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Note from Kujo
While I transcribe, I am not aiming to make them 100% word for word. I will cut out various banter and things that may not make sense, or things that I think are unneeded. I will also tweak verbiage used from each speaker, if necessary, to help with clarity. These are transcribed with ~90%-95% accuracy.
All speaker names can be clicked for their timestamp. Mostly everything underlined is a link.
You can find the original recording here (the talk starts at 5:00 timestamp):
Speakers: Frisky Fox, Beetle Dude, Magnus Ironroot, Hubert Cumberdale, Dreamer, SunBear, Bolon, and DrZipper.
Community AMA
READER NOTICE: Enjoy! :)
Frisky Fox
It’s been another week, it’s crazy how fast time flies. It’s actually already February. I don’t even know where January went because there’s been so much going on. There’s quite a few updates, some of the updates for the blockchain pillar I’m going to defer to Magnus on. Notably, the RFC that we have up for the allowlist for the chain, it’s an exciting time. We’re trying to figure out what the best way to allow for other builders to come to DFKChain. There’s a few good ideas brought up in the talk site, and I encourage everyone to go post your ideas. Also, just hearing the feedback and the votes is great. Everything has pros and cons in this state; basically, we’re just trying to find what’s best for us as a community and a project. We are on the blockchain and in a web3 trustless world and trying to focus on decentralization.
I did want to mention I am currently in the process of working with AvaLabs to create a new plugin system for subnet EVM. I’m hoping to be able to post an issue over on their GitHub repo with some information and code for that. That’s a new direction we’re trying to explore with under their recommendation, specifically for the airdrop of crystal. I’ve been heads down on that all day, there’s a lot of code that has to be done for that. I do have to leave this call early because of that.
With that, I’ll turn this over to Magnus, but I did want to say that before I run.
BULLISH!
Magnus Ironroot
Thanks Fox! Couple of updates from the solidity side and the general blockchain pillar. First of all, Fox wanted me to mention that he’s working on the deferred veAllocation [Kujo, I assume this is a veToken reference], which is going to allow block tokens to be allowed to be used for most of our contracts (like summoning, meditation, and etc). That’s in the implementation phase right now — that’s part of the reason Fox has to drop off. Making good progress there.
For me, I’m working on refactoring the questing system. Into the diamond pattern. It basically removes the limits on how much logic we can put into the contract. Currently we’re tapped out and we have to continuously optimize as we add new things to the QuestCore. If we switch to the diamond pattern that gives us the capability to use the storage more efficiently and pack in more logic. For example, the upcoming pet feeding and other things in the future.
On the DFKChain side of things, and as Fox mentioned (link), we have the RFC up open for that as well. Go vote! Go post your ideas! I’ll touch on this briefly and recap the problem so everyone has a better understanding.
The prevailing option right now is to open the chain up, but allow someone to agree to a “TOS” that says, “You won’t do malicious things on the chain.” basically. That allows us to self service opening the chain up, but with protections and failsafes in place to stop that malicious behavior. Option #2 is to open the chain up and raise gas to prevent malicious content. Another option is to keep everything as is. The chain isn’t currently open for contract deployment and there’s a process to go through to get through that, so that vote wouldn’t be a change. Other options are a community panel / committee to allow those addresses to deploy. There’s also the option to open up the chain with no gas increase, potentially allowing for malicious behavior. And the last option is to have very tight control over the contract code, through a “pre-compile”, and the contracts would have to be approved — probably the most restrictive. Please go check out the talk site to check them out! The main problem we’re trying to prevent is malicious behavior on the chain as we look to open things up. A lot of nuance, but we very much appreciate the feedback that’s been given so far. We want to encourage the voting and any great ideas on the talk site.
I’ll pass this over to the next person now.
[Kujo: PAUSE — here are the options that were up for vote]
OPTION 1
OPTION 2
OPTION 3
OPTION 4
OPTION 5
OPTION 6
FINALIZED VOTES
Bolon Soron
Very much appreciated Magnus. Lets go to Dreamer.
Dreamer
I will probably defer to somebody here in a bit to give updates on relationships and progress there. But, I will first start on Centralized Exchanges and Market Makers. We have talked to two more major Centralized Exchanges since the last AMAs. It’s really interesting to see in this environment the strategies that are different from one exchange to another. Some do focus straight up on listing fees, others focus on what seems like a listing fee, but don’t keep it. They use it for marketing focuses or put it in a pool for people to stake in. Definitely learning more and more about the different strategies out there. I think they all have pros and cons. Another thing we’re learning that is important to some, but not others, is an official third party legal opinion on whether or not the token to list is considered a security. In the traditional sense, somebody reviews it and that third party legal group gives you a positive or negative opinion in regards to it being a security. A negative opinion is desirable, a positive opinion says the opposite. We’re looking into that to better prepare ourselves for that, but they don’t all require that. Those are some updates on that, I don’t know if people like updates on how we’re learning but I thought I’d share that.
