DeFi Kingdoms Team AMA (Growth (Bus. Dev) Team) — February 21, 2022
For those unfamiliar with the project, the DeFi Kingdoms leadership team holds weekly AMA’s with the community on the discord server.
Not everyone has time to listen to the recording or wants something they can just read instead so I’ve been writing these written summaries. You can find summaries of the prior AMA’s in my index of DeFi Kingdom’s Articles.
Here is a link to the live recording: DeFi Kingdoms Community AMA 2/21/22 Growth Dept — YouTube
This week, the AMA was from members of the growth (business development) team. AMA’s have different teams present to address different topics. Join the discord to follow future responses to questions they couldn’t address on the call! Go to the Community Updates / suggestions channel to submit questions! https://discord.gg/bDwN2WYqy7
If this is your first exposure to DFK and you are looking to learn how to start participating in the game/economy, you can check out my unofficial beginner’s guide here and index of many other DFK articles here.
Team Members Present:
https://defikingdoms.com/team.html
Team Updates and Opening Statements
Frisky Frox — State of the Project
Another week is at our doorstep and it's a big one. On the builder side we are very busy on Crystalvale, Perilous Journey, improvements for stamina and how that works with questing, including for Gardening and a few other things.
Eth Denver was last week. So nice to meet so many people from the community and also some people from the team who we were able to meet for the first time. We actually went and threw axes. It’s been an amazing journey so far, a lot of big things are happening and we are coming up to the time where we are about to launch some big things and we are almost ready.
We have more people in discord now and we are growing on all fronts. We have some cool partnerships and it's the growth people here that can speak more to that. They have a lot of cool things they’ll be talking about so I’ll shut up and let them do what they do best.
Dreamer — Growth Update
This is our first growth pillar AMA. We have a number of people represented across impact, initiative, marketing, and creative.
Last week we had the release to have the ability to change profile picture. As one of the first applications we worked with Harmony on an initiative for NFT bridges and Bored Apes. They asked us if we had any functionality to display BAYC in game along with any other NFT. The first bit of utility here is the profile picture.
BAYC was a Harmony initiative. They asked for that utility and we obliged. Its part of their initiative program and they are paying 50J for the first people that use their BAYC profile picture.
FriskyFox — the metaverse — this is a huge part of the blockchain experience and having things from other games inside one game. We are for sure looking into ways to pull in other NFTs into our experience here. This was an easy one and trying to look for other ones out there that would like to partner. Harmony will be incentivizing this and buying Jewel to give away, which will help drive some demand for Jewel. Each time there is an initiative like this it will be a win-win for both projects.
Dreamer — it's only the first 100 BAYC but there will likely be more projects.
There were questions on the champion program but I’ll go into those after the others here give their growth updates.
SunBear —Grant Program
We’ve had over 50 applications come through. Soon you should start to see postings in discord on the various grants, which will show the details of what its about, the rationale, images, timeline, etc. and then you’ll have the opportunity to engage with the team about that and ask questions and make suggestions and then we will have a community vote where we move it forward with the grant approval. Some of these things are things like simplified combat where you can fight with others, safe swap options, side games. Lots of different proposals about learning more about your heroes such as genetics and how well they match up, also support for building guilds, summoning tools and also education. Even some notification apps such as when the perfect hero is for sale finally and getting a notifications, trackers, etc. Watch for those coming. I’ll be working with them to bring their proposals together and then will eventually submit for a vote.
Bolon — can you give a timeline of what it looks like for someone who submits an application?
SunBear — Initial application is starting point, then I work with them to build the proposal and then that will go out to the community. Since we have a lot, we are just taking them as they come in. We are building the team to do this process and you should start seeing a lot of these soon.
Dreamer — We have finished up Eth Denver and a lot of people were really excited about the grant program as they learned about it. Especially those from other projects. I’ve been talking to other projects on Harmony, and they’ve asked how they can use our NFTs in their game and how we can use some of theirs. We don’t want to look at DFK as being separate from anyone else. We want to invite all to join and build with us. Other games can provide incremental utility and it could be better for all of us. Sunbear will be working with people to make sure their proposal is as good as it can be so that the community is educated on it.
