Dialogue with Pandora Co-founder: The story originated from a devastating rug pull

Interviewee: Ctrl, Co-founder of Pandora

Interviewed and compiled by: Karen, Foresight News

The ERC404 token standard is considered a paradigm innovation for NFTs. In the article titled What Opportunities Lie Behind the Rise of Pandora and ERC404? published yesterday, we introduced the background, introduction, and potential opportunities of the highly anticipated Pandora and ERC404 standard this month.

Today, Foresight News interviewed Ctrl, co-founder of Pandora, to further discuss specific issues such as the reason for naming ERC404 as 404, Pandora's economic model, future plans, and the potential areas for ERC404.

Question: Is Pandora and ERC404 the same team, and how many people are on the team?

Pandora and ERC404 are the same team. Our team is growing every day, and the core team consists of myself, former Coinbase software engineer @0xacme, and a total of 4 people including Searn. Many programmers have also volunteered to join us to build and improve the code together. The ERC404 V1 code was independently completed by Acme, and the team is currently working on enhancements.

Question: What inspired you to start this project? Are there any behind-the-scenes stories you can share?

It's quite a dramatic story. In short, there was a previous project called Emerald that Rug pulled, claiming to have similar functionalities. We believed this concept had great potential, so we invested a lot of money, but the outcome was quite costly. After in-depth research, we gradually discovered that the project not only had numerous contract design flaws but also faced many implementation issues. We tried to explain our vision to the developer, hoping he could improve the project, but unfortunately, he failed to understand our expectations and did not take any remedial actions. We didn't want our ideas to go to waste, so we decided to implement them ourselves.

Question: Why is ERC404 named 404?

404 is a common error message indicating "not found" on an application or website. We think 404 is very appropriate because the entire project is quite experimental. ERC404 combines the functionalities of ERC721 and ERC20.

Question: Does the team prefer to define Pandora as an NFT or a Token?

We view these two parts as two independent components of a whole, referred to as SFTs. If you make me choose one, I might say NFT. But technically, they are "semi-fungible tokens."

Question: What key problems can ERC404 solve? What new imaginative space can it bring to the NFT market or the entire crypto market?

There are many, the most obvious being native liquidity and NFT fragmentation.

Question: What innovations and gameplay can ERC404 derive?

There are many use cases, but we particularly see potential in the gaming sector. Ticketing is also a field with significant potential.

Question: Regarding the so-called "solving NFT liquidity" pain point, some fragmentation protocols representing NFTFi have made many attempts but ended in failure. What are the root causes of these failures? How is ERC404's new solution qualitatively different?

At the root, these solutions often suffer from excessive friction and complexity, leading to a poor user experience. More critically, these solutions typically require wrapping the original NFTs, which naturally causes resentment among collectors, thus limiting the widespread adoption of these solutions. In contrast, ERC404 inherently possesses these functionalities without relying on confusing third-party protocols and solutions.

Question: What help can the new protocol provide for those NFT projects that have already declined significantly?

To be honest, the reality is that there is too much focus on immutability, which is one of the challenges facing blockchain technology. New projects benefit from new technologies, while old projects often stagnate or disappear due to insufficient implementation. From a practical perspective, if we wrap old ERC721 collections, they will face the same adoption issues we outlined above. We believe that for the foreseeable future, the focus will be on new ERC404 projects, which will benefit the most from this innovation.

Question: Can you elaborate on Pandora's burn mechanism? If someone buys 0.1 Pandora tokens, how will the corresponding NFT be burned or transferred?

If someone purchases 0.1 tokens, there will be no transfer. If the wallet balance exceeds 1 token, an NFT will be minted to their wallet. If tokens are transferred from another user's wallet, the NFT will also be transferred.

Question: What was the initial price of Pandora at launch?

After the team injected liquidity into the pool, the initial price of Pandora was approximately $200.

Question: What is the economic model of Pandora?

There are a total of 10,000, of which only 7% are allocated to the team and early contributors. The majority of the remaining supply held by the team has not yet been allocated and can be used to inject additional liquidity to meet demand. Some are expected to be provided to our market makers and exchanges interested in integrating ERC404, many of which have already contacted us.

LBank is the first CEX to list Pandora, launching it on February 6. Additionally, the Web3 wallet Bitget Wallet has also added support for ERC-404 token and NFT trading today, supporting swap transactions for ERC-404 tokens like PANDORA, K-line market viewing, and listing trades for Pandora and other ERC-404 NFT collections in the NFT market.

Question: The Pandora team bought 5,000 tokens from the market at the initial launch. How will they be distributed later?

We plan to cautiously limit the circulating supply to match the scale of adoption. This is another unique possibility brought by ERC404. Typically, project teams must limit their supply at launch to ensure that if they do not have a large community of users, they can mint everything. If subsequent growth occurs, the supply cannot be changed. With ERC404, the team can simply retain tokens to meet demand and expand, from a supply collection of 3,000 to 10,000 or even more.

Question: In your view, what will ERC404 evolve into after this?

I believe that once we submit the formal EIP, ERC404 will quickly be accepted by more projects and protocols, which will build upon it. These projects and protocols will be used for various novel and practical use cases.

Question: What goals do you want to achieve in the future? Can you share some planned items?

There are many plans, and we know how to seize opportunities. Our biggest goal right now is to build DApps and tools at the protocol level that support ERC404 and create value for Pandora holders through these products.

Question: What opportunities are there for ordinary users?

Like all technologies, I believe ordinary users can enjoy the benefits and improved user experience provided by developers and creators due to this new token standard. After all, the liquidity and fragmentation features alone can benefit ordinary users more, which is quite equitable.