Fief: State of the Protocol — Part 2
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As an extension to Fief: State of the Protocol — Part 1, let’s dive into “how” we are solving this dilemma between what game studios want to create and how players want to interact, while providing key updates to protocol economics.
Fief is not just a protocol.
Please note that there are some details we won’t go into depth yet. Our sights are set on filling a meaningful gap in the web3 market. And we’re dedicated to a delivery-first approach to product release.
In order to set a new standard for product delivery in web3, we must act differently. This means that you won’t see a published roadmap. You won’t find articles filled with hopium. We’re focused on developing novel solutions the industry hasn’t seen, and delivering them. We’d rather show, then tell. That said, we also understand high level communication is necessary for each action to make sense. In the interest of putting a few puzzle pieces together, let’s dive into how we’re connecting experiences across the metaverse.
Avatars
Fief Avatars were initially released mid 2022, coinciding with NFT market trends. Industry PFPs (profile pictures) are currently extremely limited in utility. Some projects allow their NFT holders to purchase merchandise, gain access to exclusive events, chat in gated channels on Discord, and in a select few projects, enter a metaverse experience.
When polled, Fief’s existing users want more utility, more experiences, and more unique social interactions aligned with the vision of web3. And we agree.
Think of Fief Avatars as a culmination of your gaming interests mixed with how you want to express yourself online. In order for this to look and feel seamless across gaming, the Avatars themselves should have a world in which to interact. This brings us to Fiefverse.
Fiefverse
Fiefverse is the gaming layer of the Fief Protocol. It’s an open world RPG built around an ever-expanding collection of explorable worlds. Players can travel to different locations based on their interests and equipped Avatar.
The Fiefverse runs adjacent to our more transactional applications and adds an additional incentive mechanism for participation in our economy versus that of our competitors.
We also think virtual worlds have largely disappointed to date, due in part to a lack of reward incentives, so we’re going to explore what market share we can capture at the junction of social interaction and decentralized finance.
Influence Points (IP)
Influence Points are gasless, non-transferable, off-chain rewards points packed with utility across Fief’s ecosystem. Influence Points will be utilized as an in-app currency for purchasing an endless array of assets within the Fiefverse, including Gear, Pets, Skins, and more! IP also grants you access to the gated Loot Farms, and utility with additional applications in development. Or you can use some for this Piñata Boar. ;)
The best part is that you can earn Influence Points by staking FIEF on the Staking application right now.
Dapps (decentralized applications) across Fief will have varying levels of interaction with IP. No longer will you need to pay gas or purchase multiple tokens to interact with each application. We want IP to feel seamless and usable across the platform. You can interact with as much or as little across Fief as you wish. You’re in control. You’ll be able to earn IP inside Fiefverse, Loot Farms, and other avenues as new applications are implemented. Purchase Gear with IP, equip them to your Avatar to increase your IP earnings, or sell them on marketplaces. Your choice.
To learn more about Fiefverse and IP interactions, check out this article on Influence Points.
Simplified Protocol Economics
As we prepare for the rapid succession of Fiefverse and dapp releases, we are pushing a major update to protocol economics to bring simplicity and reduce barriers to new user adoption.
Let’s be frank here — this stage of the market cycle does not reward overly complex systems. Users are hurting, liquidity is dried up, and attention spans are at an ATL. Add to that our unique position of moving from a relatively siloed network and making the needed branding updates to move away from the predatory stigmas associated with web3 guilds, it’s abundantly clear we need to build for mainstream crypto user adoption. Leave the complexity at the door.
Thus, we are moving forward with Fief Staking as the primary protocol reward distribution mechanism for fees generated via activities across all of our decentralized applications. The FIEF accrued for distribution will be either direct fees that are claimed from dapp activity where FIEF was spent or through FIEF buybacks for activities where native network currencies are used (eg, fees generated from users trading game assets).
This is an important (and much needed) change from the concentrated fee share concepts we originally had mapped to Factions and Blood & Coin — remember: reduce complexity and create easy paths of adoption for our protocol’s economy. Long tail concepts, however cool, need to be assessed relative to the current market trajectory.
Factions will continue to live on through Blood and Coin, and we are planning a sizable distribution (and we mean sizable) of FIEF to fuel the play-and-earn economy within the title. At the end of the day, this allows for a much more stable game economy and provides a reward model that better supports purchasers of IGMs who will continue on with their gamified earning experience through B&C land play.
One final note on the change — an off-chain version of FIEF will serve as the primary game currency for Blood and Coin, both to reward activities but also to fuel in-game transactions (think: buying/selling in-game items within an Auction House will be denominated in off-chain FIEF).
Our goal is to create a serious conundrum for users as to whether they want to use their FIEF inside the Fief Protocol platform, whether it be staking or other activities, or bring their tokens into Blood and Coin to participate in the real-money game economy.
To achieve this, we need to make sure the economics of FIEF are extremely sound and attractive to draw liquidity from across the market. This further underscores the importance of our adjustment away from the Faction fee system to adopt a more traditional and accessible approach.
Pre-registration for Blood and Coin is now available so you can better keep up to date on developments.
Metaverse Season Pass
Season Passes are a natural concept for players across gaming. Traditional games popularized battle passes, for players to access awesome in-game items and progression paths in the games they’re already playing.
Why should this be limited to the silo of a single game? In the spirit of openness of web3, why not give players that same experience across the metaverse?
Keep that in your mind, as we’re not ready to go in-depth on this publicly. More on Metaverse Season Passes once they’re about ready to release but remember, this will serve as a progression of our initial vision for IGM-style rewards, but in a far more systematic way.
