I have been working on my rubber ducky racing idea the last few weeks, and finally some solid ideas are beginning to take shape.
👨🔧 A Work In Progress
In a previous post I mentioned my acquisition of 40x rubber duckies from a roadside shop 30 kms from home here in the lovely Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia. The sight of the duckies and the fact that a whitewater river forms the back border of our backyard made me instantly want to arrange some sort of blockchain-based rubber ducky races.
The river is subject to flash foods that would kill a swimmer in seconds, and also there are dry periods where the river is only ankle-deep for weeks at a time. In the photo above you can see my wife in the background at the river's edge. Just to the left of her is where I imagine the finish line because it's the narrowest part of the river. I could easily stand there with a net or strainer of some kind and catch the ducks as they float downstream.
I have been trying to give each duck a unique style with some Sharpie art, hoping this will make it easy for Hivers to identify their duck as they meander downriver. It would be much more exciting to follow your specific duck during the race instead of watching 40x identical ducks race, with the only excitement being awaiting to see if your number was on the bottom of the winning duck. A quick float test today showed me that our ducks prefer floating on their side, even with partially filled with water to weight the bottom.
Ideas So Far 🧠 Feedback Please
As I adorn ducks with my daughters' trusty Sharpies I think of the rules/parameters that will govern the the rubber ducky races. I would love to hear more feedback and ideas from you all, so please read what I have so far and feel free to offer some advice/additions of your own.
40x Ducks Per Race
The store I found the ducks in only had 40 available, but I am open to buy more ducks in the future if the interest is there, and this would also increase the prize pool)
1x Race Per Week
With post monetization timespans of 7 days, it makes sense to do things on a weekly basis, and a 7 day period would also hopefully be enough time to spread the word around on Discord and various Hive communities to ensure all ducks are claimed and the prize pool is as big as possible.
The Prize Pool
I had initially planned for the ducks to be $1 HBD each, but after @wwwiebe stated I should charge $2 HBD per duck because of time and effort that will be involved, I totally agree. I would like to keep half of the entry fees to feed the family and half of the fees to be used as a prize pool. With 40x ducks available at $2 HBD each, this would be $80 HBD in total, $40 HBD for my family and $40 HBD for the prize pool, perhaps dispensed as a 1st, 2nd & 3rd prize.
$40 HBD IN PRIZES
- 1st Prize $25 HBD
- 2nd Prize $10 HBD
- 3rd Prize $5 HBD
⛵ A Possible New Hive Community 🏁
I have been tempted to create an entirely new community for the rubber ducky races, perhaps the Hive Rubber Ducky Racing Community, but eventually I think it would be more exciting to build boats from scrap wood or bamboo and give them paint jobs that would make them identifiable from very far away. I could film from the bridge above with such visibly different racers. With this in mind perhaps the potential new community could be the Hive River Racing Community. What do you all think? Would a new community be worth the time and effort and also increase participation and engagement?
6-Day Registration Window
I could use the post countdown timer to close registration for the races 24 hours before the planned race start, or perhaps leave registration open until all ducks are claimed. Some innate feeling tells me I will have no trouble finding Hive racers to claim each of the 40x ducks though, hopefully easily filling the prize pool each race.
The Good Ole' Duck Chart
I want to make the race posts just as engaging and entertaining as the races themselves, and I think the backbone of the race will be the duck (info)chart. I've become rather skilled with creating and customizing markdown tables within Hive posts via my weekly ASEAN Hive Delegator Raffle posts, so I am constructing one that should be an entertaining feature.
ID # | Hive 🦆 Ducks | Lore | Wins | Availability | Claimed By |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mrs. Mindhorn is rumored to have once been married to Bruce Mindhorn, a legendary English detective. She uses mind control to win ducky races via a hidden cybernetic eye. |
This chart is just something I am tinkering with at the moment. I plan to use different background colors for each duck photo, and perhaps eventually replace these pics with animated GIFs of each racing duck. There are 40 ducks, so I will have to create a backstory for each one to go along with the unique style, but so farI am having a blast putting this all together despite having 39 more ducks to plug into the above chart.
When a racer sends me their $2 HBD, I will instruct that they write in the memo section which duck name or duck ID# they want to claim. As funds come in and ducks are claimed, I can edit the race post and update the chart to let other Hivers know what ducks are still available to claim. Displaying a little lore and the total number race wins should keep things entertaining and maybe provide a chuckle or two.
🗣️Feedback Please
Okay ASEAN Hivers and the broader Hive community, if you're still here and a potential racer, I'd love to hear any thoughts/ideas/suggestions/feedback before the races officially begin sometime next month. Stay tuned......
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