GAME ONE: Everything You Need to Know About Our Upcoming Kusama Parachain Bid & Crowdloan

It’s official! Ajuna will be taking part in the 21st Kusama parachain auction starting on May 16. What’s more, there are special rewards on offer for those who back our crowdloan campaign, including BAJU tokens and exclusive NFTs. But what are parachain auctions and crowdloans and how do they work? In this post, we’ll explain everything you need to know and how to participate.

Why does Ajuna need a Kusama parachain?

Many blockchain networks struggle to balance security and scalability. Kusama uses an ingenious approach to resolve this problem. The protocol enables up to 100 different blockchains called parachains to share security resources over a common relay chain. For Ajuna, a parachain offers the perfect technical foundation for our decentralized gaming network. Kusama’s shared security model means that the Ajuna Network will be protected by hundreds of millions of dollars worth of staked assets. The flexibility offered by a Kusama parachain allows us to optimize it for gaming by harnessing the speed and power of second-layer sidechains. Finally, once our slot is secured, the Ajuna network will be interoperable with every other parachain on Kusama, laying the foundation for an ecosystem of games where assets can be seamlessly transported from one gaming environment to another.

How do parachain auctions work?

As explained above, parachains offer unique benefits for Web3 platforms like the Ajuna Network. However, like any blockchain platform, Kusama’s resources are limited. In fact, it can currently support a maximum of 100 parachains in total.

To decide which projects gain access to parachains, a special mechanism called a “candle auction” is used. Each parachain slot is leased for a maximum period of 48 weeks. Projects seeking to obtain a parachain need to submit bids by staking KSM, the primary Kusama token. Whoever stakes the most KSM, wins the slot — as simple as that. Once the lease period ends, the staked KSM is unlocked again and accessible to its owners.

OK… So what’s a crowdloan then?

We are funding our parachain bid through a crowdloan. This is a well-established way of participating in auctions that relies on the power of a community rather than a wealthy donor. We are asking our supporters to back our bid by staking KSM. In return, we offer an enticing package of rewards, including BAJU, Ajuna’s primary token on Kusama, and exclusive NFTs.

The reason it is called a “loan” is that once the lease period ends, you regain full control of your KSM, and can keep any BAJU rewards you received too. In fact, the KSM you stake is simply locked, but it never leaves your custody during the entire process.

What rewards are on offer for crowdloan backers?

As a backer of a successful bid, you will be rewarded with the BAJU token, our primary utility token on Kusama. True to Kusama’s DNA as a canary network, BAJU will be the token powering the leading edge of our platform, where new features are deployed first. This will allow for innovation and experimentation while ensuring that only tried-and-tested updates are adopted on our Polkadot parachain.

BAJU will be used by both gamers and developers to do things like deploy games, pay transaction fees, access services, and vote in governance procedures on Ajuna. We have assigned 10% of our total allocation of BAJU for rewarding our crowdloan supporters, which equates to 5,000,000 million tokens.

For each KSM you stake, you will receive a minimum of 110 BAJU. But remember that we will give out the full 5,000,000 BAJU no matter what, so if our winning bid is lower than our crowdloan campaign cap of 35,000 KSM, your primary rewards could be considerably higher. In fact, this seems likely given that recent Kusama auctions have closed with winning bids in the region of 10,000 KSM.

In addition to primary rewards, there are special early-bird bonuses for the first 1500 contributors and referral bonuses for those who spread the word about our crowdloan campaign. You may even get the chance to mint exclusive NFTs for Awesome Ajuna Avatars (AAAs), an addictive game about minting and forging legendary avatars. For full details on all our crowdloan rewards, read this post.

Which auction will Ajuna participate in?

The Ajuna Network will take part in Kusama Auction 21 which takes place between May 16 and June 28, 2022.

How can I participate once the crowdloan starts? In order to participate, you will need access to unbonded KSM tokens. Learn about unbonding KSM here. Once you have the funds in place, here are 3 easy ways to back Ajuna’s crowdloan:

1. Ajuna’s Crowdloan Website: Visit our dedicated crowdloan website to back us directly by connecting to your Polkadot.js account.

2. On Polkadot.js: Back Ajuna’s crowdloan through the Polkadot.js web interface by following these instructions.

3. Using Wallets: Some mobile wallets support the Kusama crowdloans by default. Follow these links for Fearless, Talisman and Nova Wallet.

4. Parallel Finance provides an “Auction Loan Platform” for contributing to Kusama crowdloans. Follow the instructions here.

That’s it! The Ajuna crowdloan is your chance to back a new breed of graphically-rich decentralized games built with the world’s leading development engines. It’s a way to support a new type of relationship between gamers and developers, where players can own and control their hard-earned in-game assets, and have a voice in the future of the games they love. Last but certainly not least, it’s your opportunity to get BAJU tokens and exclusive NFTs.

To back our crowdloan campaign and take advantage of our early-bird bonus, visit our dedicated webpage. To stay up to date with all the latest Ajuna crowdloan news, follow us on Twitter and Telegram.