In 2022, the events on the crypto stage took a catastrophic turn. Without the possibility to hedge themselves against the risk, many investors were unexpectedly confronted with an almost-2008 scenario – this time unfolding on the grounds of DeFi. In the short term, the unanticipated crypto meltdown has significantly shaken the faith in the idea of decentralized currency as such, as well as the whole ecosystem of connecting services; nonetheless, crypto remains surrounded by positive predictions on a longer time span and still continues to be fuelled by the faith of crypto enthusiasts. One reason why crypto industry will not fade out is its decentralized nature, which has a potential to revise the entire socio-economic structure and become one of the main triggers of Industry 4.0. Another strength is the ability of DeFi to transform the nature of our interaction with reality by taking it into the virtual dimension, thus opening the realm of Metaverse. However, none of these weighty advantages overshadows the fact that the overheated DeFi industry should address its current liquidity crisis.

At the present stage, the only way out is to establish an efficient, transparent and low-cost process of the liquidity provision and price setting. One such solution to this problem emerged in the form of Bunicorn Finance. Being a cutting-edge DeFi Gaming solution, this platform enables DeFi to attain the next level of the blockchain experience through permissionless Liquidity Bootstrapping Pools (LBPs). At the heart of Bunicorn Ecosystem lies the platform’s launchpad, Metaverse Starter – a supreme multichain trading solution sharing resemblance with Copper Launch, but in comparison to the latter taking one step further to provide the multi-chain support encompassed of BSC, ETH, Polygon and Avalanche. The launch of LBPs symbolizes the new approach to liquidity building and token distribution that is simultaneously both cost-effective and efficient. A self-adjusting nature of the pool weights enables to avoid the negative pressure on token price, thus allowing the market to effectively regulate its value over time. In the same vein, instant slumps of token price contribute to the fair distribution of the token, making sure malicious actors are dismissed from the game at the early stage. Additionally, Bunicorn Finance actively employs NFT vesting to turn yield farming rewards into unique NFT collectibles, while also stressing the long-term value of all NFT collectibles obtained through the Pay to Earn (P2E) gaming experience. The launch of LBPs scheduled to take place on Friday, July 29, 2022, and is deservedly reckoned among the most-anticipated community events.

To learn all essentials about the project and the upcoming launch of LBPs, I approached the CTO of Bunicorn, An Nguyen, who was deservedly listed among the Top 10 Young CTO at CTO Summit 2022 by VNExpress.

Hello, nice to meet you! I’d like to start with the question about your background. What led you to immerse into the world of DeFi – and, more specifically, Bunicorn Finance?

Hello, glad to meet you! I’m An Nguyen, CTO of Bunicorn. First of all, the thing that takes me deep into the DeFi world, and creating Bunicorn Finance, came from my passion for technology since I was a child. Then, in the process of continuing to pursue my dream, being exposed to more technology products made me even more passionate about them. And with accumulated experience and relationships, in 2015, I decided with a group of friends to open my own company to start a business.

To talk about Bunicorn, this is one of our very dedicated projects based on the blockchain technology platform. We aim to build Bunicorn as a complete ecosystem for NFT/ Blockchain projects as well as end users. Bunicorn Finance consists of various products such as Bunicorn Mobile game, Bunicorn Game, Bunicorn Island, Bunicor NFT Marketplace, Bunicorn DEX (mobile app and PC) and most recently Metaverse Starter Launchpad with many outstanding features integrated.

In July 2021, Bunicorn successfully raised $2 million dollars and proudly became one of the Top 3 NFT Projects on BSC (according to bscproject.com) after a 1-month launch, Bunicorn was also listed among MVBIII Monthly Star hosted by BSC. Currently, we are exploring new gameplay for the Bunicorn game with improvements to solve problems that many play-to-earn games are facing now such as Deposit/Withdraw NFT or token.

 Speaking of Metaverse Starter, we are honoured to introduce a brand new auction feature which has been released recently: Token Launch Auction which provides fair token distribution for individuals and prevents bots and whales from taking up all supply from the very beginning of the token launch. 

From your perspective, what are the problems the DeFi market is most susceptible to? Taking this into account, how does Bunicorn attempt to provide a way out of it?

DeFi and Smart Contract is considered a highly secure environment. But there will be no limit, good hackers can still find some security loopholes to penetrate.

However, Bunicorn currently does not rely on any price feed/oracle, the current Bunicorn farming mechanism now has a fixed number of BUNI per block, so it is almost impossible to have breakdowns of previous projects that the team reviewed.

But no one can be definitely ensured of anything in the crypto world, so Bunicorn has also gone through many internal and external audits including 2 audits by hacken.io, and 1 by Certik. We also ran a Bug Bounty program with a 50K USD reward for almost 2 months without discovering any security bugs.

Let’s speak about the latest Bunicorn’s launchpad, Metaverse Starter. What is the uniqueness of this proposition – especially in comparison to its existing rival, Copper Launch?

Firstly, Metaverse Starter can support all multichain encompassing BSC, ETH, Polygon, Avalanche and more while Copper Launch cannot. And to guarantee secure identification of user’s identity and seamless user onboarding, we will partner with Blockhash and integrate their KYC system into Metaverse Starter.

