A.G.E – A groundbreaking and revolutionary product combining NFTs and DeFi

A.G.E (Amateur Guardians of Ethereum) are the world’s first hold-to-earn NFT collectibles. A groundbreaking and revolutionary experiment combining NFTs and DeFi. An alliance consisting of 10,000 unique NFTs who dwell in the Ethereum universe with a primary mission to guard and protect the value of ETH.

• Different from traditional NFTs, AGE’s were created as Token-backed NFT (TB-NFT) as they are designed to store crypto tokens under each transaction into themselves. As the guardians are traded, a portion of the distributable ETH of trade payment will be stored on the back of the AGE. Holders have the ability to generate passive ETH profit from the DeFi harvesting feature of A.G.E. By creating and nurturing such a symbiotic relationship between crypto tokens and NFT art, we are enabling the intrinsic value of each piece of art to grow with each transaction.
• Unique from other NFTs with profit features such as Cyberkongz, which permits holders to earn new project-native tokens (like BANANA), AGE enables holders to earn existing tokens such as ETH/WETH through the revolutionary DeFi features.

Join the community: https://discord.gg/cmrXDaSvMr

Value & Utility of A.G.E

Dual value of NFT and Crypto

By building a symbiotic relationship between Crypto and NFT artworks, we are experimenting with combining some value of crypto (Decentralized Finance) and some value of NFT (artworks, membership of community, social influence) for the first time.

Utilities for holders:

1. Awesome avatars. Original, hand-drawn, and unique artworks and avatars for your social media PFP. Ownership and commercial usage rights of AGE NFTs are granted to the holder.
2. A.G.E membership. Get access to guardians-only events, merch, investment strategies voting, and private Discord channel.
3. Passive profit. Earn passive profit from the DeFi feature of Roadmap 1.0.
4. Exclusive access to futural innovative product features of the A.G.E.

NFT Artworks

600+ hand-drawn original traits

8 types: Ape, Bunny, Cat, Warthog, Eagle, Shark, Alien, and Robot

The image of the AGE is derived from the logo of Ethereum to reflect the mission of our project — to guard and protect the value of ETH. Each AGE also has an “Ethereum Reactor” embedded in his/her chest to mark their affiliation to the guardians’ alliance.

DeFi Features

The foundation of DeFi features of AGEs is the TB-NFT (Token-Backed NFT), a new form of NFT. When it is minted or traded, a portion of the payment token will be added into the inner of itself. It allows AGE holders the unique ability to interact with any other DeFi protocols through their NFTs.

The Foundation: TB-NFT (Token-Backed NFT) mechanism

A.G.E NFTs are Token-backed NFTs (TB-NFT) that store ETH as part of their value.

The backed-ETH value of each NFT grows as the volume of trades increases. The more frequently the NFT is traded, the more tokens will be stored. The token value stored will continue accumulating as the volume of trades. To acquire the stored ETH, the holder would need to burn the NFT.

Imagining TB-NFT as a special piggy bank:

You bought a piggy bank which had saved some money within it as the initial, then you sold to someone and the piggy bank continues circulating on the market. Every time it is traded successfully, a portion of the payment is stored in the piggy bank itself. The money stored will continue accumulating as the volume of trades increases. And the owner of the piggy bank needs to wreck it to obtain the money.

The key points:

• 10% of the minting fee will be stored on the back of each A.G.E NFT at the initial period it is minted.
• Every time each A.G.E NFT is traded on OpenSea, 3% of the payment amount will be stored in the NFT itself.
• Holders will have to burn the NFT to acquire the stored tokens. (Except for when claiming the passive profit)

Why did we choose ETH to be the first crypto to begin this experiment?

We believe Ethereum is the cornerstone of the next-generation internet, so we chose ETH as our first crypto coin for our experiment. It will enable the entire Ethereum community to protect the “backed” ETH from being sold; and also will support holders of AGEs to hold ETHs for a very long time. HODLers WIN!

Passive Profit

I have introduced the TB-NFT mechanism, the passive profit feature is built on the base of it. These backed-ETHs will be assembled and utilized to invest in other DeFi protocols to earn ETH, so we can greatly reduce the gas fees compared to the individual investment. Also, our investment protocol will automatically optimize the investment strategy to achieve a higher APR.

There will be separated into 2 portions in the A.G.E vault:

1. The principal portion is the backed ETH value of each AGE. The principal can be staked out only when the holder burns his AGE,
2. The profit portion is the DeFi profit from the backed value of each AGE during the AGE DeFi feature running. The portion can be claimed by the holder at a certain point (no need to burn the AGE).

As I said, the A.G.E won’t publish a new token as the profit for our holders. The backed-ETH of the whole community’s AGEs will be invested in other DeFi projects or even the Ethereum 2.0 staking. The rewards of the investment will be distributed to all holders according to the “Guarding Index” which is calculated by 2 factors.

The 2 guarding factors that need to be balanced for individual AGE investment profit:

1. the backed-ETH amounts of the AGE
2. the AGE holding time (holding blocks) of the current owner

According to the mechanism of TB-NFT, recurring A.G.E. trades will increase the backed token of itself but decrease the holder’s holding time, the accumulation of holding time will restart based on the block number of the new holder received by the AGE. Holding for an extended time will be on the contrary.

The investment model will continue to be tested and adjusted to enable balancing of these 2 guarding factors in order to obtain reasonable results of the Guarding Index. When calculating the profit distribution, the weight of the holding-time factor will not be less than the weight of the backed-ETH factor, which means the profit that holders receive from holding AGEs will not be less than trading AGEs. As we believe the value of holding is not less than the value of trading, even more valuable.

