October 31, 2022

How NOT to Mint an NFT

The Balance Ecosystem encompasses a wide range of innovative products and developments in various DeFi and Web3 technology areas.
Balance is poised to build bridges between the theoretical and practical sides of finance so that there is a means in which we can provide real-world solutions and create value driven products within the web3 space.

Balance Capital

What a turn of events. Balance NFT Alpha Passes are sold out in just over an hour before even reaching the public mint. Thank you everyone for your participation!

For the community and for the Balance ecosystem, this is a strong step forward towards NFT 2.0. Lots of utilities, services, and innovations to follow and we are grateful that you are part of this journey. 

An unexpected journey in some way.

In this blog article, we would like to share stories and circumstances and take you behind the scenes to the time we embarrassingly unleashed Frogs all over the Balance ecosystem. Mind you, the frogs were delightfully embraced by everyone.

Chapter 1: A ‘Smart’-Contract Family

We announced the Balance NFT Alpha pass on 11.August.2022. At that time, our development team had been working for months on the Liqd, implementing smart contracts, adding features and pages on the website, and setting things up on OpenSea and with our partners. 

One of our web3 developers and their young son - a family of many talents - had designed the Frog NFTs and were kind enough to let us use them as test assets on the Liqd Platform. These Frogs are colorful, wearing uniforms and hats, with several backgrounds, and facial expressions, but were never meant to be for the eyes of the public. 

published

frogs-opensea

frogs-opensea

Chapter 2: Ribbitin’ Human Errors

Everything was ready by the mint date, i.e., 01.September.2022, marketing content was released and proper hype was generated. We, at Balance, were confident that the minting of the Alpha Passes will be a huge success.

But we should have read the famous quote from Simon Sinek a few more times.

“Always plan for the fact that no plan ever goes according to plan.“

Unfortunately, at the time of release, we deployed the metadata from one of the testing collections, i.e., Frogs, instead of the Balance Pass. As one can imagine, the community did not take it well. 

Frogs instead of NFT Passes.

published

Balance Pass Tiers

Balance Pass Tiers

Additionally, our whitelist wallet verification logic was case-sensitive and the tool we used to gather the wallets in Discord with was not. This led to all wallets that were solely lowercase not being able to mint.

And finally, we discovered that there was no limit set to the amount of NFTs one wallet could mint. When going through write-ups for the developers, it became evident that this was due to a lack of written communication between team members.

All in all, an unacceptable situation and we apologize to our patient and kind community.

Chapter 3: Embrace the Frogs

At the time of the unfortunate slip, some community members started embracing the Frogs and the art. Blockchain registers historical events like no other system and even though our mishap was forever carved on stone, the crypto community at large saw an opportunity. 

Within 7 minutes of minting the Frogs, we were sold out! The community started designing encouraging memes too!

published

balance-pass-nft-meme

balance-pass-nft-meme

Chapter 4: Damage Control and Quick Recovery

On the same day, i.e., 01.September, the Balance team sat together and came up with the following plan of action. 

The very next day, Balance announced the new mint date, 05.September at 1800 UTC.

We introduced the following new measures to further prevent abusing the minting process.

Chapter 5: The Happy Ending

On 05.September, when Balance Alpha NFT Passes were minted, the community experienced a frictionless, high-quality process and the Passes were sold out in just over an hour. 

All in all, things went extremely well given how they unfolded a week back.

We are also pleased to see that the Balance Alpha NFT Passes are available in secondary markets, i.e., Balance Pass - Collection | OpenSea, and at the time of writing this article, are experiencing high demands.

The reveal of the NFT passes is now set to 09.September, at 1800 UTC. Get a glimpse of what is next with the Alpha NFT Passes and their utilities in our latest post and keep an eye on our Discord Announcement channel to stay up to date. 

We thank you again for putting your trust in us and sticking around as we build the next generation of crypto products.

About Balance

Balance is a Web3-based development company working on the cutting edge of fintech with deep roots in DeFi. Our team comprises product strategists, business executives, and financial engineers with top-level risk management and software engineering expertise. This innovation powerhouse is dedicated to building a more sustainable crypto investment economy, using decentralized business experience.