Newsletter #16 — Lizard Labs is Coming
It’s been a while since our last update and we’re really excited to share what the lizards have been up to lately!
Lizard Labs Branding
Lizard Labs is coming soon! We are mapping out the rollout of the new Lizard Labs branding including securing URLs, handles, originals, website, messaging, motion graphics, logo design and more.
We let YOU, our amazing community, select our logo. And the winner is… And the winner is… Liz Foot Logo by a landslide!
Know that the Ethlizards aren’t going anywhere! In fact we’re doing more than ever to make the Ethlizards Genesis and Venture NFTs to be recognized as top collections in the NFT space. Just like Yuga Labs is the home to Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Lizard Labs is the home of the Ethlizards. We’ll be starting our Lizard Labs rollout soon.
Team Growth
Acknowledging the growing demands on our creative capabilities, we have successfully expanded our art team. This strategic move is poised to enhance the efficiency and creativity of our projects, ensuring the continued delivery of high-quality content to our audience. Keep an eye out for those art leaks in the Lizcord! We have also onboarded UI/UX and Dev support for the development team to support not only our next meta-game project but also the $LIZ staking and community participation platform.
We are still hiring for a few roles. Want to work for us? Visit Lizard Labs Career Page.
Lizcoin
The seed round is nearly complete with ~$4M in funds in-hand. The remaining $1M in the round is slated for some strategic angels and high-quality VCs to close the round.
With that, Lizcoin is now our major focus across the organization — we’re all focused on Lizcoin.
Our leadership team has been working on all things needed for a token launch including entities to be regulatorily compliant, our token opinion paper, CEX listing, market makers and a few items unique to our token launch.
Our development team is working on the staking platform, participation rewards tracking, staking contracts and many other components that will form the ecosystem for the token.
For marketing we are planning the largest campaign that the Lizards have ever done. We are in discussion with different parties to support the Lizcoin campaign and ensure we are working with aligned KOLs that can provide strong marketing exposure, while supporting our long-term vision.
Influencer and content creators are at a premium in the bull run. You know that we’ve locked in with the Not Corrupt Media team and Andrew Wall. We’ve also secured one of the most professional, high quality creators in the sector. We know you’ll be excited to see her again…
More to be revealed here in the lead up to the public token sale coming in 2024!
Portfolio Council Update
Market Insights
While 2023 was a struggle for gaming projects, sentiment has recently picked up and there appears to be more successful fundraising and public interest starting to pick up in the space.
Investment Strategy
A key focus is to invest in projects that the general public would not be able to access, thus giving our portfolio an edge. It’s worth noting that we invest in projects that we’re happy to hold for many years.
Liquidation Status
We are nearing 5 projects that have reached TGE and could potentially be liquidated. This number will continue to grow over 2024–2025. Liquidation events will depend on many factors including price, unlock schedule, treasury state, etc. The Portfolio Council will continue to manage the DAO portfolio and determine the time and amount of any liquidation activity.
When a portfolio liquidation occurs, 40% of the funds will flow to a Loyalty Rewards Pool. Active and participating Ethlizards NFT stakers will be rewarded from this pool in relation to how long their NFT has been staked provided they meet the minimum participation requirements.
Portfolio Investments
The are a total of 23 investments (two pending and approx. $528k USD invested). Our investments are mostly gaming and infrastructure focused and include the likes of Midnight Society’s Deadrop, Celeros, Antara, Zaros, Illuvidata, Thalon, Halls of Olympia, Civitas and more. The majority are in token deals, with the remaining 10–20% being equity. We will have some exciting news about new investments coming soon!
Alpha
- New investment — Blocklords — they raised $20m and the lizards are in with 25k!
Portfolio Treasury
A few major changes have happened with the Portfolio Treasury — all of which are good for the DAO and holders!
- Portfolio Sub-DAO operations cost are now being covered by Lizard Labs. (Exceptions to this would be extraneous Portfolio Sub-DAO-only expenses like hiring a portfolio analyst).
- The 100k safety pool has been 100% refunded.
- The team is no longer taking 15% royalties from Ethlizards NFT sales (we actually haven’t been since the pre-seed round closed but just wanted to mention it).
