The First Basilisk Crowdloan
Thanksss for your sacrifice
Fellow snek charmers,
During the past 2 weeks, you helped us pull off the spiciest crowdloan campaign the Kusama world has seen up to date. With a total of 116,805 KSM contributed, Basilisk exited the race just short of the winning bid for parachain slot #5. After the auction ended, a random algorithm selected block #8355247 as the official closing moment. At this point, Basilisk was outbid by its main competitor.
Leaving it at these dry numbers does not do justice to the epic journey that the snek undertook. To leave a breadcrumb trail for future memoirs, we decided to engage in a small recollection of events.
An Epic Journey
The Basilisk crowdloan was designed and guided by the aim to obtain a parachain at the lowest price possible. The rationale behind this aim is simple - achieving a lower initial valuation would guarantee a bigger upside for the early supporters of the snek. For this reason, we put a cap on the crowdloan at 200k KSM. We also decided to launch the campaign late - just after auction #4 had started.
Shortly after the crowdloan launched, the vast community support for Basilisk became visible. In the first 48h, the snek received enough contributions to surpass many competitors and reach third place. The real magic happened once auction #5 started closing. In 24h, contributions for Basilisk more than doubled to reach a mindblowing 114k KSM. In a snakey turn of events, Basilisk attacked and claimed the lead - at least for the hours that were to follow.
At this point, the race was beginning to overheat as the main competitor started mobilizing and preparing themselves to overbid us by a magnitude of 5-10k KSM at a time.
Against the background of the already high amount of KSM contributions in the Basilisk crowdloan, we decided to release some of the pressure and to not engage in further marketing of the campaign. Instead of whaling, we started a meme war in which we quickly declared ourselves winners:
Why We Might Have Actually Won
In retrospective, losing the battle for parachain #5 might as well be seen as a victory of its own. Guided by goal to achieve a fair initial valuation, we reminded ourselves in the midst of the race that losing this auction might be better than a Pyrrhic victory. If entering at a later moment would allow us to obtain a cheaper parachain slot which is also more functional, then losing this battle is not a bad scenario.
An expensive parachain slot would have come at a great cost to our community, which is something we could never allow. When it comes to community, the same spirit applies to Basilisk which guides HydraDX:
Community always comes first!
This is why we have not engaged in any side deals to acquire the slot (not implying others have, just sssssaying…), used paid shills or Twitter bots. We honestly have no idea who is behind the majority of KSM contributions. We can only account for roughly 20% of the total. We have reached out to some friends for support but we have never offered them anything special. Everyone has contributed under the same conditions.
Our genuine approach and devotion to the community pays out. We noticed this when we were conducting the HydraDX LBP, and we are noticing also now, after the first successful Basilisk crowdloan campaign.
The insane amount of KSM which was contributed in such a short time frame is a sign that the community embraces our openness. This is the strong foundation upon which we will continue to build. For us, Basilisk is not a canary network. The snek is its own thing and we hope it will soon become the first community-ran parachain.
The snek may have lost slot #5 but it gained something more important. ❤️
Way Forward
All KSM pledged during the first Basilisk crowdloan campaign will soon return to their owners (on or around July 23rd). As for the snek, we will continue working on the monster until the next round of auctions for parachain slots #6 - #10 has been announced. While there are no dates set in stone, the expectation is that this would happen some time in August.
Once the next round of auctions is made public, a new Basilisk crowdloan campaign will be launched. We will use this occasion to release some intriguing details about Basilisk and the product.
The snek will be back - stronger and fearless.