Against recent P2E blockchain game crash | How to build healthy Gamefi tokenomics?

Cryptomines’s self-proclaimed advanced oracle revenue model has gone bankrupt, along with the price of $ETERNAL falling from 800 $USDT to 3 $USDT. Meanwhile, Cryptomine attempted to palm players off on excuses that certain players merely held out instead of participating in the game, which eventually ruined the economic cycle.

BNB Hero’s promised BNB rewards also ended up in vain while claiming that [we have already given an unprecedented amount of BNB]

This mode of mining and selling began in cold silence, broke out in a burst of cheers, and collapsed in an instant. In the end, users who hold coins or buy NFTs to participate in the game would suffer huge losses as long as they don’t end on a good note immediately.

In the following article, we will be discussing certain core problems faced by all Gamefi projects which can be concluded as:

1. How the game playability extends the life cycle of blockchain games?
2. For blockchain games, how to build sustainable tokenomics?
3. How far are we to the vision of Web3.0 Metaverse?

Gamefi after craze: No “Play”, Either the “Earn”

Where does the money earned in P2E actually come from?

Generally speaking, there are two channels for funds entering the pool:

1. Funds were from the project, including those for pool creation and mining;
2. Funds were also raised through the consumption of players and token sales.

A fair knowledge is that the project is not a charity and the subsidy of free funds is always limited.

When this part of the subsidy is reduced, the revenue decreases; the number of players who enter the game later decreases correspondingly, and the revenue is less; seeing the revenue decrease, the early beneficiaries profit out. Hence, there will be a more obvious collapse, followed by a crazy stampede.

The crazy stampede is actually a point worth going in-depth. Although Axie also faced such a death spiral, the price of SLP did not experience a flash crash of 99% in a week. To put it more abstractly, it is because players still believed in its long-term value. As a result, on December 8th, against the crash of many blockchain games, the SLP price even ushered in an increase.

What can we learn from Axie?

Some players came to play the game while others were merely for the yields. Cryptomines and BNB Hero had almost zero playability. Players were only attracted by the yields. If the profitability vanished, they would immediately turn around and leave. A qualifying game is supposed to allow users to obtain a game experience or be willing to hold corresponding assets for a long time which contributes to the self-circulation in the game, rather than just playing fast games for short-term gains. A balanced state in which consumers and suppliers are highly matched would be achieved in such a game.

How the game playability extends the life cycle of blockchain games?

The fascination of zero-sum game

Arc8 is another intriguing game that ranked first among all Gamefi projects on Polygon. The specific gameplay is to buy a certain token as a ticket to participate in a game. If you win, you earn. If you lose, you lose the ticket. As a Gamefi project in the name of Play-to-Earn, its mechanism is a zero-sum game. Players have to make money through their own efforts (spending time to play and energy to do researches), otherwise, they lose money. Hence, there is no so-called death spiral. Players are competing for the limited resources which are not infinitely magnified as presumed. Meanwhile, the process is not diced rolling but a fun experience.

Indeed, this is a true portrayal of life. When the demographic dividend has passed, people have no choice but to fight for each other as resources are no longer sufficient, which can be construed as “involution”. The time it takes for the crypto world to evolve will be much faster as a project would wind up its growth bonus period in weeks and eventually disappear along with players.

In contrast, Arc8 is smarter as it applied this competitive mechanism to encourage users to compete, expand the entire project with the charm of competition, and prevent a possible death spiral from appearing as they bore in mind that resources were limited from the start.

For blockchain games, how to build sustainable tokenomics? (Earn)

There are two types of Gamefi: Single-token and Multi-token.

Single-token

Tokenomics of the single-token gamefi project increases the impact of the secondary market on the in-game economic system. When early players bought a large number of game tokens and locked them onto their accounts, the value of the tokens and player profits would increase, making the game very promising. However, this is not conducive to attracting new players to keep up with the upgrade speed of old ones, leading to inequality and affecting the activation. In addition, the single-token mechanism may cause inflation due to the mode of mining and selling, and the lack of centralized and unified control will further reduce the life cycle of the game and plunge the game into a death spiral.

Multi-token

Multi-token systems usually divide game tokens into in-game tokens and governance tokens. In-game tokens are the main rewards for player behaviors such as daily tasks and PvE battles. They play a considerable role in the game’s economic cycle. Governance tokens are used to incentivize players to govern the community when undertaking difficult tasks such as PvP battles, to pursue community governance rights and higher token value. There is a comprehensive game between the relevance and liquidity of tokens.