- Main revenue source will be mostly from investment liquidations. Blur royalties also contribute a small amount of revenue. We’re actively evaluating marketplace support for enforced royalties to give us an additional revenue boost for the Portfolio Sub-DAO.
White Lists, Access and Pre-sales
The past few months have been tremendously productive for the Liaisons. The Liaison team have been firing on all cylinders, getting WL and early access spots to the best projects in the web3 gaming space for Ethlizards holders.
Since the start of 2024, the Liaison team have secured nearly 500 WL spots, over 100 early access spots, and exclusive pre-sale opportunities across more than 25 high quality projects.
This includes super hyped projects the likes of Overworld, PlayEmber, Palio, BloodLoop, Overtrip, Pixelmon, Tatsumeeko, Citizen Conflict, XBorg, Hytopia, Metalcore, Golden Tides, Delabs, and Shardbound, amongst many others. The Liaison team will continue bringing in those high quality collabs you’ve come to know and love.
The majority of the projects were gotten through each individual Liaison’s own network and connections so a huge shoutout to the entire team for all the effort and dedication you’ve provided to the community.
We would also like to take this opportunity to open a call for Contributors who are willing to assist with hosting AMAs. We are getting more requests from projects we collab with to conduct AMAs and we are short of dedicated hosts. If you’re able to contribute, we’re looking for at least 2 dedicated AMA hosts, preferably across different timezones for global coverage. Please reach out to Lemz to indicate your interest at lemz@ethlizards.io
Events
Mystery of the Nexus
Q1 has started out strong, as we kicked off our Mystery of the Nexus campaign at the end of January. We had 5 partners join us for this event — Champions Ascension, Uldor, Illuvium, Dimensionals and Wildcard and this marks the first of many cross project events that we plan to do moving forward. With this being the first one, we learned a lot along the way and already have more ideas for future iterations.
Chinese New Year
Our Chinese New Year activation has also been a great success! We didn’t want to miss this opportunity with 2024 being the Year of the Dragon — this only occurs once every 12 years. We sourced a fantastic artist, Massai, with the help of the Not Corrupt Media team and the art has been universally well received. We also worked with some KOLs from the east to help push Ethlizards/Lizard Labs brand into eastern markets and give us some exposure there before our upcoming campaigns. Shoutout to AmberBella for assisting us with connections here!
D1SK Wars
We kicked off D1SK Wars for Battle in the Beyond as a video series, hosted by Artemis. This one has been a lot of fun for all our Battle in the Beyond players. Artemis brings a guest on every week, battles with them, the live viewers and also gives away Illuvitars and D1SKs! While this has been a lot of fun for our BITB players, we will be having a hiatus until Illuvitars wave 3 is announced and then the show will be back!
Other Events
As the Ethlizards/Lizard Labs brand continues to grow, we are continuing to receive more and more requests from other projects to work with them on various events and activations.
- Celeros, one of our Portfolio partners, ran their first set of tournaments and provided passes for Ethlizards holders to enter and compete.
- We hosted some Illuvium tournaments in collaboration with XBorg.
- We have had regular game nights, with some projects sponsoring with WL spots and prizes. Shoutout to PlayEmber and Champions Ascension for giving out WLs and prizes on our game nights!
This is something we will continue to ramp up so if you’re interested in assisting with events or game nights, please reach out to Lemz in Discord!
Creative
Lore, Art and IP
Ongoing efforts are dedicated to enriching the Lizard universe with additional lore chapters, detailed backstories, and visually stunning art and design elements. These components play a crucial role in establishing a comprehensive and captivating world to explore.
Our creative team has showcased exceptional dedication and creativity in the first quarter. We are really pleased with the results.
LizDex
We are excited to announce that the Lizdex 2.0 is live! New features include:
- New lore chapters and art
- Now contains ALL previously released chapters
- New index and improved navigation
Want to read the latest chapter? Visit the LizDex.
Elemental Lizards Collection
Venturing into the exciting world of digital collectables, our team has been developing the Elemental Lizard Collection. This initiative aligns with current market trends, providing a unique opportunity to engage with our audience on a different level and create a collection with RPG-like utility where you can upgrade your character for greater benefits in our gaming ecosystem.
