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Initial and Daily Supply Auctions
- How will the Metronome token sale take place?
- When did the Metronome initial supply auction start?
- Was there a pre-sale?
- Is there a whitelist for auction participation?
- What was the last price in the Initial Supply Auction?
- How do I participate in Metronome's Initial Auction and Daily Supply Lots?
- How does new Metronome enter the ecosystem?
- How soon did the daily auctions begin once the initial supply auction finished?
- Who gets the proceeds of the MET auctions?
- What prevents a large hash-power miner (or pool of miners) from dominating purchases?
Metronome (“Metronome” or “MET”) is a new cryptocurrency designed to bring institutional-class endurance to the cryptocurrency category through:
- Self-governance - Metronome is designed to function indefinitely without management by a particular group or individual, even its authors.
- Reliability - The system is architected for steady and predictable token supply via descending price auctions.
- Portability - With the ability to move between blockchains, the cryptocurrency is further protected from management issues and instability.
We expect that MET will act as a store of value that is decentralized across blockchains. Since MET will be capable of being exported and imported across chains, it will empower users to move MET for whatever reason they desire. Other cryptocurrencies cannot do this.
Cross-chain export and import of MET will provide the ability to migrate from one blockchain to another in the event of a failure.
MET also allows for subscriptions, or recurring payments on the blockchain that are automatic. This is something cryptocurrencies have struggled with, until now—MET users can schedule repeat payments easily.
Additionally, MET uses custom funcationality for enhanced security and transfer.
While many different communities and institutions will discover their own use for Metronome, it was designed for any scenario where reliability is a first-order variable for selecting a cryptocurrency.
Some possible use cases include, but are not limited to:
- Decentralized store of value across blockchains
- Advanced payment settlement:
- Mass Pay — allowing users to send tokens to multiple addresses with one action. While mass pay is a well-known and used feature on the Bitcoin network, it is lacking on the Ethereum network.
- Subscriptions — allowing users to set up recurring payments between themselves and other parties. Subscription is a payment feature unique to Metronome. Users can set up recurring payments between themselves and other parties by authorizing that party to take a certain amount of MET from a wallet on a recurring, periodic basis.
A unique Metronome payments feature is subscription. Users can set up recurring payments between themselves and other parties by authorizing that party to take a certain amount from a wallet on a weekly basis.
The owner's manual is available here.
There are phases, both of which employ the descending price auction ("DPA”) pricing mechanism:
- The Initial Supply Auction, serving as the official launch of Metronome, where 10,000,000 MET tokens will be issued and made available
- The Daily Supply Auction, The Daily Supply Auction, where new tokens are added to the auction ad infinitum, at the rate that is the greater of (i) 2,880 MET per day, or (ii) an annual rate equal to 2.0000% of the then-outstanding supply per year.
The Initial Supply Auction serves as the official launch of Metronome. 8,000,000 MET tokens (10 million, less the 20% one-time author retention) will be made available to the public with a descending price auction. The price per MET will begin at a maximum price of 2 ETH per MET and floor price of 0.0000033 ETH. As time progresses and MET remains available, the auction price will decline linearly until the auction ends or all MET are sold. Metronome employs DPAs to establish predictable and transparent pricing for the MET being issued by the contract.
June 18, 2018, at Midnight UTC.
No, the first time that anyone was able to purchase Metronome was during the Initial Supply Auction.
No, there is no whitelist.
The last MET in the Initial Supply Auction was sold for 0.0027815 ETH
To participate in Metronome’s Initial Supply Auction (and, every day thereafter, the Daily Supply Lots) you will need access to an ERC20-compatible Ethereum wallet where you hold the private keys and sufficient ETH to purchase MET. Do not use wallets provided by exchanges. Be sure to use enough gas when sending your ETH. If you do not use enough gas, your transaction will be rejected and you will have to send your ETH again.
Ethereum can be purchased from cryptocurrency exchanges. Again, make sure that once you purchase your ETH, you transfer it into an ERC20-compatible Ethereum wallet where you hold the private keys.
Once you have sufficient ETH in an ERC20-compatible Ethereum wallet, you may participate in the auction by sending the desired amount to:
0x9d9BcDd249E439AAaB545F59a33812E39A8e3072
You should receive your MET almost immediately following receipt of your ETH by the Metronome smart contracts, at the price of purchase. Metronome purchased during the Initial Supply Auction will become transferrable following the close of the Initial Supply Auction. Metronome purchased during the Daily Supply Lots will be transferable immediately following receipt.
Following the initial auction, MET is added to MET’s Daily Supply Lots (“DSL”) every 24 hours, at the rate that is the greater of (i) 2,880 MET per day, or (ii) an annual rate equal to 2.0000% of the then-outstanding supply per year. Newly-minted MET from the DSL enters the ecosystem via a DPA. All tokens in the DSL start at a maximum price set by the contract at the previous auction’s last price (the price of the last Metronome sold if the auction sells out, or the final price in a given auction should an auction lot still have supply) multiplied by two. In the event a DSL does not sell a single Metronome, the starting price of the following auction will be 1/100th of the last price a Metronome was purchased at a DSL auction. Every 60 seconds, the price of MET remaining in the DSL is reduced to 99% of its previous price. After some time, we expect the price of remaining tokens will become low enough for the DSL to sell out. The absolute floor price on any Daily Supply Lots auction is 1 Wei, to prevent the price from hitting zero-- which would make setting the following auction’s initial price impossible.
