Those of you in the Unique One Community who have been around for a bit know that Unique One has had an incredible year in 2021. From the mainnet launch of our flagship NFT Art Marketplace in January 2021, our purely decentralized, community-bootstrapped protocol has stayed agile — growing, flexing, and surfing along with the exploding and volatile NFT market.

We are now in the process of launching our Substrate application blockchain on the Octopus Network. The Octopus Network is a multichain, interoperable cryptonetwork for launching and running Substrate-based application-specific blockchains, aka appchains.

The Octopus Network is built on NEAR Protocol , a massively scalable sharded layer1. The Octopus Relay is a set of smart contracts built on NEAR that controls the security leasing mechanism — and it is this security leasing, or LPoS (Leased Proof of Stake), that sets the Octopus Network apart from other protocols.

Substrate-based application-specific blockchains in the Octopus Network can lease the amount of security they need while avoiding the potential inflation baked into crowd loans — or the unwanted influence of 3rd-party VC backing — due to the high economic barrier of entry. This is a major part of Octopus Network’s stated mission.

The Octopus Network describes itself as a “ Web3.0 Incubator “ — Because the Octopus Network lowers the barrier of entry, it will “usher in” Web3.0 innovation.

Unique One Network becomes an Octopus Network Appchain Candidate

Unique One announced our candidacy to become an appchain in the Octopus Network almost three months ago and have been busy building ever since. We appreciate the community’s patience during this time. We know there has been some confusion regarding direction but becoming an appchain in the Octopus Network is a process that not every protocol can pass.

There are several stages to becoming an appchain in the Octopus Network . As the Unique One appchain has successfully built through the early stages (Appchain Development and Appchain Release), we now want to give the community an idea of what to expect going forward and take a look at Q1 2022.

The Road to an Octopus Network Appchain

Once a project has developed and released its appchain, it needs to formally Register on the Octopus Network to enter the Audit Phase. ( We are here now!)

Octopus Network developers will audit our appchain, and once it passes the audit, the Unique One Network Appchain will enter a Voting Queue where it will be upvoted or downvoted by the Octopus Network community — $OCT holders. ( More on this very important bit below.)

If the appchain is voted in, it enters a Staging Phase where Validators are spun up. $OCT holders can run a Validator node by staking a minimum of 10k $OCT. Appchains only need seven Validator nodes to startup — and Octopus Foundation will run four boot-nodes for each appchain.

When enough Validator nodes reach the minimum required safety limit of USD $2M in $OCT, the appchain will enter the Booting state and launch.

Once an appchain is launched, its NEP141 tokens are deployed. In the case of Unique One Network — $UNET.

When and how can I vote for the Unique One appchain?

Glad you asked!

If you’ve been paying attention so far, you will notice above that appchains must be Voted in by holders of $OCT. We are estimating that we may be in the Voting phase by late January/early February 2022.

Dedicated Unique One Community members who wish to take a proactive role in getting the Unique One Appchain launched may wish to participate in the upcoming Voting phase.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Get a NEAR wallet.
2. Navigate to ref.finance and purchase $OCT.
3. Once the Unique One Appchain is in Voting Phase, you can vote by navigating to the Octopus Network Mainnet and selecting Appchains. Connect your NEAR wallet, select Unique One, and deposit the amount of $OCT you want to vote with and choose “Upvote.”
4. Once the Voting Phase is completed, you can withdraw your $OCT deposit.

For a more thorough walkthrough, check our How to Vote for the Unique One Network Appchain . (Note: This article refers to Voting on the testnet but the procedure is similar.)

When $UNET?

With our estimate that the appchain phases we’ve yet to go through before launching $UNET — Audit, Voting, Booting — will most likely take us into February, we have our sights set on the mid-February/early March.

Only $RARE, $FOTO, and $FANS holders are eligible for the extraordinary swap ratio to $UNET. Therefore, the community will be informed as soon as the dates are secure — with advance notice to make decisions.

Please ignore rumours in channels about timeline launch dates or how the swap will work. Only official announcements should be taken seriously. There are conditions that must be met before decisions can be made.

We will not promise any dates until we are 100% confident that the tech has been tested and runs to spec. If you have any questions or concerns, please address them to Admins in our community channels.

The Unique One Network team is looking forward to another incredible year of building and scaling into new and exciting NFT niches and use cases — including our own Metaverse!

We will have more and more updates about the new features of the Unique One NFT appchain as we move through Q1. The Unique One Community, as always, will be the first to know!