Secondly, Metaverse Starter is designed to support both Token Launch Auction and IDO as Token Launch Auction was a tremendous success on the renowned Copper Launch. We aim to make Metaverse Starter an IDO or INO launchpad solely but a one-stop marketplace & launchpad within the Bunicorn ecosystem that enables cross-launchpad for all NFT & game projects, such as selling NFTs and so on. Prior to the launchpad, Metaverse Starter’s Mystery Box feature for the Initial NFT Offering service was successfully released with three sold-out INOs from Hero Arena, Elpis Battle, and The Wasted Lands.

As the first IDOs will be coming soon on Metaver Starter, the INO policy of Metaverse Starter will also go into effect immediately with the release of the launchpad. Details about the INO’s requirements are specified as follows.

For anyone eager to participate in the upcoming launch of Liquidity Bootstrapping Pools (LBPs): which unique advantages make this initiative a truly industry-level event? And, most importantly, how does it assist in building deep liquidity?

The biggest advantage of Token Launch Auction is that it is completely permissionless and open. The model truly promotes decentralization on chain.

• No Verification: Instead of going through a long hard project verification process (which might take months to complete) with the IDO method, the Token Launch Auction requires almost no verification from the pool owners.
• Swift Onboarding: Anyone can create their own auction at any time. The process might take only around 15 minutes to complete.
• Truly transparent and permissionless price discovery mechanism: this approach discourages whales and bots from participating in the token sale while allowing retail investors of all sizes to fairly join the fair launch in order to support projects at the early stage.

Such an approach elevates a project’s capital efficiency as they no longer have to invest a tremendous amount of resources in the traditional process of an IDO method.

Yet, the only drawback of the Token Launch Auction also originates from its permissionless nature. The new method should require auction participants to study the project legitimacy and make the choice based more on their own evaluation.

Token Launch Auction assists in building deep liquidity by selling tokens in a larger quantity. To explain it in detail, if the item is sold in the form of IDO, it will be sold at the lowest price (excluding price discovery).  And the result is it usually only sells in small quantities because it is not possible to sell a large number of tokens at the lowest price.

Otherwise, if it is sold in the form of LBP auction, the token can be sold in a much larger quantity because the selling price already includes price discovery, so the liquidity it creates after the sale will be deeper.

Also, one of the notable features of Bunicorn Ecosystem is its Card Game. Could you tell us a bit more about the functionality of its Play-to-Earn (P2E) mechanism?

In the beginning, Bunicorn Card game was originally a click-to-earn game with simple content. Gradually, we have transformed our gameplay into a different one that is more attractive and long-lasting. We are fully aware of the existing situation as there are some mistakes in the original design, such as consuming too much gas fee or the snowball oracle pushing us to go much faster. But yet, we were trying to overcome the issues at all costs. Therefore, in order to address the root of the problem, we would like to propose an improvement for the Bunicorn Card game. 

At the moment, to achieve the set goals, we are releasing Buni Island (Mainnet) and Bunicorn Mobile Game with a more playable UI/UX design including almost all the features from the previous version, and also create many new gameplay such as Buni House, Farm, Storage, Inventory, Steal, Attack, Defend, PvP Battle, and many more. 

Moreover, we are now updating Deposit/Withdraw NFT and token in-game. As we are gradually moving from the previous Bunicorn Game (running both on-chain & off-chain) to the current Buni Island (running solely off-chain), users will need to deposit/ withdraw their Bunicorn & Trainer NFTs from on-chain to off-chain or vice versa to be able to fully enjoy the Buni Island. 

At this stage, I’m also curious to hear about the tokenomics of your native asset. How is it going to be distributed?

After careful consideration, we’ve decided to use 2 tokens in our game: BUNI – the governance token), and BUR – the in-game currency and reward payout. With these tokens, we tried to achieve the following goals:

• Low and mangle entry price – pegged the entry price (recruit, hunt) to USD instead of a fixed price in BUNI or BUR. We keep it low enough at around $120-150, so it’s affordable for more players.
• Stable payout rate – pegged the reward to USD.
• Extended buying demands for BUNI token so it will increase in value and benefit the project’s holder.

A buying demand and burning mechanism for both BUR and NFT assets, so they will be burnt and slow down the inflation rate.

Since we launched the game on 31st August, the Bunicorn game has reached huge success with a massive rate of organic users. We were ranked in the top 3 of Binance’s BUILD leaderboard and became the monthly star of the MVB III program.

And to distribute them, we’ll make a mechanism so that Bunicorn Game will heal itself in the bear market and gradually recover again. Let’s see how it’s done. There are 3 factors in this new approach:

• The target BUR price. This is the ideal price of BUR in USD where minting is equal to burning that we aim for. Let’s say it’s $0.05 per BUR.
• The expense price. This is the price of all the activities in the game that users would need to pay for such as hunting, recruiting, fusion, enhancing… It will be pegged to USD in the market. If the price goes down, more BUR will be burnt. If it goes up, less BUR will be burnt.
• We’ll find a formula of the reward payout so that the number of BUR minted will be lower when the market goes down and higher when the market goes up. Because expenses and rewards go in reversed order, they will eventually become stable at the ideal target price.

Apart from the launch of LBPs, what are the future events the community may anticipate?

In addition to the Token Launch Auction, we will continue to roll out connections to new projects and increase the number of tokens launching on the Metaverse Starter exchange. At the same time, we will also constantly ameliorate our products and organize many other campaigns to provide the best user experience and expand our community.

Finally, what lies ahead of Bunicorn?

In the future, we intend to develop the Bunicorn game and update features of the Metaverse Starter launchpad to create a multi-featured convenient Bunicorn ecosystem for users. In addition, we will onboard various projects and bring users to experience the most complete Bunicorn ecosystem.