In the event that there are unsold MET at the end of the daily auction, those tokens will be held over and added to the next DSL. For example, if 1,000 MET went unsold, the next DSL would introduce the scheduled 2,880 MET plus the remaining 1,000 MET from the previous day.
We expect that the mintage rate for approximately the first 40 years will be 2,880 MET per day. After approximately 40 years, the mintage rate will increase as shown below.
| Time | Circulating MET (End of Year) | Mintage rate (End of Year) | Daily supply lot |
|---|---|---|---|
| T + 1 Year | 11,051,200 | 10.512% | 2,880 |
| T + 5 Years | 15,258,880 | 7.399% | 2,880 |
| T + 10 Years | 20,517,760 | 5.400% | 2,880 |
| T + 40 Years | 52,076,800 | 2.066% | 2,880 |
| T + 70 Years | 94,382,561 | 2.000% | 5,070 |
The first DSL took place the following midnight UTC after the close of the Initial Supply Auction.
100% of the proceeds of the Initial Supply Auction and 100% of the future Daily Supply Lots’ proceeds go to Metronome’s Autonomous Proceeds Provider (“APP”) contracts – the Proceeds and Autonomous Converter Contracts – to provide long term support for the community and help incubate Metronome in its first years. Metronome authors receive none of the proceeds from any auction.
Please see either of these helpful articles for more information.
Anyone can potentially soak up new supply, simply buying early and therefore paying more. That is how descending price auctions make the process predictable and the reason why we are using them.
Miners can potentially front-run a non-miner transaction—but they must also (a) pay more, otherwise their actions have no impact on the auction, and (b) win a block, which is unlikely unless they are extremely large pools.
Metronome is comprised of four fully-autonomous and cooperative smart contracts.
- Metronome Ledger ERC20
- This is the token’s smart contract ledger and dictates how the token behaves
- Custom functionality for enhanced decentralized transfer and security
- Auctions Contract
- This smart contract interacts with the ledger contract above and operates the descending price auctions
- Sets the rules for the initial supply auction and the daily supply lot
- Sends ETH from the Auctions Contract to the Proceeds Contract
- Autonomous Proceeds Provider (two contracts)
- Automatically provides supply between MET and ETH
- Comprised of two smart contracts
- Proceeds Contract
- Supports supply by holding 100% of the DSL and transferring 0.25% of the total accumulated balance to Autonomous Converter Contract every day
- Autonomous Converter Contract
- Allows users to sell their MET for ETH or ETH for MET
- Price determined by contents of contract at time of sale
- Proceeds Contract
Metronome will be initially issued on Ethereum with Ethereum Classic, Rootstock, and Qtum support expected to follow. As the community continues developing MET, it may be compatible with even more blockchains.
Q1, 2019 - You can read more in this recent update.
The smart contract has been audited by three independent consultants: Zeppelin Solutions, Coinspect, and Gustav Simonsson.
Though the Metronome code has been thoroughly audited by multiple independent parties, there are always some potential risks, as with any cryptocurrency. These potential risks include, among other risks:
- Chain dependence (e.g., chain mutability or chain denial of service): as the first cross-chain cryptocurrency, Metronome was built to help mitigate this issue.
- Immutable bugs: Though the code has been thoroughly audited by independent parties, there is always this possibility that a bug may be immutable or need to be worked around.
- Contract attacks: Two categories of contract attacks are: (1) technical, which exploit some attribute of the contract's bytecode-defined EVM behavior and (2) economic, where attacks induce unintended behavior from the contract functioning as designed.
We looked at the current landscape of distributed blockchain-based financial products and saw a novel opportunity to launch a cryptocurrency with equal public access and the need for a cross-chain solution. Metronome is a self-governed cryptocurrency that we believe is reliable, equally accessible to the public, and immune to community discord or individual drama.
We believe the cryptocurrency is stable, predictable, and constant. Our innovation needed a name that carried the same weight as its performance. The enduring beat of tokens being added to the ecosystem per day is unending and reliable, like a musical metronome keeping time.
Metronome’s authors will receive 20% of the initial MET supply as a one-time author’s retention. 25% of this will be available upon the closing of the initial supply auction. The remaining 75% is released quarterly over 12 quarters.
100% of ETH proceeds from the auction will remain in the Metronome ecosystem. Metronome authors can buy and sell their own MET at their discretion. Following the launch of the initial auction, the Metronome ecosystem is entirely in the hands of the smart contracts and the community.
No. Metronome will be governed by its smart contracts and users. Metronome authors plan on remaining active within the community of users and developers by continuing to grow the ecosystem with MET-enabled and compatible products. However, after its launch, authors will have no more control over MET than any other member of the MET community.
