The Training Room
Welcome to The Phantom Network's first steps in revolutionizing the web3 space, braving the adversities hand in hand with our community.
As with any endeavor or creation, a solid foundation is required. The Grid is your home to sharpen your skills when you’re not on the battlefield.
To ensure the combat readiness of our operatives, you will be required to attend training, the first phase of your journey, before being deployed on the field to perform your respective operations.
While in training, you’ll receive valuable rewards. Each day, you’ll grow stronger, bringing you and your allies the resources you need for the fight ahead. Your efforts will not be in vain.
The Grid is our soft staking platform, the first foray out of our beta and a tiny glimpse of our capabilities. An essential step towards rewarding holders, not only in the short term but in the future as well, as we unveil more identity-based tools.
Upon entry into The Grid, you’ll see a few things, such as My Token Balance, Current Multiplier, My Staked Ghost, My Daily Yield, Global Ghosts Training, and your Ghosts in training or those idling.
Your Token Balance shows how many $PXN tokens you have accumulated throughout the days your Ghosts are in training. The Token Balance will reset when you list, sell, or transfer your Ghosts. Only $PXN tokens generated by the Ghost that you sold, listed, or transferred, would reset.
For example, if you have four Ghosts and sold one, only rewards for one Ghost would reset, the remaining Ghosts would still accumulate rewards, and any initial tokens earned previously by the three Ghosts will remain unaffected.
Rewards are non-transferable, so if you snapped up a Ghost on the secondary market, your $PXN tokens only start accumulating from the time of your purchase.
The Grid does not require you to place your Ghost in any staking contract, so all unlisted Ghosts will begin their training immediately if it is in a hot wallet, cold wallet, or Ledger. You do, however, need to log in at some point to access your $PXN tokens, so do bear that in mind.
The Multiplier determines the amount of tokens your Ghosts yield daily. There will be ways to increase the multiplier through consumables. These consumables come in different tiers. Eventually, you'll be able to increase the amount of tokens you earn exponentially.
So how do you earn consumables? Well, that's for the next phase of The Grid, which we will explain in further detail down the road. All we know for now is that Ghosts get hungry, so there's a feast incoming for every mission you accomplish.
Ghosts in training refer to the number of Ghosts you hold in a single wallet. If you have one Ghost, it will reflect as 1/1. If you have five, it will reflect as 5/5. If you have one Ghost listed out of five, it will appear as 4/5. The Ghost listed would sit in the 'Idle Ghosts' section, waiting to join another squad. You’ll also be able to see how many of your comrades are training globally alongside you.
Ghost training is only the first step into Phantom Network platform V.1.0. On behalf of the Resistance, we'd like to welcome you to our crusade. It's time to come home, Ghost. It's time to enter The Grid. It's training time.
DaddyGainz’s Market Matters
Welcome to the sixth installment of Market Matters with your host Daddy Gainz. This week, our focus is on Ethereum and general market updates.
Last week's inflation CPI data came in lower than expected, which sparked upward momentum across the markets. The drop in CPI is likely due to the rapid decrease we saw in oil prices. The core CPI data, which does not include oil, came in at the same rate as the previous reading, indicating that things are rather stagnant but the markets are better off with it moving sideways rather than increasing.
The word recession has been thrown around many times, but in the eyes of the government, we are not in one and the economic recovery is trending in the right direction. We saw data on consumer sentiment which showed back-to-back improvements for months indicating that consumers are willing to spend slightly more money than they were previously.
The markets took a slight hit on Monday the 15th after new data released from China was not well received. The economic data provided from China this week showed that they cut rates which were unexpected. China also revealed a continued decline in the housing market primarily within investment properties and many important economic statistics fell short of projections likely due to their recent lockdowns.
All eyes will also be on the FOMC meeting, as it should give investors more clarity on where the markets could be heading and what the Fed has planned moving forward. Many more retail earnings reports will also be released this week, so investors will be keeping an eye on how those numbers play out to gauge the consumer spending habits in last quarter’s retail sales.
Another notable thing to keep an eye on is the Ten Year Treasury Yields which fell slightly in August.
Typically, increases in yields signify that investors are willing to invest more in riskier assets, so crypto investors like us have to keep watch for any major moves here.