Edges:

1. Reduce the negative selling pressure of the secondary market on games;
2. A single token affects certain resources or profits instead of causing the overall game economic system to collapse;
3. It is adjustable, such as increasing user stickiness through campaigns and increasing token consumption through new gameplay.

Tokens of Evolution Land:

RING: The original game token which is for land purchase，apostles, drills, mystery box, etc.

KTON: The governance token whose holders are enabled to govern the land and determine new gameplay and other upgrades.

Resource: GOLD, WOOD, HOO, FIRE, SIOO. They can be unearthed from NFT land by Apostles and Drills.

COO: Can’t be traded and only obtained during the game.

RING is also the native token of Darwinia Network, used to empower the Darwinia cross-chain technology, which further increases the utility of RING and support the game.

Way to balance the game economics: establish a benign relationship between consumption and supply.

Output:

1. More diversified and fulfilling system resource output

System resource output can be categorized as characters, materials, equipment. Each of the three is independent while being associative in terms of resource interchange.

The output of multiple system resources can interact with the economic consumption mechanism of the game, attracting players to participate in the complex system and reap the pleasure of benefiting from their strategic deployment of resources.

Multiple System Resources of Evolution Land:

Characters in Evolution Land: Apostles

The player maximizes his combat and mining abilities by combining apostles with different attributes.

Players can study the unique genomes of the Apostles, prenatal and postnatal care, and consume the “resource” tokens in the game.

Apostle’s equipment and career system need to consume “resource” tokens

Apostles can participate in PVE battles. Materials used to synthesize the equipment in the later stage may drop during battles.

2. DAO governance and community-centered content updates

In blockchain games, assets are owned by players, and developers are necessary for asset appreciation. Players can also participate in the creation of game content. Therefore, blockchain game updates are divided into two categories: gameplay and content.

Gameplay updates are usually conducted by the team, that is, adding new modes, such as PvP and PvE. The gameplay update involves subtle digital balances and functions as a means of artificial economic control. Although opinions from the community can be considered, players are still far from designing the core mechanism.

The content update is more creative. Tales, backgrounds, or character designs are very popular in the community which connects players emotionally. In sandbox games, it is more about players using engines to create equipment and scenes. The game team will also actively organize various competitions to draw on the wisdom of the masses. Once the player’s idea is adopted, it will be recognized as the final game content and developed by the team.

Allowing players to govern in DAO and contribute to content updates will better coordinate them with the team, therefore improving game playability, increasing intimacy and maintaining user retention.

Evolution Land DAO:

Holders of KTON, the game’s governance token, can participate in game governance, such as the naming of the new land, the way the land is put on sale, and the update of PVP mode.

KTON can be obtained by locking RING:

Consumption:

Upgrading+Synthesis+Loss+Exchange mechanism, among which, exists amplifying effects.

Upgrade: Upgrade elves with potions, upgrade weapons with blueprints, upgrade buildings with ore, etc. Upgrading refers to intensifying the competition between players, especially in PvP games. Due to the desire of retaining or improving the ranking, players are willing to play the game and upgrade more frequently, thereby driving the growth of other players and forming motivation in the game. Note that the upgrade process can too complicated, for example, the resource collection time is too long, or the upgrade advantage is less obvious when multiple players upgrade at the same time, etc.

Upgrading system in Evolution Land: Resource tokens are obtained by using drills and can be applied to upgrade drills, therefore enhancing mining capacity and forming a positive economic closed loop.

Synthesis: The resource synthesis system combines two or more resources into a single item, or uses other resources to improve or replace the core characteristics of the original item. As the character upgrades or explores, players can also unlock new synthesis formulas of various items. For non-combined objects such as pets, core attributes, and skills, the synthesis result is usually random, allowing players to copy with their original characters, and inherit certain explicit and recessive features to form their offspring. The process of synthesis is complicated or the random synthesis of new resources may not conform to the players’ ideas which promote trades between players, thereby activating resource circulation and encouraging players to complement each other. Meanwhile, resources in the game are automatically adjusted to a relatively balanced state.

Synthesis system in Evolution Land:

Resource token+Low-level Drill can be synthesized into High-level Drill, enhancing the mining capacity.

Apostles can breed and reproduce offspring, and players can trade the expected or unwanted genes to achieve a balance.

