Trade Licenses

Everything you need to know about Trade Licenses in Pirate Nation

Trade Licenses are launching in Pirate Nation in September 2023. Their purpose is to act as a mechanism that allows a player to sell items & $PGLD they earn in Pirate Nation. By introducing Trade Licenses into the game, we have a simple and effective lever to control the time at which new free-to-play (F2P) players earn the right to fully participate in the in-game economy and to combat bots and sybil attacks by future F2P players or external bad actors. We are rolling Trade Licenses out to holders of Founder’s Pirates via a snapshot. We will apply a flag to snapshotted wallets so they remain ‘unlocked’ and can continue trading uninterrupted immediately. We will airdrop Trade Licenses to wallets holding more than 1 Founder’s Pirate. There are a few pieces to this, so let’s break it down.

F2P We have ambitious plans for Pirate Nation and are building towards a game that can attract millions of new players. To accomplish this, we’ve carefully crafted a growth plan that achieves “expansion without dilution” - ensuring we can simultaneously grow while preserving the special nature of our genesis collection, the Founder’s Pirates. Currently, to access Pirate Nation, you must own a Founder’s Pirate (our genesis collection) NFT. But when we launch F2P mode, new players will be able to enter the game by creating a (temporarily) soulbound Pirate as their playable character. These new players will only be able to purchase (‘import’) items & $PGLD, and won’t be able to sell (‘export’) anything, until they either purchase a Trade License, or earn one by reaching Command Rank 10, in which case it is automatically applied to their account. See important notes below for further detail / nuance on this. To learn more about other differences between Founder’s Pirates (our genesis collection) and Pirates (the upcoming collection for F2P players), check out this thread we’ve published on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateNationNFT/status/1689377487216902145?s=20

TRADE LICENSE SNAPSHOT & AIRDROP At the time of the snapshot, every wallet containing a Founder’s Pirate will effectively “get a trade license”, but there’s an important difference whether the wallet holds just a single Pirate, or multiple Pirates. To ensure the game continues to function as intended, wallets with a single Founder’s Pirate will automatically have their Trade License applied to them. In effect, this means they won’t receive an airdrop, but rather, will have a ‘flag’ set to their wallet address in our game contracts, ensuring that the wallet can continue to trade (buy & sell items) in Pirate Nation without any interruption. This ensures that all wallets currently holding at least a single Founder’s Pirate are ‘unlocked’, and can continue to enjoy the game without any disturbance, and without needing to take any action. For wallets holding 2 or more Founder’s Pirates, they will also have their first Trade License automatically applied, but they will be entitled to 1 Trade License per each additional Founder’s Pirate they have. These Trade License(s) will be airdropped to their wallet, as a tradeable NFT on Proof of Play Apex.

Let’s summarize this with examples: Wallet with 1 Pirate ➜ Unlocked, but doesn't receive Trade License.

Wallet with 2 Pirates ➜ Unlocked, and receives 1 Trade License.

Wallet with 5 Pirates ➜ Unlocked, and receives 4 additional Trade Licenses.

Wallet with 7 Pirates ➜ Unlocked, and receives 6 additional Trade Licenses. Players receiving additional Trade Licenses may choose to sell them if they so wish. But keep in mind that these airdropped Trade Licenses are deflationary. Once they are applied to an account (wallet), they are burned and can no longer be traded. So plan accordingly!

IMPORTANT NOTES There are a few important things to call out about the Trade License system, and F2P. 1. New buyers of Founder’s Pirates after the snapshot date, will need a Trade License in order to sell the items they earn in the game. After the snapshot is taken, owning a Founder’s Pirate won’t in of itself entitle a new owner to sell items or $PGLD they earn in the game. That’s because Trade Licenses are applied to the wallet, not to the Founder’s Pirate(s) within them. This important piece of information will be incorporated into our onboarding materials for people who purchase Founder’s Pirates on the secondary market. 2. When F2P players buy or earn their Trade License, they’ll be able to sell items, but won’t be able to sell or transfer their Pirate - it will still be soulbound. Having a Trade License allows F2P players to trade their items, gold, and ships, but not their Pirate itself, which will stay soulbound until they earn their Voxel Soul. What’s a Voxel Soul you ask, and how do F2P players earn it? That’s a tale for a later time! 3. When F2P players earn their Trade License, they won't receive it in the form of an item, instead it'll be applied to their account automatically. Once F2P players reach Command Rank 10, their account will be automatically unlocked and they'll gain the ability to sell items they earn in the Pirate Nation economy. They will not receive a separate Trade License item during this process. This means the Trade License airdrop for wallets holding 2 or more Founder's Pirates, taking place after the snapshot on Monday, September 11, 2023, will be the only set of tradeable Trade License items in the Pirate Nation economy. 4. NFT marketplaces aren’t natively friendly to soulbound items, as they allow unsellable items to still be listed, but we have a solution. Our community has rightly raised the point that soulbound items can still be listed on marketplaces like OpenSea. This causes a problem because it allows people to list unsellable items at very low prices, and annoys buyers who can’t purchase said items. This isn’t sea-worthy. So we’ve crafted a technical solution, which stops F2P players from being able to list items for sale, while they are still soulbound. We’ll share more about how we’ve been able to accomplish this in a separate thread! 5. F2P roll out will be in phases. While all of the above is quite exciting, and we are getting Pirate Nation ready to acquire new players, we want to remind everyone that this will happen incrementally, in phases. The game is still young, and we’re working to improve existing in-game systems & launch new ones. We’ll be scaling up our player base over time, rather than all at once. Please continue to be your usual awesome & highly welcoming selves as new players come aboard - whether through ownership of a Founder’s Pirate, or as a F2P player!