Project Insight: Genopets – A Move To Earn Game on Solana

Genopets is attempting to successfully gamify fitness and movement by creating an engaging ecosystem for the members of the Solana community.

Introducing Genopets

Genopets is the world’s first Free-to-Play, Move-to-Earn NFT game that rewards users for maintaining an active lifestyle. It is primarily built on the Free-to-Play mobile gaming model, which aims to target a global audience with an economic model that appeals to all people–crypto natives and otherwise by getting them started for free in order to popularize the potential in NFT gaming. Conceptually, Genopets integrates users’ daily activity data with blockchain technology’s Play-to-Earn economics to drive the expansive gameplay, which generates crypto rewards for users.

Source: Genopets Medium

The game is the first to reward players for remaining active by utilizing the unique qualities of blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It has two unique tokens: $GENE, which is used mostly for governance and staking, and $KI, which is utilized as an in-game currency. 

Most other assets are represented as NFTs, which are fully owned and tradeable by the players. Overall, the game merges the nurture and evolution of ‘Tamagotchi,’ the training and battling of ‘Pokemon,’ and the fitness and social incentives of ‘Strava’ while rewarding players with crypto for staying active in their daily lives.

Value Proposition

Genopets intends to revolutionize the GameFi space by pursuing a user engagement growth model compared to other games in the ecosystem, which base their growth on the user acquisition model, which in the long term can be unsustainable because of the prohibitory entry costs. 

Free-to-Play: There are no upfront entry costs to begin playing the game. Users can mint their Genopet NFT for free and begin their journey, albeit with limited rewards in the Free-to-Play mode. Users can purchase additional NFTs and game assets in order to progress faster and monetize their effort. 

Integration with Mobile and Wearables: The game integrates tracking data from devices and fitness wearables to sync the user’s activity with progress in the game. 

Move to Earn: It is one of the first games to introduce the Move-to-Earn concept using blockchain technology in NFT gaming. This concept combines Move-to-Play with Play-to-Earn, to provide players with a unique platform to combine fitness incentives with intuitive gameplay. 

Sustainable Vesting Schedule: Unlike many other play-to-earn games, Genopets features exceptionally sustainable tokenomics because of the regular unlocking of early-stage investor tokens and the delayed release of in-game prizes. All private sale investors are subject to a one-year lockup period followed by a one-year linear vesting period. 

Built on Solana: The game benefits from the Solana blockchain’s large throughput, scalability, and near-instant and low-cost transactions. This assures that it can serve hundreds of thousands of concurrent users without experiencing congestion or the gas fee issues that have plagued games on other blockchains.

$GENE Token & In-Game Elements

Source: Genopets Medium

$GENE Token: It is a fungible governance and staking token representing ownership in the Genoverse. Token holders can vote on the future of gameplay and stake their $GENE tokens to earn rewards. $GENE is also used in the game for crafting and refining Crystal NFTs.

Source: Genopets Whitepaper

$Ki Token: $KI token is a fungible in-game reward token that you earn when you purchase a Habitat. $KI can be used in the game to accelerate Genopet evolution, alchemize crystals, generate new Habitats, and battle other players. 

Genopets: It is a generative NFT that evolves, can be upgraded, and customized. Genopet NFT can be minted for free and is hatched as an infant. Over time, it increases in value as players level up and augment its type, battle performance, and aesthetics. The Genopet evolves with XP, and its evolution is guided and accelerated using Refined Crystals. Each Genopet is molded through nurture and battle and is encoded with the player’s personality and fitness statistics. The nurturing elements are intended to test players physically, whilst the battle mechanics are intended to challenge their cognitive abilities.

Source: Genopets Medium

Refined Crystals: They are NFTs that are crafted using $GENE and $KI and are used to guide the evolution of Genopets. 

Habitats: Genopets live and evolve in habitats. Habitats are NFTs that can be bought or created using $GENE, $KI, and Crystals. They enable players to directly craft Gene Crystals and earn $KI through gameplay. A player’s Habitat must be maintained using crystals on a regular basis; otherwise, it will fall into ruin and stop producing $Kl. Players can earn money by leasing their Habitats to other players; however, each Habitat can only accommodate one Genopet at a time. 

Experience Points (XP): XP is a parameter in the Genopet’s gameplay that increases as the player makes progress in the game. It can be used to upgrade the Genopet based on the number of points accumulated. 

Game Dynamics

The combination of Free-to-Play and Play-to-Earn is a first for NFT Gaming is made possible by the Genopets Dual Earning Economy. This economic model allows any player to generate a Genopet for free and participate in open NFT marketplaces by purchasing and selling in-game items. Purchasing Refined Crystal NFTs improves a Genopet’s evolution and unlocks a variety of unique attributes and skills, increasing the rarity and value of the Genopet in-game. Let’s examine the two gaming modes.

