Star Atlas OTC Trading — Listing Options

In projects like Star Atlas, there are sometimes cases where OTC (over-the-counter) trades are preferred by individual players in specific scenarios. These are “direct” trades that do not go through the Star Atlas Marketplace. These types of trades may occur for a variety of reasons, such as high value items where tax incurred would otherwise be high, where large quantities of items (such as resources) are traded, and more.

A big part of the challenge in OTC trading is trust in the opposite party. By default, sending from wallet to wallet is based purely on trust. In the anonymous world of crypto, this can be hard to come by. Let’s take a look at some of the options that exist today to help provide a more programmatic option.

At Galia Crafters, we do encourage the use of the Star Atlas Marketplace when possible. While proceeds are taxed, much of that tax goes to the DAO, which ultimately will help grow the project even faster. The Marketplace tax can also be reduced by staking ATLAS in the locker. We do know that OTC trades will continue, so we’re putting these options together to help the community stay as safe as possible.

This article is for educational purposes only, and is not financial advice. By nature, OTC trades carry extremely high risk. Please do your own research on any tools mentioned, and trade at your own risk. You may want to test out any of these options with a couple of test wallets first.

Option 1: Whales Market

Fee: 0.1%
Primary Benefit: Easy-to-use OTC platform accepting stablecoin payments

Whales Market is a platform with multiple functions such as pre-market trading of drops, OTC trades, points trading, and more. For our purposes, we will focus on the OTC trade mode which will allow us to list any of the Star Atlas assets (including large quantities in one listing). This can make it very easy to trade large value assets in an easy interface.

Disclaimer: Galia Crafters holds staked Whales tokens which generate returns from a percentage of fees distributed by Whales Market to stakers.

First, navigate to the Whales Market app. You can access the Whales Market OTC Market page here.

Link your wallet, then click the “Create Offer” button on the left hand side. Select the “OTC Market” option:

Select the “SELLING” option:

You’ll be taken to a screen which has a few options for the trade:

In the “Selling” box, click the “Select Token” button, and you will see the following interface (our test wallet doesn’t contain tokens on the strict list, but you may see some from your wallet):

Because we want to sell Star Atlas assets that aren’t on the Whales Market strict list (a pre-approved list predominantly of widely-traded cryptocurrencies, so it doesn’t apply to Star Atlas assets), flip the toggle from “Strict” to “All”. You should then see your tokens, including any ships you have. We’ll use a Fimbul Airbike as an example:

Select the ship, and you’ll see the following warning:

Once you go through the warning, you’ll see that the ship is added to the sell side:

Now you’ll select the token you want to receive in exchange. In the “For” section, click the “Select Token” button, and you’ll see a list of accepted tokens:

We’ll use USDC in our example. As you can see from the payment options, only SOL, USDC, USDT and JitoSOL are currently accepted. This means that you cannot list assets for sale here and receive other cryptocurrencies such as ATLAS or PURI. For that, look at option 2 below.

Once you’ve selected the payment token, set the value. Here, we’re going to list 1 Fimbul Airbike for 9 USDC. You’ll notice down below a couple of other options. If you’re selling a single ship, the fill type does not matter. However, if you’re selling a bulk quantity of resources, you can allow the buyer to either buy it all at once (single fill) or just some of the quantity (partial fill). The Privacy flag allows you to hide this listing so it doesn’t appear publicly on the OTC page. This might be beneficial when you want to reserve a good deal for a specific buyer. If you set this listing to Private, then only those you send the specific link to can buy it.

When you move on to the next screen, you’ll see a summary. This also lists the fee that you will pay for this listing:

When you’ve confirmed everything, click the “Deposit…” button, confirm the transaction, and you’re good to go.

Note that right now, we do see an error message after approving the transaction, but the listing still appears.

You can go to the “Dashboard” link on the left hand nav, navigate the top tabs to “OTC Market”, and confirm your listing there:

As the listing creator, you have the ability to close the offer without it being filled. The asset you have listed will be returned, but the 0.1% listing fee will be kept.

Now you can send the listing to your buyer. As the buyer (using another wallet), they will see the option to buy the asset:

Once they complete the transaction, the buyer will receive the asset, and you as the seller will receive the payment. That’s it!

As a side note, while our example listed a single quantity of an asset, you can create orders with any quantity. For example, for resources, you’ll likely be using OTC only for large quantities. You can set any quantity by adjusting the “Amount” during the listing. The following is an example of a listing for 100k of Food:

If you are on the buying side of an OTC offer, please ensure that you are actually receiving a legitimate Star Atlas asset. On the listing, you can click the asset and go through to the Solscan page. This way, you can confirm that what is listed is correct. Remember, as with anything in this space, do your due diligence and don’t rush to transact.

Option 2: Hedgehog Markets

Fee: 1%
Primary Benefit: Taking payment in any SPL token including ATLAS & PURI

Hedgehog Markets creates a number of tools for use in the Solana ecosystem. One of the tools is a self-service raffle creator. We can actually leverage this raffle creator to help with OTC trades.

Please note that at this time, the raffle mechanic does not support multiple quantities of a single item in a single transaction. This means that this path is best suited for a single quantity asset, such as a ship. Hedgehog Markets is working on the capability to allow listing multiple items.

Let’s walk through an example of how to create a raffle and how a buyer would buy it. It would be highly recommended that you and a buyer agree on both a price and timeframe so that the raffle isn’t up on Hedgehog Markets in an open-ended fashion. Abuse of the raffle tool will not be tolerated.

First, head over to the raffle creation tool here.

You’ll see some default settings included on the page:

Click the “Select NFT” button and choose the asset you want to sell. For our example, we’ll use an Airbike again:

Next, change the number of tickets to be “1”. This ensures that only one individual, who pays the entire amount, will be able to receive the asset:

After this, you can set the amount you want to receive. Hedgehog Markets allows the use of any SPL token on Solana to be set as the payment. This means that you could choose to use USDC, PURI, or other tokens.

For our example, we’ll make this available only in USDC, which means that we’ll choose the SPL option and put in the USDC token address. You can see that it updates to reflect USDC:

Finally, set an end date and time for this raffle; if no one buys the ticket (such as if the person you’re dealing with backs out), then at the end of the raffle, you’ll be able to claim the asset back.

Once this is all set, click the “Create Raffle” button near the top. Approve the transaction, and after a little bit, you’ll see a notification that the raffle was created, along with a link to the raffle. Follow that, and you’ll see your raffle live:

At this point, you can send the link to your buyer, and they can buy the 1 ticket.

Note: If you are testing this yourself first, it’s recommended that you use a different wallet to buy the ticket, as the creator wallet is generally not allowed to claim the prize.

After they do this, you’ll see their purchase listed, and you’ll have an option to close the raffle manually if you don’t want to wait:

Once the raffle is closed, the buyer will be able to claim the prize:

The Hedgehog Markets option provides more flexibility in receiving payments, which for some OTC deals might be preferred.

As the buyer, you’ll want to double check that the asset listed is legitimate; you can follow the link in the listing name to ensure that the Solscan entry matches a real Star Atlas asset.

Currently, for those needing to trade OTC and looking for an “escrow” type of option, these two platforms can provide you with some choices. At the end of the day, OTC trades should be done only when necessary, as the Star Atlas Marketplace is still the most official and supported path.

We hope that this brief guide helps you get a sense of these two options and what it entails.

Stay safe and have fun everyone!