Our rule of thumb for accepting names with reserves:

1. Reserve is less than 2K, is it a good name/emoji that we feel from market sales and experience will fetch at a minimum 2K?

2. Reserve is 5K, it is an A+ quality name that will sell for minimum 5K and get to 5K quickly from our buying audience.

3. Reserve is 10K, is this a name that will get bidding action if we start the bidding at 3 to 5K? Is this a name/emoji with wide enough appeal to get multiple bidders wanting to win it so it will have bidding momentum to rocket past the 10K reserve or, is this a name that will get zero bids with auction opening bid floor of 5K?

In general we will not accept names with 10K reserves or more unless they were bought in the aftermarket or auction for more. For reserves of over 5K the calculation for acceptance of a name/emoji with a reserve at this level is, its last sale either in aftermarket or original blockchain auction price, plus 25%.

So for a name that closed in auction at 8K, an acceptable reserve price would be 10K (8,000 X 1.25 = 10,000). Our aim is to get bidder engagement and momentum, and we have never started bidding for more than 5K. On auctions where we have started bidding from a high mark, say 5K because there was a 15K reserve on it, we tend to get no starting bids and skip the name. It’s a waste of time for us, for the bidders and sucks some of the flow/momentum out of the room when this happens.

If your name is rejected, normally we reject names because a) the name is junk and your expectation are too high relative the reserve b) there were multiple other submission to the auction of a similar caliber with lower reserves or similar qualities and/or the name/emoji does not fit with the sequence of other names/emojis submitted in this cohort. And, your name/emoji may be good, there may be many buyers but it is not a name/emoji we are confident we can sell based on the lineup of the current auction and/or based on our past auction sales and current after market sentiment.