Ethereum · Smart contracts · 2022
Yakuza Inc.
Lead engineer for a seven-figure Ethereum mint: contract, allowlist, sale controls, metadata, and payout path, carried from deployment through a 3,223-token sell-out.
The challenge
Keep the paid mint path small enough to survive concentrated demand without weakening allowlist, supply, or payout guarantees.
A high-demand Ethereum mint compresses months of product work into a few irreversible minutes. A costly opcode, broken proof, stuck sale flag, or incorrect reserve calculation can waste buyers’ gas and stop the launch. The contract and the operating sequence therefore had to be designed together: minimal work on the paid path, explicit launch controls, and public state the team could verify as demand arrived.
Engineering depth
Minimal public mint path
The public function performed the essential price and supply checks before minting a single token. Keeping the hot path narrow reduced bytecode work and made gas behavior easier to predict under load.
Isolated allowlist verification
Merkle proof verification and per-address mint tracking lived in the presale flow, so public buyers did not keep paying for allowlist logic once the open sale began.
Explicit release controls
Separate presale and public-sale switches, owner-controlled metadata, airdrop support, and PaymentSplitter payouts made the launch operable without changing the deployed contract.
Gas-aware compilation
The verified Solidity 0.8.7 build used the optimizer at 1,000 runs. Even the supply boundary was chosen with minter gas cost in mind and documented in the contract.
My role
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01
Owned the ERC-721 contract and launch pipeline end to end, including deployment, allowlist, public sale, metadata, airdrops, and payout mechanics.
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02
Reduced work on the paid path to the checks the sale actually needed, while keeping Merkle verification inside the allowlist flow.
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03
Built and tested the operator sequence for moving from presale to public sale without redeploying or improvising contract state.
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04
Stayed on the live release through sell-out, verifying the contract and mint flow against on-chain state as the final blocks filled.
The achievement
A seven-figure, 3,223-token mint that sold out in under two hours; the final 596 public mints landed in 56 seconds.
The result was a smooth seven-figure release with no emergency rewrite or replacement contract. All 3,223 tokens sold in under two hours, producing 321.4 ETH in primary proceeds. When public sale opened, the closing 596 mints cleared across two Ethereum blocks in 56 seconds; the collection later passed 1,000 ETH in marketplace volume.
- The contract completed a 3,223-token sell-out and released 321.4 ETH in primary proceeds.
- The final 596 public mints landed in just 56 seconds, across the closing two Ethereum blocks.
- The collection later passed 1,000 ETH in marketplace volume, with the verified contract and launch record still publicly inspectable.
System
Public evidence