Announcing Our Partnership with the Anji Foundation

UPDATE - 26 July 2023: The terms of the agreement have changed. Read more here.
UPDATE - 6 September 2023: Lunar Plexus has been renamed to Lunar Dex and is now available. Read more here.

The Lunar and Anji Foundations are proud to announce a new partnership designed to accelerate both ecosystems ahead of the next wave of crypto innovation.

The deal, months in the making, will see the Lunar Foundation take control of the IP for most of the Anji ecosystem and support the Anji Foundation’s renewed focus on their successful “A KID called BEAST” (AKCB) NFTs as Lunar’s first customer.

The Story

Back in April, Anji Foundation’s CEO Caleb Smiler, approached Lunar Foundation’s MasterJedi on Telegram about a partnership.

“I had been looking at different projects to partner with for a while. Lunar was the first one we found that seemed to fit our design ethos, attention to detail, focus on quality, and enthusiasm of the community. It checked all the right boxes for us. So I reached out.”
- Anji’s Caleb Smiler

What started out as a discussion about a Swap widget quickly went deeper.

“In the beginning of these types of conversations I’m always skeptical. I mean, we get pitched partnerships all the time. But I was quickly impressed by the quality of the team, cleanliness of their UI, the number of chains they supported, and the depth of features with AnjiSwap. As I learned more, it quickly became clear there was quite an opportunity in front of everyone.”
- Lunar’s MasterJedi

The Lunar Foundation was thoroughly impressed with what we saw. When we dug into the overlap between the communities, we found over 600 holders actually own both ANJI and LNR. So clearly members of our communities knew a good thing when they saw it.

What is Anji?

As Caleb explained, "Anji emerged from the need to address existing limitations within the DeFi token space. Envisioned as a platform that could simplify and streamline, our goal was to create DeFi products that made the space more accessible, especially to those dipping their toes in for the first time. With a strong belief in the transformative power of altruistic goals, we championed tokens dedicated to using innovative technology for the greater good. Our overarching aim was to develop holistic solutions that benefited individual users, encouraged thriving ecosystems, and facilitated the advancement of various projects."

AnjiSwap

At the heart of the Anji ecosystem is the AnjiSwap platform, a multi-chain DEX that lets you execute single-chain trades on seven different chains: Avalanche, BNB Chain, Cronos, DogeChain, Ethereum, Fantom, and Polygon.

With a clean and easy-to-use interface, AnjiSwap supports simple on-chain pricing for real-time processing at lower slippage. And any token can have multiple liquidity pools. AnjiSwap automatically suggests the best option, while allowing you the freedom to pick the one that works best for you.

AnjiSwap also boasts a built-in crypto on-ramp, powered by OnRamper that aggregates 15 different on-ramps into a single solution. Furthermore, the app can be white labelled so other crypto projects can leverage it for their own branded DEX solution.

In addition to the main AnjiSwap app, there is also an embeddable and customizable “Lite” version that can be easily integrated into any dApp.

A KID Called BEAST

Like Lunar, the Anji team also had aspirations to build innovative NFT experiences. Caleb explained, "a KID called BEAST or ‘AKCB’ began as a joint effort among multiple parties, eventually growing into an independent entity that exceeded our initial expectations. At the start, our goal was to bring innovative changes to the NFT market by introducing augmented reality experiences to blockchain technology. Along the way, we recognized the necessity of a compelling character and solid intellectual property to truly connect with the masses. As a team, we dedicated time, love, and considerable thought to each aspect of BEAST, and we're incredibly proud of the final result. Every trait and detail of BEAST symbolizes our journey, our effort, and our commitment to bringing a meaningful addition to the NFT space."

What Is Lunar?

Lunar was started because the entire crypto space is in desperate need of people to elevate the experience to make it simple, delightful, and magical. What was initially a way to build a better wallet evolved into a platform that helps crypto creators and consumers manage all aspects of their digital assets.

Powered by the Microsoft stack and engineered for massive scale, Lunar’s innovative ecosystem combines the best of Web2 and Web3 to build unexpected crypto experiences that surprise and delight.

The Lunar Ecosystem consists of the following products:

• Accounts - Hybrid Web2 + Web3 Identities
• Mint - Bespoke NFT Minting Experiences
• Escrow - OTC Transactions for Projects & Holders
• OmniWallet - Multi-Chain Cross-Wallet Asset Management
• Portfolio - Bloomberg Terminal for Crypto
• Dex - AI-Powered decentralized exchange

Lunar Mint

Lunar Mint is the flagship product today. Having powered the 3,333 Lunar Crystals Genesis Collection sale on BNB Chain last year, Lunar Mint lets NFT Creators manage every aspect of their NFT mint on their own domain, while giving collectors the most magical purchasing process they have ever experienced.

The process of minting an NFT is currently pretty terrible. Frontrunning bots, spiking gas fees, and bad reservation systems make the process inherently unfair.

