Introducing Gobi Labs
What we are, what we are not, and why you would care.
Hello, my name is Stephen. I’m the Founder of Gobi Labs, a group of misfits that builds, invests & incubates premium consumer facing web3 products on the Solana blockchain powered by the native ecosystem token, $GOBI—this substack will read more like a personal blog than an official announcement channel, so I will keep the headlines up top every time in case you just want to skim the deets.
In June, we committed to build out 3 separate product lines: Marco Polo, The Ormuz & an upcoming 10k pfp collection titled “Merchants of Gobi" or MoG for short. We then raised a small 6-figure “Angel” round at a $7mil valuation, and closed it early September, 2022. These 3 months were hell. Good thing my recent hoodie from The Ormuz is fire proof.
Okay, here are the headlines for this post
Gobi Labs completed fundraising an Angel round at a $7mil valuation!
Marco Polo will implement a swap2earn feature starting October 1st, where we will pay out 50 SOL in the first 15-days for people who swap at least $100 on the DEX. It will be a lottery system, so every swap you do is essentially a lottery ticket. 10 people will be win 4 SOL each, and 5 people will win 2 SOL each.
There are currently pools for $DUST/ $CRECK/ $TRB/ $FORGE as well as $SOL / $USDC, w/3 new pools launching this weekend in $mSOL / $SOL, $HUSD / $USDC and of course $GOBI/USDC. Each pool will give a significant amount of GOBI tokens per DAY, so go provide liquidity & earn rewards!
The Ormuz has launched an Art Print partnership with Exchange.art where artists can opt-in to have their works printed & receive 10% of each sale. Prints start at 8 SOL + 1 SOL for shipping
The Ormuz website will go live within the next 10-days w/a “group buy” model for our first merch partners, including DAOO.
The Ormuz will launch its own label, called ‘Unfollowed’ that will be a web3 themed premium apparel brand. All purchases for our own label will only be made available in GOBI tokens.
Our 10k pfp collection will mint sometime around Breakpoint, and will be mostly focused on a “common prosperity sharing” system centered around how the GOBI token is used within the broader ecosystem. The collection name will be titled Merchants, and merchants are known to…collect taxes. Deets will be released mid-October.
A mythic skin Merchant We are launching an on-chain Sport Book titled The Colosseum in partnership with Andy & his partners, who collectively have 69 years of professional experience in professional betting. I have a line tattooed on my body from a 2012 Hawks @Bobcats game, so I’m not exactly a slouch either. The book will allow betting in SPL tokens which have pools on Marco Polo, with future expansion into ETH & Credit Card payments. The GOBI token will be heavily involved in the rewards process of the Colosseum. Target launch is December, 2022.
Okay, those are the headlines. If you’ve read this far and are bored already, the rest may not be for you. For those who want to know more about the ‘why’ of Gobi Labs, keep reading.
When I started designing Marco Polo, the Solana NFT world was very different — as was our team. We operated a marketing agency called “Puzzles” for a year+ up until about March of 2022, before we decided to fully pivot and re-skill our team into a product, this was not easy.
While the ecosystem has pivoted to NFT themed AMM’s, we will focus more on TOKENS for our DEX. We approached the design from a very different angle than most, specifically by focusing on user incentives (swap2earn) and project incentives (swap2share).
Swap2share is a simple model. We pay out projects 0.05% of every swap, this boosts revenue for teams that are actively building & growing their token utility.
Swap2earn, is a little more complicated as we are testing out multiple models with the first being a lottery system from Oct 1 until Oct 15. Other models we will test include a tiered system with fixed payouts, and many more. In order to fund swap2earn, we will have a public SWAP WALLET that gets funded from 10% of all non-fundraising event revenue from Gobi Labs. For now, it includes the following:
10% of all Ormuz sales including Group Buys, and Unfollowed & Art Print sales.
10% of all secondary sales from our MAPS & Merchants of Gobi NFT collection
0.05% of all token swaps on the DEX
10% of all profits from The Colosseum sports book
The idea, is that over the next 3-4 months, as all our products grow so too does the swap wallet & the incentives for you to swap natively on Marco Polo.
Why swap? Because swap is the single variable that drives the entire DeFi ecosystem for a DEX. The more swap volume we get, the higher the APRs will be for people to provide liquidity. That combined with our GOBI token emissions, will ensure we have the highest APR across Solana, so you can earn the highest yield possible.
Wtf is yield?
Great question. Yield is the core concept behind DeFi, a vast and empty concept for most NFT users much like the desert. What I have seen over the last 6 months in the Solana NFT space has been remarkable. The communities, user retention & willingness to endure pain reminds me of my grandmother growing up during the Mao era in rural China in the 60’s.
However, most of ya’ll have no idea wtf DeFi is, and our hope is that in partnership w/projects like Marinade & Hubble, as well as many others, we can bridge the gap between DeFi and the hoard of loyal and sticky NFT users. Pray for us.
Why are you building out so much shit, Stephen?
The short answer is, I’m an addict. Work is the most socially acceptable form of addiction we have, greater than alcohol.
The longer answer, is that since I launched & failed my first company at 23 (coconut water, ffs), I’ve waited a decade to have an opportunity to re-climb this mountain. The way we’ve designed our team, our culture, our salary structure & our workflow is to be omni-optimal. This means we aim to be the best swiss-army knife, instead of a machete. I have designed us to be agile, lean & fast. I have designed us to be in a state of momentum.
This is a concept I think about a lot. When you are starting to go to the gym, it’s painful — but once it’s encoded in your habit, it actually becomes very easy because you are in a state of momentum. I have done my best to apply that to product building. Building out The Colosseum for us, while being in a state of momentum, is optimal due to the way our team has been designed. Is it gonna be easy? Fuck no, but what valuable thing in life comes easy? Be the bike that is in motion, not the bike that is being peddled.
Wut Next?
Our map for the end of the year is pretty clear. We will aim to grow Ormuz as a leading provider of merch, prints & have the Unfollowed be a known brand both within and outside of our little world.
The DEX will aim to grow TVL & swap volume, while onboarding thousands of native NFT users into the world of DeFi w/our partners.
The Colosseum will ship, and you will be able to bet on England losing in the world cup on PK’s straight from your Phantom wallet in SOL, GOBI or CRECK.
Merchants will patrol the Gobi desert collecting tax revenue in a common prosperity sharing program along the way, while creating a community in our space focused on DeFi, learning it and mastering it. If you are a jpegger, and want to grow to be a DeFi-er, we hope that our pfp community is perfect for you.
But…as you probably can tell by now…that probably won’t be everything. There will probably be more, and if there is, 10% of revenue from whatever it is will also go into the Swap Wallet to pay out Swap2earn.
Make sure to subscribe to this newsletter if you’re interested in following the journey, as this is where I’ll post all the shit moving forward. Thank you so much for reading up to here, now go add some liquidity on Marco Polo!