Bulletin Board: June 30th
Bulletin Board: June 30th
Edition #15
A Month in the Joe-verse…
We've all heard the adage before — Rome wasn't built in a day.
The crypto space is no different.
Our industry is full of builders working to create new and impactful projects, and with that undertaking, there inevitably comes growing pains. This past month has been chock full of them within the broader crypto ecosystem. We here at Trader Joe feel that pain alongside our community, but we can assure you that growing pains signal only one thing for us here — growth.
Ever since the launch of Trader Joe, we have done exclusively that. In a time when many projects are beginning to scale down, we’ve done the opposite. We’re scaling up. Our team is growing and in turn we’ve gotten smarter, stronger, and more focused. We're keeping our heads down and grinding to build the absolute best DEX and NFT marketplace experiences this space has to offer. Regardless of market conditions, we will continue evolving to remain a central piece of the Avalanche ecosystem. Keep your heads up frens.
"Rome" will be a beautiful place when its all said and done…
June has been a super busy month behind-the-scenes for the Joe team. Let’s take a look at what we’ve been up to.
The Joepegs Ribbon Cutting is here…
Farewell. So long. Sayonara. Adios. Auf Wiedersehen. 👋
You can say it however you’d like, but the time has finally come to say goodbye to the Joepegs beta. The grand opening has arrived. The ribbon has been cut.
So come on in and join us in exploring the Avalanche NFT ecosystem here at Joepegs.
So what’s new?
Throughout the last month we’ve been rolling out new features, upgrades, and developments to begin leveling up our marketplace.
AVAX/WAVAX Functionality — Simplifying the purchasing experience, we now allow users to buy NFT’s in either AVAX, WAVAX or a combination of both + Easy 2-click wrapping/unwrapping for your AVAX (Buy + Wrap) 🔺
Verification Frenzy — Highlighting NFT projects that are exceling on AVAX, we’ve already verified 50+ collections since our launch. Shopping for your NFT’s will feel a bit more trustworthy with the shiny “Blue Checkmark” next to the projects who have already proven themselves ☑️
Launching the Launchpad — Bringing new projects to Avalanche is a necessity for growing the ecosystem, so we’ve built a launchpad to streamline this process. Just wait till you hear about the Person who launched with us first 😉
Chainlink VRF — Implementing a completely fair playing field to the minting process, we added Chainlink’s “Verifiable Random Function” to ensure that everyone can enjoy the thrill of minting without having to worry about insider’s playing the system🎲
Artist Spotlights — Showcasing the many talented artists who have chosen Avalanche as their home, we’ve launched both long-form and twitter spotlights to help promote and connect artists with the community 🎨
However, the final stone in the Joepegs infinity gauntlet was the elusive ~custom indexer~. This is what truly transforms our marketplace into the “absolute unit” it is.
So let me explain. An indexer is basically the nosy neighbor of the blockchain. If anything happens, it NEEDS to know about it. In the case of an NFT marketplace, this is an essential part of the building blocks because they know the who, what, where, and when information about all NFT’s (ERC-721 & ERC-1155) on the blockchain. The transfers, the sales, the image data — everything.
Most NFT marketplaces use Graph Protocol as their indexer (including us during beta). However, if thousands of people are all asking the same nosy neighbor for information, that becomes a painfully slow process.
So we decided to build our own. This custom indexer is built specifically for our needs. We have full control and are able to scale it as we need. What that means for you — gloriously fast loading speeds and a wide range of new features such as…
Search collections (by name/symbol/address) and items(by name/token id)
Filter items by attributes and see attribute counts
Ranking by volume across all collections (including non-verified)
Seeing and filtering activity (bids/listings/sales/transfers/mints)
See offers received for your NFTs grouped by item
Support .avax domains
Item rarity, sales Bot, batch listings, and floor price change tracker (Soon…)
For all of you who have been patiently waiting for the arrival of the Joepegs search bar, I promise you we just delivered the most high-tech search bar on any blockchain. As an added bonus, we shipped this indexer in ~8 weeks, which is a rapid delivery time for such a critical and complex piece of infrastructure.