Mint solves this problem by helping creators manage the end-to-end purchase experience while giving the buyer unprecedented insight into the process as well as peace of mind. It does this through the following features:

• Managing multiple internal, private, and public sales
• Configuring per-sale reservation limits
• Allowing multiple NFT purchases in a single transaction
• Allowing the contract to fail partially-complete multi-token transactions

Lunar Mint is the centerpiece of our efforts to make digital asset creation and management far easier than it is today.

Lunar Decentralized

ANJI holders will be most excited about Lunar’s DeFi-focused products: OmniWallet, Portfolio, and Dex.

The Lunar Foundation’s vision for better crypto starts with the OmniWallet. “Switching wallets” is not a concept users should have to deal with. OmniWallet allows you to see all your assets in one place and helps consolidate assets across those wallets in order to complete transactions.

Portfolio takes the OmniWallet one step further and helps you easily research assets, track trends, manage your digital collectibles, and plan that next great acquisition.

Both OmniWallet and Portfolio are powered by Dex, the decentralized exchange that will use AI to intelligently route complex transactions. The Dex network of same-chain and cross-chain routers helps you move your digital assets where you want them while helping you minimize gas fees along the way.

Why Partner?

“What I love about this partnership is that it really is a 1 + 1 = 3 situation,” said Marcus Yarbro, a Lunar Foundation Director who goes by the handle “Valiander”.

• “ANJI holders get to see their original vision come to life as we leverage their technology as the foundation for our products.”
• “LNR holders get to see the first version of the DEX out much sooner than anticipated, allowing us to put our attention on adding cross-chain support.”
• “AKCB will continue to innovate on token-gated solutions that can be integrated into the Lunar Mint platform.”
• “Lunar will get to leverage the expertise of the AKCB team for building out the Dex product.”
• “Both companies get to focus their efforts where they want, without compromises.”

The New Vision

With that, both teams are excited to elaborate on our combined vision for these platforms.

Lunar Dex

In July, AnjiSwap will be rebranded as Lunar Dex. The current tech stack will be re-deployed to Lunar’s Azure infrastructure, while Lunar Foundation leverages the existing Lunar APIs to services-enable the branding, multi-tenancy, and token functionality in the existing app, as well as enable Dex in the Lunar Ecosystem Management app.

BeastSwap

Lunar will leverage the white label functionality of Lunar Dex to maintain the BeastSwap platform for AKCB at swap.akidcalledbeast.com. AKCB will get to take advantage of expanded Lunar development on the platform and will get priority over feature requests and bugfixes as a Lunar customer.

Lunar Dex Anywhere

The Lunar Foundation will integrate the Dex Anywhere widget with the existing Lunar Portfolio Preview app, and over time the Angular codebase will be ported to Microsoft’s Blazor.

At that point, the widget will be replaced with native Blazor functionality in the Lunar OmniWallet and Portfolio apps. However, the Dex Anywherewidget will still be available for 3rd-party developers.

Lunar Dex Routing

The existing AnjiSwap routing contracts will provide the foundation for the first iteration of the Lunar Dex cross-chain routing solution. By making the existing contracts upgradable and combining them with our audited DevOps process, we can check the boxes on the "easy" problems and focus on one of the hardest problems in crypto: building cross-chain swapping mechanisms that are hardened against constant attacks.

A KID called BEAST

AKCB is more than just a digital collectible. The ecosystem includes over a dozen token-gated utilities that AKCB holders can enjoy. We look forward to cross pollenating those benefits between both ecosystems as we work together to drive the adoption of digital collectibles.

Lunar Crystal NFTs

Once we have a solution in place for making LNR multi-chain compatible, the Lunar Foundation intends to apply that solution to Lunar Crystals as well. That would allow you to move your Crystal to Ethereum or Polygon and do things like make your favorite Genesis Crystal your Twitter profile avatar.

Our partnership with AKCB will also allow us to learn what made their NFTs so successful and apply those techniques to Lunar Crystals and their holders.

Lunar Mint

With AKCB, we have a wildly successful customer and partner to help us understand the challenges of managing a digital collectible ecosystem at scale. The challenges they face managing their customers are the same everywhere, and their insight will help us develop joint solutions to benefit the entire digital collectibles ecosystem.

Ecosystem Tokens

PLEASE NOTE. This section no longer applies. We are leaving it here for reference. Please see this update for more information.

Having completed a migration to upgradeable smart contracts in October 2022 AND having just received its auditor’s very first perfect audit score ever (out of over 150 projects), the LNR token is well positioned to take the combined ecosystem forward.

The Anji Foundation was also in the process of also upgrading the ANJI token to an upgradeable smart contract. Under this new partnership, those development efforts will no longer be necessary.

Moving forward, the Anji and Lunar Foundations will merge the ecosystem into a single, unified LNR token.