Sunbear — another thing we are doing is at the end of the proposal (5–10pg PDF) we will have a summary sheet showing what we’ve done with this team, how we’ve engaged with them, process we’ve gone through with them, etc.
SpicyMapleCat — Marketing
Feel like I haven’t been here forever! Right now the marketing department is really busy. A lot happening in terms of marketing strategy, branding strategy, analytics, etc. Analytics we are building out will not only help with marketing, but also on development side to help with development of the game. Also working with community managers to figure out how we can better serve our community with player support.
Our communities have grown so fast. We are seeking ways in which we can help new players while catering to existing user base while keeping an eye on the road ahead. Always trying to find ways to make DFK better for everyone in the community.
We have a lot of platforms we operate on but view Discord as our home base. We have been able to establish one of the biggest and most helpful communities I’ve seen in all Gamefi projects. We are very fortunate to have you guys with us.
We have a lot of detailed marketing plans going on behind the scenes. The main goals are to support initiatives for outward growth. With Crystalvale we have new communities to welcome and I’m looking forward to bringing you new and exciting initiatives this month.
Bolon — Community
We have our vertical growth but also working on our horizontal growth to reach international communities. We have 6 discord servers and 7 telegram servers that service different international communities. We don’t want to provide a lesser experience to those that don’t speak English so we are working to build out some of these unique servers so that we can provide the same experience to these other international communities and we want there to be a platform for every community. We have some really amazing knights across the board that speak other languages. It’s been great to see these spaces grow for people who haven’t historically been getting the same experience because they don’t speak English. It makes me really happy to see these communities growing and starting to get the same experience as everyone else.
Rissen — Eth Denver
This was very special for us especially since it was only our 2nd event, the first being Miami. We had events across the city rather than one centralized space. The main event was DFK Day, which we worked on with Harmony. Tons of people came together to brainstorm ideas. The entire day was a lot of very smart people working together on DFK. We had dev panels leading up to the alpha discussion that was live streamed. We had meet and greet as well as some of our merchandise given away. Anybody that saw our shirts immediately came to us and tried to take pictures and ask questions. Overall Denver went fantastic and we are looking forward to doing more events and looking for more opportunities to interact with y’all.
Bolon — If you have a chance to come to event and meet us, please do it. It’s fun to put names to user names.
pieface — Creative
In the creative department we have been working on merchandise. The Eth Denver merch was us. Everyone was really excited about that. There were a ton of stickers. We had shirts and facemasks. A few were able to snag a bloater beanie. What I want to share is that anyone who is going to AVAX summit in March, get ready for the Merch. There is going to be some exclusive merch that will only be at that event and I’m excited to meet everyone that will be there.
Bolon — We’ve acknowledged multiple times, but haven’t said it officially so here it is. We will be at AVAX summit at the end of March in Barcelona. I don’t think we’ve every actually announced this so there it is!
Dreamer — Champion Program and Other Updates
Marketing — Just wanted to reiterate that Spicy has crushed it in marketing. Marketing for something growing this fast is very difficult and you need a really good team for. Our focus on analytics, information and talent is one that's going to allow us to represent the project in the right way. You match that with our plans and everything is really bright from a growth perspective.
Eth Denver — people were so excited to see us there and there was a lot of hype and excitement. At a higher level, there were some bigger names at Eth Denver (Nelson Mandela’s grandson) and we were able to meet with him and talk about DFK. He was so excited that while he was up on stage he gave us a big shout out. There was another shout out at DeadMau5. These events are really important to get out for people to see the team. It’s rare what we have here. When you look at the innovation, the team, the energy, the aggressive roadmap, people notice and they start to talk about it and spread it by word of mouth. Thank you for everyone that tuned in and shared from afar.