We are continuing to iterate on the art, design and tech. We’re not ready to tease anything more yet, but we’re super excited about releasing this collection later in the year.
Developer Update
On the products and development side, lots has been going on since the last update.
Battle in the Beyond
With the successful launch of the Battle in the Beyond season 0 beta, we have been hard at work getting the platform ready for Season 1. There are some exciting new features!
- D1SK Wave 1, 2 and 3 Integration (Done)
- Solo D1SK Opening (Done)
- Immutable Passport for authentication to the platform (Planned for Launch)
- UI/UX updates (Planned for Launch)
- Chat (Planned for Launch)
- Wagering (Planned for Launch)
- Playing for Pinks — D1SK Wagering (Planned for Launch)
- Tournament Game Mode (pushing for Season 1; depends on Wave 3 launch timing).
BITB Season 0 finished at the end of January. As we talked about last time, the platform had great adoption in it’s first season and over 170 players became prize winners, claiming Illuvium Beyond D1SKs, Lizcoin, Elemental Lizards and finally Lore NFTs, from our new collection Lizard Labs: Infinite Artifacts.
Nebula Portal and Infinite Artifacts NFT Collection
What are Infinite Artifacts? The TL;DR is that they are lore NFTs that were rewarded to BITB season 0 winners (see above). They had a temporary utility to help construct the Nebula Portal (see below). Maybe they will have a future utility…
We need to rescue the Elemental Lizards who are trapped on the other side of the Nebula Portal! By battling in the beyond, players were able to obtain these artifacts from the most powerful Illuvitars and bring them back so that the Nebula Portal could be reconstructed. This isn’t just a storyline though. It’s an interactive experience. By visiting the Nebula Portal website, players could connect their wallet and activate their artifacts, to assist in the Portal being rebuilt (this process finished on Feb. 26th).
If you haven’t seen this yet, head over to check out the Nebula Portal to witness the portal activation! There will be ongoing lore reveals and more development with the Nebula Portal as we lead up to the mint.
Historic First Collection Launched on IMX zkEVM Blockchain
We’re proud to announce that Lizard Labs: Infinite Artifacts was launched as the first official NFT collection on the new IMX zkEVM!
Want to buy an Infinite Artifact NFT? Check out our guide. They are available for purchase directly on Sphere marketplace.
IMX Partnership
Immutable (IMX) have officially announced us as one of their partners! We pushed some buttons, made some frens and good things happened. We promise we didn’t bribe them with McLizz’s curly flies.
Lizards had great success at GDC!
The Gaming Developers conference is one of the industry leading events and the lizards were present in full force.
We hung out with our friends at the WolvesDEN, the best side event at GDC by far!
KOLs and content creators are at a premium these days. We focused on some connections while there to evaluate some candidates for supporting with our token launch. More to come soon.
We met more VCs and investors for Lizcoin. We’re being picky who we close the round with and selecting the best options.
We co-hosted a dinner with founders of a number of top and emerging studios in the sectors. Talk about giga chads… some real big brains attended. From that group were able to lock in a couple more partners for upcoming metagame and core partnership activities.
Our CEO Animositas participated as one of the project leads sharing alpha about Lizard Labs plans across the ecosystem at the WolvesDAO Alpha night. It was well attended (20 projects were asked to present) and we had a number of outreaches from interested parties afterwards.
Alpha
@Animositas @Lemz @haitzu met with a few dozen projects at GDC to collect interest and the next few weeks will be busy following up with them to lock in the verbal agreements and interest for a new novel structure for partnering with game studios that we’re working on that will add a ton of value to our ecosystem.
Do you like gaming tokens? We do too. Probably nothing.
About Lizard Labs
Lizard Labs, positioned at the nexus of innovative projects within the Web3 gaming landscape, brings together gamers, builders, and investors. With a vision to reshape the Web3 gaming world, Lizard Labs introduces platforms like “Battle in the Beyond” to offer players unique and interconnected gaming experiences.
Twitter | Discord | Website | YouTube | Blur
This blog post is for informational purposes only. The dynamic world of Web3 gaming is constantly evolving, and we encourage our community to stay informed and make decisions based on your own thorough research.
