Seek the Spirit Key, Enter the Talisman
Early rewards for using the Talisman
Everything begins with (and in) Spirit. This is the ultimate access that one can seek, the ability to go everywhere and see everything.
If this is the nature of Spirit, then what is the Spirit Key?
The Spirit Key is sought by many but only a few will find it. This is because it’s a limited edition pass that grants access to the most devoted Seekers of the Talisman. But what is Talisman and why would you want early, unfettered access to it? In short, why should you seek the Spirit Key?
A Brief Introduction to Talisman
For months, Polkadot-JS has been heavily criticized by most users for being too technically cumbersome. So much so that many would rather stake their assets and participate in crowdloans using centralized exchanges. As citizens of the decentralized world, whenever we can take central agents out of the equation, we brim with enthusiasm. Thus, the Talisman team, armed with this enthusiasm, is building a community-owned wallet that offers a powerful and simple alternative to Polkadot-JS for the everyday user.
The Talisman experience can be had via the wallet extension or web app. Funded by various parachain teams, ecosystem heavyweights, and passionate DotSama lovers, Talisman is a truly community-owned project. Its goal is to make traversing the Paraverse a joy for regular users and in its current iteration, it allows you to:
- View your balances across all relay chains and connected parachains
- View your crowdloan contributions
- Participate in crowdloans
- Purchase DOT and KSM with a credit card
But this is just right now. In the future, the Talisman app will:
- Allow you to stake assets and earn rewards
- Let you view your NFTs and collectibles
- Experience a variety of DeFi tools such as liquidity pools, lending and borrowing, swapping tokens, and much more.
And this is where the Spirit Key comes in.
The Magic of the Spirit Key
The key was created by the Talisman Guardians and is inscribed with a message. While I do not know the exact meaning of the inscription, I can tell you a few things about how to find the key, and what its powers will be.
Firstly, the inscription:
Talisman Seeker, it’s your Spirit that’s key.
At the end of your seeking, you’ll finally be free.
A key to the new world is a difficult thing.
You should ask yourself honestly, “what on earth should I bring?”
Give a moment of thought as to whether it can be brought.
All I can guarantee is that nothing is for naught.
At first, you might think that this poem is literal, but since we have no on-chain oracles that record and report data about the divine, this simply cannot be validated.
What we’re certain of is that owning a Spirit Key marks you as an early seeker of the Talisman. There are multiple benefits to this, some of which are clear and others that are uncertain.
What We Know
It’s a special thing to be part of the genesis, especially when this genesis admits only a few.
Recipients of the Spirit Key will have the privilege of taking future editions of Talisman for a spin before everyone else. Keyholders will be in a unique position to shape the future of the Paraverse by assisting the Talisman team to make it easy for everyone (even blockchains beginners) to participate in the network. If Talisman is going to build the best wallet for the ecosystem, it would make sense that only people who have a wise or courageous Spirit would be chosen.
What We Don’t Know
Naturally, early seekers (adopters) tend to be rewarded in the near or far future. Sometimes it’s token airdrops, other times NFT drops, and still other times platform-specific bonuses or discounts. The statement “nothing is for naught” is a double negative, it means “everything is for something” or that “everything has a purpose”. Any future rewards that are planned are entirely uncertain, but since early seekers will also be shapers of the Talisman wallet extension, it’s only natural they will stand a greater chance of receiving future rewards.
Now you know what the Spirit Key and its benefits are, how do you go about getting one?
Seeking the Spirit Key
Upon publication of this post, 3,333 Spirit Keys were released into the Paraverse and made available for seeking. There are several ways in which you might find a key:
- Spirit Keys will be available to the first 1,000 people that participate in Polkadot crowdloans using the Talisman web app.
- More keys will be available in flash giveaways for contributors who participate in specific crowdloans.
- Spirit Keys are reserved for distribution to key communities and DAOs in the DotSama ecosystem. The list of communities will remain a mystery until right before the drop happens. The best way to stay on top of it is to follow Talisman on Twitter and join Discord.
- Some Spirit Keys are also reserved for community engagement and will be distributed via flash events and competitions that could arise on Talisman Discord and Twitter at any time.
For now, these are the four main distribution mechanics. However, because this is Spirit business, nothing is set in stone (well, except the 1,000 keys reserved for crowdloan participants who use Talisman). New mechanics may be introduced along the way, and the only way to be in the know is to join the Talisman Discord server and follow Twitter.
This article was written by a Talisman Sentinel.
