//State of the Chikn #16
Extra crispy on all counts
Bok Bok, and welcome to State of the Chikn #16.
Your devs are back from a short break over the holidays to kick things into gear in 2024. While we never really went away, we made sure we each took some time to refresh for the massive year ahead.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we weren’t busy. $COQ was an unexpected holiday gift that kept us glued to the charts and was a key discussion point at the first board meeting of the year. As you’re all aware, COQs are growing, and with them users and interest in the ecosystem.
As we mentioned in SotC #15, we’re shifting away from teasers and roadmaps and back to what made Chikn exciting in the first place: surprise updates and releases that excite the farm. That’s not to say we’re going into full stealth mode — your devs are still here, updates will still be announced, and official comms will continue at a regular cadence.
That said, you all know the plan.
CoqFight
ChiknX
The Bokchain
Our job now is to execute 🫡
We’re also making an effort to cut down the length of the monthly Medium to make it slightly more digestible. We’ve made attempts at this before but never succeeded: we love writing the long ones too much, so they’ll still pop up from time to time. And we also know how much you love pouring a coffee, frying an egg, and digging into 6,000 words of Chikn content.
So with all that out there, let’s dive into this: the first, and so far greatest, State of the Chikn for 2024 🐔
Cluckdate Log
What your devs have been pecking away at, at a glance.
> Chikn dApp updates
- Minor UI tweaks and fixes for quality of life across the website.
- Added KG filter to chikn and Roostr marketplaces.
- Added bigness and fertility filter on FarmLand marketplace.
- Search bar now included in all trait filter dropdowns.
- Unclaimed $EGG and $FERT for each bird visible on the marketplace.
- Added ‘Recently listed’ sort option to the marketplace.
- Roost ‘Claim $EGG’ button moved and navbar consolidated.
> ChiknX rollout
- Partner craftables added to the Wormbench.
- MadSkullz, Love Monster and Hatchy all added.
- Mixed levels of demand across the rewards, however, each partner has seen increased reach, brand recognition and volumes.
- Overall a successful rollout of a never-before-seen method of distributing rewards and integrating across web3 projects. More refining and tweaking will make this an even more amazing product.
- We are coordinating with CloudHeadz for our final partnership in szn one before we break until the next season of partners rolls through.
> Art
- Over the holiday season, Gravy cooked up a slew of $COQ-aligned art for the cause.
- Gravy remains chained to Illustrator as he works through Roostr art changes that bring the style in line with the new brand vision.
- The new art style will be used for an NFT art upgrade (à la Chikn) and in CoqFight.
Partner Rewards
Partner rewards kicked off in December with four long-time friends announced for the first season.
MadSkullz, Hatchy Pocket, Love Monster and CHZ were all cued up to release in quick succession right before Christmas to give foragers something to peck at over the break.
Unfortunately, Partner Rewards was held up by the December ‘23 Gas Crisis as inscriptions flooded the chain.
Transferring items from the marketplace, minting items to the chain, and topping up off-chain token balances all became prohibitively expensive as gas went from costing a few cents (as we’re used to) to costing dollars (as we’re only used to during Roostr mints).
The spike also hit our partners who would have had to spend thousands of dollars in gas just to mint and transfer items to Chikn wallets as part of the program.
As birds sat unfed and LP farms stayed unclaimed, we made the call to pause the program until things calmed down.
Fortunately, in the New Year, things did calm down and the Partner Rewards rollout resumed.
Farmers have been crafting NFTs and returning to our partner ecosystems to use them, and we’ve seen some new farmers from our partners venturing to the roost to gather items.
You can currently craft items from (nearly) all partners on your FarmLand — and some lucky farmers might also find a little gift buried in the shallow soil of their WormFarm 🪱
We chose our first partners very deliberately for Season 1 — these are projects that we have a strong relationship with and that are well known around the roost. This was important while we stress-tested the infrastructure and ironed out any bugs, and with a couple of minor exceptions that Hen and KFC got to quickly, things went perfectly.
Season 1 also allows us to collect important data on resource costs and crafting tendencies. These are levers that we can pull so we’re keeping a close eye on what farmers are doing to inform the way we structure the next partner rollouts.