Champion Program — As part of Eth Denver we did some alpha drops, one of those was on the Champion Program so I’ll try to speak to a few of those.
To recap, those that would really like to come and start playing DFK but don’t have the money or want to have an additional way to play and earn with no incremental funds to buy more heroes, the Champion program would cater to them. It also caters to those that have a lot of assets but can’t keep up with questing in the most efficient way possible. So we have two needs here, those with assets and those with time and to provide an in game, safe experience, for those with assets to pay for the service of those with time to play with their heroes without moving them to another wallet.
In setting the contract price, then somebody has to abide with the contract in order to get the amount held in escrow. Some have asked if we will put in a minimum wage requirement (hate referring to minimum wage). It’s undecided at this point, because the more we manipulate and control, the less people can do what they want, at the same time we don’t want to incentivize a program that is not rewarding for the Champions. For example, if I’m providing a contract on mining, its going to mine my locked jewel on my behalf, not the locked jewel of the person doing it for me. For mining and gardening its pretty easy to estimate how much jewel could be farmed, but for other quests the drops are harder to forecast. We want people to be able to set prices for their contract, but we want to help with data or analytics and having maybe trailing amount of drops and what that is worth at current prices rather than saying what a minimum has to be. So we are undecided on this, but first we will roll out function where another wallet can have limited access to another wallet’s heroes and then build from there. We won’t have the fully monetized version of this right of the bat.
We will probably have a really small minimum so that someone can’t be like 0.001 Jewel or something, but we probably won’t calculate for the players what it is worth for them. Everyone has different locked amounts, different amounts in the LP gardens.
Bolon — what about the extent to which we want to provide data on both sides of that (i.e. to both the Champion and the other end user).
Dreamer — sure the data is important on both sides. Champions aren’t forced to take a contract, so information will help make that decision. I don’t want to promise on what the information will look like, but it is an area we are trying to solve for. Both the Champion and the person lending their heroes out need at least some information.
Live Questions
(Mettez) I promise I will only ask one (but it will be a longer one). I’m hoping to hear from the team on what their general intent is to incentivize new adoption towards DFK. Specifically do we want adoption from new players on playing the game or on the DEX side and providing liquidity. I want to bring this up based on specific communications released by the team. I’m convinced that you want to push adoption of the actual gameplay, however recent announcements have shown mixed signals. For example, the first announcement that incentivized gameplay was a race to lvl 10. Leveling heroes is a good incentive for gameplay, however if you did the math, heroes who are naturally leveled could only hit lvl 6 without stamina potions, so it felt like it turned into a race to buy stamina potions and just impacting liquidity and ecosystem. The second concern, in the way that stamina potions are influenced, its a very interesting gameplay mechanic, there are some concerns from a few people in the community, that it actively devalues playing the game. I can see someone who comes in now and is actively questing, but someone else can come in buy a bunch of pots and hit lvl 10 quickly. I’m not convinced on that, but I’d like to hear the team’s input on how they want to drive adoption?
FriskyFox — This is the age old question of if you have play to earn, how do you separate that from a pay to win mentality? Any game that involves real life capital in such a very fundamental way by definition has to incorporate some of both. There will be some that have more assets to put into the game and to some extent you get more out of the game as you put more into it. There isn’t any blueprint or roadmap that has been tried and true. But for that one example in particular, the incentive was to race there and that will involve using all of the assets at their disposal, including their heroes, their time and their existing rewards and jewel (to buy stam pots). This did drive a lot of the play to earn aspect. If someone is trying to min max in one direction, that means they have to buy things and acquire from other players that are trying to min max in the other direction, which creates supply and demand. Some are in it to get highest level hero and some are in it to earn from playing and questing, so we are essentially trying to connect these two. One of you can provide, the other can consume and you can both get what you want. We are trying to find ways to incentivize all play styles so you’ll see more of that in the future.
