Written by Joe@Go2Mars
Last month, Lumoz announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, with participation from well-known traditional Mega Fund IDG and other capitals, and it was only about a month since the completion of the Pre-A round of financing. Earlier, Lumoz revealed that it would sell nodes in the near future, and the current sales volume has exceeded half, and the market response is good. In the past few months, many high-quality projects have also carried out node sales. So why do many project parties with complete technical backgrounds have a special liking for node sales recently?
Node sales are prevalent, and a war is about to break out
Node sales, a new token issuance model that can benefit many parties, is favored by many project parties and investors due to its flexibility, and has gradually become one of the popular financing methods on the market. For any decentralized network, a large number of nodes are required to support it. Therefore, project parties can set a certain proportion of node token rewards (Node Rewards) in their Tokenmetric for node sales, and investors can obtain node token rewards by purchasing node mining.
So, how do we understand node sales? Let's start with the primary market and the secondary market, which we are more familiar with. The primary market is the primary channel for project financing, and ordinary investors have almost no chance to participate in the primary market financing of high-quality projects. There is no threshold restriction in the secondary market, but the projects in the secondary market are often highly valued, which is a great test of investors' vision and investment research capabilities. Node sales can be simply understood as a 1.5-level market between the primary market and the secondary market. For project parties, the financing method of node sales is more flexible than that of the primary market, and for retail investors, they can participate in early investment at a lower valuation before the project is listed to obtain higher investment returns.
The factors affecting node sales are similar to those of ordinary token sales. Therefore, when evaluating whether a project's node sales are worth participating in, in addition to the fundamental research of the project itself, you should also consider 1. The proportion of node token rewards 2. The release/redemption rules of node tokens 3. The release rules of other tokens, such as tokens used for ecological incentives, marketing, and most importantly -- the release of team and investment institution shares.
Let the data speak: some data references about Lumoz
Next, let’s compare the data of several mainstream node sales projects in the current market: Lumoz, Aethir, CARV and Sophon, and mainly explain why Lumoz stands out from the current node sales war from the perspective of expected returns.
Project Overview
Lumoz: Focus on modular computing layer & ZK-RaaS platform construction and technological innovation. Lumoz aims to simplify the use of ZK-Rollup and enhance universality, thereby promoting the large-scale deployment of zkEVM-based application chains. Developers can easily deploy their ZK-Rollup (zkEVM) on multiple chains. For miners, Lumoz is a multi-chain PoW protocol that supports mining on various public chains and generates zero-knowledge proofs for ZK-Rollups. Innovations in the modular computing layer can be used to efficiently take over idle computing power in the market, thereby providing modular computing power support for ZK-Rollups.
Aethir: Scalable decentralized cloud infrastructure, building a GPU-based distributed computing infrastructure, breaking down hardware barriers and empowering AI and games.
Sophon: A modular blockchain focused on entertainment racing based on zkSync. As a zkSync hyperchain leveraging the ZK Stack, Sophon is designed to be customized for any high-throughput application.
CARV: The CARV Protocol is a modular data layer that facilitates data exchange and value distribution between the gaming and AI sectors. With the CARV Protocol, everyone can now own, control, verify, and monetize their data, ensuring privacy, ownership, and control remain firmly in the hands of the individual.
Basic data comparison
From the node sales data panel above, we can see that compared with the four mainstream projects, Lumoz and CARV are very generous in node token shares, both allocating 25% of their shares for node sales, while Aethir and Sophon's node tokens account for only 15% and 20% respectively. The most obvious impact on the price stability during the token release process is the release of the project team and the investment institution shares during the primary market financing.
From the perspective of token release rules, Lumoz's node tokens are linearly released over 36 months, while the investor shares of both rounds of financing have a 6-month lock-up period, which is released over 36 months; the team shares have a 12-month lock-up period, which is released over 48 months. CARV's investor shares begin to be unlocked after 6 months of lock-up, and the team shares begin to be unlocked after 9 months of lock-up. Because its node token redemption period is 5 months, the node tokens begin to circulate earlier than the investor shares.
Aethir's team and investor shares have a 12-month lock-up period, but since 35% of the total GPU tokens are released simultaneously with the node tokens, twice the number of node tokens may bring unavoidable inflationary pressure. In contrast, Lumoz and CARV, which have more generous node token distribution and more friendly release rules, may face a smaller inflation rate during the token unlocking process.
Expected rate of return and payback period analysis
Lumoz's sales plan
Node token reward distribution plan: By purchasing Lumoz zkVerifier node mining, you can get 25% of the total MOZ node token rewards
method of sales:
ETH payment, support Arbitrum network
BTC payment, support Merlin Chain
BNB/BTCB payment, support BSC network
USDT/USDC/ZKF (10% off) payment, supports Arbitrum, BSC and ZKFair Network
Invitation mechanism for Lumoz node sales: Node buyers can get a discount by entering the invitation code at the time of purchase, which will not take effect immediately but will be refunded to the node buyer in the future. In addition, the inviter can also get a commission of up to 10%.
Refund mechanism: 6 months after the Lumoz TGE, the refund window opens and users can choose to return all produced tokens and NFTs and receive an unconditional refund of 80% of the payment amount.
Analysis of expected returns and payback period for MOZ node token holders
The above is the specific plan for Lumoz node sales, with a node cap of 100,000 and a total of 10 tiers. It can be seen that the price of zkVerifier nodes increases with each round, from 200USD in the first round to 704USD in the last round, and the node price increases by about 2.5 times. If all 100,000 nodes are sold, Lumoz will raise 40 million US dollars through node sales. For buyers of zkVerifier nodes, the total expected returns that can be obtained through mining include: sharing 40 million Lumoz Points (before TGE), 25% Lumoz tokens (after TGE), and airdrops of potential new Layer chains in the Lumoz ecosystem.