Decentralized Applications
Now let’s pull it all together. Remember the different user groups I mentioned in Fief: State of the Protocol — Part 1?
Quick recap, there are (at least) seven:
1) Players who just want to play great games
2) Players who are speculating on assets or want to earn
3) Players who want social experiences
If we zoom out to the broader crypto market, we also notice other groups:
4) People who are solely interested in blockchains themselves and may not care about current experiences
5) People who are interested in DeFi
6) Traders (NFTs and crypto)
7) People who are interested in the implications of censorship, social challenges, and culture progression
This is where it gets really interesting. There are some absolutely game-changing applications being built in web3 right now. People are freeing themselves from the traditional financial and centralized games systems with DeFi, access to lending protocols, NFT marketplaces, aggregators, etc. But they’re all separated, complicated, and not delivered in a way that makes sense for web3 gaming.
Why can’t many of these products exist in a single place, and be presented in a manner that both makes sense as it relates to gaming and adds value to us gamers? Hint: it can.
Staking
The first application live on Fief is Staking. You can generate both Staking rewards AND IP by locking up FIEF. Influence Points are so cool, there is SO much utility with them. Earn Staking rewards with FIEF, while also earning IP to mint NFTs usable in Fiefverse or to sell? That’s incredible. Staking is at the heart of Fief and plays a pivotal role in binding the economics of all applications and Fiefverse experiences we release.
As touched on above, the importance of Fief Staking is ever-increasing with locked FIEF becoming the primary focus for reward distribution related to decentralized activity on the protocol and beyond.
Loot Farms
Players across NFT gaming have collectively spent billions of dollars on in-game items which won’t have direct utility within the game until, well, the game releases. One interesting feature of blockchains is that in-game items don’t require permission in order to provide utility to them. We believe there should be an outlet of utility for those in-game items. To facilitate this and make the innovation tangible, we’re launching Loot Farms.
Loot Farms enable you to earn IP, FIEF, and/or other fungible tokens using the NFTs & in-game currencies you already own without the asset ever leaving your wallet. Your game items, your control, remember? Why not receive rewards for your game assets until the game launches? Set them up in a Loot Farm, earn rewards, and purchase items in the Shop with the IP you receive.
We plan to use Loot Farms as a primary method for new FIEF distribution with a clear inflationary schedule. This will serve as an incredible tool to target and onboard new users from projects found across the metaverse — all without needing to do any time-consuming business development (we like focusing on assets, not projects). However, Loot Farm reward distributions aren’t limited to Fief rewards.
In the age of “real yield” in DeFi, we want to be among the first to adopt the concept for NFT gaming. As more of our native currency-fueled Fief dapps come to market, where the currency is required for transactions beyond gas, we unlock the ability to distribute ETH (or BNB..or MATIC..you get it) directly to Loot Farms for specific game assets.
A quick example:
Perhaps a project has issued an abundance of in-game items and is maintaining a healthy on-chain economy, but the game isn’t yet live. Given the health of the on-chain economy, Fief Protocol would target that title for whitelisting across our dapps with a focus on easy UX to vampire competitor protocols filling the role currently. For the dapps that generate native currency yield, we could distribute a % of it directly to a Loot Farm dedicated to the in-game items. We throw an IP-gate on the Farm, aligning our FIEF economics with the fee-share, and boom we have provided real yield as a third-party participant while driving demand for FIEF to access the fee flows via IP.
Are you beginning to see how powerful this is? Self custody. Utility for game items you’ve already purchased. And rewards usable across the entire Fief platform and beyond. All in an environment that enhances your gaming experience, keeps you in control, and doesn’t distract from your gaming experience.
Protocol Governance
This is one we haven’t touched on yet, but deserves a high level snippet. One of the appealing aspects of the original Faction system was the ability for users to take a larger role within the project through voting on things like game/project integration and providing input to keep the ecosystem balanced and healthy.
That’s still in play, but the mechanics will be different, in the form of a DAO. We’re in process, but we still have a ways to go. It’s an important and nontrivial step, and we’re being methodical and intentional.
We have set a goal over the course of the next 18–24 months to trend towards a decentralized form of Protocol-level governance. This governance will be accessible through Staked Fief (sFIEF), the non-transferrable receipt that is produced when you lock your FIEF inside the Fief Staking Application.
With sFIEF, you will be able to vote on important decisions ranging from protocol incentives to ecosystem growth via FIEF grant distributions to teams looking to build on top of Fief Protocol or the Fiefverse. The former will be available much sooner than the 18–24 months window and will come after the launch of Loot Farms.
Decentralized protocol governance is also a powerful economic tool — as we can drive large scale demand for acquiring and staking FIEF in order to accrue as much sFIEF as possible when we tie protocol incentives into an automated voting system. The ultimate goal is to create project-level competition for sFIEF to guide the distribution of new FIEF or IP within Loot Farms, or make decisions related to real yield ratios, or which in-game assets are accepted into Farms. A lot of game theory presents itself.
As we hit greater levels of Protocol decentralization, we will increasingly rely upon the community. As such, we will set up a special council filled with our greatest supporters to oversee decentralization efforts alongside the core Fief team. We are actively monitoring behavior to begin setting up shortlists for the inaugural council — pro tip: participation in the Fiefverse will be weighted heavily.
Each application is necessary to fully deliver the value players desire in the ethos of blockchain gaming. We’re here to open the silos of the gaming industry, and we’re excited to see you all in the Fiefverse.
About Fief Protocol
Unlocking freedom for players with accessible decentralized applications fueled by the Fiefverse.