Dreamer — I’ll add on to that as well. If we don’t find unique ways to add utility to every single token in the game then there really is no point. I didn’t even see this as an incentive and people go crazy and quest as much as they can and they hit lvl 10, lets reward them! I didn’t see it as lets isolate this to a small group and incentivize them, but I can see what you’re talking about. However, it did provide incremental demand for stamina potions. Maybe some feedback is that if we have a program to incentivize those using stamina potions to level up quickly, maybe we can expand it and say what incentives could we put out for those crafting and selling those potions. What we don’t want to do is say we aren’t going to find ways to incentivize ways for people to play game, but a fair piece of feedback is to try and find ways to reward all players in that ecosystem.
Bolon — Fox made a point in the chat, but keep in mind that one difference with pay to win is that even if it seems pay to win, they are having to pay other players. They aren’t buying a DLC from a AAA game provider. They aren’t buying in game from the company that makes a game, everything they are buying in this example (stamina potions) are coming from other players. So keep that in mind as you compare with other in game mechanics.
(Malience) One question I wanted to relay is from the support channel. A lot of people are not English native and a lot of people needing support are wondering if there will be support for other language in the game itself.
Bolon — Yes, as mentioned earlier we are working out to build the communities for other languages so that its comparable to what we have here rather than a single support channel. As far as in game, in game browser translations are okay, but aren’t perfect.
LiterallyKant — We do plan to provide in game translations and localizations. It requires a lot of stuff to get a system to accommodate that within our codebase. Once its in there it will be easier to start adding multiple languages. Another thing we are trying to work on is that we are updating so rapidly that its hard to keep that updated at the same pace for other languages. We are starting with Chinese and are a ways into that work already. To drop something else, we are also working on figuring out the mechanics behind being able to keep our documentation translated as well so that we can host full versions of our game docs in a variety of languages. Hopefully that helps.
(Malience) With the champions incentives, would it be possible for us to offer bonuses on the contract (i.e. here is stable amount to quest, and if you bring back an egg you get a bonus incentive of 10J)?
Dreamer — that would be interesting to look into with the possibilities of the smart contract. We want to start simple. If you think about Scholar program, its like here’s my heroes, go use them and we’ll split whatever rewards are worth at the end. Lets say under that model you get an egg, and at the time the egg is worth 100J, well what if you don’t have 50J to pay them at the time, then you need to sell other things, or the egg itself and it creates some pain points. The same applies for other items like runes. With the game and runes, we can’t auto liquidate every item. So champion systems is intended to set market values for what this time is worth. We might be able to have variables introduced into the contract. It’s probably quite complex. But it would be cool to say hey I’ll give you 15 jewel if you quest 2x per day, if you quest 1x per day I’ll give you 7 jewel. If you get an egg, I’ll give you another 20 jewel. We’d have to put this all in escrow to make sure the Champion is not ripped off. It’s a great idea, but I wouldn’t expect that level of functionality when we go live due to the complexity.
(Drizz) Just wanted to touch on what Mettez referred to, but regarding the Stam pot funding the player economy thought. I thought it was an interesting way to get the stam pot economy flowing. I realize that’s something the devs are looking at to make amore permanent thing and this could help float that economy until it can be more self sustaining. In that same vein, what do you think will bring bank holders or investment heavy people into playing more or is that even a goal you are trying to achieve?
Dreamer — I’ll answer the Q that I heard, but what is going on with incentives. If you take a step back and look at incentives, and what other ways this could be done. Other projects just straight out sell rare NFTs. What we are trying to do is when new highly valued assets come out we don’t just have to do a flat sale. So not only are we trying to incentivize gameplay but WE ARE TRYING TO AVOID incentivizing those with deep pockets to just buy an asset and flip it. So we have Gen0’s coming out and we are trying to figure out ways to drop them in a creative way so that those who are actively questing, summoning, leveling up, providing LP can have them without it just being a flat sale. Especially with combat, imagine what we can do with these giveaways based on how many games you win. There could be giveaways for the champion system based on people that win contracts.
