Author: BlockBeats
"If the product you use is free, then you are the product" has become a motto in the modern business world where Big Tech does everything it can to violate user privacy and obtain data for profit. The real value and cost behind these free products lies in user data. Data is known as the "oil" of the new century. With the rapid development of industries such as games and artificial intelligence, data can not only improve user experience, but also become the foundation of the entire ecosystem.
For ordinary users, it seems that they have never really examined the importance of data to themselves, and they would never think that one day they can gain benefits from the data they create. What the protagonist of this article, CARV, wants to do is to build a modular data layer for games, artificial intelligence, and Infinity, as a bottom-level protocol to bring unprecedented data management experience to project parties and users.
CARV Protocol has established a set of protocols that allow users to have complete data sovereignty. Users can use the protocol to authorize, store, verify, and confirm their identity, player portraits, and game data, while also obtaining revenue data benefits. At this stage, it is selling CARV verification nodes, enriching and atomizing the verification layer through the form of users owning their own nodes and proxy nodes.
Today is the white ticket sales phase for CARV nodes, and the public sale of nodes will be held on June 5, so I hope this article can help readers decide whether to invest in CARV.
AI + games, users can obtain passive income by using CARV
CARV builds an ecosystem consisting of the CARV Protocol, and two products, CARV Play and CARV AI Agent, by enabling users to bind their gaming, social media, and various other accounts to the blockchain. Users can unify their digital identities and showcase achievements, assets, and history in one place.
Users can also choose how their data is used, and if they choose to opt in and share this data with brands, they can passively earn money when brands leverage their on-chain and off-chain data.
For example, CARV CBO Delio Paul once said in a speech that if a very popular Web3 FPS (first-person shooter) game wants to acquire users through CARV, they will pay CARV a fee to obtain user data, provided that the user agrees to share the data.
If the game wants to find a user from Thailand who holds game tokens in their wallet and is a big whale in other ecosystems, and who has played hundreds of hours of FPS games, CARV can provide such user information. The key is that users who meet these criteria will profit from it because a portion of the user acquisition fees paid by the game project to CARV will go directly to the user who provided the data.
Driven by this vision, CARV's core product development progress and its data performance are also impressive.
Its CARV AI Agent, CARA Bot, built on the TON ecosystem is driven by the GPT big model and is an encyclopedia and smart assistant for CARV, which can help users answer questions about CARV. The next step will be to explore smart recommendations, D2E tasks, and advertising based on users' personalized data.
Another product, CARV Play, is a cross-platform authentication system and the largest Web3 game distribution and social platform. Currently, there are about 380 games listed, accounting for 30% of the current Web3 games, including MARBLEX, Shrapnel, Off the Grid, Pixelmon and Pixels.
Last quarter, its average daily active wallet count exceeded 500,000, making it one of the top three on-chain active ecosystems such as Linea, opBNB, zkSync and Ronin, providing 2.5 million players with an enhanced gaming experience to share data, establish credentials, play games and earn rewards.
Understanding CARV’s Node Sales Model
A key part of all this is CARV’s validator nodes, which play a vital role in maintaining the integrity of the protocol.
Currently, these nodes are mainly responsible for verifying the results of data processing and AI model training. These calculations are performed in a trusted execution environment (TEE) to protect user data privacy. The results are recorded on the blockchain with TEE proof to ensure the security and privacy of the process, thereby fairly distributing the value of data.
In order to prevent system manipulation and ensure fair distribution of data value, third-party verification of TEE proof is required. This requires community participation in CARV to strengthen the protocol by operating verification nodes and increase the decentralization level of the protocol.
For users, the benefits of running a CARV node mainly include three aspects:
1. Reward Opportunity: Get a large portion of the network rewards, with 25% of CARV tokens allocated to node validators
2. Decentralization: Contribute to a truly decentralized data economy that respects user autonomy and privacy.
3. Influence: Have a voice in the CARV community and help shape the development and governance of the network.
In order to enable global users to gain more benefits through the CARV network and enhance the decentralization of CARV, CARV decided to open lightweight node operations to users on June 5. Participants can obtain the right to operate verification nodes through node sales, participate in the operation of distributed data networks, and obtain CARV native tokens. Whitelist node sales will start at 10:00 (UTC) on June 3, and public node sales will officially start at 10:00 (UTC) on June 5.
