THE BUILDERS · ROBINHOOD CHAIN · NO OFFICE · NO OWNER · NO PURPOSE
Built from the ground up. Paid from the top down.
Babel is a game about finishing a tower built over 12 rounds, one brick at a time. There are 8,190 bricks in total, and they are minted in strict order, round by round. You can lay a brick three ways: solve a small puzzle with your computer for free (you only pay the network's gas fee), pay its price in USDC, or split the cost between the two. Every time someone pays in USDC, most of that money is shared with the people who laid bricks earlier, so laying a brick early and cheaply can pay you back later. A slice of every USDC payment also goes into a shared vault; once the tower is about half built, anyone can use that vault to launch a new token called $BABEL. You can also trade a brick you own for some $BABEL instead of holding it. Nobody owns this project, nobody can change the rules once it starts, and nobody promises you will make money. Every rule is spelled out in detail below.
The Builders raise a tower on Arc, open to anyone. The Foundation stone, brick No. 1, is the Builders' own and was laid before the works opened. Minting proceeds through twelve rounds: the first of two bricks, the second of four, and so on, doubling, to the twelfth of four thousand and ninety six. Eight thousand one hundred and ninety bricks in all, each an ERC-721 token whose card is cast on the chain.
A round is a minting stage, not a physical level of the tower.
Bricks are laid in order, one after another, the next brick always the next number. Round k holds bricks No. 2^k to No. 2^(k+1) minus one. A round is complete when its last brick is laid; the next round begins at once. Nobody chooses a place: the place is the moment.
| Round | Bricks | Numbers | Work at the first | Price at the first |
|---|
A brick is laid in one of three ways, or any mix of the last two.
By work. Your browser looks for a number (a nonce) such that keccak256 of the works' seed, your address, and the nonce falls below the mark of the place. A mark is a target number your hash must land below; the lower the mark, the harder it is to find one. The mark begins at one hash in 2^22 for the first brick and halves every 256 bricks: the higher the tower, the more hashes a brick costs. Nothing is paid but gas.
In coin. You pay the price of the place: 2.40341 USDC for the first brick, doubling every 2,048 bricks, to about 38.45 USDC at the last. No hash is needed.
Any mix. Every part of the price paid in coin is a part of the work forgiven: pay half the price and the mark doubles (twice as easy), pay nine tenths and it grows tenfold.
A hash serves once: nobody else can reuse it. A brick laid by work is a brick like any other, save that it draws no coin dividends until its dues are settled (Article VII) and holds one ticket in the lot rather than two (Article IX).
Of every hundred paid in coin for a brick:
50 to the coin weight of the bricks laid before it, pro rata: a brick paid in full weighs ten thousand, a brick paid half weighs five thousand, a brick laid by work weighs nothing here.
7 to the sweat weight of the bricks laid before it, pro rata: the part of each brick that was worked for.
8 to the sponsor named in the layer's link (Article V).
10 to the Liquidity Vault (Article VI).
10 to the pot of the round (Article IX).
15 to the Builders.
Coin weight and sweat weight are how a brick earns a share of what later bricks pay: the more of a brick's price was paid in USDC, the bigger its coin weight; the more was earned by work, the bigger its sweat weight. A class nobody holds yet, and a sponsor who cannot take his part, pass their part to the pot of the round. A brick collects what it is owed at any time; nothing is pushed to anyone but the Builders. The till pays only from coin: a brick laid by work brings the till nothing, and takes from it only through its sweat weight.
Every brick has a link naming its number. Whoever lays a brick through that link names that brick their sponsor, and the sponsor takes eight of every hundred the layer pays in coin, for that brick and for its settling later. A brick may name itself: a subscriber who already holds a brick pays eight less, in effect. A builder may also sponsor a brick he lays later with a brick he laid earlier, so the eight-per-hundred returns to himself instead of the pot of the round, and this is allowed and expected.
A sponsor takes his part only while his brick is in coin, in full or at least by half, or settled. A brick laid by work passes the part to the pot of the round instead. The Sponsors Roll lists who brought the most coin in.
This article replaces mnmnt's quarry. Ten of every hundred paid in coin go into the Liquidity Vault, held in USDC. Unlike mnmnt's quarry, the vault buys nothing while bricks are being laid: no other contract is called during a lay.
When round eleven is complete, brick No. 4,095, roughly half the tower, anyone may trigger the vault once. It becomes the USDC side of a new $BABEL trading pool, and that pool position is then locked forever: nobody, including the Builders, can withdraw it. $BABEL cannot be sent or traded before this moment; that lock lifts on its own, the moment the pool launches, and nobody can lift it early or hold it back.
The fixed supply is 819,100,000 $BABEL: 50% for liquidity, 40% for brick redemption, and 10% for the Builders, vested linearly over seven days from liquidity launch without a cliff. The vault receives 10% of mint payments.
A brick laid by work, or in part, may settle its dues later: its holder pays the price of the day, the price the next brick would cost in coin, and the brick joins the coin weight in full. What the brick had earned by its sweat is paid out first; the settling payment goes through the till like any coin, with the brick's original sponsor and the vault. The price of the day rises with the tower, so settling early is cheaper than settling late.
This article is new to Babel; mnmnt has no equivalent. The holder of any brick but the Foundation stone may burn it for $BABEL. Burning pays out first whatever the brick has earned and not yet collected. It then removes the brick's coin weight and sweat weight from the tower's running totals, so remaining bricks divide future distributions according to their coin and sweat weights. A burned brick cannot win the lot: its tickets are removed from its round's draw.
The V4 pool charges its separate 0.3% liquidity-provider fee. The hook collects 3% on the USDC side of swaps for the dev wallet. Ordinary $BABEL transfers have no transfer tax.
$BABEL earned this way cannot move until $BABEL launches (Article VI); it sits still until then, like everyone else's.
Each public brick redeems for 40,000 $BABEL plus its outstanding USDC, before or after launch. The payout does not decay or depend on how the brick was minted. A completed round must be drawn before its bricks can burn. The Foundation cannot burn.
Each round keeps a pot: ten of every hundred paid in coin for its bricks, and whatever no class or sponsor could take. A lot is a random draw: when the round is complete, the pot is drawn by lot among the bricks of the round, once the L1 number of the closing has passed and anyone has pressed DRAW. A brick half in coin or better holds two tickets, a brick laid by work one. The pot goes to the winning brick's dues, whoever holds it then. The earlier rounds hold the smaller pots; the later rounds hold the larger ones.
Every brick is cast on the chain as its own picture: the round and place, the mark that laid it, how it was paid, who brought it in, the day. No server holds the picture; it is read straight from the chain.
Whether a resale carries a share back to the Builders and a transfer validator like mnmnt's.
The Builders have no office, no owner, and no purpose. They hold the Foundation stone and take fifteen of every hundred paid in coin, paid to their wallet at once. They cannot pause the works, change a share, take a brick, or touch the pots or the vault.
No wallet may lay more than ten bricks; bricks laid by work count toward this limit too. Only an ordinary wallet may lay a brick, never a contract.
The tower is complete when round twelve's last brick, No. 8,191, is laid. This is called Ascension. Round eleven's completion, at brick No. 4,095, is the earlier and more consequential moment: it is what unlocks the Liquidity Vault (Article VI), at roughly the halfway point.
What Ascension itself changes, beyond a final event and a mark on every card.
Nothing. A brick is a place in a tower to nobody in particular. What it earns depends on what others pay in coin after it, and nobody knows what they will pay. The Articles say so, the card says so, the contract does so. The bricks are counted.