Winning! A Review of The First Aavegotchi #Bid2Earn Auction

5 min readJul 20, 2021

A new paradigm for NFT drops has arrived 🚀

The Aavegotchi Aauction House opened its doors last Thursday, July 15 to kick off Polygon’s first-ever #Bid2Earn GBM Auction. The auction lasted for 72 hours total with its dramatic conclusion happening at the end of the weekend (cue the Hammer Time!).

First, What’s a #Bid2Earn Auction?

A #Bid2Earn auction (Powered by GBM!) is a normal English auction, with a twist. Every time a participant is outbid, that person earns a payout up to a certain % of the original bid. Entirely automated, the payout is credited immediately to their wallet, along with their refunded original bid. This incentivizes price discovery and rewards bidders to keep searching for undervalued NFTs so they can keep bidding and keep earning!

GBM Auctions incentivize market participation…

because every time you are outbid, you earn GHST in real time! 😲

Cool in theory, but how did the Bid2Earn Aauction play out IRL?

We’re thrilled to report that Aavegotchi’s debut auction was successful by virtually every single metric, setting the stage for a new, higher standard for NFT drops across the space. Upcoming major Aavegotchi releases such as Haunt 2 (now being voted on by AavegotchiDAO) and The Gotchiverse REALM parcel sales will most certainly continue to build on this auction’s momentum!

Now, let’s look closer at what happened this past weekend.

Seeing is Believing

The auction offered a total of seven distinct wearable items of varying quantities. The most valuable single item was the VR Headset (the only Mythical rarity ranked item), fetching all of the top ten closing bids. Likely because of its lone Mythical status, the VR Headset also had the widest range of winnings bids with the highest going for 13,308.669 GHST while the item’s lowest winning bid was 7000 GHST.

Behind the numbers

748 unique bidders participated in the three day auction, accumulating a total of 12,957 bids! Analytics reveals that the majority of price discovery happened in the high-energy first hours of the auction. Bids continued to gradually increase as participants strategized and repositioned for the auction’s closing.

The bid-to-earn aspect of the auction was far more than a gimmick. Over 73,000 GHST were distributed as rewards to those who were outbid. These rewards happened across 10,307 unique payouts, and the total bidding volume clocked in at a massive 3.2m GHST, a testament to the incredible enthusiasm driving this auction!

Total bids per item are also interesting:

Steampunk Goggles: 1568 bids
Steampunk Trousers: 2154 bids
Mechanical Claw: 875 bids
VR Headset: 478 bids
Gamer Jacket: 1338 bids
Game Controller: 2222 bids
Gotchi Mug: 4322 bids

But total bids divided by the quantity of items minted is even more notable! This more accurately reveals each item’s true draw for bids.

Average number of bids for a single item:

Steampunk Goggles: 6.272 bids
Steampunk Trousers: 4.308 bids
Mechanical Claw: 8.75 bids
VR Headset: 9.56 bids 🔥
Gamer Jacket: 5.352 bids
Game Controller: 4.444 bids
Gotchi Mug: 4.322 bids

The Gotchi Mug was the only Common rarity item of the auction, meaning 1000 such mugs were available for bidding. Despite this, the Gotchi Mug still managed to average more bids per item than the 500 quantity Steampunk Trousers.

While most of the individual auctions concluded Sunday at exactly 2pm UTC, a number of Gotchi Mugs went deep into “hammer time.”

Hammer time prevents bots (or anyone) from swooping in at the last moments to make a final bid. Any bid in the final twenty minutes causes the conclusion of that auction to be extended by an additional twenty minutes. The Gotchi Mug gained a fierce following over the weekend and it resulted in the longest lasting auction. That final Gotchi Mug ended up selling for an impressive 133 GHST!

A Better NFT Drop

Beyond the data, we’re most thrilled with the way this NFT drop succeeded in boosting morale and engagement. Even the most “successful” of typical First Come First Serve NFT drops tend to fail in this regard. They are instead maligned with disappointed fans, gas wars and even bots. This auction had the complete opposite effect, instead feeling more like a celebratory shared experience.

Pixelcraft Studios continues to pore over the data analytics and user feedback alongside the GBM team so that the next auction offers an even more intuitive user experience. If the DAO’s current proposal for a second Haunt of Aavegotchis passes, we can expect a mid-August date that features 15,000 Portal NFTs hitting the auction block alongside a number of completely new wearables. This is shaping up to be the single most exciting crypto event of DeFi Summer 2021!

If you participated in this first Aavegotchi Aauction, THANK YOU! HIGH-FIVE! And do make sure to share your feedback either on Twitter, our dedicated Discord channel or here in the comments below.

Stay spooky frens,
Aavegotchi team

About Aavegotchi

Aavegotchis are on-chain collectible ghosts staked with Aave’s interest-generating aTokens.

Compete for player rewards by earning XP, leveling up, and increasing the rarity of your Aavegotchi fren. Owned by the community, Aavegotchi is governed by the AavegotchiDAO and the native eco-governance token GHST. Summon your first Aavegotchi today and join the future of playable NFTs staked with DeFi!