Introducing Pic One: The Internet’s Popularity Contest
Pic One is a social crypto game where players pic between three cards. The most voted card by participants has the greatest chance of winning — so Pic wisely.
Gamble with your friends, earn cool rewards, and find new influencers to support!
How Pic One Works
In each 30 second round, three cards are drawn for players to choose from. When all the votes are in, we use a provably fair formula that any player can check easily to determine the chance of a card winning.
For example, if 75% of all players pic card A, then that card has a 75% chance of winning the pot. However, don’t forget players who bet on B and C have a combined 25% chance to scoop it themselves!
All Natural Keynesian Beauty
The Keynesian Beauty Contest is a concept introduced by John Maynard Keynes, noted bête noire of the Bitcoin community, in an attempt to explain the behavior of investors in the stock market. The idea is that one isn’t trying to price securities based on fundamental value but on what everyone else in the market perceives to be their fundamental value.
Keynes asked readers to imagine a newspaper contest where they attempted to choose the most attractive face among six. If you chose the girl who won the most votes, you shared a prize with your fellow voters.
The most simplistic way of playing the game is to pick the girl you like the most. However, the immediate and obvious strategic improvement is to guess what the other players in the game would think. Taking the concept further, you can try to guess what the other players in the game will think knowing that people are trying to play the second-level strategy. Similar to poker, the best strategy to play is probably one level ahead of your opponents.
Our game has similar strategies and meta-strategies — but with a twist. We introduce the element of luck so no one is guaranteed a victory. Even if you’re just 1% of the vote, you can still win! Your chance is determined by the vote so you still want to assess what the crowd is up to but what you choose to do what that information is up to you.
Maybe you like the idea of trying to win BIG even if your chances are somewhat lower. Instead of being forced to pick what you think everyone’s favorite is, you can go the other way and pic against the trend. Or if you like to play it safe and win more frequently, you can follow the crowd. The choice is YOURS!
But don’t forget, people may be aware that you’re trying to do this which could change their votes too! ;)
Pic One is Designed for Fun, not for Collectibles
A lot of crypto games — especially those born after 2017 — want to simply tack on NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to a pre-existing game and say “Hey, look we’re a blockchain game!” Sell some tokens, create some “art,” and laugh your way to the bank.
We at Pic One wanted to do something different — built by gamers for gamers. Let’s be honest, while NFTs are incredibly cool and we can’t wait to bring some to you in Pic One, for the most part, that’s not what really makes a game fun. NFTs are an awesome second layer or feature to a game, not the core unless it’s a true 0–1 type of innovation like CryptoKitties. The point isn’t that NFTs suck — rather that most implementations so far have sucked or have been poorly conceived cash grabs.
Pic One started with the core concept of a Keynesian Beauty Contest and then tweaked it to make it a fun crypto betting game with a huge social element. We need blockchain for the provably fair RNG and settlements. Eventually the entire game will live on-chain as we scale up alongside Ethereum.
Our entire mission is centered around what makes the game most fun for YOU, the player.
Social to the Core
Everything in crypto starts with building a strong community. Whether it’s a currency, a platform, or even an exchange, the success or failure lies with who’s participating. Whether you’re a Bitcoin maximalist, DeFi optimist, or Binance evangelizer, the ties that bind people are stronger than a simple pros/cons list. There’s something intangible and powerful in being part of a thriving, growing network.
Come join our new community — we think you’ll have fun, meet cool people, and maybe even make some money along the way!
Pic One is the Internet’s Popularity Contest.
