The staking information around Gods Unchained and Immutable can get pretty confusing really fast, both because people tend to mix up the two, but also because the staking percentage values repeat and come from several different sources. Starting from a Discord discussion, I collected information, references and wrote up one article for each token for my own use but hopefully also to help clarify things for you guys. I will be updating this article as new information comes out.
$GODS initial distribution and circulating supply
Same as IMX, $GODS tokens were initially distributed in 2021 to Gods Unchained players. The Gods Unchained Whitepaper details the token distribution on page 5:
After this initial distribution, several events regularly distributed more tokens to active players:
- Blessing of the Gods;
- Interim distribution as Weekend Ranked rewards;
- Ongoing Daily Play & Earn rewards starting at the end of August.
Immutable updated in October 2022 their definition of 'Circulating Supply' and this update extends to all its in-house projects. You can read more details on this change on my other Hive post about IMX staking or in this blog post. CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko have been updated to reflect this definition change.
$GODS Staking
1. Offering Of The $GODS
The first staking distribution, named 'Offering Of The $GODS', was announced in this blog post from June and consisted in an initial pool of 1 million $GODS. This distribution was dubbed 'manual staking', maybe from the GU standpoint? Moreover, the staking reward pool was an arbitrary amount - there isn't any indication that it resulted from an actual calculation of fees accrued since December 2021. It was distributed in 2 parts:
33% (~355k $GODS) 'Surprise rewards' distributed based on L2 holdings since the 1st of December 2021 until the 12th of June 2022. This first part was a retrospective distribution, justified in the blog post with a reference to the Whitepaper. However, there is no explicit indication in the Whitepaper that the staking rewards would be distributed to stakers before the actual staking program was implemented.
66% (~734k $GODS) 'Ongoing rewards' distributed monthly, calculated in a similar manner but starting from the 12th of June 2022, until October 2022 (essentially 4 months / distributions). This period was later extended to November. I speculate the GU team plans on transitioning to automatic staking without interruptions in the distribution of staking rewards, but the system was not quite ready yet in October.
Eligibility was calculated on a weekly basis, where players had to meet a few criteria. The balance considered for calculating purposes was the minimum held during each week. The criteria were:
- Hold the $GODS tokens on Immutable X's L2;
- Wallet was linked to a Gods Unchained account;
- At least one of: play a game, mint a card, buy a pack or trade a card in any marketplace.
The staking rewards are claimable via this webpage.
In spite of the arbitrary pool size and the apparent disconnect from any calculation of actual fees collected from the game, there seems to have been at least one transaction that funneled part of the forging fees to this initial staking pool; the address that collects forging fees, 0x875da3e83073b8e25d6ad2727e081f4c00d07b7b, transfered over 355k $GODS tokens in July to the address that distributes staking rewards and Daily Play & Earn rewards, 0x678a0c16c71f7616612028db81c938d6cdae2034. This transaction thus covered about 1/3 of the amount of tokens distributed. Some community members have reached out to the GU team for an official confirmation on this, but to my knowledge they haven't received any reply.
2. Automatic staking
I expect this to start later this month or during December, with the end of the 'Ongoing rewards'.
This section will be updated as more information is made public.
3. Staking pool sources
The primary source of information about the Staking Rewards Pool is the Whitepaper. In page 5 we can read that:
Any $GODS used in the game (e.g. using $GODS to craft new in-game NFTs) will be sent to this rewards pool;
20% of all primary sales will be sent to the rewards pool;
20% of secondary trading fees will be sent to the rewards pool. This has since become 20% of 5% royalty fees.
The blog post 'Marketplace Royalty Fees' from the 12th of May confirms this information:
This information and more is also available in FAQ style in this support article.
4. Pending questions
What is not clear to me yet, since we are continuously collecting revenue for the staking pool, is the amount of $GODS earmarked for the staking pool being accumulated for when the real / automatic staking begins? Will we be receiving an extra reward on the first real staking distribution, to account for the accumulation from the previous months? Or the 1M 'Offering Of The $GODS' is supposed to roughly account for the period before real staking begins?
And also the Whitepaper mentions "Any $GODS used in the game (e.g. using $GODS to craft new in-game NFTs) will be sent to this rewards pool." Will this also apply to $GODS paid to enter upcoming game modes? Or any other non-NFT sinks in the client?
5. Relevant addresses
- Pack sales: all proceeds from sales in ETH, $GODS and USDC seem to be collected at this address:
https://immutascan.io/address/0x8041186144c3dd5120b303f57f5ec814bb59ca4b - Forging fees: https://immutascan.io/address/0x875da3e83073b8e25d6ad2727e081f4c00d07b7b
- Current staking and Daily Play & Earn distribution to players: https://immutascan.io/address/0x678a0c16c71f7616612028db81c938d6cdae2034
- Royalty fees. Using the Immutable API, it is possible to query information on any trade and find the addresses that collect royalties. This process takes 2 steps. Let's use for example this trade
First, we need to get the transaction details from the API endpoint. The documentation for the relevant API endpoint can be found at this page. So we take the Transaction ID (148508476) and make an API call to the URL https://api.x.immutable.com/v1/trades/148508476. We get this JSON result
Which contains 2 Order IDs, one buying order and one selling order. We can take either Order ID and query the API again, using another endpoint documented in this page. So for example we can make an API call to the URL https://api.x.immutable.com/v1/orders/240976914?include_fees=true, find the 'fees' section in the JSON output and take note that 3 royalty addresses are being used:
There could be of course more addresses, but investigating that would require some coding and a systematic scan of many transactions.
Additional rewards to stakers
Gods Unchained is looking for more ways to reward stakers, particularly to small holders. No details have been announced, but we expect news on this soon.
Token swapping on L2
Anyone wishing to buy or sell $GODS on L2 can use Immutaswap, paying 5% in fees.