It stays in the contract until a new mint (called it mint B) happens. Then the 30 day clock begins again. If no new mints happen in those 30 days, then mint B takes 50% of that 50% remaining.

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[-]elspood4y10

Well maybe I'm missing something, but the game theory doesn't seem that interesting to me. And calling it a 'return on investment' seems a bit generous for what is really just a game of blockchain chicken. In fact, it might be as crazy as a dollar auction where people might end up bidding more than what half the accumulated contract is worth due to sunk cost fallacy or other irrational behaviors.

Either way, you're not really buying anything of value here: you're just betting that the auction gets so little attention that you can walk away with free money, or else you're financing someone else's eventual bad decisionmaking (possibly your own).

You say "which in theory should increase the value of every minted NFT so far", but I don't see how. What additional value is added to a previously purchased NFT by someone purchasing the next one? If anything, each incremental minting makes the previous one worthless (unless you ascribe some inherent value to owning an arbitrary NFT). In fact, every NFT in this game is a badge of shame except the one that that wins the pot, and even that one could be shameful if it cost more than the pot was worth.

It seems especially insidious that the game perpetuates itself by trying to get people to restart the bidding war again with the other half of the prize pool. You didn't say whether the price of minting resets after half the pool gets claimed, but either way it's terrible: either the price resets and make the next bidding war even more furious and ties up even more people/funds, or it doesn't and makes it more likely that the other half just sits there unclaimed forever because it costs more to mint the bid than you'd see in return, but I don't see how this ever ends well for anyone.

On the other hand, one could view this game as punishing greed at a meta level: at first it looks like you get a free 242x return, but at best you realize you've only thrown away $500; at worst you end up much deeper in the hole you tried to dig your way out of. Not sure I approve of the ethics of this punishment, though.

Anyway, it seems clear to me that the correct strategy is to not mint the next NFT. Get some popcorn and watch; the entertainment value to others is the only real value in RandomWalk.

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[-]gwern4y10

And calling it a 'return on investment' seems a bit generous for what is really just a game of blockchain chicken.

Yeah, hasn't this 'timer unlocks deposit' game been run many times before? Either it lapses from lack of interest, or eventually the pot gets large enough for someone to pay a miner enough to lock in the necessary blocks to cash it out or DoSing rival transactions or something like that.

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[-]elspood4y10

Actually, the worst thing would be if the price of the minting increases at a rate slower than the value of half the pool grows. Then every next bid would still be "in the money", and then whoever doesn't go bankrupt first wins. This thing could eat the whole world. Terrible. Kill it with fire.

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[-]taras4y10

The price of minting will increase a little slower than the growth of the pot, but it will never reach a value greater than about 450x. It would approach it asymptotically.

It would be interesting if several participants battle with each other for a while. Then, when they are worn out, tired and out of funds, a new participant claims the pot with a single mint at the end :)

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[-]elspood4y10

I shudder to imagine the mutual funds created to fund bids on this thing.

How hard do you have squint to not see this thing as pyramid-shaped? This thing is like Sierpinski's pyramid. It's fractally a scam; a scam at every conceivable resolution.

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RandomWalkNFT: A Game Theory Exercise

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Analyzing RandomWalkNFT's interesting withdrawal mechanism for minted ETH