The Last Dream's ERC-721a Smart Contract with Milestone Based Pricing

Every so often a new piece of technology comes along that changes everything. For NFT fans, that's the release of ERC-721a which has made it possible to batch mint at an affordable price.

My smart contract developer was also very pleased with his function that auto-approves NFTs for sale in OpenSea, removing the need to pay gas fee for all approvals.

I wanted to take it a step further with my ambitions to create a milestone based pricing algorithm. 

When I was structuring the project, I was playing with the idea that the pricing model could benefit early backers, longtime collectors and at the same time, be inviting to new thrifty collectors. 

So I came up with the following loop :

Start the price at 0.07 ETH. 

It starts low for an obvious reason. Early backers are provided with a fairly low barrier entry to the collection. 

Every 100 sales, increase 0.01 ETH.

The increment of the pricing is triggered by sales milestone. This provides a blanket of security and assurance of quality for the NFTs. If the NFTs fail to meet expectations, it won't sell and there won't be a price increase. The project creator, ie. me have to work harder to produce quality NFTs. 

At the same time, it is also a sign of confidence from the project creator. I am just confident that the NFTs could sell, which will lead to increments that benefit my project. 

Another important reason is the periodical increment will benefit early backers who purchased at a lower previous price. The value of the NFT increased and they are given a predictable opportunity to sell the NFT for a return.

Repeat until it reaches 3 ETH

There has to be a ceiling to the pricing. To have the pricing be on a perpetual increment is a disaster waiting to happen. The maximum price should still be low enough for price increase in resells by NFT holders, but high enough to trigger an end to the cycle. 

Repeat the loop again at starting price + 0.01 ETH

This will place the value at 0.08 ETH. This would give fresh buying opportunities to new collectors who couldn't afford the high price from the old cycle. The project gets to have new blood in the community of holders. 

However, the price crash would trigger NFT holders to sell. In layman's terms, the micro economy's crash is predictable and set in code. That is, if the value of the NFT is truly proportionate with the pricing.

We must also entertain the other two possibilities - the NFT project and its' assets could hold a bigger or smaller value compared to its sale value. 

Therefore, the project's creator and community must dedicate effort to increase the project's value to be higher than its sale value through means of utility, charity, NFT quality and marketing. 

End the loop at some point

As much as I am a fan of perpetual motion systems, there has to be a stop. The cycle ends when the starting price reaches 3 ETH and stays stagnant there. This decision is sound in terms of programming loops. There has to be an end. 

The final pricing table looks something like this :

The Last Dream was a project full of AI + human collaborations. From the creation of artwork to upscaling and copywriting..I had wanted to have a fully automated loop with zero human intervention. It was purposeful, elegant and romantic. 

However, my smart contract developer got too excited and created writable functions for every single loop point. As a coder myself, I could not and will not reject such robust coding.

At which point, I realised that a fully automated milestone based pricing is indeed, just a girl's dream.

The Last Dream drops on June 1 2022.

It is an ongoing NFT collection of artwork created using AI-human collaboration by artist Haze Long. 

It has a simple goal of creating a close-knit community in order to fund and enjoy a space in one of the upcoming metaverses.

Haze was a victim of child abuse and a huge advocate for this cause. This is also a project that supports charities who focus on child abuse prevention, response and psychological healing.

Smart Contract developed by Ghazanfar Perdakh