As the most important part of the return composition, here we only take out the MOZ node token reward to estimate the expected return of participating in the Lumoz node sale. At present, Lumoz has completed three rounds of financing, and in the third round of financing, Lumoz's valuation was 300 million US dollars. Generally speaking, the market value of a project at TGE can reach 10 times the valuation of the previous round, which is 3 billion US dollars for Lumoz, and the total value of 25% of MOZ tokens is 750 million US dollars. However, considering the uncertainty of market sentiment and market fluctuations, as well as the influence of other uncontrollable factors, we conservatively estimate that based on the market value of 1 billion US dollars, the total value of 25% of MOZ tokens is 250 million US dollars.
Further analysis of the cost shows that from tier1 to tier10, the node sales price increases by 15% each round. If you participate in the purchase of tier 1, the cost of each node is $200; the cost of tier 3 is $265; the cost of tier 6 is $402; and the final cost of tier10 is $704. Here we only show the number of node tokens unlocked in the first 12 months, which is actually unlocked in 36 months.
The total supply of MOZ tokens is 10 billion. The estimated monthly token rewards are: the cumulative value of rewards received by each node as of the current month.
After the node sale is completed, the actual node mining income depends on the number of nodes online at the same time and the online time. As shown in the figure above, when there are 10,000 nodes online at the same time, each node can get 6,944 token rewards in the first month, and when there are 50,000 nodes online at the same time, the first month mining reward is reduced to 1,388 tokens. In other words, the more nodes are online at the same time, the less token rewards each node can get.
The total time for releasing all node rewards is 36 months
Next, we can further estimate the yield of node mining. The table shows the expected monthly yield in the first year of participating in node mining, calculated based on a valuation of 1 billion. Assuming that Xiao A, who is very lucky, successfully participates in the purchase of tier 1, his cost is 200U, then the green square in the above figure is the time when he will get his money back. When the number of nodes online is 10,000, Xiao A's yield reaches 300%+ in just one month, and it can reach 10 times the profit in the third month ($2083). Xiao B, who participated in the tier 6 node sales, purchased a zkVerifier node at a cost of 402U, so Xiao B will also get his money back in the first month and get more than 150% of the profit. At the same time, within half a year, Xiao B can also get more than 10 times the profit ($4167) through node mining.
Compared with other projects, XAI, which started this round of node sales, has a payback period of about 4 months. CARV, which is most similar to Lumoz, has a node token value released in the first month that is enough for tier 1 users to pay back, but since the released veCARV tokens need to be redeemed for CARV before trading, if you want a 1:1 redemption, you need to wait for a 150-day redemption period, so the payback period also takes at least 4-5 months.
In terms of airdrop rewards, buyers of zkVerifier nodes will also have the opportunity to receive airdrop rewards from new chains that will be released by Lumoz, ecological partners (such as Merlin Chain, ZKFair), and investees. It is worth mentioning that due to the sell-off caused by token unlocking, the price expectations of both MERL and ZKF tokens are almost at the bottom. With the reduction of selling pressure and the reversal of market sentiment, the expected airdrop rewards for Merlin and ZKFair, two high-quality projects with both technology, background and narrative, have made people look forward to Lumoz's node sales.
To get out there, you need to have strength and background
As a global distributed modular computing network, Lumoz is committed to providing advanced zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) services, supporting the development of the Rollup network, and providing powerful computing services for cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). To address the current challenge of high computational costs in the field of zero-knowledge computing, Lumoz Network leverages its deep expertise in ZKP over the years to significantly improve computing efficiency through innovative optimization of circuits and algorithms. This effectively solves the high cost and low efficiency problems faced by the Rollup project, and lowers the threshold for ordinary users to participate in the zero-knowledge computing market. On the other hand, Lumoz has simultaneously launched a modular computing power layer to absorb excess computing power on the market, thereby providing computing power support for its ZK-rollup.
At the same time, the zkVerifier node launched by Lumoz also brings unprecedented convenience to users. By simply running a lightweight node, users can easily perform ZK calculations and obtain corresponding rewards from the network. This innovative initiative will promote the widespread application of zero-knowledge computing technology and bring broader application prospects to the entire industry. Since 2022, Lumoz has supported more than 16 Rollup projects in the testnet; achieved 20,002,146 transactions; the community size has reached 440,000 people; and from 2024, it will provide ZKP-related technical support for Merlin Chain (BTC L2), ZKFair (EVM L2), Orange Chain (BTC L2) and more than 20 upcoming new chains.
The hottest narrative, unique core technology and strong R&D capabilities have also made Lumoz favored by the capital market. In April, Lumoz just completed its Series A financing with a valuation of US$120 million, led by Polychain. In addition to OKX Venture, a top Crypto Native institution, other investors include traditional US dollar funds such as GGV and IDG Capital that have been active in the crypto market in recent years. Then at the end of May, Lumoz announced that it had completed a strategic round of financing with a valuation of US$300 million. The specific amount was not disclosed. The leading investors were IDG Blockchain, Gate Ventures, Blockchain Coinvestors and Xia Yan Capital. The strong financing background undoubtedly adds to Lumoz's competitiveness in the node sales war.
Summarize
Summer is coming, and we have survived the "long" two-month bear market. At present, with the approval of the ETH ETF and Trump's strong call for cryptocurrencies, the market's expectations and consensus for the return of the bull market are expected to reach a climax again. Based on experience, the market generally expects that the real climax of this round of bull market has not yet arrived, or at least it will reach the high point of March again. Driven by this optimistic sentiment, how can Lumoz, which has both topics, strength and background, not make people full of expectations?