The advantages are clear:

• LNR is available today on 4x more centralized exchanges
• LNR has significantly more volume across the ecosystem
• LNR’s liquidity across the ecosystem is in a better market position

The Lunar Dev Team will evaluate the ANJI contract for features that can be ported over to the LNR ERC-20 contract, and we will have more information on that at a later date.

When thinking about the conversion ratio between ANJI and LNR, there are really two main points to work out: what is the ratio, and when should the converted price take effect?

Token Conversion Ratio

Everyone knows that the conversion ratio is going to be a touchy subject. The fact of the matter is, there is simply not enough LNR in the Lunar Treasury to convert at a 1:1 ratio, given the current price of both tokens.

We looked at three different options:

1. Assume ANJI completed a migration like Lunar’s and adjusted the supply in the process. Issue new tokens at a 1:1000 ratio for a total supply of 10M tokens (10% of the total LNR supply). Under this scenario the total LNR issued would be roughly 22% of the original value.
   - The Lunar Foundation felt this methodology was too low for ANJI holders.
2. Use the ratio of holders. As of the time of this writing, ANJI has 9,248 holders, and LNR has 38,828 holders. That ratio is 23.8%.
   - That ratio was not meaningfully higher than Option 1 and rejected by the Lunar Foundation.
3. Round up from Option 1. 30% is a nice round number. That conversion ratio is 1:733.
   - The amount of LNR issued would not totally drain the Treasury and still allow us to complete other transactions later.

The Lunar Foundation has chosen to submit a 30% conversion rate to Lunar DAO for approval.

Conversion Process & Timing

Putting millions more LNR into circulation immediately has a fairly significant impact. The Lunar Foundation has to balance that process in a way that doesn't unduly harm the ecosystem. The most appropriate way to do that is through a vesting contract. We can list that contract address with the various token websites as "not in circulation" and there will be a much more measured pace as vested tokens are converted.

The next question is of timing. Do we:

1. Use a platform like Unvest.io to issue vesting tokens now, or
2. Build a system to let you simply trade ANJI for LNR directly on the platform, after some specified vesting period?

There are clear benefits and tradeoffs to both.

We believe it should be treated just like the migration ANJI token holders would have already gone through at some later date. That means issuing the new tokens now using a commercial vesting platform.

• A new ANJI-LNR vesting token will be issued to ANJI holders using Unvest.io at 30% of the USD value of their ANJI holdings.
  
• After the DAO vote, ANJI-LNR holders will be able to access Lunar DAO Governance platform, and ANJI-LNR will get a 70% power boost to be equal to LNR in voting power.
  - That gives ANJI-LNR holders equal access and say in the future of the Lunar Ecosystem.
• ANJI-LNR holders will vest on a six (6) month schedule with a three (3) month cliff.
  - After three (3) months they will be able to convert half of their ANJI-LNR to LNR, with 1/3rd of their remaining allocation available every 30 days thereafter.
• Though ANJI-LNR will have no par value, it can be traded like any other token, for which Unvest.io will charge a small “platform fee”.
  - This allows people to trade vesting tokens over the counter, using either the 1inch P2P swap system, Illiquid.market, or Lunar Escrow when it is launched.

Exchanges and Liquidity

LNR is already listed on LBank, the only centralized exchange ANJI is currently on. Beginning immediately, the ANJI Foundation will begin the de-listing process with LBank. Once those holders exit the centralized exchange, they will convert at the same price and ratio as ratified by Lunar DAO and be added to the ANJI-LNR token contract on Unvest.io.

With ANJI’s decentralized exchanges, alert banners will be placed on the major coin profiles, pointing holders to landing pages that explain this transition.

ANJI Rewards

Lunar has committed to airdropping the proper Staking rewards, and maintaining access to ANJI rewards redemption for the foreseeable future. Please see this post for more information.

Governance

Though the partnership between the Anji Foundation and Lunar Foundation is already a reality, a successful vote by Lunar DAO will be required to ratify the following steps:

• the integration of the new Lunar Foundation assets into the Lunar Ecosystem
• the transfer of LNR from the Treasury to the ANJI-LNR vesting contract
• the voting power and validity schedule of the ANJI-LNR token in Lunar DAO

The Lunar Foundation has posted the Lunar Improvement Plan (LIP) for a vote. Lunar DAO members can cast their vote now!

Wrapping It Up

“The future of Lunar has never been brighter.” said ‘Silverdust’, a Lunar Foundation Director. “With this partnership, we’re excited to add the hard work of the Anji Foundation to our portfolio and accelerate delivery of the capabilities that originally brought Lunar holders to the ecosystem.”

Anji Foundation’s Caleb Smiler added “We’re so glad we get to see our community’s vision live on, and we’re looking forward to making Lunar’s products available to all our Beastholders in the weeks and months ahead.”