Onchain Luck of the Draw

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• 📡 Zora Goes Live. The onchain social heavyweight opened its new real-time streaming feature to all users, letting creators broadcast and connect live with their communities.
• 🍧 Doopies Mint Is Open. Doodles’ long-awaited 25k companion collection has launched its public mint on Magic Eden, introducing +50 species, evolving traits, and dozens of hidden 1/1s on Solana.
• 🐀 Moving Castles Launches Rat.Fun. Buy a rat, buzz it up, send it tripping for AI-generated loot, then cash out before it passes out in this new post-brainrot onchain game on Base.

These days, there's plenty of places to do serious financial stuff onchain, like perps exchanges, prediction markets, DeFAI yield opps, etc.

But sometimes you just want to try your luck and have some light fun. If that's your vibe right now, I'd check out two of the newer offerings from multichain NFT marketplace Magic Eden: Packs and Lucky Buy.

🎴 Let 'em rip

Back in September, I wrote about the top tokenized Pokémon card platforms. Since then, Magic Eden joined this arena by integrating with Collector Crypt, allowing its users to open, trade, and redeem Pokémon cards directly on its marketplace.

Here, you can currently choose from a base Sapphire pack (50 USDC) or a premium Emerald pack (250 USDC). You're most likely to pull cards in the $30-$60 or $150-$250 range respectively, but you could pull cards as valuable as $2k or $10k depending on the pack.

After a purchase, a pack graphic will appear that you can click to rip open. Magic Eden will then show you the card you pulled and how much it's worth.

If you don't like the card, press the "Take Payout" button to instantly sell your card back to Magic Eden for 85% (Sapphire) or 90% (Emerald) of its market value. This guaranteed sellback option is only available for the first 72 hours after your buy, though. Alternatively, hold the card on Magic Eden and list it there later or choose "Redeem" to process having the physical version shipped to you.

Yet there's not just Pokémon cards to choose from here, either. Magic Eden has taken this same packs approach and applied it to Ethereum and Solana NFT collections. However, there are some notable differences.

Of course, firstly, instead of USDC you pay with ETH or SOL for these NFT packs. And sellback payouts for these pulls are either 90% of the pulled NFT's floor price or 101% of that collection's top offer, depending on which is higher.

The biggest difference, though, is the sellback window period. Instead of the Pokémon packs' 72 hours, you have 5 minutes to decide whether you want to receive the NFT you pulled or the instant payout.

That said, everything else works exactly the same besides the fact that NFT packs don't have a redeem option as there's nothing to redeem IRL. The potential upside is higher on the NFT side, however. For example, the premium Promo Ethereum pack offers a chance to win a Pudgy Penguin, the floor of which is currently 5.3 ETH or ~$18k.

🍀 Feeling lucky?

Another fun and newer product from Magic Eden is the Lucky Buy system. The idea here is that you can win an NFT for 99% less than its floor value by committing a small amount of SOL.

Joining in is straightforward. Find any NFT on the site that bears the 🍀 badge or head to magiceden.io/luckybuy to find all supported collections. Clicking on the clover badge will then bring you into a Lucky Buy interface where you can set your parameters.

You can set your probability slider as low as 1% or as high as 75%. The lower the slider, the less SOL you'll have to commit, though your winning chances will also be lower. The higher the slider, the more SOL you'll have to commit, but you'll also have a better shot at pulling your target NFT.

You can press the "Simulate" button to test out some spins first with nothing at stake. If you decide to officially try, press the "Lucky Buy" button and confirm the purchase with your wallet. Magic Eden will run a verifiable randomness function (VRF) onchain to decide the outcome. If your attempt hits, you can keep the NFT or choose "Payout" to receive 95% of the NFT's value in SOL.

Conversely, if you don't win your target NFT, the SOL you committed will be gone. However, as a consolation, any time your Lucky Buys miss you'll receive a non-transferable Lucky Emmy NFT, and these help boost eligibility in Magic Eden's rewards program.

Under the hood, Lucky Buy runs on a 5% fee that’s layered on top of the listing price. Sellers actually get a small boost (up to +0.75% extra on their listing amount if their NFT sells via Lucky Buy), while a dedicated treasury backstops the gap between what buyers commit and list prices. That’s how someone can hit an NFT for, say, 3% of its price without the seller getting rugged.

Ultimately, this is a degen way to spend a little and potentially win a lot. It's not rocket science or groundbreaking to be sure, but it's fun to try and doesn't take much time or money. If you're bored onchain lately, it's a light way to take some shots at NFTs without overthinking it.

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