#15 Ethlizards Newsletter — Nonstop Development
August and September Updates
August and September were both months that were really focused on infrastructure and development. The lizards have been building all summer long.
Pour One Out for the Ethlizards Formerly Known as V2
Welcome the Venture Lizards!
As shared in our Brand Positioning discussions, we asked for community feedback on renaming of the V2 Ethlizards collection and you delivered. By an overwhelming majority, 75% of you voted to officially name the V2 collection as “Venture Lizards”. The next closest runner-up (Eternal Ethlizards) had only 15% of the vote.
The community has clearly spoken and we are pleased to announce that our lovable rascals are now officially known as Ethlizards: Venture Lizards.
Elemental Lizard Renaming Competition
On a similar note, over 150 naming ideas were submitted during the Elemental Lizard renaming competition. And the winner is… Elemental Lizards. Due to overall brand positioning finalization and the community support of the Venture Lizard naming, we are electing to maintain the name ‘Elemental Lizards’. We believe that the following structure gives us more clarity and keeps all of our collections more consistent:
Portfolio Sub-DAO — Ethlizards
Genesis Lizards — OG Web3 Builders, Founders, and Pioneers
Venture Lizards — Gaming and Web3 Investors, Traders, Degens
Community Sub-DAO
Elemental Lizards — Web3 Gamers, Content Creators, Guild Leaders
With that said, there were some amazing submissions in the competition and we are going to recognize the top 3 with rewards.
The prize winners are:
1st place — Lizard Legion — GreenGeorge
2nd place — Elezards — thanasaras98
3rd place — Warlizards — multiverse2261
Bonus rewards — Elizards — Natles — bonus prizes for similar concept to Elezards
Product Updates
Both our development team and the creative team (art/design/lore) are doing an excellent job and pushing forward with consistent progress across various workstreams and products.
Battle in the Beyond
BITB development continues on pace and is nearing the launch of the first beta release!
- The battle mode is shaping up and the team have been busy finalizing the homepage, lobby, matchmaking, leaderboards, battle mechanics and other features for the BITB launch.
- We’ve integrated with Illuvium and the pentest is under way.
- Implementation of BITB beta design and theme is almost complete, with major updates to styling and layout.
- Extensive improvements to platform design and functionality.
- Future release design concepts have commenced.
- We’ll be polishing the last few areas up until launch, which is coming soon!
In our last newsletter, we showed you the first pass on the platform’s UI. Below you can see the latest WIP leaderboard design as a comparison.
The first ever Battle in the Beyond tournament happened in August and was won by our very own Chief Ethlizards Officer Animositas. He promises there were no bribes to the development team (fake news).
BITB Beta has commenced. We have a call out to the community for volunteers to take part and have had several dozen community members and content creators get involved in testing with us. If you are an Ethlizards holder and would like to help beta test BITB you can apply here.
Lore Book / LizDex
Our Lore Book, the LizDex is coming to life!
The cover and pages with full-color artwork are in the works and implementation of the Lore book into the platform has commenced. Work is ongoing on future chapters of the Ethlizards’ Lore.
Elemental Lizards
Work on the Elemental Lizards NFT collection continues. Potential architectures have been evaluated and a final decision has been made. We’ll have an announcement on that end coming soon. A final design concept has been settled on and the structures for the generative collection are being ramped up. Things are looking very cool and we’re excited to share progress in future newsletters. The design team are killing it and we know you’ll fall in love with the next generation of the lizards.
Highlizards
Introducing the Highlizards… well kind of.
The Highlizards are the clan leaders of the Elemental Lizards. Not much else is know about them. More will be revealed soon.
Merchandise
Ethlizards merch is coming soon!
We have recently received our first merch samples and we are very happy with the high quality and comfortable materials. The first merch drop will feature an essentials clothing line. We are also working to prepare a special item and hope to have it ready for the initial store launch. The online shop is being built and we’re excited that soon we can deliver some much requested merch right to your doorsteps.
Discord Community and Events
August and September were great months for the Lizards in our community events.
In August, we participated in MetalCore’s Guild Wars event and claimed 2nd place in Overall XP and 3rd place in Most PvP Kills. We were up against some pretty big guilds such as YGG and Merit Circle and performed incredibly well, despite being very outnumbered!
In September, we participated in Fableborne’s DAO tournament, facing off against Wolves DAO and ReadyPlayerDAO. We annihilated our competition, winning with a landslide victory. We have more events in the works!
Big shout out to Dub who has been streaming with the Ethlizards. We have enjoyed watching him DESTROY the competition in My Pet Hooligan among other games.
Lizard Liaisons
We love to give our holders access to some of the best whitelist and beta spots to remind you all that high quality Web3 gaming experiences are coming!
Lately, there has been a lot of talk and hype about Parallel’s potential. 48 early access spots were distributed to lizards — everyone in the community who wanted to try out the game was given a spot.
A total of 170 whitelist spots were secured by the Liaison team in the month of August 2023. Despite the current quiet market conditions, the team managed to nab some high quality and hotly anticipated collaborations with projects such as My Pet Hooligan, Fableborne, Sugartown, and Parallel.