Partner Rewards is ultimately an experiment in gamified collaboration and whitelisting for our users. While uptake for some of our partners has been less than expected, we’ve shown the overall theory works and are excited about the future of this mechanic.
There’s more than one way to distribute a reward, so if demand for rewards fluctuates we’ll find creative ways to keep it on. WormFarms and $EGG Burn races are just a few of the tools we have under our wings, and as always, we’re keen to hear your thoughts.
Our motivation here is to bring awesome content, prizes and engaging mechanics to the Chikn farm, beyond simply giving out whitelist spots to new mints.
If you haven’t yet, jump into your crafting bench and craft yourself some NFTs.
Check out our partners and engage with their ecosystems to win Chikn rewards and prizes.
And definitely dig in those WormFarms — there’s gold in them there tunnels ⛏️
$COQ Council
As bland as it may sound, we’ve got to discuss some regulatory stuff.
One of the reasons Chikn has managed to stay so secure is our commitment to regulatory compliance in our home jurisdiction. We’ve always been extremely careful to stay within the rules, which means our users can play without worrying about the lawman calling at any time.
In the fast-paced world of crypto, this means that we can’t move as fast as we sometimes would like. When we come up against something that could potentially cross a line, we always seek legal counsel first. We will always stand by this policy — our goal is to build on the right side of compliance, giving our project security and our players confidence.
It also means that we haven’t (so far) been able to immediately jump on the biggest thing to happen to our ecosystem last year: $COQ.
Memecoins occupy a strange legal area, so despite Wojak and Gribbly having our full blessing, there was very little we could do publicly before we got the OK from the lawyers. The risk here was very high and the time frames very short: a dangerous game.
With $COQ launching right before the holidays, the legal team were unable to provide advice right away. Fortunately, they did eventually come back from holidays, so in January we got some clarity.
Our position is now very clear, as is the broader narrative of Chikn and $COQ. That is, as previously stated, $COQ is purely a community coin that was not created by us, nor directly a part of the Chikn ecosystem.
While this might be glaringly obvious to most, it was critical to strategically distance ourselves from $COQ while we waited for advice to that effect. We needed that space then so that we could have the freedom to work more with $COQ and the team down the track.
Wojak and Gribbly are incredibly generous and truly understand the symbiotic relationship between Chikn and $COQ. They are some of our greatest supporters and crucial players in the Chikn ecosystem, and their hard work has enabled us to reach these regulatory conclusions and create a path forward.
Without releasing any more specifics of the legal advice, we can say things are looking good.
And that leads us seamlessly into…
The COQ Inu (and me)
We’ve spent a fair bit of time in this article, on Twitter and in Discord talking about $COQ. And there’s good reason — there’s never been a memecoin of this scale birthed from an NFT-based ecosystem like ours.
In just one short month, $COQ grew to become a brand in and of itself — inextricably tied to Chikn, but with a life of its own. We can’t say enough how proud we are of Wojak, Gribbly, and everyone else in the community who showed a firm hand in erecting this monumental meme from the ground up.
This isn’t State of the Coq — you’re here to get updates on the Farm. But the reason we’ve spent so much time on $COQ so far is that it has had a massive impact on our ecosystem, and it would be remiss of us not to address our plans, actions, and visions for the future.
With so many eyes on $COQ, a lot of attention has come to Chikn and Avalanche as a whole. Across the data points that tell us how many people we’re reaching, things are up and better than ever. Behind the scenes, our conversations are telling us that we’ve crossed a threshold in terms of brand recognition.
But so far, this hasn’t converted to an increase in holders or new users. This has got some farmers feeling a little spooked.
Without downplaying these narratives or any individual feelings, we stand firm on our vision.
When in doubt, zoom out. What has changed?
The only shift of note: expectations.
This is emblematic of an increased level of excitement about Chikn. The vision that we’ve been putting forward is possible — and could be bigger than we had ever imagined.
We’ve been walking the path of $COQ mania right beside you — as supporters, as degens on the 1 second chart, as Chikn farmers, and as your humble devs. We’ve felt this change in expectation from Chikn, and we’ve felt a change in what we expect from it ourselves.
