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Catalina Whale Mixer

A holder portal for the Catalina Whale Mixer community, with points and a leaderboard, Floating staking, a rewards store and multi-wallet profiles.

Role
Built the holder portal and Floating staking, with a small team
When
2022–2023
Client
Catalina Whale Mixer, freelance
Stack
Next.js, React, Node.js, Solana web3.js, Cardinal staking, Metaplex Candy Machine, and 2 more
Status
Archived
Catalina Whale Mixer holder dashboard: a Float On banner, collection stats, the holder tier and points, their staked whales and the points leaderboard; names blurred
Holder dashboard. Names blurred, social feeds cropped out.

Context

Catalina Whale Mixer is a Solana collection of hand-drawn whales. By late summer 2022 its holders had a scatter of separate utilities and no single place to go, and the team had already had a setback with a previous developer. They wanted one portal that gave holders a reason to come back every day.

I was freelancing on Solana utilities for NFT communities at the time. With a small team, I wrote a proposal around what the holders needed and then built it.

What I built

  • Every holder earns points from how many whales they own and whether those whales are staked. Points drive tiers and statuses, and the leaderboard ranks the whole community.
  • Staking is called Floating, and it runs on Cardinal's non-custodial contract, so whales never leave the holder's wallet. The staking page shows each whale as Floating or Sinking and the points it earns per day. In February 2023, Floating also qualified holders for the Nakamoto Whales drop, the collection's Bitcoin Ordinals release.
  • Holders spend points, plus SOL where a reward asks for it, on NFTs, merch and airdrops. The reward NFT goes straight to the holder's main wallet.
  • A profile can hold several wallets plus an email login, so a holder with whales spread across wallets still gets one score.
  • The dashboard has collection stats and the community's Discord and Twitter activity. There's also a marketplace view of the whole collection, and wallet-to-wallet messaging.
  • The team got an admin for stats, rewards, a candy-machine wizard for new drops, theming and data exports, so routine changes didn't need a developer.
Catalina Whale Mixer points leaderboard: featured whales above a ranked list of holders with tier, points, status and NFT count; names and handles blurred
Points come from staking status and how many whales a holder owns.

Key decisions

On Solana, a wallet needs a token account before it can receive a new token. I made that its own signed step in the purchase flow rather than folding it into one transaction.

Linking several wallets to one account is common. Unlinking a single wallet without disturbing the rest of the account was not, and holders sell, rotate and retire wallets all the time, so I built it in from the start.

Floating staking page: a surfing-whale Floating banner, the holder whales marked floating or sinking, their stats and stake controls; wallets blurred
Floating is staking. A whale that isn't Floating is Sinking.

Result

The portal became the official holder hub, and the public Catalina Whale Mixer site pointed its Float Whales button straight at it. Coll3ctibles grew out of the same idea, one platform instead of many one-off utilities. For other collections I built raffles, wheels and staking, which are on the Solana community tooling page.

Feature by feature

  • Multi-wallet profiles

    One account holds up to five wallets, and any single wallet can be disconnected from the identity without touching the others. Email login works too.

  • Wallet-to-wallet messaging

    Built with Dialect, with a custom identity provider so conversations show profile pictures and names instead of raw addresses.

  • Marketplace

    Shows the whole collection, unlisted whales included, filters to listed ones, and hands off to Magic Eden to buy.

  • Admin

    Collection stats, reward creation, a step-by-step candy-machine wizard, theming of the portal's colors and images, and exports of user and staking data.

Screenshots

  • Catalina Whale Mixer rewards store: a pirate-themed banner above reward cards for an NFT trait pack, merch and a VIP pass airdrop
    Rewards are bought with points and SOL and land in the holder's main wallet.
  • Catalina Whale Mixer marketplace: collection stats and filters beside a grid of listed whales with prices and ranks; owners and mint addresses blurred
    Marketplace, including unlisted whales. Owners and mints blurred.
  • Holder profile: tier, status, points and linked wallets beside the holder whales and their staking status; name, handle and wallets blurred
    Profile with several linked wallets. Name, handle and wallets blurred.
  • Admin candy-machine wizard, first of five steps: create a collection token with metadata; the treasury wallet field blurred
    Admin candy-machine wizard, step one of five. Treasury wallet blurred.
  • web.archive.org
    Archived The Whales site from March 2023: an illustrated festival stage with Buy a Whale and Float Whales buttons
    Catalina Whale Mixer's public site in March 2023. Its Float Whales button linked to the portal.
  • Admin dashboard: the admin menu beside collection stats, floor price, holders and volume charts, and community activity; admin names blurred
    Admin insights. Admin names blurred; the admin table is cropped out.
  • Admin collection settings: the portal's title, images, social links and a four-column color palette, all editable
    Collection settings: the portal's name, images, links and palette, all editable.
  • Portal sign-in card over whale art, offering wallet, email, Discord or Twitter login
    Sign in with a wallet, email, Discord or Twitter.
  • Reward purchase, step two of four: create the associated token account before the NFT can be sent; wallet and mints blurred
    Buying a reward: create the token account first. Wallet blurred.
  • web.archive.org
    Archived Floating staking entry page from September 2022: the Catalina Whale Mixer badge and a Start Floating button over whale art
    Floating staking entry, archived Sept 2022 (Wayback Machine)
  • Catalina Whale Mixer key art: cartoon whales on a beach stage under a red The Catalina Whale Mixer banner
    Catalina Whale Mixer key art.

My part

I built the holder portal and Floating staking with a small team. The collection, its art, the brand sites and the Nakamoto Whales drop were the project's own. The portal is offline now, so the screenshots come from my June 2023 article, with community members' details blurred. Catalina Whale Mixer’s art in the screenshots is used with permission.

Questions