Mint XEN

Q: Can I mint multiple times from the same address?

A: Yes. After you've claimed your mint of XEN once, you can use the same address to claim another cRank. You won't be able to add the new XEN tokens later to an existing on-going stake however, so you will have to either EES for that initial stake, or send the newly minted XEN tokens to another address and stake from there.

Q: Can I extend my mintTerm (T)?

A: No. When you claim your cRank at the first step, you also choose your T. Let's say you choose 10 days. These two variables are bundled into the same transaction which you then sign. You now have to wait 10 days and come back to the website. During this time, the mintTerm limits will have increased according to the mintTermLimit formula. However, this doesn't matter for your agreement with the protocol. Even though you may want to extend your T, it is not possible. This is not what you agreed upon. You agreed upon what was possible at the time as you claimed your cRank.

Q: When will minting stop?

A: Never. XEN is a onboarding tool where new people now and in the future can enter blockchain without the barrier of having to transfer any other kind of value, part from gas. Minting XEN will become increasingly more difficult with time and adoption. The supply follows a logarithmic curve.

How can XEN ever become valuable if you can mint it forever?

If you value XEN today and don't want to wait for the maturity date, you might consider buying it instead in a liquidity pool on a DEX. You are then basically buying someone else's work in terms of the time they waited for their maturity date to mint. You are buying their time. XEN is time. Please be aware that the supply of XEN follows a highly inflationary supply emission through minting. The supply velocity becomes disinflationary with time and adoption. This means that one will be able to mint substantially more tokens today than in the future. After 8 years, minting will be very difficult and the inflation will decrease to 0.01-1% for all.

Can I change the duration of the mint?

No. The chosen mintterm is locked in and cannot be adjusted.

Q: What stops me from creating a bot that mints from thousands of addresses?

A: Nothing. Each address will have to pay gas to both claim cRank and also mint. Furthermore, each address will have to pay gas in order to later sell their XEN tokens. When you sell XEN tokens, you may want to reimburse the original gas costs of claiming and minting. Likely, one would not sell their XEN for less than the summarized gas costs. This would create positive price pressure which would increase the value of XEN for everyone. The value of XEN at genesis is 0, with 0 supply. If someone is paying for gas it means they make the judgement that XEN has value. You can easily predict gas cost when you claim cRank but not as easily what it will be when it is time for your mint. In fact, the further away you choose your maturity date (which you're incentivized to do), the harder it will get to predict gas costs, unless you intentionally pick a date that falls on a future Sunday, when gas prices are low. Further, since claiming cRank increases mint rewards for everyone by advancing the globalRank, the value of everyone's mint will increase as well. XEN is free. Minting XEN is not free. Time and gas has value. Minting from 1,000 wallets amplifies mints for everyone. Read more on this topic here.

XEN is using logarithm base 2 to smooth out the rewards based on the difference between global rank and cRank. XEN has already foreseen bot attacks and built in a counter measure. A bot attack is actually healthy for the protocol. If you were to build a bot - how many transactions would you run? Probably not more than 1,000 for example. You will have to pay 5 USD/tx. You will immediately burn 5,000 USD on gas. That's assuming you're not over-driving the Ethereum network and your gas remains relatively constant. What does that do for you and the rest of the users? For the rest of the users, it will amplify everyone's mint.

Let's say there are a million people within the system. Then, another one million people have the chance to mint. So, you as a bot will end up diluting yourself. As a bot, you pay for the gas, let's say $5,000 USD. But you effectively pass on the amplification to the rest of the community. So, the community will always be larger than any bot out there and the bot will always be limited to any number of gas they want to spend.

So the bot will pay for everyone's gas and give everyone free XEN. If you write a bot, you're actually helping the community. The protocol on Ethereum, for example, will take your gas and say thank you. Basically, only a few bad actors will create bots, but it will be the community that benefits.

The diluted pressure will always discourage bots, and come up with some reasonable number and not millions of addresses. Are you really ready to pay 5M USD? Ethereum will not let you. Currently Ethereum is running at 15 tx/s. Anything above that is going to ask you for more money. So are you willing to be the #1 spender of gas? It's not going to be 5 million dollars for 1 million addresses - it will more likely be $50 million very quickly.