This is exactly why we stand by our vision. The path is never fixed, but our destination never changes and our determination is steadfast.
The future of Chikn has always required user acquisition. There are barriers to entry that we’re working to overcome through the ChiknX rollout. Part of that plan was to also build brand recognition — with $COQ, that job is off to a firing start.
We have an opportunity to convert tens of thousands of $COQ holders into Chikn Farmers and CoqFighters. But there are still barriers to our ecosystem — the last month has made that very clear.
And so, we stick to the plan. Sentiment swings quickly in crypto. It’s up to us to remain level-headed and see the forest through the AVAX Treez.
For a small team, we’ve come a long way in the last two years. As Famers, you’ve not only been a part of something special: alongside us, you’ve created something special. A living, breathing, organism. The fact that something like $COQ could come from among your ranks has nothing to do with us and everything to do with the community you’ve built around our humble NFTs.
When in doubt, zoom out.
We believe our community is now stronger than ever. More certain than ever. Convinced that great things are possible — because we’ve seen great things with Chikn, and we’ve seen great things with $COQ.
It’s now up to us to deliver. As an indie team with a massive vision, we juggle the difficulties of limited resources with our ambition to release big products. We can jump on new opportunities, experiment, fail cheaply, and learn quickly. But we also have the expectations that come with a grand plan for a highly recognisable web3 gaming brand.
At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. We are proud of what we have built and will continue to work tirelessly to uphold these expectations into the future.
CoqFight
CoqFight development has always been tied to ChiknX, and last year we discussed reprioritising our ChiknX expansion over game development to get more eyes on the project and users in the arena.
Remember this was still during a very bearish market, and no one was sure when we’d see the light at the end of the tunnel. CoqFight has never left the development table, but as we all know, release timing is critical in web3.
At that time, nobody could have predicted that a huge influx of potential players might come from the biggest Avalanche memecoin launch of 2023, right in our midst.
There’s a very clear alignment between $COQ and CoqFight, and with the legal clarity that we now have, some timelines are being shuffled.
That’s not to say ChiknX goes to the side. Our prioritisation of partners remains an important onramp for new users and it is already in motion — but the timing for CoqFight is clearly much better than just three short months ago.
Thus, the means of capturing and converting the majority of potential users has changed significantly. Our job is to convert $COQ holders to CoqFighters. We are hustling to create this onboarding route for new players, as well as delivering something incredible for you all.
CoqFight is almost ready for open alpha, with the core gameplay and mechanics refined from the closed alpha conducted last year. We are of course making changes and adding flourishes for this next phase of release to make sure it is something all current players can enjoy, as well as being inviting and sticky for those incoming.
For an indie studio like us, creating a game from the ground up is no mean feat, and we are proud of where we landed in less than 18 months of active development alongside all the ecosystem updates you have enjoyed over that time.
There’s not a lot to say with words at this point, so we’ll close out this section with a bit of video content instead
Some footage you might have seen:
Note this footage is recorded directly from the game engine, with the majority of the UX overlay redacted. These samples are designed to show how the battles play out visually when your birds come to life!
Some new footage:
Please keep in mind this is pre-alpha footage and all of the content and move sets you see are subject to change. So don’t start speggulating too hard on which traits do what. Still, have fun picking apart all the little details!
More Than an Inch at a Time
It’s hard to overstate the attention Chikn has garnered from the launch of $COQ. Whether or not it can be seen on-chain, we’re turning the right heads, and there is a lot of interest in the ecosystem. What you see in public is often just the tip.
Our job now is to leverage our new-found interest to realise Chikn’s potential.
We are nimble, always on our toes, always looking for the next opportunity and experiment.
There are some very big players looking. It’s time to don the shirt and tie and embrace these exciting new opportunities.
Just because you can’t hear it, doesn’t mean we’re not working. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. This isn’t the Wizard of Oz — and we’ll prove it to you.
You’ve witnessed the 0 to 1 moment with Chikn.
And now we are on the cusp of the next order of magnitude.
Be proud to be a Chikn Farmer. 2024 will be a year to remember.
Bok Bok,
The Chikn Team
Word count: 2,653—we’re still trying.
