Mad Lads At War!
Mad Lads At War!
A deep dive into the Mad Wars crypto trading competition being sponsored by Zeta Markets.
We sat down with 0xBlackfish, the big brain behind the Mad Wars trading competition, and chatted about everything you need to win.
First ever social trading competition
Insane prizes (Mad Lads, tickets to Breakpoint, and more!)
How to play and where to get started
Interview w/ 0xBlackfish and Zeta Markets
What is Mad Wars?
The Mad Wars is a crypto trading competition hosted by Zeta Markets where Mad Lads subcommunities battle each other for *perp*etual domination and eternal focking glory!
The Mad Wars is a first of its kind experience that combines the best of DeFi, NFTs, and wallet technology to create a social experience unlike any other.
In what might be the first ever social trading competition, it’s a bridge for DeFi and NFT communities. It’s a mission of collaboration, inclusivity, and the elimination of silos between communities on Solana and in web3.
What are the prizes?
Trading profits not withstanding, the Mad Wars is a multi-level competition with prize pools at every stage.
Mad Lads NFTs
Mad Lads will be swept from the floor using fees generated during the Wars
Breakpoint Tickets
Entry to Solana Breakpoint in October
Mad Merch
Official Mad Lads t-shirts and hoodies
1/1 Mad King Rug
an actual 4’ x 4’ rug delivered to your doorstep!
1/1 Mad Lads Subcommunity Rugs
an actual 2' x 2’ rug delivered to your doorstep!
Prizes will be awarded via a raffle system.
Team - Overall
The better your PnL, and that of your team, the more of a boost your volume (and thus your odds) will get.
All trading fees generated from the competition will be used to sweep the floor of the Mad Lads collection. These swept Mad Lads will then be raffled off to qualified participants of the team competition based on volume traded.
Team - Individual
Team rankings and prize earnings are based on PnL.
The best trader (e.g. the trade with the best PnL) on each qualified team will win a 1/1 rug (2'x2') of their team's sub-community logo.
Runner-ups on each team will win an Uncommon Mad Hoodie.
Global - Individual
Global rankings and prize earnings are based on PnL.
The best overall trade in the competition, regardless of team status, will win a rug (4'x4'), 1/1 replica, of the Mad King. This is the grand prize of the entire competition.
The ten best traders on the global leaderboard will receive tickets to for Breakpoint 2023 in Amsterdam.
How do I enlist?
The Mad Wars has been designed to offer paths to participation for both holders and non-holders alike. Mad Lads holders have a direct path to the contest. All holders will be dropped a Mad General WL token.
There are three ways to participate in the Mad Wars:
Mad General
WL token for Mad Lad holders, were airdropped to all Mad Lad holders on July 10th
Mad Recruit
WL token given to Mad Wars teams, these tokens are used to recruit non-holders onto teams
Mad Trainee
WL token opportunity for non-holders.
Join the Zeta Discord and make your case or complete the MAD TRAIL trading boot camp.
The Mad Recruit and Mad Trainee routes are available to non-holders. It's the only opportunity to get in on the team game and to have a window into what it would be like in a Mad Lads sub-community.
What is the Mad Trail boot camp?
The Mad Trail boot camp is designed to get trading newbies ready for battle.
If you’re gonna learn, you may as well earn.
Experienced traders can also benefit from the Mad Trail. Collect at least 100XP and you’re entered into the prize pools. There are two different types of ways to earn XP, achievement and progressive based.
You can also earn XP by completing trading courses and other learning modules.
Zeta's goal is crystal clear. They want to prove that you don't need be big-brain-bozo to make profitable trades. Anyone can long and short assets on the market with them.
Zeta Markets and the Mad Wars
Excerpts below come from an interview with the Mad Wars lead organizer, 0xBlackfish.
Why is Mad Wars launching as an xNFT?
There's a lot to say here, but put simply, there are certain things that Backpack and xNFTs uniquely enable that are simply not possible otherwise. The bundled tokenization of community *and* code were the largest draws for us initially.
For this first go round, we knew that the first step wasn't a direct port of the app into an xNFT - so the natural alternative was an xNFT that was app adjacent. Something that would allow us to explore the technology and use cases in order to further our understanding for deeper expansion in the future.
What do you think about the future of xNFTs?
I think we all agree that even for Mad Wars, we're not leveraging the potential of xNFTs to their fullest - so in a lot of ways this is an experiment for us to learn and see what works.