Loss: Loss system refers to the player actively destroying the resources owned by other players, or the necessary consumption of the system gameplay, which allows multiple players to directly interact strategically

Loss system in Evolution Land:

Breed of Apostles consumes resource tokens.

The initiative of low-level drills can be seized by high-level drills on the NFT land.

Exchange:

Lock and Lottery

Lock and Lottery system in Evolution Land

Gain KTON through staking RING

Defi Farm: RING-Resource LP token

Lottery:

How to further break through the death spiral of Gamefi projects?

Think in the big picture and simulate community investment instead of speculation

For example, in Decentraland and Sandbox, two leading blockchain projects, their users do not have any short-term benefits who either hold relatively poorly liquid NFTs or tokens, since there is no short-term gainer, it is naturally difficult to fall into the death spiral.

However, it’s still controversial to claim that the people who invested in DCL and Sandbox weren’t for profit. Indeed, they all have made a great fortune either through reselling land or holding tokens.

Hence, there is another way to look at “Earn”, which is, when a broad consensus is formed on the product, it attracts more users to hold it for a great while. Such kind of Earn, a win-win situation for both players and the project itself, is less speculative.

Evolution Land, the earliest pioneers to show attention for Defi, NFT, and cross-chain blockchain games(since 2018).

With a keen insight into the industry, the team started development in 2018 and survived the bear market. In 2019, it connected Uniswap to complete every game transaction, deployed Defi in advance, gained the trust of the community, and had players gain the surprising Airdrop from Uniswap. It is undeniable that we have also experienced the pain of the death spiral. The resources, as one of Earn’s means, have also experienced a decline in the case of insufficient consumption.

In-game NFT has the potential for interoperability. Certain game platforms have realized the interoperability of virtual avatars while some cooperation is mutually converted irreplaceable attributes. Although a few pioneers envisioned cross-chain game and cross-chain NFT future, there are still unsolved problems between blockchain technology and the excellent experience of games. The Darwinia team behind Evolution Land has been contributing to the technological innovation of a cross-chain bridge to empower the future Metaverse.

Instead of standing idle, the team was studying advanced gameplays, developing new features, and creating new approaches for resources consumption. This time, the target ceases to be “dig resources in order to dig more”. On the contrary, the team has been looking for the key that makes resources more functional in-game, earning from battles against FeatherMoon or others with fortified equipment or building privately owned virtual world.

Starting from PVE, we chose the new ERC-1155 format assets as rewards instead of ERC-20 Tokens since NFT limits liquidity to a certain extent which makes it easier for users to own and less willing to sell; Using existing tokens (such as RING, resources) will weaken the value of the land; and if it is a new token, it will inevitably dilute the value of other tokens on Evolution Land.

The synthesis of materials and resources can make powerful equipment that will strengthen the ability of the apostle and help defeat the rivals in the next PVP. PVP and PVE may be separated and become independent Dapp.

The other is the use of plots. Each plot will be expanded into a 100*100 space. Using resource-fired bricks, users can freely construct buildings on plots, creating a home in metaverse. This will make Evolution Land more like a Layer 0 space. Whether it is ordinary users, blockchain project parties, or companies outside the crypto world, they are allowed to build their own scenes, hold events, and display functions on Evolution Land.

Of course, we will still take out 70% of the game revenue to give back to the community in different forms, explore more mature governance models, and continue to expand the boundaries of Evolution Land.

How far is it from Gamefi to Metaverse?

Evolution Planet is determined to be a metaverse composed of multiple intriguing elements, a blockchain world worthy of long-term exploration and continuous evolution. It has experienced the low ebb and will continue to seize brilliance. After entering Evolution Planet, you will experience not only our own project but also MDex, Uniswap, Quickswap, Mytrade, Opensea, NFtrade, XNFT, settled in CryptoKitties, Polkapet, YGG, ZGG, Lendhub, Channels, Phala, Crust, Polygon, etc. We are more than a McDonald’s Gamefi!

Moreover, the Darwinia team behind the Evolution Land who explored cross-chain technology and constructed cross-chain bridge has been, is, and will be striving in realizing the potential of interoperability of in-game NFT and empowering metaverse.

Evolution Land: https://www.evolution.land/land/4/
Telegram: https://t.me/evolutionland9
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Evolution_Land
Discord: https://discord.gg/JRkvWXvzEe