Launchpegs…
If you didn’t catch the reference earlier about who the first “person” to first launch on our platform was… well, it was The Person.
And it launched with a bang. Minting out all 4000 pieces in the first day, this collection just goes to prove that there is an appetite for quality NFT projects on Avalanche. So what makes this project so special? Well to quote myself…
TLDR: This 4000 piece PFP collection features the big-eared, long-nosed character of “The Person”. A completely ambiguous and flexible being. No age. No gender. No race. Embodying the behaviors and emotions of the people it observes, this character finds the flawed aspects within society and makes humor of it. Created by the renowned Turkish artist Cem Guventurk, the brilliance of this collection is that it not only finds forms to represent each of us as individuals, it also finds a way to represent us all as a whole.
Cem Guventurk truly poured his heart and soul into this project, so we’re very proud to be able to help him and his team succeed. They deserve it. If you want a more in-depth dive into the details, check out our long-form spotlight piece about it here.
Those of you who participated in the mint can likely attest to the simplicity and smoothness of the Joepegs minting experience.
The devs do be spoiling us with the quality UX.
…but if you missed the chance to try out this silky-smooth mint experience on The Person (or on that Smol Joe free mint that’s been dominating your twitter feed😉), don’t worry. We’ve got more projects launching soon. Like tomorrow soon.
Owloper is building a GameFi NFT ecosystem based around the $OWL token. With upgradeable NFT’s and daily rewards, the Owloper collection is pairing utility with art.
Minting begins tomorrow, July 1st. We’ll see you night owls there.
Be on the lookout for more details on our next launch partner Chad Doge.
Wen mint? July 8th.
Mash up Mondays
Let’s get a dialogue flowing. Join us every Monday to chat with artists, NFT enthusiasts, and AVAX lovers about all the happenings in the space. You’ll get to enjoy some unstructured, truly authentic conversations between community members, artists, and our team… you might even hear some alpha if you’re lucky. Keep your eyes peeled on twitter for these new weekly spaces. Feel free to listen to the replays of this month’s spaces below.
Mash Up Monday - Ep 3 (Smol Joe + Free Mint Alpha🤫)
NFT NYC Recap
Not everyone got the chance to drop everything and fly out to New York City’s NFT conference, but the Joepegs team is wayyyyyy too NFT obsessed to not go and explore.
If we had to summarize the experience in one phrase — Avalanche is underrated. Even with this ecosystem consistently proving that it has the best community around, the NFT space hasn’t found its footing in the industry-wide conversations. So we’ve got some work to do.
So our trip turned into a scouting mission of sorts, and we went on the search for insights into how this space could be improved. One key takeaway — the onboarding process needs to be improved on both the artist side and the user side.
How can we do that? By putting the spotlight on the art. New users understand art much easier than the complicated economies around NFT’s + Artist want to launch their projects in a way which it feels like their own. Less focus on the marketplace and more focus on the artist.
We hear you loud and clear.
Wen JOE V2?
Time to address the elephant in the room. Are we finally releasing more info about the next iteration of Joe? … Soon, you will learn all the details of how we’re building a novel protocol for structuring liquidity on a decentralized exchange. This will be the biggest DeFi innovation for AMMs to have ever arisen from outside of the Ethereum ecosystem…
We’re taking the Alfred Hitchcock approach and building the suspense for a little while longer.
Trust us. It will be worth the wait.
Put Your $JOE Tokens to Work
The $JOE token is one of the most widely held and utility-rich tokens on Avalanche.
veJOE Staking: Boost your Yield Farming returns by accruing veJOE.
rJOE Staking: Access exclusive New Token Launches, grow your rJOE bag to use when ‘launch season’ returns.
sJOE Staking: Earn $USDC rewards generated from sustainable revenue accrued from Trading Fees on the platform
You can also put your JOE Tokens to work with our Partners:
Zap your $JOE into a derivative option from our partners and stake that to enjoy varying rewards
Yield Yak: Get ~50% APR paid out in JOE Tokens
Vector: Get ~80% APR paid out in VTX + JOE Tokens
Steakhut: Get ~50% APR paid out in STEAK Tokens
Beefy: Get ~20% APR paid out in JOE Tokens
If you’re part of the Joe family, we’ve got something here for everyone. I hope you have as much fun with your rewards as sJOE and his friends are having at the playground.
A new bombshell has entered the Joe-villa…
If our Avalanche Aphrodisiac posts didn’t get you going, this news surely will. We’d like to welcome Bitcoin as the next islander here on Joe Island. At the first coupling we saw Bitcoin and AVAX pair up in stunning fashion. Those two lovebirds will definitely be fan favorites ;)
If you don’t watch Love Island, here’s the translation: Native bitcoin can now be bridged to Avalanche using the recently launched Core App Wallet. Once bridged you can then get to yield farming by pairing your $AVAX with your newly bridged $BTC.b and depositing in our Trader Joe farm. Check out our partner protocols at Vector, Yield Yak, and SteakHut to potentially earn boosted yields.
$AVAX - $BTC.b Farming options
Safety first…
I’m well aware that this section might get ignored about as hard as the flight attendants who give pre-flight safety instructions to rows of people with Airpods in….but it is a reality that the crypto space has its dangers. You’re very likely to run into one of these scams at some point, so it’s always good to take a minute and get a refresher on how to avoid some of the biggest malicious traps in crypto.
Let them eat cake!!
The big day is almost here. Trader Joe is about to have its very first birthday! We can’t thank the community enough to helping us get here. We’ve accomplished so much already, but this first birthday really puts it into perspective — this is just the beginning. We have so much to look forward to, but for now, we’re just excited to celebrate this achievement with all of our wonderful community members.
Stay tuned for the Birthday announcements!
Community Art Contest 🥳
You didn’t think we would have a birthday without throwing a party did you? This month we are celebrating Joe turning 1 with a 1/1 community art contest! The theme — “Carnival”.
As always the theme is an open brief, meaning your creation can be whatever your heart desires (as long as its a jpeg/png/gif).
Trader Joe has always been about community and we never would’ve got off the farm without the support of our incredible Avalanche fam. For this reason, if you choose to do a Joe themed piece, we ask that you focus on the community as a whole, rather than the beeg man himself.
Submissions are open for 1 week (from the 4th), closing on the 11th.
Let your imaginations run wild!
• • •
Content is King.
Trader Joe was born and raised in the meme culture. It’s how we built our community. It’s how we built our brand. This type of content is how we rallied all the way from being a small underdog project on Avalanche to the top-tier project we are today.
However, we aren’t stopping here. With our aspirations set as high as they are now, it’s time to step up every aspect of our game. We want the reach of the Trader Joe voice to stretch across the entire crypto space.
To become this respected voice in the space, we’ve decided to start putting out content that matches the quality of the rest of our operations.
This month marks the launch of our creatives team that will be headlining this effort. You can expect everything from high-level research insights to never-before-seen entertainment. You’re not gonna want to miss out on this one 😏
Top-tier DEX. Top-tier NFT marketplace. Top-tier Content.
It’s the Joe way.
Check out the content from our first month here:
Trader Joe
Joepegs
Research
NFT Collection Spotlights
For Fun
Protocol + Avalanche News
Interesting Threads
Joe Earning>Joe Emissions — Sindermann
Diamond Hand Joe Holders — Sindermann
The Joepegs Indexer — Cryptofish
NFT NYC Takeaways — Joe
Concentrated Liquidity Explained — Joe
How to Bridge Bitcoin to Avalanche and Farm it (Part 1 + Part 2) — Joe Intern
About Trader Joe
Trader Joe is a one-stop-shop decentralized trading platform native to the Avalanche blockchain. Trader Joe builds on the frontier of Decentralized Finance, providing users with an innovative and unique trading experience that is seamless, accessible and empowering.
Twitter | Discord | YouTube | NFTS
About Joepegs
Joepegs is the trusted NFT Marketplace on Avalanche. A home built for creators and collectors from all walks of life, to serve as the cultural hub for premium digital assets. Discover and interact with digital art and culture at Joepegs.