We took a lot of inspiration from the Mad Lads mint, particularly the game that was included as part of it. In an ode to that experience, we've included our own game in the Mad Mint.
We've tried our hardest to bundle as much of the social experience into the xNFT as possible - intending to use that as our social layer and then the DEX as our app layer. Little things like this are why, for me, it had to be an xNFT.
A little more alpha for readers who made it this far: we don't have any concrete plans at the moment, but we are exploring the potential of the soulbound feature and the kinds of interesting things we could do with it. Make of this what you will.
What does “social trading” mean?
For the longest time, DeFi and NFT communities have largely operated in separate circles, with a relatively small amount of overlap in the venn diagram. While the launch of NFTfi projects has started to erode the barriers, it's not happening fast enough!
Because of the "financialization of everything" that pervades web3, it is impossible to avoid coming into contact with some form of "DeFi" in just about every interaction on-chain, including NFTs.
It is therefore our belief, that the top experiences in web3 will combine the best that these two communities have to offer to create brand new experiences that are better than either one can offer in isolation.
In many ways, wallets are actually the bridge. For The Mad Wars, Backpack is the linchpin that pulls everything together for a seamless user experience.
Historically, trading has largely been a one player game. It is also our belief that based on the combination of the following parts mentioned above, we have entered a period of technological development that enables social investing experiences that are entirely novel.
Personally, I don't think anyone from web2 (WeBull, Robinhood, Public) has integrated a social component into their app that has really taken off.
The Mad Wars is a test of our thesis that web3, and NFTs specifically, provide a new wrinkle which has the potential to make social investing not just a side feature, but the main event.
It's like going to Vegas. If you head to the casino by yourself and win a $1K jackpot, you're just some degen who got lucky. Compare this to hitting the casino with 4 or 5 of your best friends and doing the same thing - what do you remember - the $1K you won or the fun you had with your friends during and after?
The only difference here it isn't only your 4 or 5 best friends - it's your entire FOCKING Mad Lad sub-community.
Who Is Zeta Markets?
Zeta a decentralized exchange, offering fully on-chain orderbook with perpetual swaps markets for BTC, ETH, SOL, ARB & APT. We're one of the OG protocols on Solana, and have survived FTX, the USDC depeg, and more - so we're not going anywhere!
Currently, key features include USDC margining (that means you use USDC collateral to back your trades!), isolated margin accounts (per asset), up to 10x leverage, and the ability to interact with the DEX via the UI or programmatically using our SDK / CPI programs.
A bit of alpha for readers of the Mad News - the featuring for isolated margin and 10x leverage may be about to change very soon - so keep your eyes peeled!
Beyond the specs, we're a group of longtime operators in the space. We're focused on building the most performant DEX that offers an ergonomic UX - in short a place where people want to trade. And as evidenced by The Mad Wars, we're dedicated to bringing users of all experience levels along with us.
Everyone can trade, given the right learning opportunities and by starting smol.
You’ve been leading the Mad Wars planning, how did you find yourself in this position?
I’m a data scientist and growth team member at Zeta Markets and have been in web3 since 2017. I spent a lot of my early days playing around with different DeFi applications and only recently discovered NFTs.
Fun fact - the first NFT I ever minted was the Orcanaut collection from Orca, minted at 0.6 sol, back when SOL was like $150 or something like that.
So how did I come to be involved with Mad Lads? Quick story - at the time I was working for Solend and saw that Backpack was launching. It had a ton of hype and I really loved the different approach that the Backpack team was taking to building the product. It was and still is novel.
Back then, it was impossible to snag a beta invite code. Fortunately for me, Rooter had an extra and was kind enough to gift it to me (thanks Rooter!). This was back in September of last year, back in blue ball only days, when it was a major WAO-fest in the Discord (still is!)
Fast forward to the Mad Lads mint - biggest no brainer maybe ever. I minted a General, flipped him for my Katana at 77 sol, and the rest is history.
I've slowly been accumulating more of the last couple of months and intend to continue to do so. I've of course been buying for value and what I like, but also to expand into different sub-communities.
And I'll say this - while price appreciation is nice (who doesn't like to make money?), the networking and community building part of the experience has been the most fun for me by quite a large margin.
I'm proud to say that the majority of The Mad Wars experience has been built by Mad Lad holders (including folks who don't work at Zeta). So in this sense - it truly is a community effort.