Yes, you can find download links for the iOS and Android versions of the wallet at https://metronome.io/apps/
This error usually happens when a user tries to send more funds than are in the wallet - likely because the balance-to-be-sent did not include enough room for transaction fees. The recommended solution is to try the transaction again by sending a lower balance to provide enough room for transaction fees.
The amount of gas required to successfully transact on the Ethereum network (with either MET or ETH) can vary based on the network’s load relative to its capacity. Tools like https://ethgasstation.info/ can be helpful in determining the amount of gas necessary.
We recommend you refresh/rescan the wallet, and your cryptocurrency balances should be updated. This can be done by entering the wallet, clicking “tools” in the lower left corner and using the “rescan transactions” tool. And as always, have the wallet seed phrase safe and on-hand when rescanning.
Note that it is possible the transaction failed, so please search the transaction hash on Etherscan. In event of a transaction failure/return of ETH or MET, this means the user has only lost gas.
A Metronome chainhop is a movement of the same 1 MET from one network to another network. Metronome only manages a single currency, sending the same token across multiple chains – and back. Others are a token swap network managing many coins, never sending the same tokens back and forth.
See the team’s article for more information on how Metronome is different than other interoperability solutions.
A Validator is off-chain software running on distributed nodes, maintained by a publicly known entity, which exists in order to propagate an event from one blockchain to another. Validators are responsible for observing a blockchain for events, validating cross chain movements (as described below), and voting on the validity of that event. Initially, there are 5 validators but eventually we will allow any trusted entity to run a validator in order to encourage a more decentralized MET token movement process – more may be added in the future. The need for validators fades in subsequent phases.
The initial phase 1 Metronome validators are:
- ETC Labs
- The QTUM Team
- Bloq, Inc.
- Veriblock
- Spacechain
In order to ensure security and usability of Metronome’s cross-chain features, there will be three phases of cross chain rollout. Each subsequent phase will further decentralize the process for completing cross-chain moves.
Phase 1 - Federated Network of Validators
In phase 1 a federated network of validators operates in a multi-signature, multi-party approach to validate that import/export movements follow the Metronome protocol. MET owners may export at any time.
In the event of a chain fork, the quorum of validators will choose which side of a fork supports Metronome.
Phase 2 - Chain Attestors and stake weighting
Phase 2 seeks to decentralize and rely less on validators. For each blockchain, Metronome will look to chain oracles that provide a very specific piece of data: What is the correct chain for a particular currency?
The goal is to automate the choosing of hard fork sides, automatically ingesting and following the community choice for each blockchain.
Finally, as a global check on contentious events via minority chains and attack-style hard forks, the percentage of total Metronome tokens on a particular chain shall have that level of percentage global weight, in the event of a discrepancy in the Metronome consensus protocol between two versions of the MET global supply timeline.
Phase 3 - Fully autonomous, stake-weighted cross chain transfers
Phase 3 of cross-chain validation provides a fully decentralized end state. The model mirrors that of the original Bitcoin blockchain, a full consensus protocol. This model includes
- A node. In MET Phase 3, each lily pad may be considered like a single Bitcoin node.
- A blockchain. In MET Phase 3, each lily pad maintains its own independent copy of the history of all MET cross-chain transfers.
- A movement. In MET Phase 3, each user-generated import may be considered like a single unconfirmed Bitcoin movement. An import is considered confirmed after 24 blocks (24 hours).
- A block. In MET phase 3, a block may be generated once per hour, on a stake-weighted basis (total stake weight of entire lily pad). This block is shared by users desiring imports to each lily pad.
- Consensus protocol is Bitcoin design, with proof-of-stake modification. We call this APS, Autonomous Proof of Stake, because it is different from both POS and DPOS. In MET phase 3, each lily pad is a stake-weighted autonomous actor.
This is possibly the first cross-blockchain blockchain. Each lily pad -- each set of smart contracts -- uses a Bitcoin-style consensus protocol, with Proof-of-Stake modification to determine the outcome of hard forks. This consensus protocol automatically chooses one side of a hard fork over another.
See the Validator Document for more information on the Validator phases.
MET owners who wish to move their MET across chains will need:
- MET
- The native token of the export chain (think ETH, ETC, so forth) in order to pay gas
- The native token of the import chain (think ETH, ETC, so forth) in order to pay gas
- Small amount of MET as a fee (0.5% of total transferred) to go to validators.
- The Metronome wallet or knowledge of how to use a wallet via CLI for necessary
TokenPorterAPI calls.
The 24 hour confirmation is to defend against chain reorganization and 51% attacks. The team is designing a solution to auto adjust based on current hashing power of the network – the lower the hashing power, the higher confirmation requirement. Because a chainhop involves multiple networks, one must consider hashpower of both networks to avoid double spending during a chainhop. Our security auditors suggested this mechanism (especially in light of recent reorganization attacks). For phase 3, there will be certain block confirmation for validations but it may be less than this.
If a chainhop does not confirm in the first 24 hours, a “retry” in the wallet may be required. Sometimes network activity can jar a node out of sync, extending the expected confirmation time of chainhops. This is not expected to be a regular issue, especially as the validator network matures.