Some situations might happen:

1. Someone intends to hold AGEs to receive the profit distribution. For the holder aspect, if he sells, he will not get the passive profit since he is not a holder any longer. But if the AGE floor price is high enough, the holder might decide to sell it instead.
2. An individual doing a private sale back and forth to a different wallet of his own to increase the trade volume by themselves, in order to increase the backed-ETH of his AGEs.

These 2 situations reflect 2 different investment strategies:

• In situation 1, the individual prefers to invest in holding time. He could receive continued passive profit as his holding-time factor increases as he is holding, but he also receives profit from the price fluctuations if he sold.
• In situation 2, the trader prefers to invest in the trade volume rather than the holding time. He generated more backed-ETH to his AGE through his tricks; so he will receive profit from the distributions because of the bigger backed-ETH factor. But how do we know if he receives more profit in this way than just holding? However, this does help the whole community because the community fund always raises from 1% of the trade price on Opensea.

If the project & system run as I expect, the value of the entire A.G.E collection will grow increasingly higher and higher like a flywheel:

• The backed-ETH is the floor price protection mechanism. The holder won’t sell his AGE at a price lower than the backed-ETH value, because selling it at that price is obviously worse than burning it. (Burning is making the AGEs deflationary.) So as AGE are traded more frequently, the backed-ETH becomes grows, the floor price protection of AGE moves higher, and the entire value of the AGE collectibles moon.
• Also, there is a possible way to incentivize holders not to claim ETH profit and return it to the system for model boosting: An option for holders that adds the profit to the principal part, similar to the way compound interest works.

More details of A.G.E DeFi features will be discussed with the community and revealed in future articles.

A few additional thoughts behind the A.G.E model

It’s incredibly ironic that the Non-fungible Token is becoming “Fungible”.

At the end of 2021, as the mainstream commercial industry began embracing the metaverse, more and more NFT projects were starting to utilize metaverse games as their ultimate goal, as if that is the only way forward for NFTs.

Most of these projects are using the BAYC-like avatar NFT community as a starting point to jettison towards the ultimate goal of the metaverse, yet the NFT utility offered to holders at the moment is pitifully low. Some of these projects put their ambitious goals aside after they have completed their sales goals, while the community and holders have not the slightest idea when they will enter the metaverse. Even worse, some of them are outright scams, teams just disappeared after completing their public sales, and leave holders/investors/customers frustrated and hurt (I was one of them). Of course, we also have seen many projects that are continuing to create value for the community and users, and step by step they are fulfilling their promises to the community. Maybe this is the sword of Damocles of the crypto market, the NFT frenzy has brought the wealth, but also the demons.

But is our innovative direction for NFT all that’s left to go into the metaverse?

I remember once we tried many other interesting directions, such as puzzles, cartoons, generative art, DAO, and attempts to increase the liquidity of NFT assets. Unlike the metaverse that now rules the roost.

I think we are still a long way from reaching the ideal metaverse, which requires a huge investment of time, manpower, and money to build. Before entering the metaverse, I think 3 fundamental issues have not been resolved in the current NFT collectibles market so far:

1. The ownership of images cannot be authenticated. With the current technology, we can only prove the ownership between a token of ERC721/ERC155 protocol and user wallets through the smart contracts, but we cannot prove the relevance of these digital contents and social media accounts; nor can we prove the original creative copyright of the images. NFT avatars often represent some form of community power and even honor, yet anyone can download images to set up avatars and thus create fake identities on social media to easily conduct scam activities (I believe this problem will be easily solved as social media goes live with the authentication feature of NFT ownership). Furthermore, some individuals can easily copy images to build pirated, fraudulent projects. (I think this problem needs to be solved by innovation in the way images are encoded)
2. The challenge of meeting the commitments of the projects. The possibility of NFT holders to fully enjoy the benefits of community membership depends on the project’s ability to run a long-term, well-run community. This not only tests the responsibility and ability of the project team but also requires the holder to spend attention and time cost of holding the NFT. If the community is not well led and managed, then it is possible that the purchase of NFTs will not be rewarded with corresponding value rewards in the community, or may even flee with the money.
3. NFT as the subject of investment has three major issues: poor liquidity, the inability of secondary investments, and arbitrage in a single way:

• Poor liquidity: NFT asset form of poor liquidity problem has always existed, and because of the large bid-ask spread, holders are difficult to quickly cash out at the desired price. Although some projects like NFTX have made attempts to solve the problem of illiquidity in terms of funds, the results are not very satisfactory.
• The inability of secondary investments: That is to say. When you buy a traditional NFT, you can do nothing but join the community’s events through your NFT. NFT cannot be secondary investments somewhere to generate additional profits, while ERC20 tokens can achieve it in the DeFi system.
• Arbitrage in a single way: NFT investors can only arbitrage by making the right buy and sell trades when the NFT price fluctuates. A high risk of investment lurks in this single way of arbitrage. However, the higher risk is that the price of NFT is tied to factors such as how well its brand operates and how solid its team ability is. If the community of NFT is not running well enough (or the project team flees with the money), resulting in the price of NFT not being able to rise, then there is very little room for arbitrage. In the worst case, the price of the NFT may dump to 0$.

We have seen projects such as NFTX, Nftfi, etc. continue to progress on the strategic investment side. I am confident A.G.E will set the standard going forward and maximize the investment opportunity for its community and guardians.

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Website: https://ageth.io/