Digging up the $TOMB

$TOMB is starving from lack of utility. Can a P2E project to fix it?

8 min readApr 13, 2022

$TOMB as a primary token for P2E project

“Grave diggers” (naming is a subject of discussion) — is a P2E project, which utilises unlimited supply of $TOMB to its extend.

Terminology

$TOMB — main “ecosystem” token
recruiting — an irreversible process to recruit a $DIGGER for $TOMB
$DIGGER — non-fungible token
digging — a process, which occupies $DIGGER with digging $GRAVEs
$GRAVE — incentive fungible token, which is mined through digging
$GEM — non-fungible token, which may be mined through digging
$SHOVEL and $FOILCAP— non-fungible tokens, which may be used to enhance $DIGGERs characteristics
$GDHR — fungible token, which is used to claim a share of protocol earnings

Index

Meet $DIGGERs

$DIGGERs are a community of arbitrary qualified persons, who wish to dig graves. Every $DIGGER can be appraised by a set of characteristics:

Dexterity — is responsible for pace at which $DIGGER mines $GRAVEs
Intellect— is responsible for chance of finding $GEMs while mining $GRAVEs
Glamour—responsible for additional appraisal of $DIGGER’s rarity (does not affect digging in any way)

Recruiting a $DIGGER

$DIGGERs don’t want to work for free, furthermore they want an employment contract to be signed. To sign an employment contract, an employer would need to lock certain amount of $TOMB for agreed-upon term.

When employment contract is signed, a random $DIGGER is chosen from multiverse of $DIGGERs. Their characteristics are random too, but will obey Normal (Gaussian) distribution law. The resulted value V of singular characteristic will be calculated as:

Formula to calculate the value of singular characteristic

Where bias — pseudo-random number from -128 to 127, which obeys Normal distribution law.

Thus, creating a noticeable disperse in $DIGGERs rarity.

Payment multiplier

Recruiting a $DIGGER requires $TOMB to be locked for an arbitrary period from 1 week to 4 years. On signing, 0.5% $TOMB will be withhold as fee and transferred to Graveyard Management Fund, more on that in the next paper. The more $TOMB will be locked for recruiting a $DIGGER, the harder this $DIGGER will work, linearly.

NOTE: Payment multiplier will be calculated before fee withhold, that means 100 $TOMB lock will receive 100x multiplier.

Thus, providing incentive to lock more $TOMB for single $DIGGER.

Commitment multiplier

Period of locked $TOMB affects commitment of $DIGGER — the longer the contract, the harder $DIGGER will work, for example:

locking $TOMB for 4 years (208 weeks) will yield 1x commitment multiplier
for 1 year (52 weeks) — 0.25x
for 1 month (4 weeks) — 0.019x
for 1 week — 0,0048x

Thus, providing incentive to lock $TOMB for longer period.

Motivation multiplier

Furthermore, as contract term progresses, the $DIGGERs working power will change, as it gets tired close to middle of digging, but has a “second wind” near the end of employment contract. $DIGGERs’ Dexterity will change in correspondence with a predefined curve:

The curve which is used to calculate $DIGGERs working power

On the graph, the X axis represents employment contract from 0 (contract start) to 1 (contract end). The Y axis represents Dexterity multiplier. Quick recap:

$DIGGER will start with 1x multiplier
the multiplier will be steeply reducing down to 0.244x near half of employment contract
after approx. half of contract, the multiplier will rapidly increase up to 6.5x at the end of employment contract

Thus, providing various cases to buy or sell $DIGGERs on NFT exchanges depending of their current motivation.

Releasing $DIGGER

After the contract is depleted — $DIGGER can be released for 1 $GRAVE and 1$ TOMB to unlock underlying $TOMB. In this process:

1 $GRAVE, used in burial, will be b̶u̶r̶n̶e̶d filled.
1 $TOMB, used in burial, will be b̶u̶r̶n̶e̶d placed.
$DIGGER will be b̶u̶r̶n̶e̶d buried forever, but with a smile on their face, as they accomplished their life goal.

Firing $DIGGER

$DIGGER can be fired before contract’s expiration, refunding $TOMB to employer. This will upset him, as he can no longer fulfil his contract and life goal. To compensate, a penalty will be withdrawn, at least 25% of locked $TOMB value. Furthermore, the earlier $DIGGER is fired, the bigger penalty is.

The curve, which handles redeemed $TOMB in dependence of contract progress

$TOMB, which was withhold as penalty, will be transferred to Graveyard Management Fund.

Thus, a way to appraise sole $DIGGER in arbitrary moment — providing a way for arbitraged ‘floor sweeping’.

Sending $DIGGERs to dig $GRAVEs

Staking $DIGGERs at graveyard will occupy them with work. $DIGGER’s characteristics (without multipliers, but with equipment) will be constantly qualified against arithmetic mean of all $DIGGERs in the graveyard, to calculate relative characteristics:

If $DIGGER’s characteristic’s value is greater than mean — this characteristic will be boosted.
If it is less than mean— will be reduced.

The resulting value may be between 0.5 and 2, that means, $DIGGER with the most Dexterity in the graveyard will have relative Dexterity of 2. $DIGGER with the least Dexterity in the graveyard will have relative Dexterity of 0.5.

