DeFi Kingdoms Team AMA (Project Updates) — July 5, 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 (mostly a transcript tbh). You can find the transcripts/summaries of the prior AMA’s in my index of DeFi Kingdom’s Articles.
Link to the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmRnakVdcaw
This week, the AMA was from members of several teams relating to updates on the project. AMA’s have different teams present to address different topics. Go to the new website https://dfk.rapidr.io/ and submit AMA questions there and Join the discord to also see responses to AMA questions not covered on the weekly calls.
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.
DeFi Kingdoms Website
DeFi Kingdoms Official Medium
DeFi Kingdoms Discord
Team Members Present:
https://defikingdoms.com/team.html
Dreamer Update
Dreamer — Last week we did an extended update. Took up a lot of time talking about strategy around fundraising and what we are doing around business continuity planning. 1. CV Feature parity is a big focus, not just the dev team, but also making sure we have the runway to do so. Can’t share tons of details of what is in process, but pre and final details of a raise we have been looking at short-term raises that can contribute to the overall raise. We have had one successful conversation there and have an offer there that our lawyers are looking at there that is very promising. As people look at the recap from the fundraising perspective, def looking for partners in the industry for a short term capital injection for a mutually beneficial agreement of what we are building and where things will live and what we can do for their priorities. 2. Looking for other partners out there, other games, studios, those looking to enter into the space and those that are already in the space. 3. Overall equity raise for Kingdom Studios. Had a couple of good conversations with both VC and hedge funds. Trying to hone in one to lead the overall raise. The entity that leads the raise will be the one that confirms the valuation. We’ve done our own inputs on the valuation, but they will confirm the valuation that they are comfortable representing then we take that to everyone else we’ve been talking to that is looking to participate and contribute, then based on that we get firmed up commitments and move into the due diligence phase. Sometimes that lasts a month or longer. That’s legal due diligence for everyone involved in the raise. I did find a way to lock in some short term funding that would related to the long-term raise. That’s my main update. I’m going to hand it over to Beetle Dude because priority 1, CV parity.
Beetle Dude Update
Beetle— Thanks Dreamer. Exciting to hear progression on that side of things. To Dreamer’s point we have a main priority of getting CV parity as much as we can. In that vein we have been working pretty heavily on getting the quests over there. We have fishing and foraging pretty far along. They are in testing right now. It’s not looking like we’ll make the cut-off date of tomorrow but still hoping to get them out this week, maybe towards the weekend. Trying to get those up as quickly as we can. There’s a lot to it. A couple of new tokens there and making sure our mechanics are straight and the solidity contracts are good. Hopefully getting that out this week. Can’t be 100% there but I feel we are on the right track, so either this week or early next week.
Bolon — Did you want to comment on the item bridge?
Beetle — We are making progress on that, which will allow you to bridge over any of your items from Serendale to Crystalvale. That is in process. It is a fairly complex feature, so its going to require a lot of testing. With some difficulty on Harmony Testnet we are trying to find creative ways to make sure that is working properly. That’s probably going to be a little bit further out.
Fishing and foraging this week, or hopefully this week or early next week. After that we would probably do meditation circle as quickly as we can get the items that we need to do that, then in conjunction with that getting gold mining in a good spot in Crystalvale. Then Crystal mining and Gardening would come after that.
You mentioned meditation circle and we’d also be getting alchemist into place as well and then would also have a castle zone as well, but there’s less functionality there. So just trying to get the quests in as well as the items that we get from the quests.
Bolon — One other thing I wanted to throw out RQ, Dreamer mentioned we did an in depth update last week. The write up from Samichpunch, is pinned in the AMA Voiceless Chat, AMA Question and General chat channels as well as recorded and posted on Youtube.
Next we’ll go to Sunbear to carry on the building theme and give an update on Kingdom Builders.
Sunbear Update
Sunbear — so we’ve had the issue we mentioned about not getting the grant from Harmony and then the bridge issue. All of our partners have had to halt their grants and unfortunately so have we. So many are building and almost ready to go to a vote. We are committed to bringing that back as soon as we can, obviously right now its not something we can do, but on what we can do, we have reformatted the build program for the situation that we are in currently to help expedite building and support for the builders. You saw the support site that you saw Faun take a lead on building. We have also switching up so that we have a proposal system, since there is no funding, that is more streamlined. It focuses on how you want to build on DFK Chain or use DFK assets, and then we have formed a committee that represents all of the primary parts of Kingdom Studios that can make these decisions and get these partnerships formed. This was just posted on build.defikingdoms.com, so please check that out.
