Two Sides of a Coin

In my previous articles, Welcome to Lepricon, Where Blockchain and Gaming Collide, and Wherefore Art DAO, Lepricon?, I made the point that Lepricon is not about blockchain; it’s about entertainment. In this article, I want to explore what that means in practice. I also want to discuss how this fits into a larger picture, one where the solutions to real-world needs and desires drive the mainstream adoption of blockchain.

If you read our white paper or view our investor deck, you will see all the crypto buzzwords; DeFi, blockchain, token, staking, mining, and so on. So, yes, we are very much about blockchain, at least to that specific group of people.

However, if you view us as a gaming platform, where ordinary people can quickly jump into a game and have a bit of fun predicting the outcome of a simple question, then we are a source of entertainment, and those words have far less meaning.

In a similar vein, we use the term dApp because our platform, and all the games it contains, are built on smart contracts. That’s all a dApp is; an interface to a smart contract instead of a web server. This distinction is an essential point to the same specific group of people.

To our users, and by that, I mean the people who play the games, it’s gobbledegook. They see an app or a website where they can play games. They will not at first recognize these new terms we have created or derive any perceived benefit from them.

I could pose many similar questions, and the answer would be the same. The inexorable conclusion is that an organization like Lepricon is a two-sided coin if you will pardon the pun. We have two distinct audiences with whom we must have meaningful communication:

• A crypto-friendly audience, the investors, that views Lepricon through the lens of its token, L3P, and sees opportunities for income generation and capital gains.
• A general audience, the players, that views Lepricon as a source of entertainment and a way to pass the time.

The most important takeaway is this:

The satisfaction of the investors is wholly dependent on the joy of the players.

Satisfying token holders is the 21st Century version of investor relations, as applied to a company that raises its capital through tokenized equity.

Satisfying the Players is a much more traditional matter of identifying opportunities in the market and capitalizing on them with products and experiences that meet identified needs and desires.

Of course, there will be overlap. Many people who buy the token as an investment will want to play the games. It might be one of the reasons they’ve invested. These individuals will most likely be the first players on Lepricon.

Conversely, this may be the first exposure to cryptocurrencies for the users that come to Lepricon expressly to play the games. Some of those players will see that the in-game currency they have been using to play does so much more and that it is an asset worth owning in its own right. They should find it no more complicated to obtain than any other in-app purchase.

This outcome is what we refer to when we talk about gamified DeFi and its power to increase the general acceptance of cryptocurrency in everyday life.

If we are to succeed in building our player economy, then we must realize some essential truths. And the most important of those concerns language and messaging.

A Matter of Language

If we have two different audiences approaching Lepricon from two different directions, then we must use the appropriate language for both.

For example, when we announced our partnership with RioDeFi, we revealed that this would bridge us to the Polkadot meta chain. Consequently, we will execute transactions at high speed — an essential component for a hyper-casual gaming experience and vital information for investors considering purchasing an initial stake in L3P, our operating token.

The messaging for players will be different. The games will be fast. A new game every 60 seconds. Immediate payouts. These are the terms that are important here. There is always an elite minority of gamers who will look under the hood for further information to understand how it all works, as there is for any game from Cafe World to World of Warcraft. The vast majority don’t need the experience explained to them in in-depth technical detail, nor do they have any interest in learning. They just want to play.

Most importantly, the experience must match the promises made. The hype must be factual.

There are many capabilities of the Lepricon platform that we would not create messaging for when it comes to building our player community; our path to becoming a DAO, our DeFi staking platform, and our interoperability across chains, to name a few. However, we would introduce these features in an orderly manner to players as they spend more time on the platform. We want to educate them on the possibilities afforded to them by their ownership of L3P. We want our users to participate in the player economy fully.

Blockchain Inside

The above leads me to my final destination. How do we package blockchain for mass adoption? We don’t sell blockchain online as a product, at least not to B2C markets. We use blockchain technology as the backbone of applications and experiences because it provides certain advantages. It’s immutable, and it promotes trust. Everything should be on the blockchain. I will fly the first airline that truly converts its air miles program to an air tokens program that runs on a smart contract and makes my rewards fungible.

Blockchain-based games are a thing. Even the new Atari VCS console comes with a utility token for on-console purchases and numerous opportunities to collect NFTs. Maybe a few people will buy it because of that, but most will buy it because of everything it does and the experiences it offers. People don’t buy a product because of the method of data storage chosen for it. Did people buy Evernote because it uses SQLite? Or was it because it was an excellent note-taking app?

Maybe there will be an intermediate step. As the market learns about blockchain through the media, perhaps there will be an understanding of what blockchain technology offers to bring fidelity to online activity. I think of this as Blockchain Inside, if you remember the long-running Intel branding campaign.

However, in the long run, blockchain will have matured when it becomes a silent partner, and products and services focus on their benefits to the customer, not how those benefits are derived.

We are not there yet, but Lepricon is taking the first step in that direction.