Web3 Needs Better Auctions: Why GBM’s ‘Everyone Wins’ Model Is a Game-Changer

True pioneers in the Web3 space are rare these days, lots of promises, buzzwords, and big ideas. Often these new concepts come with maximum extraction, minimum effort vibes, and let’s be real, it’s becoming a huge drag on the Cryptoverse. Which is why when you find something truly different, that isn’t just smoke and mirrors, it’s showcasing real tech that is working and doing what it’s meant to, a massive ear-to-ear grin starts to appear.

GBM’s ‘Everyone Wins’ model does just that, it makes you smile. Are we now seeing the rebirth of the Web3 builder after a few years of decline? It’s time we dive in and see why GBM is flipping the traditional auction format on its head.

The Problem with Auctions

If you’ve ever taken part in an auction, physically or online, there is a very obvious issue. This is due to the fact that auctions like eBay, Sotheby’s, or OpenSea follow a winner-takes-all model, one winner walks away with the item, be that a house, car, painting, or digital art piece, while everyone else walks away with nothing. Yes, it’s worked for centuries, admittedly, but in a Web3 world that champions participation, fairness, and community ownership, this model is increasingly out of place.

Sellers are incentivised to squeeze as much as possible from a small pool of bidders, while all participants bar the winner are left with no reward for their time, energy, or conviction. In effect, their bid becomes a sunk cost, and their engagement is treated as disposable, until next time bro.

This in turn leads to thin participation where people only bid if they think they can win, skewed incentives mean that the platforms often favour the sellers, and that ultimately leads to no long-term value being kept. Everything just leads to the next listing, and the next sale, with no thought given to anyone else.

This is where Hugo and GBM stepped in.

“We wanted to make auctions more participatory, rewarding, and exciting… not just for the winner, but for everyone involved.” – Hugo McDonaugh

Participation is King

Bidding should feel like you are participating in something, contributing to the process, not just a way to be extracted from; this isn’t gambling after all.

If you’ve ever been part of a Web2 or Web3 auction, you know all too well about snipers, bots, and flippers. These parties push out real users, hurting the ecosystem that is trying to be created.

GBM flips this, allowing every participant to win or earn, no one walks away empty-handed. This seems like a totally alien concept because it really is completely different from anything the world has seen before.

“GBM turns bidding into a social, rewarding experience. People bid to win or to earn… that dynamic creates loyalty and stronger communities.” – Hugo McDonaugh

Let’s be real here, most auctions aren’t great at helping us figure out what something is actually worth. They’re just good at seeing how high someone is willing to go before they blink. That’s not price discovery, that’s bluffing with better UX, poker with a paddle.

First-price sealed bids encourage people to lowball and hope for the best.

Dutch auctions get gamed by bots and wait-for-the-bottom snipers.

English auctions? Constant bluffing and fake bids to psych each other out.

The real issue is that there’s no incentive to bid your true value, so we never get a clear picture of actual demand. It’s like trying to guess the temperature outside by seeing who almost opened a window. GBM turns that on its head.

With their incentive engine, every bid becomes part of a shared discovery process. When you’re outbid, you get compensated, and the next bidder has to push the price higher in a meaningful way. Suddenly, bidding becomes a collaborative truth-seeking mission, not a guessing game.

It’s like game theory meets community engagement, and the result is quite brilliant.

Plug & Play

Most auctions in Web2 and Web3 are built for a single purpose: to sell the thing and move on. They’re standalone events, not systems. And certainly not composable.

GBM is building auction infrastructure, so protocols, not just platforms. This lays the groundwork for much more than one site; it’s positioning itself to be the infrastructural layer moving forward.

Being plug & play allows for any creator or dev to spin up a GBM-powered auction without rebuilding everything from scratch. The logic is modular, permissionless, and fits right into the emerging Web3 stack, just like AMMs did for liquidity.

Whether it’s NFT drops, token launches, rare collectibles, or even physical assets being tokenised, GBM’s architecture is built to adapt and scale.

And given where we’ve seen RWAs begin to head, this might just be the killer use case that no one saw coming.

There’s Proof in that Pudding

As mentioned earlier, GBM has been quietly building. This isn’t a smoke and mirrors project; this is a 70,000+ auctions later kind of project, with no signs of slowing down.

This means real revenue and a working business model. With $200M+ in volume and more than $7 million handed out to bidders, this is a project that is certainly catching the attention of big players in the space. And that shows with the incredible list of Web3 titans that GBM has worked with so far. The likes of Aavegotchi, Unstoppable Domains, and Cryptograph. They even auctioned Gavin Wood’s original Ethereum Yellow Paper, so no big deal, probably nothing.

Looking ahead, GBM seems to be speeding up if anything. The team is rolling out a unified UI to let users see and access all GBM-powered auctions in one place. They’re launching the full protocol, moving toward community governance, and they’re doing it all with a focus on sustainability, fairness, and actual utility, not hype.

“These achievements give us a solid, sustainable foundation to now scale globally with the launch of the GBM protocol.” – Hugo McDonaugh

In a space that often favours speed over substance, GBM is doing the hard work of building something that lasts. Something composable, transparent, and here’s the kicker, actually fun to use.

Because at the end of the day, Web3 needs more than promises and tokenomics, it needs primitives that work and protocols that scale. And, yes, it 100% needs builders who still give a damn.

If this is the start of a new era of real Web3 infrastructure, we’re all here for it.

Disclaimer - The GBM token is a utility token for participation in the GBM ecosystem. It is not an investment, security, or financial product. Participation in the GBM IDO does not guarantee profits or returns.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.