Two other pieces we’ve been receiving feedback on. 1. Application process for folks to get connected to game so we can co-market, and if you want them to be listed at the Jester there’s now an application so we can review and work with you on that, or if you want to be listed on the menu on the right of the game (or have a link on our website). There’s a lot of ways to do this co-marketing. 2. Now that we have raffle system launched and the ability to reward third party games with raffles, there is now an application to do that as well and create those partnerships in an expedited way.
Of course we will do this in a thoughtful and intentional way. If there’s something that feels disruptive or does requires some type of funding then we would of course take things to a vote if there is a need to do so, so that we are protecting the communities voice in that. Come build, come play, come check us out on the build site.
Bolon — I know there will be a lot of excitement around that, especially around the co-marketing.
Dreamer — just wanted to add to a plug, building on our site does require you to be whitelisted, so even if you weren’t looking for a grant, but you are looking for blockchain data and building on our subnet, please reach out. We are funneling those through the kingdom builder site.
Pieface Merchandise Update
Pieface — the hype is real because launch for merch is this Friday. Last week when we teased merch it was much appreciated. There’s actually a merch feedback section on RapidR. https://dfk.rapidr.io/contribute/merch-feedback/. That is basically my home. I’ve been chatting with you guys about what we have in store for merch. Would love to hear more feedback. It will be much more than just products to sell. In true DFK fashion and spirit of it all, our goal is to innovate in everything we are involved in. Just to share a list of what we have planned:
- Web 3 integration
- NFT ownership verification
- Merch for hero holders
- In game benefits for the future.
Right now we are working on some updates to make sure our merch store goes smoothly for our international friends. So our friends in EU and Asia we want to make sure this works for everyone. We will have almost 20 items available this Friday. But I will share in the AMA voiceless chat some of our merch that is being modeled.
I’m very excited for this Friday!
Written Questions from RapidR
Is DFK for sale? Can you clarify what you mean by fundraising?
Dreamer — Not sure exactly what they are asking, but if we are looking to get bought out short term and get a quick turnaround, No. We aren’t trying to rush a public listing in a month and have some buy us out, that’s not our plan. We are aiming for CV parity, that’s always been our original plan, there’s lots that have slowed that down in past months and now that has emphasized the need to do that. Serendale has lived on harmony and there’s no immediate update that that is changing but we are trying to be aware of everything happening in the market but also aware of other chains and what it would mean for us to have a fully functioning realm on their chain. There’s a lot of work that comes along with that in terms of Bridging. I’ve heard many say that 500K-1M TX’s a day would cause almost any chain to have trouble. I haven’t researched every chain, but there are advantages to having the volume, player base and roadmap that we have. So are we considering collaborations that would incentivize building on their chain or a new home for Serendale? Yes. Trying to think if there’s another way to interpret if DFK is for Sale? We are always trying to find good partnerships like Synapse and Benqi. We are definitely open to partnership, not for sale, but for services we both provide, collaborations, etc. We are also talking to game studios, in the traditional sense (which opens up some cool options for collaborations for people new to Web3 and giving them a softer landing) or other game studios that have skillsets we are lacking.
Live Questions
(Blessith) I get your primary objective is getting investors on the financial side and get you can’t disclose much, but that financially that is what you want to do. On the implementation of game content, is the current outlook just implementing the current Serendale to Crystalvale and what are the hurdles of copying the HTML code from Serendale to Crystalvale.
Dreamer — I think it’s a bit more complicated than just copying and pasting code, but I will say that there is a very real risk that many things in Web3, we might wake up and things will be different tomorrow. We have a very strong subnet. We have a lot invested there and good partners in AVAX, and we want to make sure we follow through on the intent and design of CV so feature parity is a high priority, but other game content we are also looking to progress that as well. In future weeks we might be announcing some other collaborations with people that can help progress other features of our roadmap. If Serendale were to go to a new chain, how easy would it be to just “copy and paste” code?
