A Behavioral Science Experiment

At the beginning of our white paper is a note: “Loot NFT (Now NeoWorlder) introduces game mechanics that have not been tested and should be treated as an experiment. Therefore, members’ behaviors may differ from our expectations.”

It is widely understood by those familiar with our business that this statement relates to how we incentivize people to participate in auctions (for example, the effects of having limited tokens, the lock-up wallet, the paywall, unlocking status levels by collecting sets of unique creations, etc.).

Yes, this is an example of gamification; however, this differs from our statement’s focus.

To better understand the scope of our experiment, it is necessary to delve deeper into free market dynamics (notably, the struggle between members that follow the rules and those that do not).

The Bitcoin Gamble

There is no doubt that Bitcoin is an impressive technological achievement. Nevertheless, its true innovation lies in how it uses game mechanics to create a system in which the incentives for participants to act honestly are greater than those for dishonest behavior.

For e.g., take a single mining pool approaching 50% of the network’s hashing power. This can cause bitcoin’s value to drop due to a collective fear of a 51% attack (i.e., doubt that the network’s security could be compromised). That result is obviously against the interest of miners in that pool who get paid in bitcoin. To prevent this, they leave to join another pool with less hashing power, resulting in removing the FUD and restoring market confidence.

This self-regulation is daring in its assumption that the collective behavior of people is highly predictable in certain conditions. Instead, Bitcoin utilizes powerful motivators (such as greed and excitement) to elicit machine-like input from humans, much like a mechanical component can be used to control and improve an engine’s performance; without it, the engine fails, and without the engine, the component is useless.

My fascination with Bitcoin since 2013 was partly due to my realization that, for the first time, humans were working for a “living machine” instead of other humans. At the outset, the long-term success of Bitcoin was far from certain; it was an experiment (some would argue that it still is).

The Loot NFT Thesis in a Decentralized Environment

To comprehend the challenge of NeoWorlder, consider the following hypothetical. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the BUN as a cryptographic token, the Oven (that is, time-locked escrow wallet), and how blockchain wallets and peer-to-peer transfers operate.

(a) Sink the ship scenario while in the ship.

Let us consider an extreme case where malicious actors attempt to destroy NeoWorlder by removing all BUNs from circulation. One possible attack vector is to acquire a large portion of the total circulating supply of BUNs and send them to an unspendable address or an address under their control with no intention of participating in NeoWorlder. Given the limited supply of BUNs, this would lead to a cessation of member activities.

Note: Smart contracts manage member activities and interactions in a decentralized system. Once these contracts are launched, they cannot be changed (unless an editing feature is included in the code) — that is, they remain in the same state on the blockchain in which they were created.

Let us consider the obstacles to achieving this objective:

Bad actors must spend a lot of energy and money in this attempt all while being aware that the members have the power to switch to a new BUN2 token, rendering the scheme useless. In fact, it would be significantly more advantageous for them to use these BUNs to obtain and re-list NFTs.

(b) Peer-to-Peer Transfers

Two types of peer-to-peer transfers will be examined: (i) transfer of NFTs and (ii) transfer of BUNs. Peer-to-peer transfers are defined as activities outside of the NeoWorlder ecosystem. I will address them both in turn.

(b-i) Peer-to-Peer NFT Transfers

The decision to transfer NFTs peer-to-peer should be based on where their values are best preserved.

(b-ii) Peer-to-Peer BUN Transfers

It is theorized that, as incentives for members to participate in activities increase and decrease, the appeal of peer-to-peer BUN transfers (and “Hodling”) will adjust cyclically.

(c) Concluding Remarks

NeoWorlder is an experiment with in-game mechanics to influence a crowd’s actions to bid at auctions in a decentralized network; this could lead to the creation of valuable NFTs regardless of the current popularity of the creator. The above is what we anticipate based on the assumptions we have made. It may or may not be the outcome.

Please let us know if you can think of any other contributing factors. Firstly, this would help us to become better at what we do, and secondly, we can publish our answers in an article so that others can benefit from the information.

❤️ Loot NFT.