Wow! What a long week. The Karmaship team pulled off a historic achievement last weekend at the Outside In Equinox Fall festival. For those who are familiar with the project, this was a crucial first step for launching the Karmada, our internal distribution system for the Karmaconomy. Karmaship is changing the way people interact with and use cryptocurrency by bringing a real use-case for the currency from the very beginning while denying the outside sharks any access to mess with it. In order to do this, we needed a successful experience airdrop at our first Genesis Experience and, while there were MANY technical hurdles to jump, we pulled it off in the end!
To give some context to the uninitiated, Karmaship is an experience-based blockchain economy that relies on the validation of real-time experiences to both provide security and value to the ecosystem. While we are creating the new Proof Of Experience protocol we are distributing out the initial economy to those who attend our Genesis Experiences. By proving they have attended in physical form, all attendees, staff, volunteers, etc get to send their airdropped Karma Experience tokens (KEX) to the blockchain for Gathering of KMX, our transactional cryptocurrency. We use our Supernodes in conjunction with an internal mesh network to do this so people don’t need to host the blockchain themselves. The mesh network maintains a local, secure network that keeps outsiders out and allows our internal economy at the event to thrive!
Sounds amazing right? Only problem is that in the real world at an event up in the middle of the mountains with poor internet and lots of other variables the theoretical execution of our plan was challenged on many fronts. Because we don’t have the actual P2P mesh finished yet (coming very soon), we planned on using a more traditional LAN mesh network with repeaters throughout the 2mil square foot space (yes that big!!) while placing 2 Supernodes and the Mothernode in strategic places for the activation and KEX airdrop. With 92 degree weather during the day all week and an insane amount of space to cover we were up against it but got the network setup. What we didn’t factor in was the poor wifi we had with the festival setup nor the interference we would get with all of the other signals and electrical systems, lasers, lighting etc running throughout the space. Upon the launch of the festival we were still a ways out from getting it to work and our Supernode fabricator and artist, Terrance Ward of Magic Machine who was still completing the first structure for the Mothernode. (It was a massive undertaking and amazing that he was able to knock it out in 10 days!) Day 1 went by without an airdrop.
Day 2 was a fresh day and we were ready to make the airdrop happen but more unforeseen obstacles arose as the new LAN network we brought in had many issues communicating with the wifi network. The day went by and still no airdrop. Would we get it done? Finally by 11pm we had a working LAN and the main Mothernode was installed in the festival to great applause. The anticipation had really grown! This is where we were supposed to be Thursday before the festival even started and we still needed to test the airdrop and the blockchain. As we thought, many things needed to be fixed. Our main blockchain engineer along with our other devs from around the world patched into the Mothernode via remote control and proceeded to code throughout the night while I facilitated the process standing at the physical node. 7 hours later, with a freezing face and numb legs I was able to celebrate that the work was done and we were ready to launch!
THE KARMASHIP OFFICIALLY LAUNCHES! HISTORY IS MADE.
As the sun rose on the Equinox, Sunday September 23 at 5:00am PST time our genesis block was created and I validated the first official experience airdrop on the chain. I was able to then delegate that experience to the Mothernode and start Gathering KMX! It was an insane moment to say the least! Immediately I started running around the campsites waking up our team and fellow Karmaship fans as I announced to the world that Karmaship was officially live! Groggy and with sleep in their eyes people excitedly lined up at the Mothernode to get their airdrop. What happened from there was nothing short of revolutionary!
THE BITCOIN EXPERIENCE
The beauty of the Karmada phase for Karmaship is that it gives everyone who gets in the Bitcoin Experience. Because we are internally pegging to Bitcoin and giving the crypto away in small bits every block, everyone receiving the equally distributed block rewards via Gathering gets a ton of Bitcoin-valued crypto to spend. This caught on like wildfire once the gathering kicked in. Every 30 seconds more KMX entered their wallet and because vendors were accepting it thanks to the buyback program we had setup, people were able to get things for this new crypto. Furthermore, since Karmaship is based around the idea of one single wallet with a unique username, it is super easy to send KMX to friends and vendors once you know their username. People were spreading the love left and right, sending KMX to each other, using it to barter goods and receive goods and access services within the festival.
By noon the whole festival was a buzz about the airdrop, with a long line of frenzied festival goers trying to get their airdrop. We had to put a barricade around the Mothernode and set some rules but it was super fun! Karmaship had done the unthinkable. In one day we launched a new coin, got it into the hands of users and had them use it to get real, valuable goods! What other coin has ever done that?? By midnight the frenzy had died down but the word was out and we continued to validate new experiencers into the next morning. The Karmaconomy was officially launched!
WHAT NEXT?
After the event officially closed down Monday at noon, the Mothernode was shut down and shipped off to a secure location. Our team headed out for a much-needed R&R but co-founders Tron, T3q and myself were already busy interfacing with our marketing team strategizing about the next Genesis Event. The Karmaconomy had officially launched and the real work was just beginning. We will announce the next Genesis Event very soon.
As for those currently Gathering, we will have a killer block explorer up very shortly so everyone can check their KMX balance, see what block we are on and how many Supernodes are active. Then in the next week or so we will launch a web wallet which will allow Gatherers to send their KMX to new people coming into the Karmaconomy! While the only way to become a Gatherer is by attending a Genesis Event, anyone can create a wallet and receive and send KMX. Because this is the Bitcoin Experience right now and the coin is so insanely priced in terms of USD, there would be no way for anyone to spend it thanks to the law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. So, instead we can have fun with it and spread it out! As more and more events and vendors accept it, the value becomes more legitimized and the coin more useable.
In our next post we will go into great detail on how we plan on providing liquidity to vendors with our upcoming DEX, the Totem Nodes that will be used to bring in this liquidity and how we plan to convert KMX into a stable coin on main Karmanet launch without pegging to anything!
HUGE THANKS to all the Karmaship team & volunteers that worked their butts off to make this launch a reality! Special thanks to the Outside In Equinox production staff who put up with us using their production trailer all week, the vendors who believed in us and accepted the new currency and the city of Santa Barbara for facilitating this first experience!
-Alfa Warrior
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