Beetle — It’s definitely not that simple. Specifically for CV we have new NPCs, new token designs, the biggest time constraint is on the solidity (contract) side. We have a very usable front end, so the architecture is there so we can make the updates pretty seamless between the realms, even if we were to add a new realm or chain, its set up so that we can use a lot of what we already have as long as functionality doesn’t change much. It’s really on the solidity side that just requires more time. That is the primary time constraint. On the front-end any new NPCs or items would be what we have to complete and work on.
(Blessith) I get once you guys have your code/foundation some of it might be copy and pasted but there’s other stuff. The other thing is, after getting CV up to speed to where Serendale is currently, what is the next improvement to NFT utility and overall economic impact for the game?
Beetle — Next thing for that would be profession quests lvl 10, which will include pet bonuses and utility. That would be the next step after parity.
(Blessith) Is building on Harmony in a stall or Idle state until we know what Harmony is going to do?
Beetle — I’d say that’s accurate.
(Malience) I just had one quick question and one addon to a previous question. The first is how are we going to handle the quest funding contract as far as the funding for quests on CV go, or will that be a separate contract? The other part is adding on to the question about DFK being for sale, does that include if the right offer came and a company came to buy the rights of DFK, would Kingdom Studios be willing to let go of that?
Dreamer — I can answer the second question.
Beetle— The first one is more of a solidity question.
Dreamer — If someone came in with a good offer and had the right capabilities to help complete the vision are we going to say right now whether we would say yes or no? No. We obviously aren’t going to say don’t even ask on what ways you can collaborate with us. We are working with some partners right now that can help with the overall vision and help with some cool crossover functionality. If someone sees all the value and wants to reach out, then sure reach out. But none of the conversations I’ve had have started or ended with them buying everything and us handing it over. Our goal is to find the funding to fund our experts and people working with the community. It’s not that we are trying to avoid capital from those that don’t necessarily want a partnership, but we are focusing on the latter. We haven’t had any of these conversations like you have asked about. We haven’t been looking for it, and I’m not saying we are not open to it. But if we were open to it, it would be with priority of limited disruption and maximum stability while preserving the roadmap. We should expect things to be enhanced as we make partnership.
(Malience) I think the biggest fear is that we don’t want to become Activision DFK due to how they take over and change the functionality of every game they touch.
Dreamer — I can confirm that’s not the type of studio we are talking about.
(Malience) Are we going to be going towards splitting our current quest fund contract or will we be pulling funding from somewhere else? Referring to the quest fund wallet.
Dreamer — we don’t have all of the experts on this, but the quest fund primarily right now is just funding gardening quests, and gardening isn’t even in the first phase of CV quests, but essentially when this has been brought up separately, we are saying hey we will be doubling the source of questing how does this work? It still takes a hero to quest in the gardens, and so would the quest fund we see today need to support that on CV especially if we see a new influx of question on CV? That is a possibility, but there is the quest fund set up on CV and the validators have an option of going to a floating/variable fund that could help the quest fund or be used for other things.
(Starbuck) 1. What happens to Gen0 1–20 descendants, do we expect a reroll and 2. What about duplicate eternal pages?
Dreamer— I’ll take the first one. The plan is to add on to the overall rerolls like we did with the Gen0 reroll after CV Gen0s. I think that confirming with Hubert and Fox specifically, they’ve been closer to this. I think there is a lot to consider there, not only the Gen0’s themselves, but also all of the summoning that has taken place. I think the answer you are seeking is less about how do we do it but is it still a plan to expect to address those? I have no reason to expect that we wouldn’t. It’s just one matter to have the idea and another matter on how we get there. All of the Gen0’s that came from those and might carry the Transcendent genes is a lot. There also may be options that we present to the community. Great question but one that we should circle back with the experts from the team.
Beetle — the other question falls into the same category of game mechanics.
Bolon — IIRC there may be a use for those duplicate pages (can’t recall correctly) but we will also have the “order book” marketplace system that might address this.
Beetle— I don’t have any updates but that would be applicable there.
Bolon — Party of the issue is that the new token type doesn’t transfer the same way as ERC-20. If you throw this on RapidR we can circle back to this next week and make sure we get some more clarification on this.
