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Circle

Circle
10-09-24•circleonshape.network

Project Overview

Circle is an ERC20 token on Shape where every buy makes the circle bigger, and every sell makes it smaller.

Where The Idea Came From

Shape, an Ethereum Layer 2 specifically targeting creators, went live on Sept 30th. A few days had passed, and there still hadn't been a single ERC20 token to really take off on the chain. This was due to the lack of infrastructure for new L2s (no Dexscreener, No Uniswap, etc), as well as the NFT focus of this particular chain. We decided to use this lack of infra to our advantage—by deploying a Uniswap v2 fork and using the size of the circle itself to show marketcap, we played off the name "Shape" to create their first memecoin.

The Launch

  • Fair Launched by pairing the full token supply with 1 ETH in the v2 pool, which launched it at a ~$5k marketcap.
  • Since the chain was relatively new, there were no snipers.
  • We sent it in the Shape chat and posted it on Twitter. Initially, only Shape supporters bought in.
  • Eventually, thousands of people bridged over to make the circle bigger.
  • Beeple even made an everyday about it

What We Learned

  • People LOVED the idea of showing marketcap in a unique way. Screenshots of the black circle with white text went viral.
  • The only way for people to view the marketcap was to return to the site.
  • We only displayed a "Buy $O" button for users to swap directly on the site. Users had to click "⇅" in the corner to switch the modal to "Sell". What was a seemingly obvious UI choice for us turned into hundreds of "How do I even sell this thing?" tweets that worked to our advantage.
  • Eventually, we added a one-transaction bridge-and-buy from other chains, which reduced friction even further and gave the circle a second wind.

What Went Wrong

  • One of Shape's selling points is "Gas Back for Contract Deployers." That said, we were unable to claim our ~3e due to not making either contract ownable at deployment.
  • Since we used Uniswap v2, Liquidity Rewards are kept in the LP until withdrawn (whereas v3/v4 are kept seperate). We felt as though claiming rewards was taking from the project itself, so we never claimed and left it in the LP.
  • We realistically should have had a 1% buy/sell tax and no one would have cared, and we could have made some money on the project.

Wrap-up

Our first TokenWorks project, and by far the most successful to date.

A great reminder to keep ideas simple.