Fight Over Fees?

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	Crypto $2.38T	↗ 3.0%	↗ 7.5%
	BTC $69,222	↗ 5.2%	↗ 6.7%
	ETH $2,045	↗ 5.6%	↗ 9.7%

I've noted before that Flaunch is my favorite coin launcher platform – it sports unique offerings, like creator fees paid entirely in ETH and revenue streams that are transferable as NFTs.

That's why Takeover, a new project that builds on these Flaunch pillars, recently caught my eye.

Is it DeFi? Is it an onchain game? The reality is it's a blend of both.

Essentially, Takeover is a gamified open market for trading fees, recently launched on Base.

Every coin launched here gets a 100-tile grid, and each tile represents a 1% claim on all trading fees that coin generates, paid in ETH. Claim a tile and you'll earn a cut of every trade in perpetuity ... unless someone else takes it from you.

All Tiles = Always Up for Grabs

Takeover uses a Harberger tax model, an economic mechanism designed to keep assets in continuous circulation.

In other words, every tile holder must publicly set a price for their tile. Then anyone can buy it out at that price at any time, instantly, with no negotiation.

To hold onto a tile, you put down a USDC deposit and against that pay a weekly tax (the default is 5%) based on your self-determined price. The tax payments flow to the Boardroom to fund automatic buybacks of the $TAKEOVER token. More grids, more tax, more buybacks, etc.

If your deposit runs to zero before you top it up or exit, your tile is forfeited and becomes claimable again as an empty space on the grid.

The Strategic Dimension

The main challenge here is pricing properly.

Of course, every Takeover tile has a fundamental value that can be calculated from the fees its parent coin is generating.

For instance, at the default 5% weekly tax rate, a tile earning $10 in weekly fees has an equilibrium price around $200, i.e. the point where your tax cost and your income break even.

Price too high above this equilibrium and your carry costs will stack up, or price too low and basically guarantee that your tile will be claimed by someone else.

Straightforward enough, right? The catch is that this equilibrium point constantly shifts per the rises and falls in a parent coin's trading volume. Dying coins will be expensive to hold, while runners' tiles will become worth fighting over.

Finding the right balance means having a view on where a coin's volume is heading, and then repricing your tile(s) or withdrawing your deposit(s) accordingly.

How to Try for Yourself

You can launch your own grid on Takeover by creating a new coin or importing an existing token, though most newcomers should consider buying into a grid to learn the ropes first.

Let's use the $FLNCHY grid, for Flaunch's mascot token, as an example.

Flaunch routes 80% of $FLNCHY's trading fees into this grid, so it's an interesting early experiment to check out. Assuming you're already on the page with USDC ready in a connected wallet, you would:

1) Browse the 100-tile grid
There are no empty tiles in the $FLNCHY grid currently, so you'll have to find a tile that has a listing price that you're willing to pay. At the time of writing, the floor price, or the cheapest listing, was for 68 USDC.

2) Select a tile and your buy details
The buy interface will show the tile's buyout cost, average weekly earnings, etc. Input your new listing price (the UI offers quick multipliers, or set your own), then choose your deposit duration. Your total cost = the buyout price + an initial deposit (for the Harberger tax). Next just confirm the buy with your wallet, and you'll be in.

3) Hold, earn, and adjust
Once you hold a tile here you would start earning 1% of all $FLNCHY trading fees in ETH, distributed in real time. Now you'd just have to monitor your position. If $FLNCHY trading volume picks up, your tile will become more valuable and more of a target, so remember to check and adjust your listing prices defensively as needed.

Zooming Out

It's cool to see new kinds of onchain projects being built on compelling infra like Flaunch. In time, AI agents will start competing on Takeover, too, so the platform is poised to blossom into a larger economic experiment.

If nothing else, it's one of the first live tests of Harberger taxation in a context where the underlying asset has a calculable yield, which means mispricing has real, immediate consequences. It's novel in that way, so keep it on your radar.

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