Can the chain economy model go through without Token?

Article Title: "Can the Chain Game Economy Model Work Without Token?"

Source: W Labs

Some of the game teams that W Labs has been in contact with recently have a request for economic model design: Can we not include tokens in the model? At the beginning, our team thought that it was the castration of the most exciting and exciting part of the chain tour. However, after an in-depth understanding of the background of this requirement, I think it is necessary to provide some solutions. In this paper, we will throw a brick to explore how to design the downstream game model without adding tokens.

First, why does the project put forward the chain tour economic model and do not want to join the token?

Summarizes the ideas of the next several project teams for several reasons:

First, some national or regional policy restrictions.

For example, if the token of a project is classified as an equity asset, it will be subject to the jurisdiction of the SEC, which is very troublesome for the project. On March 16, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler also told reporters that holders of proof-of-interest tokens can receive returns from the pledge, so they should be considered securities that need to be registered under U.S. law and fall under SEC jurisdiction. Including the New York Attorney General has said that Ethereum is an unregistered security, so its founders, including Vitalik Buterin, violated U.S. securities laws, among other things.

What kind of project founder wants to be sued for breaking the law just because the project is doing well? Unless you're on the scale of Binance, then it's worth it. I don't want to go to Bellyland forever. So there are projects expanding in North America that say their tokens are utility tokens, not equity tokens. However, the classification of tokens is still up in the air, so if you don't want to get into trouble, you need a lot of legal and public relations resources in advance. Therefore, it is understandable that some chain game teams would not want to touch the thunder and simply remove the token option from the project economy model.

There is also the mysterious country in the east, the management of the entire crypto industry is still in the stage of slowly understanding. Projects without tokens are perceived as safer by the team. At this summit in Hong Kong, Dr. Xiao Feng from Wanxiang Blockchain gave a speech on the theme of "the three-generation coin model. This surprised me a little before. I thought that Hashkey would have to say some macro macro narrative, but it turned out to be a three-generation coin model that we have been discussing last year. I thought about it yesterday, maybe I have a shallow cognition. Did I deliberately send a signal to WEB3 practitioners, that is, do not talk about token color change, Hashkey has dared to discuss the design of token model in the open summit, does that mean that the policy will slowly relax?

Second, it represents the view of most groups who don't want to include tokens in their economic models: Tokens are the original sin of the chain's death spiral, and without tokens in the model, users won't be able to mine and sell smoothly.

The team at W Labs has reservations about this idea. It is like a new economy that keeps bartering for fear that the money it issues will later inflate.

We wrote more than 100,000 words of research and investment articles, just to try to design the economic model more reasonably and more in line with the characteristics of the project itself. Now many projects soon become death spiral, because we did not spend more time on the model and operation according to local conditions. The first men of the Beautiful Country sailed to North America on the Mayflower. If they simply copied the successful British monarchy and parliamentary system, there would be no separation of powers of their own.

Of course, we recognize the need to partially limit the external liquidity of tokens in the early stage of the project. Some people say that this is not WEB3 ah, we are in the long-term development perspective of the project, there is no problem. Just as a country has just established its economic system, it basically needs to have foreign exchange control. If there is no threshold, it will be ransacked by huge funds from outside.

Third, for some projects that are primarily focused on navigating from WEB2 users, having a token in the game will greatly increase the difficulty of accessing the Apple App Store and google play.

Second, how to design an economic model without tokens?

Well, regardless of whether the above three ideas are reasonable, let's talk about them directly as a proposition essay.

First and most important, without tokens, there has to be a medium that links the inside and outside of the game, right?NFT can do this, so economic models without tokens should focus their design on NFT. In fact, the economic model that we're designing now, even if we have N tokens, is exactly the same way to channel liquidity to the NFT, which is an idea that we've been emphasizing in the last long post, why? Compared with tokens that can be sold at will, NFT makes it less easy for players to sell tokens than to sell tokens in terms of liquidity, emotional support, and store of value, which reduces selling pressure and prolongs the life cycle of the game.

