data created in the testnet besides contract interactions will be deleted just before the mainnet. At the launch, our ambassador artists will immediately start to mint their NFTs as the genesis collection of Babylons, including artworks created by over 40 distinguished global artists from 15 countries with various backgrounds. So we are mostly excited about NFTs that we will see on the marketplace after mainnet launch and within the first weeks of Babylons. These artists and their NFT drops will be announced over different social media channels, stay tuned and open those notifications!
For those who can’t just wait to get more information on the $BABI token, don’t worry and hold onto your horses a little bit more, we got you covered and prepared quite a few surprises up and ready for you! Check the bottom of the article to see the links to follow up. All announcements will be done over those channels. Time for the Babylonsian future is NOW!
DISCLAIMER
The Babylons project is in early stages and should not yet be considered as an investment under the concurrent circumstances. This is an experimental project operating in an experimental space due to the fact that the history of NFTs doesn’t go so far back. We hold no liability or responsibility for lost funds. Please only interact with the platform and protocols in case you fully comprehend the risks involved.
CONCLUSION
The NFT industry and Babylons project as a whole in particular can be significantly beneficial to artists, investors, collectors, charities and other public good providers far beyond what one might think, although this outcome is not pre-determined and heavily depends on active coordination and support of various sub-groups united within NFT communities like Babylonsians themselves.
The next step is for you to join the community. We will be doing community airdrops to early members to incentivize our growth, and on-board new developers, artists, collectors and more to our platform, to be hit the right targets in such a fast-paced and challenging environment as crypto markets and blockchain start-up scene is.
- Please follow us on Twitter here. Retweet or quote this medium article. Bonus points if you tag your friends in the scene and may be or already are interested in the NFT space.
- Please join our Telegram Community Channel here.
- Please follow us on Instagram here.
- If you would like to take part in the testnet, please fill out the form here and fulfill the requirements listed in the form to be eligible for testnet airdrop as well.
- Come hang around in our Discord Server!
Thanks a lot for being interested in Babylons, we hope we could provide some insightful information quenching your curiosity and appetite!
Stay tuned, wild and vibrant! You will be hearing from us again pretty soon on all communication mediums and also on the Medium itself.
Until then,
Peace.
***Please check community update v1.0 to see the updated metrics.