FriskyFox — to echo that, there are all different kinds of styles in our game. WE are trying to provide value to all gameplay styles. Trying to provide that feedback loop of adding value into the ecosystem so that players can interact with other players and even pay other players, all of those are set up so that rewards aren’t going to us, they are going to the community and other players and that’s a really important way we are looking at this.
(Drizz) Is there something you are thinking like we want x% of players playing with heroes? Are you trying to lure out bankers to get heroes?
FriskyFox — it’s all about creating the right incentives. Hopefully everything will be incentivized to do everything, but everyone is never going to be interested in doing everything. We just want to make sure everyone can have an experience that is appealing to them. We aren’t shooting for any specific %s.
Dreamer — we have to look at stages to, when it was only a Dex we didn’t have these questions. Then when we had Tavern there were choices between heroes and Dex. If I had to speculate, we are on the horizon of actual combat gameplay. All of the resources that will feed into potions and all of the heroes that have been leveling up preparing for battle will change the game quite a bit and we might have people coming in purely to just play. Then others may come in and say hey this looks like a good platform and investment, and get heroes and cards but not actually even play (i.e. the fee sharing in the bank might fit what they are looking for). We don’t want to control how that should be split, we just want to provide a system where all types of players can join in an ungoverned and unmanipulated way.
Bolon — Do want to remind everyone that we will have a Perilous Journey discussion with Hubert. The discussion will be hosted on YouTube so that we can do some screen sharing. More details for that will be forthcoming. After that discussion we will post a form specifically for Perilous Journey questions.
Closing Remarks
Rissen—Excited for the next event! Thanks for having me!
pieface — super excited for the Avax summit and all the Merch!
SpicyMapleCat — Sent me all the bloater beanies please! Can’t thank you guys enough for tuning in. Planning to be at more of these in the future.
Sunbear — I really appreciate what Drizz said there at the end. You are passionate about this project. We are too. We love answering questions and also listening. Appreciate the feedback and the ideas. We do as a team try to figure out ways to make this better every day.
Bolon — when you send stuff to myself, Alia or any of the knights, it gets passed on. These are things we care about. Maybe we don’t have an answer for you, but it does get passed on. I send a lot of community feedback messages.
Dreamer — I’ll echo the last two comments with a bit of an invite. I feel like there was an apology from Drizz about being hard on us. But I don’t see it that way. I feel that the question’s asked represent a larger theme or group. We are all in this together. We need the best ideas. The core team is called that way because its part of a larger team (i.e. contributors and community being a part of it). We are receptive not just to other projects building on us, but also those within DFK questioning and suggesting and we want to continue to build that culture. I want ot invite you to feel empowered in that. If you see someone complaining and you feel you have a good response, feel free to connect with them and share. It’s an appreciation of the passion, but also making sure we are all aware that this is going to continue to get really big. In order to succeed we need everyone to contribute and we appreciate all the well-intentioned comments and question from the community.
Frisky — Thank you everyone for the excellent questions. I’ve said it before and mean it. Ask the hard questions. We don’t want to surround ourselves with a bunch of yes men. We are trying to build something that’s never been built before and we are trying to make it through the refiner’s fire. We are all stakeholders in this project. I hear ideas all day long, even about small things (i.e. I’d like to make that Parrot in the docks squawk. We like to hear these things and we are excited to create this with you. We are creating a new industry and new world. Excited for this week and next week and all the big things that are coming. Love this community. Bullish!
Bolon — Kant just confirmed we will have a parrot that squawk's at the docks. Thank you to everyone that asked questions. We would not be here without you. Keep bringing up suggestions and ideas and feedback. Thank you everyone up here for taking the time to join this. If you all need anything please come see us. Bullish!
Check out my Index of Samichpunch DeFi Kingdoms Articles For a list of all of my other articles. You should definitely bookmark this index. Follow my medium account to get updates when they go live!