A general idea in practice is: Soft tokens earned in the game, such as diamonds, coins and crystals, can be used directly or indirectly to upgrade the NFT. WEB3 gold farmers can upgrade the original 100 UMint whiteboard NFT to level 10 NFT through this NFT formation mode. Because level 10 NFT is enabled in the game's high level copy, the price goes up to 200 U on the NFT market, and the player makes 100 U on the sale. The idea is that players who want to make money will pay for it. Without the token, you can make your NFT assets appreciate and then cash them out.

At the same time, NFT can also solve the problem of Blizzard and NetEase before, that is, decentralized storage. It doesn't matter if the centralized server is gone. All the assets in the game can be given to NFT, and then players will put NFT in the wallet.

Second, economic models should be designed to win to earn, rather than play to earn.Of course, this is also related to the attributes of the game itself, such as Texas game class, Moba class, Csgo class, COClike strong confrontation type of games, naturally suitable for win to earn model. If it's mining or nurturing, steer it towards PVP leaderboard rewards, and design it for rewards like leaderboards to win to earn.

The biggest difference between Win to earn and play to earn is this: Win to Earn is a casino-like business, where you pump water for a living, rookies are rewarded, and masters earn. play to earn is where projects give rewards and players earn. But why should the program let you keep making money? Don't you lose money if you keep making money? It just starts earning you 1 U, and then it tracks the 10 U in your wallet.

In a win to earn chain game without tokens, a master can only upgrade NFT continuously, and then have a greater win rate in PK, and obtain more NFT cultivation resources, and continue to develop. The most important thing is that the winner earns the loser's formative assets, not tokens, and there is no overt token inflation.

Thirdly, enhance the serial value capture function of NFT, hoping that players can play to own.One problem in reality is that even if the WEB2 game is fun, players will get tired of playing it, let alone the chain game with weak playability at present. Even if the strategy or tactics in the design of various models are strengthened, the game energy will eventually run out, which can reflect the superiority of NFT as a decentralized asset: If a project has a next chain game, it can simply announce that the NFT of the previous chain game will get a new NFT drop in the next game. This way, the player won't have to rush to sell the NFT in the last game, and the NFT will be more powerful in the next game. Why cut meat when the floor price is 30%?

This kind of thinking has begun to be applied in the mode of "platform + multiple chain games", which can be combined with the "platform points" system. Yes, there is no need to have a token, a complete point system + NFT with serial value capture will be enough.

Three, there is no token chain travel case

Let's continue to learn from it, and let's take a few examples to illustrate.

Big Time

Big Time is one of the most familiar projects among chain players. It's one of the few 3D franchises that started in 2021 and is still evolving, so give it credit for that.

Bigtime is an MMORPG chain game that incorporates the concept of NFT. Players who have tried the game can see at a glance, the game screen, operation, etc., are the shadow of World of Warcraft. Big Time is based on an impressive background, founded by CEO Decentraland co-founder Ari Meilich, who recruited an accomplished dev team of game industry veterans from companies including Epic Games, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Riot. In the first two rounds of financing in 2021, $21 million was raised. Star investors such as FBG, North Island, Digital Currency, OKEx, Alameda, etc. In addition, I have accumulated a lot of capital reserves by selling Passcard and Space in the past two years.

Big Time has been a representative of the tokenless economic model for two years. It was only announced this year that Token TIME would be released when appropriate, but the overall model is still built around the various NFT of the game. TIME tokens will mostly be produced in the game by equipping the Time hourglass. And cannot be traded on the in-game marketplace.

The biggest feature of Big Time is that it uses skin NFT as the core basis of its economic model. The Skin NFT has many functions, in addition to its status and uniqueness in the game, it also allows the equipped player to enter a restricted area or exclusive copy, and allows the asset of the NFT to be linked and traded freely. All series have a limited and constant supply of skin, each in their own fixed quantity. To create a special skin NFT, you need to acquire space (land) and functional NFT (furnace, armory, time guard, etc.).

TIME tokens, on the other hand, serve as the primary in-game currency. Players produce TIME tokens through time guards, and further skin NFTS through functional NFTS, which eventually reach the end buyer, closing the loop on complete production and trading. TIME tokens, with a maximum circulation of 100 billion, can be generated by equipping the Time hourglass and completing quests or duplicates, or imported through the player's wallet. Their main functions include refining, upgrading, crafting, accelerating NFT, and accessing special in-game areas and duplicates.

