On Xendependence Day, July 4, Jack Levin proceeded to launch a new token on Ethereum. VMPX ERC-20 is supposed to mimic the BRC-20 token launched previously on Bitcoin to create a 1:1 pair acting as a bridge between the two chains. VMPX minters ended up burning over 7.3 million ETH in gas fees and creating a 6 million daily trading volume. Despite the projected 8–12 hour mint time, the duration was prolonged to 60 hours, ensuring much broader participation and lower gas fees than initially expected.
What is VMPX ERC-20
VMPX ERC-20 has a total supply of 108,624,00vmpx0 and was created to mirror VMPX BRC-20, which was launched in May on Bitcoin. Both tokens have the same supply and follow the first principles of crypto like self-custody, transparency, decentralisation, supply starting from zero, no founder allocation, immutable code, and censorship resistance. VMPX was minted entirely by the XEN community and other participants and will guarantee the 1:3 allocation of XN in the X1 chain, which will start in 2024. Mr. Jack Levin is going to use both tokens to create a bridge on the Libre chain to connect Bitcoin and Ethereum and allow the free flow of assets between the two networks. Holders of VMPX will have the possibility to convert them conditionally to XN or to earn fees from traffic passing through the bridge.
Mint time
It was initially thought that the mint rush would create a gas war, causing very high fees and network congestion, but after the initial spike to 200 gwei, the fee dropped and maintained an average level of 40–50 gwei for the remaining time.
$VMPX gas mint auction. $7M worth, 4,500 holders. Credit: @jarosciak pic.twitter.com/XBSzNuKLh2
— ⓧ Cyphereus Prime 🟧🦇🟦 (@mrJackLevin) July 6, 2023
This gas cost, resulting in an average price of $0.068, created a floor price for the token that will hardly go much below this level. After the mint, there were circa 700,000 locked in a liquidity pool for a 6 million daily trading volume and a 7.3 million market cap, which is a big success. In total, there were 18,451 transfers and 4,500 holders. The price of VMPX sets the starting price of XN, which at press time on July 6 was $0.20 per XN.
In comparison, the BRC-20 version had over 10,000 holders after the mint and over 286,000 transactions. When CoinMarketCap listed it, the volume was close to 30 million.
Impressive volume on $eVMPX. A fairly launched token that was embraced by the community.
— Razvan Costin (@razvancostin14) July 6, 2023
Congrats for these numbers. 🙌
Going forward, I do hope to see all projects in the ecosystem working out and I would like now to continue building on FPOC 🚀 pic.twitter.com/IeZ0gCqk0B
ETH burn
Minting VMPX was free, but the gas cost is an inevitable element. Gas for transactions is burned, and only the tip goes to the miners.
Burning gas could be compared to expending CPU power when mining Bitcoin. There’s a need to do computational work and expend energy to create a single token. Gas cost is what brings value to VMPX, and, at the same time, makes ETH deflationary. A total of 3,694.17 ETH, or 7.3 million, have been spent to mint the entire supply.
The gas was spent on a work performed for each cycle multiplied by the power.
The smart contract verified on Etherscan features a function called _doWork. The purpose of this function is to perform a certain task based on the power parameter set by the user when minting VMPX. The function iterates a specific number of times (determined by cycles * power) and sets the value of the _work mapping at the incremental counter index to true.
Essentially, the _doWork function is a placeholder function that represents computational work on a specific mint started by the user. It’s there to simulate a process that requires computation or effort, which is then paid for in gas. The users needed to perform this work in order to receive VMPX tokens.
High gas fees created some outcry in the Ethereum community, which couldn’t fathom why anyone would create a contract that purposely generated high transaction fees. Only those familiar with XEN and VMPX knew what was actually happening and continued minting the token.
Wondering why gas fees are high right now?
— cygaar (@0xCygaar) July 5, 2023
The top ETH gas guzzler is this contract where users make validators run useless/unnecessary code just to increase overall gas usage.
People are literally burning their money to increase gas fees for everyone else 🤦♂️. pic.twitter.com/4skfcpkxtD
Ethereum became deflationary for the first time since Merge on October 9, when the XEN Contract was launched. XEN has already burned 45,004.82 ETH, or $84,686,924, so far.
The VMPX bridge
Both VMPX tokens will be used to create a bridge on Libre. Libre is a network based on the AntelopeIO software that will host a liquidity pool for each of the tokens. Users will use the single staking method to lock their tokens in and earn transaction fees. The holders of VMPX have a 300 million allocation in the total supply of 1 billion XN native coins of the X1 chain. They will be able to convert 1 VMPX into 3 XN. Token time locks may be a condition that could apply to the conversion. The Libre team is currently working on a DEX for BRC-20 tokens, and VMPX and other tokens launched by Mr. Levin will be traded at a very low transaction fee. After the conversion of VMPX to XN, VMPX will become part of the protocol-owned liquidity, while XN may be used for staking to generate yield from the fees.
X1
VMPX and the bridge are part of the larger XEN ecosystem, which will also include X1. In addition to the other 10 chains where XEN already exists, the connection created between X1, Ethereum, Libre, and Bitcoin will unify the chains and create a thriving ecosystem powered by the XEN community. The X1 Litepaper describes token distribution and the method. Users need to burn XEN to get XN, or they can get it by holding VMPX. Mr. Levin is currently testing two versions of the chain. One is called Devnet and is based on the Polygon Edge open source code, and the other is called Fastnet and is based on the Fantom Opera code.