September 2023 has been a relatively quiet month for collaborations. That being said, we still received 5 incoming requests and approved 1 of them. It’s a good project and the Liaisons team is currently in discussions with them to provide early access to their highly anticipated alpha test in October so keep a lookout for it!
Operations
Operations and runway management are proceeding as expected. Lean operations for all departments but high performing core contributors are delivering consistently across the board. Our development costs are higher for September and will be for October with the Battle in the Beyond push. We’ll ramp down costs a bit for November and December around the holidays as we move into the next phase of our project. The good news is that we should start to see some revenue from the platform as we believe it is a superior experience for Illuvium Beyond gamers and collectors.
Additionally, we’ve got Community Lizard Contributors scaling up this month. Continued improvements in infrastructure and organization have been implemented for topics like project management, payroll, and communications as the core contributor team has grown.
Core Contributors
We have the pleasure of onboarding a couple of new team members in August and September. We won’t spoil the details for you here. Check them out in https://discord.com/channels/897797305883820032/1137334942137847958!
WTB Developer
We are looking for a senior or lead-level Web3 Blockchain / Solidity developer, who also has full stack skills, to work across our upcoming projects. If you have 3+ years commercial Web3 experience and 7+ in software generally, please contact matt@ethlizards.io
Marketing
In August, we waved goodbye and wished good luck to Sam Steffanina, as he transitioned to another role full-time in Web3 gaming. We are pleased to replace quality with quality. We have partnered with Andrew Wall and his team at Not Corrupt Media to lead Ethlizards Content and Marketing activities. With over 50 years of combined experience in tech and media business, the Not Corrupt Media team have produced over 10,000 pieces of original media that generated over a billion views, and converted $100MM+ in revenue (and counting). We’re already deep into our works together and we couldn’t be happier to have this powerhouse of a team onboard.
September 2023
Team onboarding and kickoff meetings, strategy planning and organizing was a primary focus. We established project management and workflow systems to manage various workstreams.
October 2023
October is all about finishing the marketing funnel development, infrastructure, executing the BITB campaign, content creation and delivery pipeline and other marketing deliverables.
Portfolio Council Update
The last two months were about refining the processes and tying off some loose ends from the previous epoch.
Keen Discord followers will have seen a recent investment announced — a $50k token purchase in Zaros, a new DeFi project with strong lizard connections that aims to boost yields for liquid staking token holders.
We’ll also be confirming news from the first epoch of a $10k investment in a game that the Ethlizards community have been active contributors and competitors in since its early days. We’re excited to see where this one goes next after a sold out NFT mint.
We are pleased to announce the second epoch Council’s first investment, a $15k early stage token purchase at a studio level with a team building on Polygon. The token will span across multiple games, and we were impressed with the organic player growth and revenue generation achieved to date in their lead title. We will share all the details when we can.
Following this up was an investment of $20k in Antara, an ambitious project out of the Middle East that’s taking on the auto-battler genre and is aligned with an upcoming feature film. It’s fair to say we were impressed by the scale of the team’s vision and finances backing the broader brand, which is aiming to showcase new capabilities in that part of the world.
Most recently we shared our investment and partnership with Data Zenith, creators of Illuvidata, including an opportunity for interested Ethlizards to personally participate in their seed round. More details in Discord as soon as that drops.
Meanwhile the second epoch Council have been wheeling and dealing their way towards two new investments. We had a fast-turnaround opportunity to join forces with a larger VC and contribute to an early stage deal with a game that’s achieved substantial reach in the broader gaming community and has some impressive metrics to show for it. This also opens the door for future access to deals we might not have the size for on our own.
We’re continuing to discover ways to use the Portfolio Council as a vehicle for individual investment opportunities, so if you’re a Lizard who wants to build out your personal web3 gaming portfolio, stay tuned — we’ll bring you more on this soon.
Ani’s Alpha
- For those that missed it during the last town hall, Ani and Archangel were dropping some fire alpha (pun intended) about the Elemental Lizards. Unreleased until now, there will be 8 different elements represented among this new group of lizzies. Any guesses what those might be?
- Mystery of the Nexus is delayed until after BITB launch as we don’t want to split our focus during the platform launch. However, we’ve locked up the content for the event. You better bring your thinking caps for this one — or your deerstalkers…
- Spaceships are cool.
The Ethlizards are positioned at the nexus of innovative projects within the Web3 gaming landscape. Ethlizards brings together an exceptional mix of avid gamers, visionary builders, and savvy investors, establishing itself as a highly esteemed partner in the GameFi ecosystem. Our unique position spans various verticals, encompassing Web3 game studios, infrastructure partners, venture capitalists, and gaming organizations. We seamlessly blend the best aspects of VCs and Web3 gaming guilds/DAOs while co-developing solutions with our partners.
Ethlizards is fostering a community that features successful investors, project founders, and a multitude of individuals actively committed to creating and contributing value. Our distinguished partners and advisors, including founders of major Web3 projects, remain actively involved at all protocol levels. At Ethlizards, we firmly believe that an exclusive focus on value extraction in Web3 is counterproductive. Through our early-stage GameFi portfolio activities, we ensure the long-term success of the DAO, while our short-term strategies prioritize gamification, product development, and extensive partnership growth. This holistic approach positions us to thrive amidst the industry’s rapid expansion in the coming years.