[Kujo: We do, Dreamer. We do!]
Another nuance we’re focused is that some exchanges have their own technology that helps integration, onboarding, marketing, bringing on new users in general. A lot of times that comes by way of a native wallet. Historically, the majority of our users have been using MetaMask. Around the Crystalvale launch we started to also support the Coinbase Wallet and after the Klaytn launch we also support the Kaikas Wallet. In the future, it might be, at least for wallets that have a seamless integration wallet offering that support DFKChain and Klaytn, we can see more of these wallets being supported in game. I think that’s not only easier for onboarding new members, but for multiple exchanges as well, to have that foundation lain.
Related to that is also the topic of onramps and offramps. Historically we’ve worked with RAMP as an onramp provider. We’re trying to bring that back as a focus, but we want to think globally with variety. Some focus can be on very very niche countries that we may or may not have exposure to. But, if we want to market in that country we have ways for folks in that region to do bank transfers or local credit cards to buy Jewel directly, or a token supported in the ecosystem. Basically trying to lower those barriers of entry to new players. In our efforts to build awesome content, we also want to make sure we have a foundation to bring others in. We want to receive feedback from people on what those complications are for onboarding. Centralized Exchanges and onramps are huge for that, wallets are huge for that as well.
My next topic will lead to others on the build side after, so I’m going to pause and turn it over to SunBear for business development and relationship management updates. Then I’ll have a few more things before I pass it back to you Bolon.
SunBear
Thank you Dreamer. I just want to say, as a business development group, we not only focus on what Dreamer is talking about in decreasing barriers, but in conjunction with that we really want to work with partners that are really willing to help us reach into those regions that don’t know us very well. Help decrease those barriers, engage with that region, educate that region, and have them connect with us.
A couple of exciting things I’d like to talk about related to that. One partnership that we see, as we’ve connected with the Klaytn ecosystem, and have had talks with and gotten to know really well, is PlayOne Games. So, we’re going to first announce here our official partnership with PlayOne Games! They know the ecosystem in Klaytn and South Korea very well. Dreamer and I had a recent meeting with them where they spent some good quality time with us live, brainstorming what it is that we need to do in this region to reach out and connect with South Korea. Excited about that! Our marketing teams are working together very soon and you’ll be hearing more about that official partnership very soon, maybe popping up in the game as well.
Another thing we’ve been working on, that you all may be aware of, is that we’re close partners with Rome Blockchain Labs (RBL). One thing they’ve worked on for quite a while is creating price feed information for the Trader. If you go into the Trader now there’s an extensive DEX and a lot to utilize. But, you don’t necessarily have historical data for those prices. So, we are going to be implementing, in the next few weeks, that data feed so that you can choose to have those charts pop up in the Trader for that information.
Another that we’ve been working on for a while with players for tools and help you, as we did over a year ago, we ran a bounty for tools for taxes and transaction history report. We’ve been talking with a group called Blockpit, who are one of the main innovators in the space that create tax reports and history reports for people to use in many countries and more to come. We are announcing today our official partnership with them! That will be launched here within the next month. You will see them in the Archivist. They will offer discounts to folks who enter their system through the Archivist. They’re really trying to help our community, so you can expect a 10% discount for using their services. If you’re looking for a one stop shop to help collect all that transaction information for your taxes, they’re a very good solution. They’re working hard right now to ensure the historical price history is accurate over the three chains we’ve been on in the last year. As soon as it’s live, we will add it to the game — Early March. They also will be doing a fee sharing agreement with their services, so they can not only support us, but feed some revenue back into the ecosystem. More on that soon, but we want you all to get used to them and learn about them — probably through ChaosCast [Found Here].
There’s more that I would love to talk about with partnerships, but we’re just not quite ready yet. Thank you.
Dreamer
Thanks SunBear. I wanted to share a little bit more on the Corporate Governance side. We do have a committee that governs all this. Our Corporate Governance structure is made up of various committees, it’s where we don’t have just one person making any important decision: game related, partnerships (like Wisdom), tokenomics, or new business ventures, etc. PlayOne games I’m really excited about, we’re starting to lay the foundation there. There are things with language and translations that are in the works. There are really unique ways that people operate in different countries, especially in web3. Korea is one of them and PlayOne Games is very knowledgeable on this. For example, rather than being a Twitter focused area, it’s Telegram. So, finding the right ways to get new features and guides out is going to be really important.