Free to Play

In the free-to-play mode, players can mint their NFT for free and earn XP points based on their physical activity. The XP points can be used to upgrade the Genopet NFT. After achieving a certain level, the Genopet can be sold on the marketplace or use those points to accelerate the evolution of the habitat, thereby providing an opportunity for monetization. 

Users can do the following in the Free-to-Play game mode:

Nurture: Hatch a unique Genopet NFT for free based on personality and connect it to step data to begin playing. 

Evolve: Earn XP by participating in daily step challenges that level up the Genopet and customize its appearance. 

Battle: Access the Battle Arena and compete against other Free-to-Play players in competitive, strategic mini-games to earn even more XP and climb the leaderboards. 

Trade: Sell upgraded Genopet NFTs on the marketplace to other players looking to get a head start in the Genoverse.

Source: Genopets Medium

Pay-to-Play

Players also have the option of beginning their journey on the game via purchasing habitats and other NFTs to accelerate their progress and have access to greater benefits and Genopet’s token system and a faster-earning mechanism. 

Players have the following possibilities in this game mode:

Purchase a Habitat from the Genopets Marketplace or from other users to begin earning $KI + XP on a consistent basis. 

Stake $GENE to boost the daily $KI cap and accelerate the daily accumulation of $KI and XP. 

Generate and mix various Refined Crystals for the evolution of their Genopet NFTs. 

Rent their Habitats to other players and earn rewards so as to assist other players in their Genopet’s evolution.  

Sell their Habitats to other players or on the marketplace in order to purchase a new one. 

Source: Genopets Medium

Roadmap

Source: Genopets Whitepaper

Team Background and Funding 

The Solana-based game closed its seed funding round of $8.3 million in October 2021, which was co-led by Konvoy Ventures, an investor and board observer of Axie Infinity and Pantera Capital. 

Several other crypto venture capital firms like Old Fashion Research, Alameda Research, Solana Capital, Xoogler Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Collab+Currency, Spartan Group, Animoca Brands, OliveX, Hyper, CMT Digital, DeFi Alliance, Eniac Ventures, CMS Holdings, GBV Capital, Yield Guild Games, Merit Circle, Bitscale Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Evernew Capital, Fundamental Labs, Valhalla Capital, Cinchblock, Raptor Capital, and Magnus Capital, were also involved in the round. 

Additionally, eminent angel investors such as Kevin Lee (the co-founder of Twitch), Bryan Corrigan (VP and Head of Americas, PUBG Corporation), Prabhakar Reddy (Co-Founder of FalconX), Richard Ma (CEO of Quantstamp), John Robinson (President & COO of 100 Thieves), Melanie Strong (a 19-year veteran executive of Nike) and Keisuke Honda (a Japanese professional footballer) were also involved. Such a large pool of well-known angel investors and venture capital firms is a testament to the interest and traction the game has garnered in the Solana ecosystem since its launch.

Source: Genopets Medium

The key members of the Genopets team are as follows, along with their relevant backgrounds:

Albert Chan, co-founder, and CEO – Chan has over ten years of growth marketing experience as an owner of e-commerce businesses. Chan has over ten years of experience in software development, of which four were focused on blockchain technology. His team was the winner of the EOS Global Hackathon in 2018.

Benjamin Tse, co-founder and CPO – Benjamin is an award-winning product designer with over fifteen years of experience in UI/UX, Business Strategy, SaaS, E-commerce, and Branding. He’s been around in the blockchain domain for over six years now and was a part of Chan’s team in the EOS Global Hackathon that they won.

Jay Chang, co-founder –  Chang is a product management and marketing leader with over ten years of experience in the same. Of his four years in the blockchain domain, he spent three in Product Marketing, leading the go-to-market for EOS at Block.one. He’s currently also a part of Google’s P&E development marketing team.

Concluding Thoughts

The floor price of the Genopets NFT collection is currently at 24.5 SOL, over $2400 at the time of writing, on Magic Eden, the largest NFT platform in the Solana ecosystem. The total volume of Genopets NFT traded currently stands at 61415.54 SOL, as per the data from Magic Eden.

Although Genopets is still in its early stages of adoption, its user-engagement growth model and its appeal to a non-crypto audience is unique in the GameFi ecosystem. Compared to the user-acquisition model that most game developers adopt, which entails onboarding as many users as possible in order to drive the game economics (purchasing an NFT in order to get started with the game, which results in unsustainable inflationary progression), the user-engagement model delivers growth as long as users are participating in the game and the Play-to-Earn concept ensures that Genopets will continue to grow as long as it keeps expanding its gameplay and rewarding users for their participation.    

Find more about Genopets here:

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‍Source : web3wire.news

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