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The NGU Launch Saga

Published → Thursday, March 27, 2025

Embracing the Chaos, One Wrong Turn at a Time

Alright, frens. Deep breaths.

If you’ve been following along, you know our recent launch attempts didn’t exactly... go up. More like sideways. Maybe diagonally down for a bit? Let’s just say the charts were less “rocket launch” and more “experimental aircraft hitting unexpected turbulence.” Repeatedly.

MC, the NGU mascot, navigating a chaotic and hilarious flowchart labeled "NGU Launch Plan v1… v2… v2.1?" with wrong turns, flaming potatoes, and loop-the-loops.

Look, when things go sideways in Web3, plenty of projects hide tail and run. Some just straight up rug their community and disappear into the digital ether. Poof. Gone.

That’s not the NGU way. That’s not us. We embrace the chaos. We own the Ls, even when they sting. And frankly, this whole experience has been... well, a saga. A comedy of errors, maybe? Definitely involves potatoes.

So grab some popcorn (or a stress ball), because we’re laying it all out: the wrong turns, the ‘WTF just happened’ moments, why we messed up, and why we’re still here.

Because builders build.

Act I: The Liftoff... Annnd Immediate Abort

Remember the hype? Months-long build. Earlybird list popping off (2k+ strong!). “Wen Launch?” minigame smashing it. Base collabs heating up. We felt unstoppable. Ready to absolutely SEND IT.

Launch 1 hits. Numbers start flying. Market cap briefly touches the sky ($1M+!). Dopamine kicks in. We’re geniuses!

...For about two hours.

Two-panel cartoon of MC the mascot riding a rocket labeled "NGU $1M+" while cheering, then panicking and slamming a giant red "STOP" button as the rocket nosedives, spewing flaming potatoes.

Turns out, we deployed a slightly misconfigured Uniswap v4 hook. And by ‘slightly,’ we mean it was:

  • Calculating fees wrong (Oops).
  • Eating way too much gas (Big oops).
  • Reverting valid transactions (MEGA OOPS).

Basically, the swap experience was totally fubar. So, with heavy hearts and even heavier sighs, we slammed the big red 🛑 STOP BUYING 🛑 button.

Not the launch day announcement anyone wanted. Especially not us. Felt bad, man.

Act II: The Plot Twist You Didn’t See Coming (Neither Did We)

Okay, hook bug identified. Annoying, embarrassing, but fixable, right? We paused, told everyone to hold tight, and dove back into the code, hyped for a quick fix and relaunch. Let’s go!

Then we decided to be smart.

Hey, let’s use the data from that brief, chaotic launch window to stress test everything else...

Famous last words.

Here’s the wild part: the hook was broken, but you guys were APING IN. Seriously. People minted tokens so fast, the Potato Numbers started going vertical. Like, so fast the calculated points were going to literally outgrow standard database number types, meaning ranks & leaderboards would need some galaxy-brain math just to function at that scale.

Super bullish problem to have, honestly! 🔥

But there’s a catch. While the points system boomed, the massive load it generated started choking the rest of our infrastructure. Stress tests confirmed what the brief chaos hinted at: the projected server costs at that level were unsustainable AF. Clearly, the current setup wasn’t ready for prime time (even if the hook had been perfect).

Mascot MC sweating cartoonishly as a machine overflows with flaming Potatoes and numbers, labeled "!!!" to depict a bullish integer overflow moment.

‘Stupid ambitious’? Probably! We were so focused on the shiny game mechanics (and apparently making numbers go up too fast!), we underestimated the sheer grunt work, infra scaling, and cost needed underneath to handle that kind of launch day degeneracy at scale. Lesson learned. The hard way.

Act III: The DevOps Boss Fight 🫠

New plan: Fix hook + Upgrade Infra = Solid Launch. We aimed for Tuesday this week (March 25th).

We knew it was major work (thanks, Act II!), but we faced the necessary infra upgrades feeling capable. We figured our familiarity made executing the complex changes... well, easy peasy, right?

Narrator: It was not easy peasy.

Turns out, production-grade infrastructure for a real-time Web3 game is its own complex beast. The planned upgrades took way longer than estimated.

We dove into fun* (read: painful) stuff like:

  • Migrating points calculation workloads from AWS Lambda to AWS ECS to improve computational throughput and handle sustained load more effectively.
  • Refactoring the frontend API to manage significantly higher frequency of real-time data updates for player points and status.
  • Implementing robust failover and data synchronization mechanisms between on-chain events and our off-chain database state to ensure data integrity and reliability.

We even started hitting default AWS service limits on things like concurrency and network bandwidth (shoutout Kinesis pipelines). This led to some... interesting chats with AWS architects where we basically had to explain why our real-time game needed that much juice. Let’s just say raised eyebrows were involved. Validation that we’re pushing boundaries, maybe?

MCmascot with a sly, determined expression riding a rocket labeled NGU, preparing to face off against a giant boss made of tangled servers, AWS icons, and error messages

It’s genuinely complex stuff. Which is actually why we plan on open-sourcing our final AWS CloudFormation templates once everything is stable and battle-tested. Hopefully, it saves other degens from this particular circle of DevOps hell.

But the immediate result: We weren’t ready in time. We missed Tuesday. Again. More delays. More frustration (ours and yours).

Yes, DevOps kicked our butts. And yes, we now have profound empathy for anyone wrestling with cloud infra demons at 3 AM. 🙏

Building robust infra is hard.

So, Wen Launch? (No, Seriously)

Look, we know. The delays suck. The flip-flopping makes us look like smooth-brained idiots sometimes. We get the frustration. We feel it too.

Here’s the deal: No more launch dates until we are absolutely, undeniably, 1000% SOLID.

We’ve burned enough trust (and probably brain cells) promising dates we couldn’t hit. We’re done with that.

Right now, we are heads down:

  • Finalizing and testing the hook fix.
  • Implementing and rigorously testing the infrastructure upgrades.
  • Running extensive simulations and end-to-end tests.
  • Adding more checks, balances, and deployment safeguards. Triple-checking everything.

We will keep you updated on progress via Twitter and Telegram. But the next time we announce a date, it’ll be because the button is ready to be pushed, for real this time.

Builders Build (Even When It’s Messy)

This whole saga is peak Web3 building. Ambitious, chaotic, sometimes painful, often humbling.

It’s trying new things (v4 hooks! Tackling complex, real-time infra!), hitting walls, learning, and iterating. Remember Ethereum’s early days? Yeah, kinda like that, but with more potatoes.

We could pack it up. Rug. Disappear. Plenty do.

But that’s not the vibe. We believe in NGU. Despite the fumbles, we believe this team is building something original, fun, and strategically deep.

Cartoon mascot stacking large labeled blocks like INFRA, CODE, TESTING, and COMMUNITY on a clean, glowing foundation beside an NGU rocket taking off

We’re not running away from the mess; we’re cleaning it up and building it stronger.

Because builders build. Even when it’s hard. Even when they faceplant. Twice.

See You On The Moon 🚀

To everyone who’s stuck around through this turbulence - the believers, the patient, the true degens - thank you. Seriously. You’re the reason we keep pushing.

We’re committed to getting this right and launching NGU properly. It’s taking longer than expected, involved more chaos than anticipated, but we’re getting there.

Stay tuned for updates. We’re grinding now so the next chapter IS ‘Number Go Up’.

- The NGU Team