Announcing Rawrshak Open Alpha Testnet!
A new year brings new beginnings
Hello 2022!
🎉🎉🎉
We’re kicking the year off in spectacular fashion with the launch of Rawrshak’s Alpha release on Optimistic Kovan Testnet. After spending the latter half of 2021 deep in development, I’m proud (and slightly relieved!) to share with you all, what I hope to be a key piece in the foundation of the decentralized metaverse!
Sure, it’s still more or less a barren land right now, but there’s so much potential here that I can’t wait to share what I believe is an incredible future with you all!
If you haven’t heard of Rawrshak before, don’t fret! Feel free to head over to my introduction of Rawrshak here or check out our website.
But first of all, what exactly is an Alpha release?
An alpha release is a release that allows the public to test the project for the first time. This version of the project is closer to an MVP (minimum viable product) than a final product, so don’t worry if you run into a few bugs. The Alpha allows the gaming community to test and play around with the functionality. There are bound to be issues that pop up, but you can trust that we’ll work to get everything resolved as quickly as we can. We appreciate your patience and we’re excited to have you all on board!
What is in this Alpha?
Rawrshak Smart Contract Infrastructure
Rawrshak has easy-to-deploy Ethereum smart contracts for developers and creators, enabling smooth deployment of NFTs. The Rawrshak smart contracts will take advantage of future on-chain gaming systems. NFTs deployed on the Rawrshak smart contracts will be useable in a wide variety of gaming contexts, many of which are currently under development.
Rawrshak Player and Content Creator Web Apps
The Player and Content Creator web apps are the portal with which users interact with the Rawrshak platform. It grants users access to the marketplace and lets them manage their inventory. It contains the smart contract and Meta Asset NFT launchpad for creators to deploy their own collections and mint their own assets.
Unity Gaming SDK and Tools
The Gaming SDK gives game developers the ability to adopt the Meta Assets into their game, adding an interactive component to NFTs and giving them much more value beyond mere collectibles. Additionally, we developed tools for the Unity Game Engine which help content creators package in-game assets that conform to the Meta Asset frameworks.
Meta Asset Frameworks
The Meta Asset Framework provides content creators a formula to follow when deploying their in-game assets as a blockchain asset. Game developers will expect meta assets to adhere to the framework in order to load a meta asset into their game. The framework includes specific asset packaging, metadata standard, and in-game asset requirements.
Rawrshak Marketplace
The Rawrshak Marketplace is a public marketplace that emulates a similar experience to trading posts in existing popular MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2. We are developing extensions in the Gaming SDK that enable developers to easily integrate this public marketplace into their game.
Rawrshak Subgraphs
Rawrshak’s public subgraphs allow developers to create their own dashboards and to easily access their content’s NFT information. These subgraphs are accessible using GraphQL queries both from web apps and from games. In addition to Rawrshak-specific subgraph queries, the Unity SDK has examples on creating custom queries to any public subgraph.
Asset Viewer Demo project
As we currently don’t have any projects that use the Meta Assets, we’re releasing an Asset Viewer demo that allows gamers to view their assets inside a Unity game. This project can be used by developers as an example of how to integrate the Unity Gaming SDK. Please note that this is just a demo and may contain bugs.
For more information, please check out the Rawrshak Documentation here.
For tutorials and demos, please check out the tutorials here.
Alpha Testnet Information
The Alpha launch will be on Optimism Kovan testnet (Chain ID: 69).
We recommend using Metamask because it allows users to switch to a test network. For the Unity demo project, we recommend Metamask Mobile because it also allows users to change networks and has a WalletConnect integration. We have not tested other wallets.
The marketplace currently only supports testnet DAI (contract address): 0xDA10009cBd5D07dd0CeCc66161FC93D7c9000da1
For instructions on getting testnet WETH and DAI, refer to this tutorial.
Community Building
RAWR Governance Token Rewards
For Alpha participants, we’re allocating RAWR governance token rewards. A total of 500,000 RAWR tokens are to be distributed to alpha users at the RAWR token launch sometime later this year.
- 250,000 RAWR between all gamers and meta asset holders
- 125,000 RAWR between meta asset creators and game developers
- 75,000 RAWR as rewards for Rawrshak Events such as asset bounties, scavenger hunts, asset creator competitions, game jams, etc.
- Up to 50,000 RAWR for bug bounties
Alpha testnet rewards participation runs from Jan 12 to March 31st. We will not release the distribution criteria for the 375,000 RAWR tokens at the start of this Alpha. This is an experiment to encourage organic usage of the entire project. As much as possible, we don’t want the RAWR token rewards to incentivize people to game the project to perform specific actions. This may change for future testing releases. This Alpha is for the Rawrshak team to learn about the behavior of gamers, game developers, and content creators, in addition to testing our platform. We’re hoping for honest feedback from the community. Please play around with the project as much as you can and you’ll be rewarded!
We will be as transparent as we can about the distribution criteria soon. This is a learning process for our team and so we hope you can remain patient with us.
We will host Rawrshak events to encourage developers to play with the Unity SDK and encourage creators to deploy unique assets to the marketplace.
We will reward users and developers who notify us of previously unknown bugs, highlight issues, give recommendations, and meaningful feature requests. Please join our discord and notify us in the #bug-reports channel.
Important! There is NO RAWR token available yet. Any token with RAWR symbol is not related to this project. We will announce the launch of the RAWR token at a later time, so please join the official channels.
For more information on the RAWR Governance token, please check out the RAWR token documentation.
Rawrshak’s Meta Assets
We’re also rewarding community participants with Official Rawrshak Meta Assets to be distributed at our mainnet launch! These assets will be rewarded to users for specific tasks and participation.
Rawrshak’s Meta Assets may include the following:
- Alpha Title NFTs
- Rawrshak In-game Alpha Decals NFTs
- Rawrshak In-game Alpha Trophies NFTs
Please stay tuned for more information on how to be eligible for these Meta Assets!
But wait… There’s more!
As a part of our collaboration with Arweave via the Open Web Foundry, we’ll provide 100 GB worth of AR tokens to gamers, content creators, and game developers. Please join our Discord server and stay tuned for more details!
Alpha Participation
In order to participate, please check out our Gamer Tutorials here and Game Developer Tutorials here.
Game Developer Demo:
Gamer Demo:
Collaborations and Partners
Decent Labs
Rawrshak partnered with Decent Labs to build the front-end MVP. Decent Labs is a venture studio that helps projects develop from idea to launch.
ChainSafe
We worked closely with the ChainSafe gaming team in developing our libraries and testing out ChainSafe’s Gaming SDKs. We will continue to work closely with them as they develop new features and gaming products.
Arweave
Rawrshak took part in Arweave’s accelerator program called the Open Web Foundry. Check out their website for more information!
The Graph
Rawrshak is part of The Graph Foundation’s Grants Program — Wave 3 cohort and is receiving technical help and guidance from The Graph team.
Disclaimers
Meta Assets do not yet have in-game utility. We have not yet reached out or partnered with any game developers. We are actively looking for projects interested in adopting Meta Assets for their games or worlds. We have plans on developing World Creator games for players who want to create and deploy their own worlds.
Please reach out to us if you’re a game developer who would like to discuss further: contact@rawrshak.io
About Rawrshak
Rawrshak is a gaming-focused NFT platform that empowers creators to deploy cross-game interoperable assets. The platform provides a decentralized end-to-end solution for traditional game developers who want to easily plug into a metaverse.
For the latest information on Rawrshak, please join our Discord and follow us on Twitter.