A few less impactful events happening throughout the week include multiple Fed policy speakers as well as Monetary and Employment data from AUD, CAD, NZD and GBP. Over the weekend we saw BTC reach levels over $25,000 and ETH reach levels over $2,000, both key levels of high resistance and volatility.
Diving deeper into Ethereum, we saw a small rally in price following the successful Goerli Testnet merge, the last test before the final merge. Following the last test, a more concrete yet tentative date of September 15th has been set for the final merge to Proof of Stake.
The Ethereum network’s change of consensus protocols from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) will leave many miners out of business. The network has relied on miners in order to operate for many years, and copious amounts of time and capital have been spent by investors to support the network. As you can imagine, many participating in the ecosystem are not happy with the merge to PoS since they'll need to relocate their expensive mining hardware to alternative networks or be left with quite an expensive and obsolete set of hardware.
Many miners are discussing the possibility of switching their mining rigs to Ethereum Classic, which still relies on PoW, but the large influx of mining competition may make things unprofitable as ETC is not a very popular network. There are discussions of mining different coins on other networks as well, but none of them are projected to have anywhere near the potential profit margins seen from mining ETH.
As the final merge is set to take place within a month’s time, anything could happen to the price of ETH before and after the merge so anticipate the unexpected and expect nothing. We will likely be seeing many days filled with differing levels of volatility in the coming months as we approach the ETH 2.0 merge, the release of Mt. Gox’s 137,000 BTC as discussed in previous weeks, and many more important data sets from across the globe.
Gainz's Two Cents:
Overall the market is fighting hard to continue this current rally from the past month, but with key technical resistance levels approaching and many fundamental and geopolitical risks lingering, we may need some bigger catalysts to push things to higher levels.
Understanding that there are downswings within bull runs, we must also consider the opposite, that we may be in an upswing within a bear market. NFA, DYOR, happy trading and be safe out there. Till next week my friends.
Pineapple Lounge
Welcome to the Pineapple Lounge! This week we’re featuring a Ghost recruit, Citsacras, who recently has begun developing a card game called Grand Archive. Grand Archive is an anime-style trading card game with western game design and extreme collectability.
Citsacras
@citsacrasx
The Resistance is home to many talented and creative individuals. We wanted to take a look at an entrepreneurial Ghost that left his web2 job and transitioned to developing a card game full-time. Citsacras, we look forward to potentially seeing your products on the Grey Market!
“Some of the biggest challenges (that don't plague NFT projects) are supply chain and sourcing, but there are parallels. Simply put, it's great to want to make a card game, but there are many things to plan and consider.
You need to design your card. You need to commission art. You need to think about the paper you want the card to be printed on. White core? Black core? How thick? How heavy? What finish? What type of foiling? What type of color treatment? What type of printer? Then, shipping, distributing, and ultimately selling it.
The process for producing merch such as card sleeves, deck boxes, or playmats works pretty similarly as well. So many moving pieces make up the final product of a card, so when it all works out perfectly, it's like a dream. Chasing a dream is never easy. But there's a reason Shonen is as popular as it is!”
Community Updates
True to the commitment to engage with our community, we ran our usual weekly activities. Baerinz ran a special weird food live stream while Jane streamed games for whitelists. Foxtrot ran a VC event for some juicy whitelists as well.
The community was challenged to tease our tastebuds by concocting a PxN-inspired meal fit for our Ghosts, being edible is optional as long as the resemblance to food is there. We are not a fussy bunch!
Mental Health Mondays continue to be a weekly staple as we give the community a safe space to share their feelings. Gainz held Market Matters for the community to huddle and learn to navigate the possible upcoming changes in the market.
We look forward to engaging the community with more interesting events and activities. Whispers from the grapevine point to the possibility of faction activities coming back soon.
Deliberate Growth
There is running a business, and then there is growing one. Growth should be a subset of operations, but it isn’t always. A business requires know-how, structure, staffing, and work ethic in order to scale & expand beyond day-to-day operations & existing capacities.
In PxN, we have a newly-created team to specifically manage growth - of partners and avenues for garnering more exposure for our NFTs, community, brand, and eventual product.
We intend for what we are building to get in front of as many eyes as possible in order to capture the attention of interested & fitting brands, merchants, buyers & sellers, web3 enthusiasts, and fellow builders.
In this intention, we choose to be deliberate by way of designating a quality team for the task. Allow us to introduce: our Business Development Team. We will be releasing an exclusive interview with the team soon.