Rome Blockchain Labs. From my background, being able to go make a trade and not having any information readily available, even with the current prices, this is a huge win for everyone in the game that goes to trade. But it also goes right into a very powerful tool, Rome Blockchain Terminal. That’s already in the Castle under the Archivist. But, as time goes on this will be more accessible so you have the information available when you go to trade. And the last bit is that I’m excited for Blockpit, relative to the timing of the year. We did run a contest last year, but it was limited to one chain. Blockpit solves our problem across all chains.
My last comment that Fox probably would have wanted to go over. This is an upcoming feature that we’ve hinted to earlier, mid last year. We talked about locked token utility in the past. That concept has been evolving a bit, especially as we get closer to the scheduled unlocking of Crystal. Token burns are very important. We did identify the hero burn through Dark Summoning, and we’ve upped burning throughout the whole ecosystem. From normal fee distribution and so on. But, we wanted to up that even further. Rather than talking about more token utility, we’re going to focus on this being more of a “deferred payment” for game features. We want to avoid the perception of “spending” locked tokens and token utility. We’re considering a way that we want to use tokens that aren’t currently in circulation. A promise of them being delivered to a wallet sometime in the future. We want to be able to burn a portion of those tokens and set aside a portion of those fees to be collected at a later date. In order to get access to it, you’d have to burn tokens. These features are getting closer to being released, but we don’t have an exact date yet. It’s currently in production. In addition to what we’ve mentioned in the past, you’d essentially look at the current token price of things in the game and times that by 4. That would be the overall locked token amount to gain access to that.
For example: If I had a summon that cost 50 of a Power Token to do, I could instead choose to spend 200 Locked TODAY. 75% of that would be burned completely, but the original fee will be distributed to the normal distribution when they unlock. That’s what we kind of planned before, but it’s been approved in tokenomics. And in addition to that, we’ve been looking to introduce a token burn reward program. But, essentially, there are some things in game that we can use that locked token deferred option openly … but there are other parts of the game, like summoning, where it’s limited so it doesn’t impact the overall balance of the game too much. So, we wanted to think of other ways that people could contribute to burning tokens if they wanted to. It would operate similar to raffles, but Hubert can go over it. He’s spent a lot of time designing it.
The gist of it would be to burn locked or liquid tokens at the chance of rewards.
Bolon Soron
No worries, appreciate it both Dreamer and Sunbear. I did want to add two quick comments. The first one for BeetleDude, in production means in progress, not ON the production site. The second on Blockpit, I’m super excited for the partnership with them. I know taxes are a massive stressor to everyone. So very happy to have an offering for people that can help with that. It’s basically a Koinly system, so they’re the ones that will prepare a full tax report for you if you were in a country that they support (which are many). But, they won’t file it for you. They will get the data and prepare the report. Koinly doesn’t get our data, but Blockpit does!
Let’s go to DrZipper!
DrZipper
Hi everybody! Just a quick update, I’m feeling ill so I won’t ramble. From the community Dev side, on behalf of PineCone. Many of you might have noticed, there were a couple of outages to the GraphQL a couple of nights ago. This took out not only the bots in Discord, but a whole lot of our community builders sites. That was caused, as we determined, by a single IP address, that just spammed the system until it overloaded it [Kujo: DDOS].
So, we did introduce some rate limiting on GraphQL. That’s now set at 10 requests per second, with a burst rate of 20 requests per second. Which, we think, should be more than enough for people. We made some additional fixes for various errors as a result of the rate limiting, but hopefully that should be fewer. And, as a part of that, we’ve reduced the query timeout from 5 minutes to 1 minute.
Please reach out to me or PineCone and we can discuss it if there are issues with limitations impacting you. We want them to be usable, not abusable.
I always wanted to mention a couple of exciting things. I don’t know if any of you spend any time in the DFK Subnet Explorer. You may have noticed a couple of new things:
1) All game contracts are now labeled. For example, if you want to view hero core or meditation circle, you can type it in and it will pop up. Should make it easier to identify which contract is which.
2) The other really cool thing is that all of the input methods for contracts are now decoded (or at least most of them). So, if you look at your wallet you should see “Start Quest” or “Complete Quest” etc.
[Kujo: Search your 0x on the subnet link above and you’ll be able to identify your transactions easily, like this image below as an example]
[Kujo: You can also search for specific contracts like this example]
[continuation]
If I’m not mistaken, I think some of those are actually populating better now with MetaMask as well. Just trying to do what we can to make the contract interactions more transparent for everyone.
Bolon Soron
Thank you DrZipper. Let’s go over to Hubert or BeetleDude, whichever one of you wants to go first.
Hubert Cumberdale
I guess I will continue off with what Dreamer alluded to with the deferred token raffle. So, that is going to work kind of similar to the raffles that you’re used to with the raffle system. Except for using raffles, you’ll be using unlocked or locked Power Tokens for it. Initially it will only be launching on Crystalvale. Eventually we will be migrating it to Serendale later. Things you can expect to see there, the plan is to have 10 concurrent raffles that run on a 26 hour timer. Those ones will have the same kind of level of reward as you’re used to seeing in the Duels system. But, it won’t be outputting at the same degree as each of them. But still, you can potentially run into some Greater Enhancement Stones, some Greater Attunement Crystals, and various other items like items and lower levels of those stones and crystals. We may add more to that down the road. Then, also, we’ll be having a two week raffle that will be for a Gen0. The one other thing we’ll do about it, to disincentive waiting until the last minute, is it’s going to have a system that the cost per ticket will increasing over time in steps. So, if you’re in the first 20% of the time, that’ll be when the tickets are the cheapest and step up until the end — where’s it about 50% more per ticket at the end. As Dreamer mentioned, you’ll be able to use locked or unlocked tokens at the same rate to enter into that.
As far as other updates I have … we’re continuing to work closely with Wisdom Labs on the PvP system. There’s still a lot more to go, but we’ve went through a couple more classes this week. Next week we’re ready for another juicy alpha drop. Continuing to get our major features ready to go: Level 10 profession quests, pet utility, and the tournament system are things I’m focused on.
Beetle Dude
Thanks Hubert! On my end and on the application pillar side, we are continuing to progress on quite a few things. I have mentioned in the past that, we are working closely with Wisdom on PvP. Part of that update will be introducing a login system and an off-chain database. This will open the door for a ton of great stuff, like in-game chat, hero grouping, quest grouping, tagging, and other QOL improvements. Should open up the door for a lot of those awesome features. Hopefully trying to make the game more enjoyable on a user experience level.
We’re also working through a Gardens update to revamp the UI and make it match up with everything else. That should be the last update to purge all of the old and dark modals we had before [Kujo: UI conformity].
We are still working hard on green pet eggs, specifically the art team — working through animations and lore. I do want to mention that we’re trying to continuously improve the way we’re putting them together, trying to make pets more epic and fantastical. SecondBestDad has a nice teaser he’s going to post here in a second.
[ continuation ]
This is the Garden Sprite. It’s a class of anthropomorphic, I guess that’s the right term for it, fruits and vegetables.
I think that’s all for now on my side. Just a ton of great stuff that we’re continuing to push forward on. We just released power-ups and I think that went really well. That’s it for me.
Bolon Soron
Thank you Dude of Beetle. Let’s start with some Hubert Questions. We do have a couple of hold overs from last week, so we’ll knock those out first, then we’ll keep going into the newer stuff submitted this week.
Question #1 — Hubert Cumberdale
Q Can we get a general vision for each stat when it comes to combat?
A I’ll try to be succinct with this. We’ve kind of gone through some iterations on how the stats will be used, listed on the main site (link). In general though, I’ll go through the stats each in a row.
Strength (STR) — Used for damage scaling of melee weapons and also a means for determining what equipment you can equipment. There will be a STR requirement on armor.
Dexterity (DEX) — Will work as a damage modifier for ranged type weapons. But, it also is a key component to weapon accuracy and spell accuracy. It also does play into blocking as well.
Agility (AGI) — Tied to your initiative. The main initiative stat. Also tied to your evasion capabilities. Maybe some abilities on some class, and in general for other stats, there may be abilities that utilize those stats in some way (that may have been noticed in previous Alpha drops).
[Kujo: Hubert came back and corrected himself. Agility ties into spell and physical evasion. Wisdom and Intelligence DO NOT.]
Vitality (VIT) — Used largely for Health Points (HP) and recovery from status effects.
Endurance (END) — Your main defense stat for physical defense. It drives how much damage reduction you have. It plays into armor and armor will enhance the capability of Endurance. As well it will provide the main source of resistance for debuffs.
Intelligence (INT) — Main magic attack stat and Mana Point (MP) growth (WIS is also used for MP growth). It will also be used for spell block. Spell block or spell evasion, I can correct that later, but it’s one of those.
[Kujo: Hubert came back and corrected himself. Spell block is tied to INT.]
Wisdom (WIS) — Main magic defense stat. Also necessary for MP growth. There will be a magic defense that’s based off of wisdom, and armor can enhance that scaling as well. It’s also used for either spell block or spell evasion, I’m getting mixed up on those. I think it’s spell evasion.
[Kujo: Hubert came back and added. Wisdom is also the scaler for healing. Wisdom also plays into magic accuracy.]
Luck (LCK) — Plays into a lot of things already mentioned: blocking, evasion, resistances, etc. Has a little bit of a play in everything as well as critical hits. It will also have a role in increasing drop rates for rare items as well.
Question #2 — Hubert Cumberdale
Q Examples of pet benefits in combat. Are they just going to give stat boosts, or will there be augmentations in battle such as +5 fire damage for having a fire pet kind of thing?
A As far as pet bonuses go, we are still a bit early on with that. So I don’t want to say too much. But, you can kind of expect similar things on the traits with heroes. Such as resistance bonuses, damage bonuses, or different things of that nature. As abilities that come from your pets. The different starter levels will kind of determine the scale at which you get out of that. We’re still pretty early on and haven’t spent much time on pets. We’re focused on hero abilities and basic equipment put together. That’s about all I can say on that for now.
Question #3 — Bolon Soron
Q Do we have another Wisdom AMA planned? Is it safe to say the one hero skill tree per week pace will continue, or will there be more?
A Yes, there will be one coming, no date yet. Yes, we do plan to continue dropping alpha on it each week.
Question #4 — Hubert Cumberdale
Q Any further detail on FATE, the combat mechanic?
A One thing I will note about fate is that we’ve adjusted our plans for fate. Where you saw those in the formulas, that’s going to be removed and replaced by luck with some multiplier for it. Fate is going to play a different role in combat.
Question #5 — Hubert Cumberdale
Q Level 10 profession quests, stamina per attempt. Is the plan for level 10 profession quests to have the same stamina per attempt cost of 5 if you have the profession, 7 if you don’t (like level 0 quests). Or, are we looking at something different? Would making the stamina per attempt higher, less possible attempts, would that provide an opportunity to reduce the computational requirements?
A First off, the plan for the level 10’s is to not change the stamina requirements. That’s not to say that further down the road profession quests won’t change. I think definitely leaving the door open for that to be different in the future, but the most recent ones there won’t be a change. As far as reducing computation costs, it would depend a lot on how we do things. If we tried to give the same experience in rewards, or improved ones, even with fewer attempts, we would still have to determine all the rewards. I’m not sure that would save much, potentially a small impact or a wash. I think, with the computation costs issue, we’re constantly working on them. We are currently working with Klaytn to see if we can relax the limits they’ve placed. Hopefully we’ll get some positive action out of that, but nothing to report at the moment.
Question #6 — Hubert Cumberdale
Q Multiple sets of locking jewel at the Jeweler. So, being able to have multiple locking periods within the same account [Kujo: Laddering concept maybe]
A We did talk to this in the past. Hopefully I can repeat it similarly. We wanted to keep the system streamlined. We want people to tuck away their Jewel and be exploit free. We did discuss multiple threads, but ultimately decided it was too complex and didn’t want to risk abuse. At the moment, your options are to multi-wallet to have different locking times.
Question #7 — Bolon Soron
Q How many power-ups can be applied to a hero at the same time? Does allocation c/sJewel to power-ups impact the rewards? What does it mean when the Jewel icon is partially filled on the screen?
A All of them. No. It means some of them are applied, but not all of them. [Kujo: corrected by Hubert] It means that you don’t have enough charges to get the full benefit from them.
Question #8 — Dreamer
Q Would it be possible to have a governance vote to delay the unlock time for Crystal and or Jade?
A I think I’ll answer this by directing to some major updates we did today. We’re really focused on finding solutions within the structure that we have. We’re in a market as a result of events that people didn’t expect individually, all at once, or within a time period. I get where the source of this question is coming form. But, we as a team, we’re working really hard to find solutions to implement new features, add utility, onboard and retain players — with minimal disruption. Continuing to cultivate a healthy ecosystem. Unlocking one of those features, and in my opinion and maybe many others, is that kicking the can down the road approach sould be a last resort. We haven’t been discussing this as an option and instead discussing the ideas we discussed today. Burning and token burn rewards. I think this question should be hopefully ansewred just by hearing those answers indirectly. Our focus is to find other solutions that is less disruptive and fair to all. So, could there be a vote? Yes. But, this isn’t what we discussed. But, I guess anything is possible, however our perspective is to find a good solution for all.
