March 25  2024 · Block Height 836200 · Bitcoin Price $68K

Happy Monday!

We’ve cracked the code for “GOB” — the hottest Game on Bitcoin. Read on to see how it works & what the optimal game move is, plus mining news and podcasts!

Quick Hits

• Someone just spent an 11 year old P2PK coinbase output, now worth $3.3 million (was originally $537).

• Bitcoin Ordinals Nodemonkes collection flips Bored Ape Yacht Club by total Market Cap.

• Luxor publishes 2024 Halving predictions & Implications.

• StratumV2 releases SRI 1.0.0.

• Old model Bitcoin miners are headed to Africa, per Bloomberg.

Chart of the Week

The “Game of Blocks”

A few days ago yet another Ordinals airdrop appeared in thousands of wallets, but this time it wasn’t clearly indicated as a Runes airdrop…. it is an on-chain game.

The game was created by an anonymous user(s) who provided some communication through their twitter account. Alternatively, users can also just reference the parent inscription for the collection to find the information they need. Let’s play!

What is it? There are 88,888 “GOB” inscriptions (similar to above) airdropped across the Ordinals ecosystem. Your goal is to use these GOB inscriptions to acquire the most “MIME”. There are 3 phases to the game and the rules for Phases 1 & 2 are out explaining how to acquire MIME.

The Mechanics: Every 144 blocks (a “cycle”), the blocks depicted on the GOB inscription may double. You can prevent your GOB from doubling by reinscribing it with some text, but when you reinscribe it you risk your GOB dying.

The game has three total phases with 9 cycles each. At the end of each cycle, the number of GOBs in your inscription double unless you reinscribed it. The more GOBs you have the lower tier you are in. MIME awarded by tier declines with each cycle. The probability of survival + the MIME awarded is published in the schedule below:

So, what’s the right move in Phase 1 (given a single GOB)? Many degens will tell you the right move and maximum expected value is to YOLO immediately, with a 99% chance you will die in Cycle 1. However, if our goal is to maximize the actual MIME yield and consider the alternative that we walk away with nothing at all, we can come up with some simple risk/reward logic.

I reached out to some of the smart people I know, Sarah & Ben, to help me think through GOB. We wanted to find what the Expected Value of MIME would be by risking vs the alternative of waiting one more round and then freezing. The decision matrix then looks like this:

It appears that the best move is to do nothing for now and wait until Cycle 7 when the Max Next Round is lower than expected value risk. Additionally, there is even more incentive to prioritize surviving Phase 1 so you can play Phase 2 (the rules of the game are unclear at this time whether your dead GOB from Phase 1 resurrects for Phase 2).

While this is probably the best strategy if you have a single GOB, someone with multiple GOBs might want to play the GOB lottery and risk a few right out the gate in Phase 1.

Keeping it simple: The next phase allows players to combine or “merge” GOBs to rank them up a Tier. Also, no doubt these GOBS will fetch a price on secondary market. There could theoretically be some sophisticated strategies arbitraging secondary market pricing of GOBs. It remains to be seen how much interest this game will generate!

Links we liked

Article: How Bitcoin Mining Has Changed Since the Last Halving

Tweet: Did you know Bitcoins were originally 1 million units?

Tweet: Ordinals Enjoyers explain the Mempool

Blog: Ordinals are a Fiat Scam

Blog: Crypto’s Broken Moral Compass

Blockspace Podcasts

🎙️The How & Why of AMMs with Alex Nezlobin

(YouTube) Mechanism this, mechanism that. Why does crypto infrastructure even matter? Gwart discusses with Alex Nezlobin!

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