Interviewed and Compiled by: Karen, Foresight News
Interviewee: Ctrl, Pandora
The ERC404 token standard is considered a paradigm innovation for NFTs. Today, Foresight News interviewed Pandora co-founder Ctrl, delving into specific questions about the reasons behind the name of ERC404, Pandora's economic model, plans, and the potential niche where ERC404 holds promise.
Are Pandora and ERC-404 the same team? How many people are on the team?
Yes, it’s the same team. Our team is growing every day, but the core team is 4 people including myself, Acme, and Searn. lots of programmers voluntarily joined us in building and refining our code.
What inspired the project? Are there any stories behind it?
It’s a funny story. Long story short, we got rugged by a project called Emerald that claimed to have similar functions and we lost a lot of money because we saw so much potential in the concept that we bought a ton. When we realized that the contract was incomplete and poorly implemented we tried to explain to the developer that it was a waste of potential, but he did not understand our vision and was unwilling to make things right. We didn’t want the ideas we had to go to waste, so we did it ourselves.
Why was the number 404 chosen for ERC-404?
404 is a common error message meaning “not found” in applications/websites. We thought it was a fitting name because the whole thing was so experimental and we knew it would confuse many protocols and dApps when we launched it because it has mixed ERC721 and ERC20 functions
For the team, would they prefer to define Pandora as an NFT or a token?
We look at the two as individual parts of a singular whole. So we call them SFTs. If you had to pick one, maybe I’d say NFTs. But technically they’re “semi-fungible tokens”.
What key problems can ERC-404 solve? What new possibilities can it bring to the NFT market or the entire crypto market?
There are so many, but the most obvious two are native liquidity and fractionalization for NFTs.
What other innovations can emerge from ERC-404?
there are too many to even list, but we see so many in gaming in particular. Ticketing is another niche where we see some amazing use cases.
Regarding the pain point of “solving NFT liquidity,” there have been attempts by fragmented protocols like NFTFi in the past, but they all failed. What is the cause of these failures? What differences does ERC-404 propose with its new solution?
People in crypto hate friction. We learned this when we realized how difficult it was to motivate people to even bridge to an L2 or a new chain. Every solution before ERC404 had too much friction and was usually a wrapping solution that abstracted the original NFT that people wanted to fractionalize or make liquid. Collectors hated this and it limited adoption significantly. ERC404s have these functions by default and don’t rely on confusing third-party protocols and solutions.
For NFT projects that have already experienced significant price declines, what help can the new protocol provide?
Honestly, the reality is that this is one of the challenges blockchain technology faces as a result of being so focused on immutability. New projects benefit from new technology and old ones often become stagnant or fade into obscurity because of inferior implementation. Realistically if we wrapped old ERC721 collections they would face the same issue we outlined above with adoption. We think the focus will be on new ERC404 projects for the foreseeable future and they will benefit the most from this innovation.
Could you provide a detailed explanation of Pandora’s transfer mechanism? If someone buys 0.1 Pandora tokens, how will the corresponding NFT be transferred?
If someone buys 0.1 token, no transfer occurs. If a wallet’s balance exceeds 1 token, an NFT will be minted to their wallet. If a token is transferred from another user’s wallet, an NFT will be transferred as well.
How did Pandora initially determine its price and distribution?
Pandora was initially priced at a floor of around $200 after the team seeded the liquidity pool.
What is Pandora’s detailed economic model?
There are 10,000 in total. Currently, only 7% has been allocated to the team and early contributors. The rest of the supply held by the team is mostly unallocated and can be used to seed additional liquidity to keep up with demand. We also anticipate that some will be provided to our market makers as well as exchanges interested in integrating with ERC404, many of which have already reached out.
In the early stages of launch, the Pandora team bought 5000 tokens from the market. How will they be distributed later?
We plan to use these to carefully limit the circulating supply to scale alongside adoption. This is another unique possibility that ERC404 enables. Usually, projects have to limit their supply on launch to ensure that they mint out if they don’t have a substantial following. This can’t be changed later on if they grow. With ERC404, teams can simply reserve tokens to scale alongside demand and grow from a 3000 supply collection all the way to a 10K and beyond.
In your opinion, how will ERC-404 evolve in the future?
I believe once we submit our formal EIP we will very quickly see ERC404 accepted as a genuine token standard that countless projects and protocols will build on top of for a plethora of use cases, both novel and utilitarian.
What goals do you want to achieve in the future? Can you share any planned initiatives?
The list is endless. We’re ambitious and excited, and we know opportunity when we see it. Right now our biggest goal is building dApps and tooling to support ERC404 on a protocol level, and using those products to drive value back to Pandora holders.
What opportunities are there for ordinary users?
Just like all technology, I think ordinary users can simply enjoy the benefits and improved UX that developers and creators can provide as a result of this new token standard. After all, liquidity and fractionalization benefit ordinary users more than anyone else in the ecosystem. It’s quite egalitarian.