SubAction is a project which brings various types of auctions of NFT tokens to Kusama and Polkadot. This project will allow users to create auctions, add items represented by the NFT tokens, select the proper auction type and let everybody compete and bid for the items of your choice.
Aim of this project is to create a platform which will support different kinds of auction for the upcoming prime time of the NFT tokens. As in the real world, items represented by the NFTs can be bought, sold, transferred and even auctioned to the highest bidder. There are actually various auction types serving multiple purposes and SubAuction's goal is to bring user one unified and easy-to-use interface for both buyers and sellers. The whole process is configurable - user can set how long the auction should last, how many items will be auctioned and other settings which can even differ by the auction type. Also, very often users want to have multiple auctions which are started one by one. We would provide a framework which can automate the process so user could actually create an auction template and then use it across its own defined sequence of auctions.
MVP of this product will provide one single auction backend which will be the english auction, the classic between amongst auctions. But there are also very interesting auction types out there which could prove useful in the blockchain space so here is a list of auctions which we find particularly suitable
The most common type of auction is where the participants bid against each other and the highest offer wins. Auction will reach its end when one of the criterias are met
- there is a countdown and when the auction is concluded, the highest bidder wins
- auction can have a time period between the bids. So for example if nobody made a better bid than the last one in 10 minutes, auction is concluded and the last bidder wins
- auctioneer can even end the auction in any moment he chooses (usually when he is satisfied with the price)
There can be also various configurations parameters like auction length, minimum value of the next bid or list of invited participants (so called "permissioned auction").
Candle auction is a variant of the English auction where the last part of the auction is randomized in the sense that it can be concluded anytime. This prevents bidders from leaving their bids to the last few minutes or seconds and it's actually more fair in the internet environment where bots can bid on behalf the buyers. Configuration of such an auction will be very similar to the English one.
It's the opposite of the English one where auctioneer sets a rather high price and it keeps lowering it until one of the bidders accept it. The price is always tied to the basket if items rather than a single one so price actually keeps dropping until all of the items are sold. Auction is concluded when all the items are sold or the reserve price has been reached.
In this scenario bidders will simultaneously submit their (secret) bids and winner is automatically selected by the highest bid. The value of all the bids remains a secret and only auctioneer knows how much each participant have bid. This type of auction is frequently used for auctioning the goverment contracts or mining licences.
This is a very popular auction type used by charities. Each participant will pay a "top-up fee" which is based on the bid he made minus the closest lower bid to his one. Which effectively means that each participant will pay the top-up fee except the first and the last bidder. The last bidder wins the auction, obtains the item and only pays the item's price.
There are mutliple variants of this kind of auctions but all of them revolve around the idea that multiple items are being auctioned at the same time. So, for example, a bidder can say he will pay for A and B but only if he can get both at the same time.
You can find more information about our implementation and JSON metadata NFT format in our docs.
We loosely based our nft-pallet on the orml-nft implementation. We added couple of things to our own pallet
- Token locking (token owner shouldn't be able to transfer the NFT token after the auction is created)
- Token genesis for easier development
- Metadata followed by the ERC-721 standard
Goal of our nft pallet is to allow our application to easily replace one NFT implementation for another.
We have developed our auction pallet with flexibility in mind. This is the list of features we currently support
- Creating an auction with NFT token
- Bidding by other users and locking their funds via the
LockableCurrency - Auction time measured in blocks
- Conclusion automated via
on_initializecallback - Auction removal
- Various checks to prevent malicious actions
- Configuration parameters for the auction itself
The make run command will perform an initial build. Use the following command to build the node
without launching it:
make buildOnce the project has been built, the following command can be used to explore all parameters and subcommands:
./target/release/subauction -hThe make run command will launch a temporary node and its state will be discarded after you
terminate the process. After the project has been built, there are other ways to launch the node.
This command will start the single-node development chain with persistent state:
./target/release/subauction --devPurge the development chain's state:
./target/release/subaction purge-chain --devStart the development chain with detailed logging:
RUST_LOG=debug RUST_BACKTRACE=1 ./target/release/node-template -lruntime=debug --dev