According to official documents, 25% of the total supply of CARV's native token $CARV will be provided to validator node operators, and the emission adopts a release pattern of reducing 25% every 6 months, which means that 50% of the node reward tokens can be unlocked in the first year.
The total supply of $CARV is 1 billion, which will be unlocked within four years from the start of TGE. The application scenarios of $CARV include gas payment and purchase of game assets, as well as guiding data owners, providers and consumers to participate in ecological activities as an ecological incentive. In addition, $CARV can be converted into ve CARV through 1:1 staking, and ve CARV can be used to participate in community decision-making and ecological activities.
50% of CARV’s total supply is equally divided between the community and nodes, which is a rare thing at a time when VCs and retail investors are in conflict. This is also the greatest sincerity that CARV has shown through the node sales model and user profit sharing.
Previously, CARV partners such as Aethir, Sopon, and Xai have not only enhanced their decentralization level, gained a large number of node support, but also raised funds for project development through this method. For ordinary investors, participating in node sales can invest before the project is launched, thereby obtaining earlier entry opportunities and potential benefits.
The release of node tokens is most critical in the first year, because the next year may be a bull market with a good price. If a bear market follows, the cumulative release of tokens will increase, and institutions and teams will begin to unlock them, and the risk of a price drop will become higher. Therefore, the focus of node release is on how many coins can be mined in a year.
The total amount of CARV tokens is 1 billion, and the reward for nodes is 25%, which is the most generous among similar projects. In addition, 12.5% of the total tokens will be released in the first year of the bull market, which shows the pattern.
After the node mines the token, the operator does not get $CARV immediately, but first gets the governance token ve CARV, which can then be converted into $CARV for trading on CEX. And ve CARV has a certain redemption period, but CARV's 150-day redemption period still has a time advantage compared to the 180-day redemption period of the same project.
Related reading: "Data comparison of Aethir, Sopon, and CARV, which node sales revenue is the highest?"
For node investors, it is also important to pay attention to the token unlocking time of the project party and investors. CARV investors will start unlocking 6 months after TGE, and the team will start unlocking 9 months after TGE.
In addition, the redemption period for CARV's node mining tokens is 150 days, so the node tokens are unlocked earlier than investors, which is an extremely sincere move for retail investors.
In addition, CARV officials also announced a token repurchase plan, and node operators can choose between two repurchase methods.
One is a 100% buyback in $CARV, which is equivalent to the node price denominated in USDT at the time of purchase, and is linearly vested within 30 days from the date of buyback. The second is an immediate buyback of 80% ETH, which is equivalent to the ETH price of the node snapshot at the time of purchase, and the ETH will be released immediately. Eligible node license holders need to maintain a participation rate of 70% or higher and have not converted any ve CARV rewards to $CARV. Users and investors will enjoy greater flexibility and income protection.
The Future of CARV
For projects that obtain project development funds through node sales, the most important test is the ability to operate in the long term. Currently, CARV is the project that combines the two hot sectors of AI and games most closely and has the first-mover advantage.
In terms of AI, CARV has announced cooperation with Aethir and Google Cloud. Aethir is a decentralized GPU network. For AI, computing power is crucial; Google Cloud is a top infrastructure provider, providing a variety of resources including CPU, network, resources, CDN, etc.
As an intermediate layer, CARV not only connects the super-strong infrastructure and GPU computing power, but also has its own AI agent and integrates top AI applications led by fetch.ai. For AI, data plus infrastructure and GPU will create greater imagination space.
Another pillar of CARV's business is the gaming sector. As mentioned above, CARV users can actively choose to provide their own data to obtain passive income. For B-side customers, CARV is also doing its best to accumulate more complete data to serve the game. The existence of CARV has achieved a win-win situation for games and gamers.
Through an interview with CARV founder Victor, we learned that CARV’s current focus is to better support node development, including making it easier for users to run nodes and improving the overall operation and purchase experience. Next, CARV plans to expand the application of the node network as soon as possible, including data layer verification and oracle implementation.
Beyond that, CARV’s bigger vision is to build its own verification network and processing system, and ultimately implement its own data layer, including data availability (DA) and storage.
On May 31, Animoca Brands announced that it had become a strategic investor and node operator of CARV, which has injected more confidence into the future development of CARV. According to the roadmap, CARV will strongly support and incentivize the development of node deployment in the next quarter. Therefore, for users, choosing to participate in CARV node sales at present will participate in the ecological construction with the lowest threshold and obtain both active and passive benefits.