(Blu) Concerns about Harmony and the overall experience. Essentially the game is not playable. Haven’t been able to quest for 2 days. It’s not only not being able to quest, but we are also paying 3–5x the amount of gas that we used to pay, it’s ridiculous. And harmony doesn’t seem to be any closer to fixing their RPC issues, and that they are consistently ignoring the elephant in the room. If we have to be on Harmony, fine, but we need to be able to play the game. DFK needs to do something, what are you guys going to do?
Dreamer— you are preaching to the choir, I was cheering for you while listening to the question. A lot of this goes to CV parity and getting those features available in CV. Starting with Fishing/Foraging, the Meditation Circle/Alch, then Gold mining etc. We’ve done our best reaching out and trying to address issues. We’re also seeing issues with Testnet, making it hard to launch and test new features on Harmony. We feel your pain and that’s what we’ve been trying to address in the past few weeks in CV parity both in funding and in dev resources. Once we have those things in place your experience can be enhanced with lower fees and less disruption on DFK chain. We don’t have any control over the Harmony court. They have their priorities. They’ve made it a point that although we have communication channels with them, they don’t report to us and we can only do so much. It would be a lie to say we are happy with the experience for the community and that is why we have been proactive to look for other solutions from all directions.
Closing Statements
Sunbear — Thanks, Blu for voicing the frustrations that we are all feeling. I feel you and I’m right there with you. I’ve seen the team on a daily basis doing everything they can to work with, communicate with and raise concerns to Harmony. There’s so much going on to try and look out for our community. Just know that we hear you. Sashei is one of your biggest advocates out there, talking to Harmony and trying to make your experience better. Thank you to everyone being patient, especially to the builders, just excited to see what we can do together. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other.
Pieface — We are def all in this together. Thankful for everyone in the community. This merch effort is for you guys in the community and want you all to be happy with it, so another plug for the Merch feedback on RapidR. Coming soon we will have a T-Shirt where we ask for some submissions on what to put on the back. I love community involvement in development and merch and we love you guys. We got this. Thanks, guys.
Beetle — I’ll just echo what everyone else said. We have a great community, we have a great team and will continue pushing forward. We will get CV in a good spot. Dev team is working hard and putting in long hours to make sure it happens. Appreciate the patience.
Bolon — y’all are awesome, please use the RapidR website.
Dreamer — We are doing our best not to dance around questions, but also want to make sure we aren’t burning people out in this environment. Re moving Serendale off of Harmony that would only be the option if its the best for everyone. Things are changing every day, we don’t know what we are going to wake up to tomorrow, there are discussions with every chain mentioned by Blessith in the chat. I don’t know if there is anyone that we haven’t started talking to about the potential. Everything that comes with Serendale means different things to others. From a Bizdev perspective, we carry a lot of attractive qualities for a chan that I haven’t seen in other platforms, not only our ability to cross-collab, but our team, our roadmap, what we’ve put out, our transaction volume, its really attractive, so we don’t want to rush into the decision, not only do we want to make sure eveyr potential move is fully valued, if that’s the way we go, we want to make sure we know them well and that they know us well. Going forward we don’t want to entger into relationships that aren’t mutually beneficial. We are all here on this AMA because we see the value, but not everyone sees it the same way, even if they say they do. If we move homes, if there is a new home, we want to make sure it isn’t done lightly and that all options are exhaused. If the best option is to move off of Harmony we need to have evidence to support that. We are trying to be progressively creative in the background, in finding strategic partners currently in the game that have a lot of things going on and skills and other pieces, we’ve had live meetings and hopefully we can get closer to talking about that. Right now we are all hands on deck to solve the short term issues we anticipate and solving feature parity, but we are doing our best to make sure things progress in the meantime.
Please use the RapidR website, we want a lot of questions there. We want to see things voted up with detailed comments. Really excited about merch. Hopefully people appreciate all the efforts of those that have worked on it (Pie, Mother Brain, Dragontea). People have said things like oh great another way to find for us to spend money in this market, but its another revenue stream to help us continue building and also another brand recognition activity.
Regarding the grant program and not being able to provide funding, we want to get people into the game, using the master raffler and building on DFK chain. There are things that we can do. Some say they don’t need money but they at least want people to access their services. It might come with a big disclaimer that it’s not officially from DFK. There is still a ton of work going on towards this. People on AVAX are eagerly awaiting the incremental features. People in the community are excited. Thank you for being patient and supportive and asking all the right questions in a professional way.