Such a set of NFT as the core, TIME token as the auxiliary play, help the value of the overall game precipitation on the NFT, to achieve "fair competition", the game's main focus on the game equipment and experience, rather than a variety of DEFI financial play. This idea also echoes what we talked about earlier, using the NFT as a medium to connect inside and outside the game, reducing overall liquidity and reducing real-time selling pressure. A limited number of unique NFT skins will also give players a better sense of belonging to Play to their Own, creating more of a sense of honor and spiritual support for the NFT, rather than cold numbers like tokens.

Legend - Fiery Verdict Collection

The Legendary Verdict of Fire Collection, which was released in public beta last December, is a special kind of game with no token model: WEB2 game + digital collection, where equipment holding digital collection can play valuable items in the game and then sell them. This game was explored in depth last year. It wasn't a big hit in WEB3 circles, but it was a big hit in digital circles.

The game is on the Legend IP, and we got the format number. "Legend" without too much introduction, since 1999 listing, more than 20 years of enduring popularity, so far there are still tens of billions of dollars a year water, user scale tens of millions.

Compared with the traditional players who are still fighting in the traditional web2 equipment, the advantages of the Legend collection edition are obvious. Players can realize the full interoperability of the digital collection and the certified national version chain, and they can also have the same digital collection in other servers, and they can trade freely to realize the compliance flow. The use of domestic characteristics of the national version of the alliance chain, mainly in order to avoid regulation, assets on the chain at the same time, and do not appear public chain, NFT and other sensitive words.

The gameplay is basically the same as that of Frozen Legend, even the numbers haven't changed much. There is no Token design in the game. Players can recharge talisman through RMB, and Talisman, as the most important krypton gold game currency in the game, can be further exchanged for ingot, trading equipment, items, unlocking special abilities, etc., but Talisman cannot be reversed into RMB.

The function of the number is mainly realized through the "legend order". "Legend Order" not only greatly increases the chance of dropping equipment after killing monsters, but also has a higher chance of dropping equipment that can be synthesized into digital collections. And players want to experience the full digital collection version of the link, trading function, must have a "legend order". We can think of the "Legend Order" as a Pass card in web3 games, which can only be held in order to extract the digital collection of these "NFT" on-chain transactions.

However, the game has been online for a few months and looking back, it seems that the Legendary - Verdict of Fire digital edition has not made much waves in the field of web3 games. In the game, almost all the players are under the name of the "China digital" guild, the number suffix of the union name (China digital collection 1, 2, 3...). Are compiled to dozens, indicating that basically are the number of hidden circle players in the game, and in the web3 circle, the discussion of the game players are very few.

"Legend - Flame Verdict" in the web3 field of cold, not because of the economic model, but the number of Tibetan circle is originally and web3 is not the same two circles, and "legend" this IP for many years to try new but not too concerned about the game of web3 players, The game lacks mainstream web3 gameplay, and the game itself looks a little stale in terms of graphics, gameplay, etc.

BitstarWar

BitstarWar, which has been in beta in Guatan for a few days, is a COClike (a parody of SuperCell's Clash of Clans). We have previously published an article analysis of COClike's chain game, this kind of SLG gameplay will make hardcore players addicted, but the requirements for numerical planning and gameplay are extremely high, the need for strategic balance. BitstarWar is the COClike chain tour with the highest completion degree and the strongest playability that we have ever seen. The drawing style is also very good. The friends playing in the internal test are very addicted.

In addition, this is not a WEB2 chain modified game. According to the introduction of the project team, it has been developed for nearly three years, and their main storyline is mining. The main base is like a mining pool, which can install various mining machines and produce in-game star coins. The project is currently doing a marketing campaign to promote the blind box sale at the end of April. If you are interested in the project, don't miss the sale date.

The project team is Eastern Fantasy Verse, a studio with years of experience developing WEB2 games. The game started private testing on April 17. The main line of the game that is temporarily open is to obtain resources, build bases, develop troops and loot other people's bases. Through PVP, you can obtain trophies to improve your ranking in the league. The current private beta version also includes GVG public battle, which is COClike's game to do the most social point. - PVE gameplay will be opened in the future.

