White Rabbit White Paper V2

What we learned and what we're changing

It’s been 6 months since our white paper V1 and the launch of 2 chapters and Azuki casting for chapter 3. Being one of the first if not the first in the space to experiment with decentralized storytelling with high quality content, there were a lot of learnings and amazing feedback from the community we’d love to share our thoughts on!

This writing aims to reflect upon the past 6 months and chart the course for what’s next with a focus on our tokenomics.

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Quick refresher on our tokenomics before we dive deeper

We currently have 2 token types: Producer Passes and $WRAB:

Producer Passes are ERC1155 NFTs people can mint and use to vote at the end of every chapter. Here were the options in chapter 1 + 2.

White Rabbit Token ($WRAB) are ERC20 tokens that users earn as they vote that represents fractional ownership of the final film NFT when completed.

• The earlier you vote the more you get.

• You also get a small winning bonus as you un-stake if you picked the winning option.

Credits shown in the end of the film and our leaderboard demonstrates who our top producers / owners are based on wallet holdings of $WRAB

What worked well

• people loved voting, 86% of people staked their producer pass to vote immediately after minting

• The early staking bonus incentivized people to vote early

• People liked talking about what they voted for

• People loved the art and quality of animation

What we learned

• Staking and un-staking is gas intensive and easy to forget.

• People will vote on which side is winning to optimize for the winning bonus.

• Utility of producer passes after voting is unclear.

• Price volatility on producer passes is confusing for new comers who don’t understand the voting mechanisms

• What does holding $WRAB in our wallets do?

• What do users do between chapter productions?

User feedback

We conducted a user research survey and 1 on 1 power user interview sessions to learn about the pain points of our users and validate our learnings. Thank you all who participated! In summary, people seek clarity and care about fractional ownership of IP for $WRAB and the ability to vote with producer passes. A biggest project pain point is the long wait time between chapters - our users want to see more BTS between chapters, more added utility for producer passes, and appreciate the community in Discord becoming more engaging lately.

What we are changing

Starting from the basics and first principles on tokenomics. What’s the goal of the project and what does it mean for users who hold our tokens? What value do we intend to deliver to our users and how do each tokens deliver that? We want to give users clarity on these going forward.

The goal of the project is to build a platform to support IPs who want to let their users directly fund, vote to decide outcome, engage in the creative process, interact with the community, and become owners of the content. Let’s break down how our tokens can best perform these jobs going forward:

• $WRAB represents ownership of the final NFT and governance of the IP, think of it as a White Rabbit DAO token that governs the White Rabbit IP.

• Producer Passes represents participation in the form of voting/staking. This is your ticket to participate in creative decisions and voting by staking.

Why are we changing it

Users first bought producer passes in order to stake and vote on the direction for the next chapter. For consistency, all creative decisions should be driven by holders with staked producer pass. We will be moving creative voting power to users with staked producer passes, rather than $WRAB.

This also means we will be removing the winning bonus that incentives un-staking. We noticed people tend to vote for the side already winning to optimize for winning bonus, we want to remove economics from the creative decision to let users vote for what they truly like and not what earns them more tokens.

This also solves for the troublesome logistics and economics of staking your producer passes after minting to vote, but forgetting to un-stake to earn winning bonus, and after un-staking, not really knowing what to do with it. Users can simply keep their producer passes staked and continue voting and deciding the outcome of the film. (More staked, more votes)

The long term goal of Shibuya is to become a decentralized platform of different IP creation and governance of DAOs, something previously not possible in web2. The $WRAB token will be focused on being utilized as the White Rabbit DAO token and ownership and governance of the White Rabbit DAO, which governs the IP and all matters related to White Rabbit series. $WRAB also grants access to “producer” and “executive producer” only channels in discord for behind the scenes artwork and conversations with other producers and the team. A distinction to make between voting on DAO/IP matters with $WRAB, and voting on creative decisions with staked producer passes. For example, future licensing or economical decisions made for the IP will be voted on by $WRAB. Creative decisions such as NFT casting and character naming will be voted on by staked producer passes. In retrospect, the Azuki casting vote would have been done with staked producer passes rather than $WRAB under this new framework.

Currently, the only way to earn $WRAB is via minting producer passes and voting on the film. In the future, we want to come up with more creative ways for fans to earn $WRAB and introduce more utility and features enabled by staking or burning your producer passes. Here’s an example of something we announced in the beginning that collecting all 7 passes will perhaps someday be useful.

We will also be introducing more activities within our discord for our producers to be more involved with the creative process in between chapters such as the Azuki collab on NFT casting with 250 NFTs casted and voted on by our producer and Azuki communities. Join the conversation here!

Conclusion

Producer passes are for art. $WRAB is for IP governance.

Producer Passes - keep staked for creative voting power, burn to redeem items or NFTs in the future.

WRAB - hold in wallet to be a producer, part of White Rabbit DAO owning the IP and make decisions on the future of the film along with the team.

These changes might not seem like a ton, but gives us a clear direction and clarity going forward not only as a team but as a community alongside our holders. Hopefully this addresses some of the pain points we observed and improves the experience going forward. We’re open to more improvements and would love any feedback from the community on this plan! For existing holders, there is nothing you need to do based on the changes, more to be announced in the near future :)

Thank you Scott, Alex, Giff, Emily, Maciej, Alex, Cassini for reviewing this draft and providing feedback