Digging $GRAVEs

$DIGGERs work whole day, without weekends or vacations. For 1 $DIGGER that has:

1 relative Dexterity
1x payment multiplier
1x commitment multiplier
1x motivation multiplier

it is programmed to dig 4 $GRAVEs per day.

That means, a $DIGGER with relative Dexterity of 1.1, worth 100 $TOMB locked for 2 years, in the middle of their contract, will dig:

55 $GRAVEs per day.

NOTE: $GRAVE will not be fractional, so it will be possible to claim, own and trade only integer amounts of $GRAVE.

NOTE: $GRAVE will not have max cap.

Finding $GEMs

After finishing digging another $GRAVE, a $GEM can be found. $GEMs are unique non-fungible tokens, which rarity will be randomly distributed as an absolute of Normal (Gaussian) distribution from 1 to 256. Meaning, that most $GEMs will have rarity from 1 to 20. For 1 $DIGGER that has 1 relative Intellect it is expected (but not guaranteed) to find 1 $GEM every 134 400 $GRAVEs (~100 years of constant work).

Relative Intellect, however, will boost, or diminish chances quintically. That means, a $DIGGER with relative Intellect of 1.75 is expected to dig:

1$GEM approx. every 7112 dug $GRAVE.

NOTE: rolling for $GEM collecting will happen on claim (when $GRAVEs are minted)

Equipment for $DIGGERs

A variety of equipment can be bought for $GRAVEs. Singular $SHOVEL can permanently enhance $DIGGER’s Dexterity, while $FOILCAP will enhance $DIGGER’s Intellect.

Sole $DIGGER can carry only single piece of every equipment type. If new equipment is applied to $DIGGER, the previous equipment in corresponding slot will be burned. There is no way to remove equipment from $DIGGER once it was assigned to them. When $DIGGER is buried — all equipment will be buried with them.

Equipment can be appraised by 2 characteristics:

quality — is defined randomly at mint
level — a multiplier for equipment’s quality

Quality is picked randomly with respect to Normal Distribution law, in range from 1 to 256. Applying equipment to $DIGGER will boost corresponded base characteristic with quality amount. Example:

$DIGGER with 150 Dexterity, with $SHOVEL of 110 quality and 1 level will have base Dexterity of 260 — making him the most powerful $DIGGER between everyone unequipped (max value for base characteristic’s value is 256).

The Auction

A sole equipment can be bought from Dutch Auction. A random piece of equipment is displayed at auction at any time in one of 10 auction slots.

Initial price — is the whole $GRAVE circulating supply (all minted $GRAVE without burned $GRAVE). Auction’s price will diminish as auction progress, as depicted below and will, at maximum, take 6 hours to reach final price of 1 $GRAVE:

The curve, which handles auction current price in dependence of auction elapsed time

That means, that equipment may be bought from auction at 1/100th of $GRAVE circulating supply approx. 2 hours after start. First one to buy from auction, will pay in$GRAVE and acquire listed equipment. This auction slot will be immediately filled with new item, and a 15 minute break will start.

$GRAVE, which was spent at the Auction, will be transferred to Graveyard Management Fund.

The Lab

At Lab a piece of equipment can be levelled up to boost its stats. Each level will boost equipment’s quality with quadratically diminishing returns:

The curve, which handles equipment quality multiplier in dependence of equipment level

That means:

level 1 equipment will yield 1x quality multiplier
level 4 — 2x
level 9 — 3x

To level up equipment, $GRAVE can be used. Levelling up equipment is exponentially hard, and each step will require substantially greater amount of $GRAVE. Initial price of levelling up (lvl.1 -> lvl.2) is defined to be accessible for regular $DIGGER (illustrated in Digging $GRAVEs paragraph) after a week of hard work — 28 $GRAVE.

The curve, which handles levelling up cost multiplier in dependence of current equipment level

To describe depicted above graph:

lvl.3 -> lvl.4—206 $GRAVE
lvl.8 -> lvl.9—30 705 $GRAVE

There is a way to pay less $GRAVE than is required for an upgrade, but with risk of botching equipment in process. For example, paying 50% of required $GRAVE will lead to success only in 30% of cases.

The curve, which handles a rate of success in dependence of supplied funds rate to required

Botched up equipment will be burned.

$GRAVE, accrued from the Lab operations, will be transferred to Graveyard Management Fund.

Thus, creating in situ utility for $GRAVE.

Finalised formulae of $DIGGER’s dig-ability

Where:

|d| — absolute Dexterity
d — base Dexterity
S_l — applied $SHOVEL level
S_q — applied $SHOVEL quality
d with hat — relative Dexterity
D with bar — mean Dexterity in the graveyard
min(D), max(D) — extremum Dexterity values in the graveyard
P — progress through employment contract
b — current block number
B_s — start of contract block number
B_e — end of contract block number
M_M — motivation multiplier
M_P —payment multiplier
M_C— commitment multiplier
i with hat — relative Intellect (calculates like relative Dexterity)

22500 — empiric value of generated blocks in FTM network in 6 hour period

How this project might benefit TOMB ecosystem?

An additional use case for $TOMB, will increase demand pressure.
$TOMB, locked to obtain $DIGGER is withdrawn from circulation entirely, will diminish sell pressure.
$TOMB / $GRAVE obtained as fees or profits are used in Graveyard Management Fund strategies to yield secondary profits, which are distributed back at the community.