We've seen a lot of COC games, most notably last year's hit Heroes of Mavia (not yet playable, too slow), and Galaxy Blitz, which recently went into public beta. But what makes BitstarWar unique is that it is also a tokenless model.

How to make gold without a Token? For most of the current chain play "whether to earn money, earn money how to fall into the bag for safety" is the most important. Through the project side's white paper and their communication, the chain goes like this:

At the present stage, players can only download APK pack from the official website or install the Apple pack to play, so the game can only use U to buy the blind box or use U in the game, corresponding to Web3 players. In the next stage, the game can be downloaded from overseas App Store or Google Play, and overseas WEB2 players can recharge the game through in-app purchase.

Players can make two kinds of trades in the game's trading market: NFT trades can be made with U; Items such as equipment, mining machines, collectibles, etc. The currency used is diamonds (in-game top-up currency). The sale of diamonds for U is performed by spontaneous market makers within the player community, and the project does not directly price it;

After the player obtains the U, they can withdraw the wallet on the chain.

Without tokens, the whole economic model is focused on NFT. BitstarWar's NFT model is based on the Officer NFT, which is officially distributed in a blind box and players need to purchase and own at least one officer NFT in order to enter the game. Officers have strong combat skills that help players loot resources and greatly determine the outcome of a battle; The officer's NFT also has some cryptic properties, distinguishing social identities in the game; NFT can also be traded freely on the built-in trading platform of the official website. In addition to the officer NFT, the game's skin (equipment), mining machines, collectibles and other NFT, can also be freely traded on the trading platform.

The other main economic thread of the game is the in-game purchase. In the private beta version of the game, you can see all kinds of building upgrades, technology research, hero upgrades, item purchases, etc., all need to spend a lot of star coins and metal. In the private beta, star coins are more important than metal in the early stages and are obtained in three ways: by mining machine production, by buying gift packs with diamonds, and by robbing other players.

The integration of the above two sets of models builds the overall economic model ecology of BitstarWar, which is relatively simple and straightforward, with the web3 elements of NFT, far away from various complicated Tokenomics Settings, and at the same time retains the in-game revenue channel. Through the continuous upgrading of the game, the value is gradually deposited on the NFT of various games, and the transaction is finally realized through the trading market, creating a relatively stable economic cycle.

It should be said that the tokenless economic model in this game is similar to the Treasure Cabinet in Fantasy Westward Journey to some extent. There are specialized market makers to buy at a low price and sell at a high price to realize the circulation of hitting items, but it is only NFT in BitstarWar. The biggest problem with this type of model is that if the base of players is not large enough to make a profit for the market-making players, there will be no one to do it spontaneously. Judging from the game quality shown by BitstarWar at present, it is successful in chain games. I hope to rely on this advantage to precipitate more WEB3 players.

Fourth, economic model summary without token

Through the summary and analysis of the above three cases, we can feel that the tokenless model of the game is not an unpopular option, on the contrary, some game teams have physically voted with their feet to choose the tokenless model. In all three cases, NFT (or digital cache) is used as the main value carrier and provides a cash channel for free trade. Meanwhile, soft tokens in the game are used as AIDS to lubricate various economic activities in the game.

In fact, if we think back, the most basic economic model for Web2 games is very similar to this model. Krypton money for game currency, game currency to buy equipment to upgrade the hero, and then in the field or outside the hit equipment and hero account cash. The only difference is that in all three web3 cases, the addition of the NFT chain makes it safer and more convenient for players to monetize their assets.

Such an economic system eliminates the complex pledge, Token market making and other elements common to web3 projects, which is a relief for both players and project parties. With a simpler and more direct approach to the essence of "this is a game, everyone should play first", it conveys the most authentic soul of the game to players.

In such a tokenless model, people are more focused on the gameplay itself and more immersed in the fun that the game delivers. And we believe that such a web2.5 tokenless economic model between web2 and web3 will be adopted by more high-quality game quality teams, especially the game teams transforming from web2 to web3, after the great wave has passed.

Original link

欢迎加入律动 BlockBeats 官方社群：

Telegram 订阅群：https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram 交流群：https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Twitter 官方账号：https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia