DeFi Kingdoms AMA 7/25/24 Summary and Transcript

Summary

Hosts: Bolon Soron, Beetle Dude, Magnus Ironroot, Hubert Cumberdale, Winston Jazzhands

Jeweler Airdrop:

Bolon Soron and Hubert Cumberdale discussed the progress on the airdrop for LP fees. The delay is due to ensuring the accuracy of the data. Fox, who is handling this so the airdrop may not happen this week but should be ready by next week.

Stone Carver:

Winston Jazzhands announced that the Stone Carver would be joining Crystalvale in about 20 hours, advising players to prepare their materials.

Metis Hunt Sponsorship:

Bolon Soron updated that the Metis Hunt Sponsorship is live, with daily winners receiving 0.5 Metis each for the next 60 days.

Expeditions Update:

Winston Jazzhands and Hubert Cumberdale shared that there would be a demonstration of Expeditions after the AMA, showcasing power-ups and other features.

Community Questions:

Customization in PVP:

Question: “Will there be a ranked mode and any thoughts on how to make a ranked mode experience balanced as far as, you know, heroes with different power levels, equipment, that kind of thing?”

Answer: Bolon Soron and Hubert Cumberdale discussed future PVP features, starting with private matches and tournaments before ranked modes. Customization options include limiting heroes by rarity, stat scores, and unique class compositions. Hubert mentioned they are not planning to launch with a ranked mode for matchmaking but will focus on private matches and building a tournament system first.

Frisky Fox’s Involvement:

Question: “Heard rumors that Fox is checked out and hands off, not concerned about the project. Can we speak to Fox’s status with the team and project?”

Answer: Bolon Soron and Hubert Cumberdale confirmed that Fox is still heavily involved and working, despite being on vacation. Fox has stayed up late to join meetings and has been active in critical tasks like the LP splitting.

Battle Royale Mode:

Question: “Hubert, thoughts on a Battle Royale deathmatch mode.”

Answer: Hubert Cumberdale expressed interest in a permanent death Battle Royale mode, potentially involving Vinescence to revive heroes. He liked the concept and saw it as a cool addition.

Equipment Shop:

Question: “I know the variable weapon level question was answered last week, but to dig a little deeper, will the equipment shop sell weapons higher than level 10 all the way up to level 20, perhaps?”

Answer: Hubert Cumberdale stated there are no plans to sell weapons higher than level 10 to avoid outshining Void Hunts equipment.

Birthday Plans:

Question: “Any DFK birthday plans akin to last year’s party hat airdrop?”

Answer: Bolon Soron hinted that there are plans for the DFK birthday, with details to be revealed later.

Wagering System:

Question: “Any sneak peeks on a wagering system (for PVP)?”

Answer: Hubert Cumberdale discussed a planned system where players can vote on winners with potential rewards, along with other forms of wagering.

APR in Gardens:

Question: “Seeing live APRs in the garden. So this is something that we’ve talked about. APRs in the garden, at this point, the rewards for providing LP in the gardens aside from the gardening quest are entirely based on in-game fees and cannot be predicted.”

Answer: Bolon Soron mentioned that APRs are currently based on in-game fees, which vary constantly. Historical APRs might be shown in the future with clear caveats clarifying they are APRs in the past.

DFK Chain Validators:

Question: “Given that we own/control all of the current DFK chain validators, how does that make DFK decentralized? And is there a plan to entice other parties to run validators?”

Answer: Magnus Ironroot explained the decentralization of validators and the economic and technical considerations involved, particularly with the upcoming ACP 77, which will provide more flexible validator requirements. He also discussed the balance between keeping gas low and preventing malicious activity on the chain.

Final Thoughts:

• Hubert Cumberdale: Expressed excitement about nearing the finish line for Expeditions and ongoing work on PVP, emphasizing the importance of optimization and bug fixes.
• Magnus Ironroot: Highlighted the progress in Expeditions and the transition to focusing on PVP.
• Winston Jazzhands: Thanked the community for their support and engagement, emphasizing the team’s continuous effort in development.
• Beetle Dude: Praised the team’s consistent progress and the community’s support, expressing pride in the team’s talent and dedication.

Bolon Soron encouraged the community to continue submitting questions and engaging with the team.

The AMA concluded with a bullish sentiment from Beetle Dude.

Transcript

[Beetle Dude]
Great to be back. My trip was amazing, thank you.

I was really just using it as an opportunity to avoid Bolon, but I couldn’t use it as an excuse anymore, so here I am.

[Bolon Soron]
That’s right, Beetle Dude plans trips just to get away from my virtual presence. All right.

[Winston Jazzhands]
You got some power over him, man. You’re living in his head rent-free.

[Bolon Soron]
I’m saying, feels good, feels good. So we do have one, actually, nope, sorry. We have a couple of quick updates to run through, and then we will be diving into your questions, of course.

One thing just to cover real quick, the jeweler airdrop. So we had made the announcement about the LP fees and that the drop would be backdated to everybody who had been staked in the jeweler to correctly reward them. Basically, we just have to do the math three times and make sure everything is good.

So we don’t expect any kind of crazy delay on that, but we don’t wanna rush it and not have the math be correct either. So we are working on that and we’ll bring you more updates, but we wanna make sure we get it right. Not sure if Hubert, you want to add anything to that.

If not, I will move on or anybody else.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
I was reading the chat and slightly distracted. This is about the airdrop for the LP splitting thing we did. Yes.

Okay, yep. So all I can say is we just wanted to make sure that we audited everything, that the data was correct. There was, so we completed that audit and there was just an adjustment that needed to be made.

And then there’s this one last little thing that we’re finalizing. And then I think after that, it should be able to be dropped. Fox is the one doing that.

So he’s also still on vacation at the moment. So it’s kind of dependent on his time zone and availability. So may not happen this week, but I would expect it probably will be no later than next week.

But I guess probably shouldn’t quote me on that just in case something goes wrong, but I think we’re pretty close to being ready to go on that anyway.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Greatly appreciated. I saw a question about the problem itself.

So there’s a Discord announcement that has pretty much all of the details, but just I guess to like high level capture it. Essentially the contract was set up to take the fees and split them. The problem being that the contract itself could not split the fees.

So that’s what needed to be corrected essentially. And then as far as timing goes, it was just a matter of kind of it being caught to be perfectly honest and then fixing it. That was my very, very non-technical explanation.

So if there’s anything that I missed, feel free to jump in. Otherwise we will rock on to the next update. All right.

Let’s see, Winston, wanna talk about the Stone Carver?

[Winston Jazzhands]
Oh yeah, I’d love to. Everybody get your materials together. He’s gonna be joining us in Crystalvale in about 20 hours.

So make sure you have your stuff together or get ready to buy some because the prices are probably gonna get really good. There you go. Carve your stones.

[Bolon Soron]
Stone Carver. Let’s see, the Metis Hunt Sponsorship is live. The first winners will be drawn in just shy of six hours.

So if you’ve not gotten your daily hunts in, there is still time. But every day for the next 60 days, there will be 10 winners drawn that will win 0.5 Metis, half a Metis each. So that’s super exciting.

This is kind of the first piece of some Metis Sponsorship stuff coming on. So very excited to see that go into action. And I wish all of you hunters the best of luck in winning.

And final update, expeditions. I’m gonna throw it to you first, Winston.

[Winston Jazzhands]
Oh, thanks. Thank you, Bolon. I’m gonna try to go camera on here for a second.

Dreamer usually does the camera on stuff, but I’m gonna do it if I can figure it out in a minute. Okay. Nope, that wasn’t it.

All right, nevermind. We kept the camera. Oh, wait, nope.

[Bolon Soron]
Hey, everybody, there we go.

[Winston Jazzhands]
I was just looking at not the big red button and that’s what it was. Hey, thanks, Bolon. Yeah, so expeditions are very close.

We’re still working on a couple of things, but we think it’s close enough to show it to you guys. So I think after this AMA, we’re gonna do a 10 or 15 minute kind of a dev sit down with me and Hubert and Bolon. And we’re just gonna show it to you.

We’re gonna crack it open and show you the power-ups and show you all the good stuff. And we’ll make a recording of that. And then anybody can watch it whenever they want.

It’s perfect. Yeah, thanks, Bolon.

[Bolon Soron]
Thank you. So yeah, we are going to end this stream and then start a new stream. So stay tuned to keep an eye on the YouTube channel for that.

And we may be dropping some alpha as well. So super excited for that. All right, anybody have any other updates or anything they wanna touch on before we jump into some questions for this week?

All right, let’s get into some questions. First up is for, welcome back, DudeofBeetle. It’s time for questions for you.

Thoughts on the brand experience of DFK, the ability to be able to toggle off all animations, like on the world map, even toggle off animations to reduce resource use for lower end devices?

[Beetle Dude]
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think that is something that we’ll want to look into. I will say one thing that’s coming along with PvP is a whole new kind of way to handle maps and map tiling that should also help with performance quite a bit.

So it’d be a matter of retrofitting that onto our old maps and making those easier to build on top of and all that good stuff is part of it. But as far as turning the animation off now, I can take a look. I think that could be possible.

Could be another user preference that we could add in the user settings to make sure that people on those lower level devices are able to kind of enjoy the experience as well. So it’s a good suggestion. I think it belongs on the list, I think, the old list.

It’s been a long time since I mentioned the list, but it’s still here.

[Bolon Soron]
Since you’ve mentioned it, it has not been a long time.

[Beetle Dude]
Ah, you can’t add it when I’m not here, that’s impossible.

[Bolon Soron]
We took full advantage of your absence. Thoughts on a claim all quality of life button for duels for rank rewards? I’ll just say I don’t think it’s something that we have looked at yet, but it could be a pretty good quality of life.

I think that might be more Fox’s list than Beetle’s, but Beetle, if you have any thoughts, feel free.

[Beetle Dude]
I mean, Fox’s list is looking pretty good to me right now.

[Bolon Soron]
Perfect, lists for everybody. So Magnus, a question for you in regards to, and I’m going to go into acronyms, but I don’t know what they mean, so sorry. But ACP 77, which was announced that could supersede ACP 13 for subnets, thoughts on what that represents, impacts to us, anything along those lines?

[Magnus Ironroot]
Yeah, sure thing. So yeah, just to hit the high points on ACP 77, basically it’s like changing the entire subnet model. Right now validators have to stake 2,000 of AVAX, which is like really pricey, especially for maybe smaller games that want to just get spun up and just launch validator and have their own chain. So this is kind of like turning that model on its head and you can basically like emit tokens if you want to, and that could be like a ERC 20, ERC 721, and you can have an on-chain way to do validator requirements. So if you want to say you need an NFT in order to validate this subnet, you can do that. You also only have to sync the chain instead of like the X and C chain.

So it kind of like detaches, or like it’s not live yet, but like, and it’s still in the works of kind of defining a specification, but it kind of like detaches subnets from the kind of C chain model. And so they’re even like talking about doing a rebrand from subnets away to something else. And that’s like a discussion as well.

So everything with ACP 77 is in flux, but basically it gives you some really good kind of like set of tools to be able to decide your different staking parameters and how you want to onboard validators and kind of like find a grand control over staking rewards that currently aren’t there. So it’s going to be extremely powerful. I think we’ll see a lot of cool, I don’t want to call them subnets, but yeah, effectively like whatever subnets get renamed to once this launches.

And it’s definitely something I’m really interested in and we’re going to keep an eye on this as it develops. There’s a lot of tokenomics work that goes into like what you want to emit, which token, validator rewards, pretty much everything I just listed. Or you can choose to just kind of stay with the standard model as well, as well as staking 2000 of Vox.

So it gives us a lot of flexibility to really like tweak things. And it’s a necessary step on the path to decentralization. So we’re keeping an eye on it.

It’s a highly in flux, but yeah, it gives us some really cool advantages here in terms of tweaking the chain.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Thank you, Magnus. I am glad that there are people who understand this around.

Let’s see, as we… Okay, there we go. Sorry.

Given that we own slash control all of the current DFK chain validators, how does that make DFK decentralized? And is there a plan to entice other parties to run validators?

[Magnus Ironroot]
Yes. So it’s great that these questions were back to back because I guess the first piece of that is that Avalanche did launch Elastic subnets, but there’s some missing functionality there for us to be able to, for example, use Jewel as kind of like that central token to either reward validators or kind of like require onboarding requirements. So that we’re kind of like waiting on the results of ACP 77 to be able to kind of like in a truly decentralized fashion, just let new validators kind of hop on if they meet the requirements and then they can drop off and kind of have like some gatekeeping rules around that that are just kind of done through code and we don’t have to deal with that, but that’s all kind of wrapped up in ACP 77 in terms of the technical side. And then like I alluded to on the other, or on the previous question, once those technical blockers are removed, there’s a ton of modeling that needs to happen in terms of what incentives look like, how do we keep the validators like validating the chain and they need to be in profit to keep them doing that. Otherwise they’re just kind of losing money.

DFK chain has like our like RAM requirements are like 64 gigabytes and then has a pretty strong CPU to be a validator. So it’s not without its cost to run just a single validator, let alone multiple of those. But yeah, and so that also includes like what token do you reward things in?

Where does that value come from? And so it’s in addition to kind of the technical side, I just mentioned there’s an economic or game theory side and you have to make sure in the worst case, the chain will still keep running and the validators are incentivized to do that like pretty much no matter what happens. So it’s going to take a lot of discussion and like mathematical modeling and just a lot of, I guess, technical work to kind of put all these specifications in code and then they kind of like submit them to the chain and do those upgrades within the parameters of ACP 77, whatever that ends up looking like.

So yeah, a couple of different sides of that coin, but we’re kind of waiting. And then once that comes out, we can kind of have some more specific discussions on what that looks like.

[Bolon Soron]
Just one thing to, I guess, kind of add and Magnus, if you want to speak to this as well, cause you understand it better than I do, but also with the chain being open, having other validators, like essentially if we remove the whitelist requirement, there is also some level of risk to that as well. Aside from the fact like Magnus was talking about, we need validators that keep running because if we start losing validators, then that causes network issues. But even aside from that, especially with a chain like DFK chain being very high throughput and very low gas, there are malicious actions that can be taken.

And at that point, there’s no control over those. So that is one of the benefits of the current setup is that there is a level of control of what can be deployed on the chain to prevent basically just attacks on the chain itself. Magnus, did I say that right?

[Magnus Ironroot]
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, Bolon. Basically, there’s like a certain kind of like level of economic cost that needs to be tied to transactions being submitted to the chain. Otherwise, you could just, if it’s too cheap, you can just spam the chain and just dump a bunch of data on it.

And then our validators are working overtime to store like all these just like empty transactions that people submitted. And so it’s kind of like a seesaw between keeping the chain secure and keeping gas low. And right now we’ve been prioritizing keeping the gas low and just really having a performant chain.

But I mean, that’s not saying we could swing things the other direction, but it’s likely that a gas would need to come up a little bit in order to protect the chain. So it’s one of those like economic considerations. But yeah, in short answer, it’s to prevent malicious activity.

But of course, if you want to build on DFK chain and build something that hooks into our existing contracts, reach out to us and we’d be happy to get you the wait list.

[Bolon Soron]
Most definitely. Yeah, and if you are interested in looking for information, build.defikingdoms.com is where you go to apply and devs.defikingdoms.com has all of the developer docs with correct addresses and testnet settings and all that good stuff. And testnet, for anybody who is interested, testnet is open.

So anybody can go start building on DFK chain testnet, that’s perfectly fine. It’s only mainnet that requires a permission. Awesome.

Thank you, Magnus. Greatly appreciate the answers there. So this question is really best suited for Dreamer.

So I’m going to very lightly touch on it, but we are going to circle back to it next week when we have Dreamer back to give more of a full answer. But essentially the question, can we provide an update on the treasury and how the runway for development looks? And if we feel that DFK is undervalued, are there plans from our end to purchase Jewel?

So like I said, we’ll circle back with a more full answer next week when we have Dreamer here. But as far as like the treasury and the runway goes, obviously a large factor in that right now is the Metis grant. So we announced three weeks ago, two weeks ago, I don’t remember, time doesn’t exist, but a couple of weeks ago that we had actually followed up with a second part of that grant that increased the total payout by 50%.

So that has obviously been a large boom to our treasury and runway as we hit various milestones and get different payouts on that grant. But as for the rest, we will double back and get you a full answer. Going to Hubert, any thoughts on a hunt loot with a drop rate similar to like shards, seasonal items, something like that for hunt vouchers where you could use that voucher rather than paying the crystal and gold entry fee or even retry vouchers where it would waive the cost of retrying instead.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I think we probably wouldn’t do that just because it’s just adding an extra resource that’s kind of very specific. But I like the concept kind of makes sense in some ways and maybe we will do things in the future where it’s not necessarily a token, but there are ways to like gain access to things that let you bypass fees or something like that.

But I don’t see us doing anything like that right away.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Jumping over to Beetle Dude, would it be possible to implement keyboard controls for hunts, maybe even controller controls?

[Beetle Dude]
Absolutely, that’s a great question. That is definitely on the agenda. It’s been a discussion as part of our kind of revamping of the UI discussions because the current UI isn’t probably super set up for a keyboard per se, though we could add those controls in the meantime as well.

But yeah, I think both keyboard and game pad controls are on the agenda in the longterm. I would guess after we get through at least the first phase of PVP, but yeah, definitely something on the horizon. Awesome.

[Bolon Soron]
Thank you, Beetle Dude. Any foreseen issues with the arrest of the Kakao founder in regards to Klaytn? I’ll be honest, I did not know that happened, nor do I still really know anything about it, but no would be the answer.

Shortly after we migrated to Klaytn, they went through an entire organizational revamp and fully separated from Kakao. So Kakao does run a couple validators. I think they still have a stake, but Klaytn itself is an entirely separate entity from Kakao with their own structure, their own governance, their own organization, which obviously they’re also merging that organization with the organization of Finjia to create Kaya, but it should not have any impact that we are aware of, no.

Let’s see. I guess this one was also going to me. Okay.

Seeing live APRs in the garden. So this is something that we’ve talked about. APRs in the garden, at this point, the rewards for providing LP in the gardens aside from the gardening quest are entirely based on in-game fees.

So I want to say it’s 10%, if I remember correctly, of any fee in Crystal, except for duels, will feed into the Crystal Veil LPs and same thing with Jade on Serendale. So there isn’t really a way for us to display APRs because they vary by the second and there’s just like, we don’t have a way to predict what they will be necessarily. One thing that theoretically could be possible is looking at historical APRs, but if we were to go down that road, we would need to make sure that it was very clear and pretty heavily caveated within the UI, that this is not meant to be an expectation of what you’re getting, but just a look at the past of what has happened.

So it’s kind of tricky to do that because generally speaking, if you look at an APR, that is your anticipated return rate. And in this case, we can’t really give you an anticipated return rate because everything is just based on those in-game fees. If there’s a burst of in-game fees, then your rewards went up.

If there’s less in-game fees, then they went down. And it’s the same thing with the jeweler as well for the same reasons. So the APRs that used to display were based on emissions because those were fixed rates of emission.

Now they are not. So yeah, that is that. And jumping back to Hubert, what do you think of a mechanic where you burn multiple eggs while hatching to increase rarity chances?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, I’m pretty resistant to do anything that impacts like rarity chances, just because if you increase it, then that kind of sets essentially the new norm as far as like how many of a given rarity exists. So I am not too keen on that idea. I think, especially with us adding more burn mechanics for pets and whatnot, I think it was all kind of built around the system as it exists right now.

So I think with pets in general, I expect to kind of see a bunch of things kind of start changing with that ecosystem once we have the combat bonuses out and we have the new burn mechanic for them. It should, I think, really kind of change the paradigm. So I’d like to see how things go once that happens.

And then we can talk about if things need to be adjusted after that point.

[Bolon Soron]
For sure, for sure. I’m getting a little bit concerned about our community’s determination to kill pets, to be honest. Like they seem really, really after a way to kill pets.

And that’s just sad. Be nice to your pets. Don’t let them kill you.

We’re gonna have to call PETA. All right. So got kind of a few series of questions in regards to PVP here.

So we are going to jump into that. I will say, these are the final questions that we have for this week. So if anybody has anything that they want to throw out there, then please feel free to do so.

And we will take a few questions, but otherwise we’ll wrap up early and jump into the Expeditions Alpha stream instead. Which if you were not here at the beginning, immediately following this stream, we are going to start a new stream. And our very own Winston is going to show us what Expeditions looks like.

Hubert will be there as well. And we will be dropping some Expeditions Alpha. So make sure you tune in for that as well.

Going into the PVP questions, will there be a ranked mode and any thoughts on how to make a ranked mode experience balanced as far as, you know, heroes with different power levels, equipments, that kind of thing?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Sure. So yeah, I guess first off, we’re not planning on launching with a ranked mode for matchmaking. Our plan is just to have private matches initially, and then moving on to building a tournament system.

And once we’re done with all of that, then I think we will start looking into some sort of a ladder, a ranked ladder. And for that, I think it would really need to be like multiple different ladders. Because it’s true, like if you’re dealing with like very powerful heroes, mythic heroes versus like common heroes, it’s going to be pretty difficult for any common heroes to ever have a chance.

But, you know, if we had a ladder that was only for common heroes, for example, like rarity ladders or even ranked ladders, I think, you know, we’re building the system so that we have a lot of customization. And I think what would make sense for when we get to that point would be to just have, you know, different tiers. And of course, you know, maybe the unranked ladder or like the uncapped ladder, I guess, where there’s no extra rules, that one would probably have the best rewards.

And, you know, we would just kind of have to scale the rewards based on like the ease of getting the heroes that would likely be at the top of those. But yeah, we’re currently just focused on getting the system built in and of itself and then getting the tournament system as well, which we think that’ll be a really good system to just have in place. And then, you know, kind of a ranked ladder is a little bit more involved and requires a little bit more recurring work.

So we’re just not prioritizing that right now.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Yeah. Super excited for tournaments.

One thing I will add as well with any kind of matchmaking, whether it’s ranked or not, you need a critical mass because you need people to be able to find matches quickly. You know, nobody wants to sit in a queue for 15 minutes waiting for somebody to queue up with them. So that’s a consideration as well.

You kind of actually spoke to it a little bit there anyway, but thoughts on different brackets for different categories of heroes. I’m going to rephrase that away from brackets since we’re not necessarily talking about like ranked mode, but any additional thoughts on like how different levels of heroes, whether that be level rarity, whatever the case may be, can be modified or customized in PVP?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
I’m not sure I understood that last question. Would you say that again?

[Bolon Soron]
Anything you want to share about customization in PVP really would be the question, I guess.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, the customization doesn’t edit the heroes per se, but it does, you know, set limits on like which heroes are allowed to join.

So, I mean, we have, you can limit rarity, you can limit rank. So like advanced heroes and above are not allowed, for example. You can do things by stat score, which is just, you know, having like, you can do it either by individual stat score, I mean, like no hero can have a sum total of all their stats above 150, or you could do it the other way and say, no hero below 150 stat score need apply, only ones above that can even join kind of thing.

So we have kind of limits on both sides as far as things like that. We’re also adding different modes, for example, like no triple class compositions where it’s all the same class or also like all unique class compositions requirements, things like that. Those are settings that can be turned on, they’re not there by default.

And there’s other things like dark summoned only, normally summoned only, perilous journey only, and a few other modes that we’re still working on. There will be a few things I think we’ll not launch with, but will be coming afterwards that I think will also be pretty interesting.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Thank you, sir. One last question for you.

Any thoughts on what rewards will be like for PVP?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
I wonder how much I’m allowed to say. So I guess for tournaments, I think we’ll definitely be seeing a bunch of different kinds of rewards. We do have from Metis a good chunk of funding to just support kind of ongoing rewards.

So I think there’ll be some degree of that. We are planning on there being kind of a generalized pool of rewards from like fees and whatnot that will also be used to reward winners. I expect we’ll also do things where, we’ve already kind of in the past had planned like lands to be rewarded through tournaments.

So that’s a possibility here, though I think there’s some concern about that with how many heroes are available. So that particular one, we’ll have to see, but we could also reward things like unique equipment and other things potentially down the road. Like, I’m not sure what it could be, but I mean, the options are very high.

Like we have a lot of options. You know, it could be crafting ingredients and different things like tied to the crafting system later down the road. Like we’re gonna make it flexible anyway.

So there’s that. In terms of like private matches, that’s going to be something where it’s a little bit more free form. We likely won’t have too many rewards that we’re giving ourselves just because it’s private matches.

It could be any random player versus another random player at a given time. We need to be cognizant of like exploitability of the system and with private matches in particular, it’s pretty easy for someone to just set up two fights against themselves, like two different teams and two different wallets against themself that are, and if we’re just giving rewards for that, for every private match, then that reward system could be exploit pretty easily, I think so. So for that, we do have some plans and I don’t know that we’re ready to talk about that quite yet.

So I won’t say too much more about it, but I think what we’ll see there is while we’re in the process of building the tournament system I hope to see a bunch of guilds organizing their own like manual tournaments and having rewards for that as well as what we’re planning to do as well in addition for setting up just a little bit more exciting system in the beginning while we’re working on the tournament system. But again, kind of not sure I’m allowed to talk about that quite yet. So that’s all I’ll say.

[Bolon Soron]
Yeah, there’s some cool stuff coming. We might have some level one heroes tournaments, we’ll see, we can have some fun there. Awesome.

Well, this will be a last chance if anybody has anything they want to ask to drop it in chat and otherwise we are going to start wrapping up a little early because we’ve gotten through all of our questions and then we will kick off the Expedition Alpha stream. So last call for questions. As we wait just a moment for that, I will say as always, we’ll have Expeditions very soon.

Check out the stream for some Alpha. And yes, Nino, my finger lives on the mute button. Oh, I’m being told to check Discord.

So I will check that. Oh, now everybody’s coming out of the woodwork. All right.

Hubert, thoughts on a Battle Royale deathmatch mode.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
That sounds pretty cool. When we say deathmatch, are we meaning like permanent burn or just Battle Royale in like randomly? I mean, I guess that’s similar to a tournament really.

No way. Unless there’s something I’m not thinking about.

[Bolon Soron]
I’m going to assume that they mean permanent death. I don’t know, but that’s what I’m going with.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
I mean, permanent death is kind of cool. Again, especially once we get the Renaissance going, we could easily have it be, if you lose, you have to spend the Vinescence for each of your heroes or they get burned kind of thing. So I think that might be pretty cool.

I like it.

[Bolon Soron]
All right, let’s see. Sorry, there’s a few questions that got dropped in Discord. So nevermind, we’re not wrapping up.

We’re going back to questions. Heard rumors that Fox is checked out and hands off, not concerned about the project. Can we speak to Fox’s status with the team and project?

I mean, I’ll kick that off and anybody else is welcome to chime in. No, not true. Fox is literally like across the world right now and still working a crap ton of hours a week, every week while he is across the world.

Fox is still heavily involved and very much concerned about the project. Anything anybody wants to add to that?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, I’ll say, you know, during this vacation time that he’s been on, he’s very often stayed up pretty late to be able to be in meetings or available when it’s like really inconvenient for him, but just with the time zone that we’re in. He just did that LP splitting. That was all work that he did.

And there was a lot of work that went into doing that and making sure that we had the right analysis in place, make sure that we reward everybody, plus tools and everything else. Like, I don’t know who’s giving these rumors, but it doesn’t really match reality.

[Bolon Soron]
Perfect. Thank you, sir. I know the variable weapon level question was answered last week, but to dig a little deeper, will the equipment shop sell weapons higher than level 10 all the way up to level 20, perhaps?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
No, not planning on that right now. So I don’t want to have the equipment that’s available there to outshine what’s available from the Void Hunts.

[Bolon Soron]
Perfect. Any DFK birthday plans akin to last year’s party hat airdrop? I’ll just say we have plans.

What they will be, you will find out. But we have plans.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
I don’t have all the party hats, though. I got a lot of flags for that.

[Bolon Soron]
We need another 145,000 party hats, okay? Okay. Any sneak peeks on a wagering system?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Sneak peeks. Well, I can say we are planning on there being a system where players can vote on who is going to win, and there can be rewards tied to that. And we have some other plans with other kinds of wagering, but that’s something that may not come out at launch, and we have to make sure that it works how we think it’s going to work.

But I’m going to stick to those general vagarities. I don’t think that’s really a word, but that’s what I’m going to say.

[Bolon Soron]
Let’s see. Another win, Expeditions. Tune into the stream after this.

There will be another stream immediately after, and we will talk about Expeditions alpha stuff. So, all right. Let’s see.

All right, that’s everything that seems to have been dropped in Discord. I think I can go ahead and end the stream. I caught everything from YouTube chat as well.

Y’all really took me up on that invitation, and I appreciate it. But also, bring that energy to submitting questions throughout the week, you know? Then we already have your questions.

But no, as always, thank you to everybody who has taken the time out of their day to be up here on stage and answer all of these questions for us. Thank you to everybody who’s tuned in, and will listen to this later and read the transcript later. Thank you to everybody that has asked questions, whether it be live in the stream or preemptively.

Please make sure that you drop your questions either in the AMA questions channel in Discord or at talk.defikingdoms.com, because you asking questions is what allows us to answer questions, and an AMA would not be very exciting without questions. So, make sure to keep them coming. We look forward to doing this every week.

It is, at least for me, a highlight of my week. Make sure you keep an eye on our YouTube channel, and I’ll drop it in Discord as well. It’ll probably take like two, three minutes to close out this one and fire up the next one.

And then we will go live with some Expeditions Alpha. Before that, let’s go around the horn, some final thoughts. We’re gonna make Beetle bot bullish us because he hasn’t been here, and that is my payback to him.

So, to kick things off, Hubert, any final thoughts?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Um, yeah, I kind of feel like a broken record a lot of these last weeks with us having all this work going into Expeditions and PvP. It’s, you know, two really big things that we’re working on. Very excited to be, you know, getting very close to the finish line on Expeditions and for what we’re gonna show here in just a little bit.

Um, I guess just gonna caveat that that there’s still some work happening. We’re still finding bugs. I’m currently in the process of trying to do a little bit of an optimization pass on the code right now and about halfway done at the moment.

So, hopefully, you know, trying to push that through this week and, you know, then we’ll see, make sure everything’s working. And, you know, then once we have decided it’s working, then we’ll be ready to get it for you guys. So, very excited about that.

PvP work is also coming along very well. We still have a lot more that we’re needing to get done, but I think we’re gonna continue to show some things here and there of what we’re working on and hope you guys are liking what you’re seeing. And, yeah, just super grateful for all you guys.

I’m happy to be alive. It feels good and we’ll talk to you all next time.

[Magnus Ironroot]
I’m also happy you’re alive, Hubert. Yep, for me, it was really nice to crawl out of the Expeditions dungeon for 30 minutes and promptly go into the PvP dungeon. So, moving on to the next thing.

But, yep, my favorite part about software development is always deploying the code and, well, the deploying part’s not very fun on blockchain, but once it’s deployed, seeing people use it. So, very excited after so many months to get to this stage with Expeditions and looking forward to working on the PvP stuff.

[Bolon Soron]
So, your favorite part is actually right after deploying?

[Magnus Ironroot]
It’s after deploying and all the bug fixes are done and then it’s fun. Perfect.

[Bolon Soron]
Winston, final thoughts?

[Winston Jazzhands]
Sure, yeah, thanks, Bolton. Just super grateful to this community that stick around with us and it’s wild that we can go from like dead on Monday to here’s the big review and reveal of this giant feature just in the same week.

So, it’s great. We appreciate you guys sticking with us. Thank you so much.

[Bolon Soron]
One last quick reminder. Sorry, Pine Cone mentioned it in chat and reminded me. Please do like this video, like the tweet, share, subscribe, follow, all of that fun stuff.

It really does matter and help and it is greatly appreciated. All right, over to you, Beetle Dude, for final thoughts and a sign off.

[Beetle Dude]
Excellent. Thank you, Bolton. I won’t take up too much time, but I do want to just say, I guess just how proud I am of this team.

I think hopefully people have noticed that we just keep building. I don’t think we’ve ever really stopped. We just keep going.

We’re obviously putting out some pretty big features coming up soon. Excited to be still working on a lot of really exciting features. Stoked, I guess I should say.

And yeah, I mean, as far as I know, there hasn’t been any delays. We’ve just been plugging away and continuing to do everything we can. We have a super talented team and that hasn’t changed.

And we have about the same amount of people as we had for quite a long time. And they’re all excellent people and devs and biz folks and marketing folks and all that. So proud to be on this team.

Proud to have the community that we do. And yeah, no worries here. We’re alive and well.

And I’ll just leave you all with a big old bullish. Bullish!

[Winston Jazzhands]
Bullish!

[Bolon Soron]
Thank you, everybody. And we will see you next week or immediately after this.