5
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Editorial I recently did a Bitcoin video https://youtu.be/jWGm08ZU3WU explaining how to know when a market is turning; this works to maximise profits. While it is hard to know the ultimate Top or Bottom, I like to watch the indicators and, most notably, when the predictions start getting ridiculous. Approaching the top of the Bull Market, we had influencers shouting million-dollar tops and now four to ten thousand bottoms. Honestly, anything is possible, and I don’t discount that something extreme might happen, so I always use a stop loss. It’s important to watch the indicators and not the crazy predictions because the shift is coming. We can see it with the project’s building, and they are also getting positive vibes into the market. Once we start to see and feel this, it’s essential to know what to watch and look at, so as Josh says with his intuition, use this with some technical knowledge, not just the opinion of an influencer that sprang out of nowhere into the crypto market. The Moon Mag helps you DYOR (with our help), so you can put your hard-earned dollars into projects with solid potential and as you will see with my image, it’s all about to begin again. The cycle of life and Bitcoin continues!
A note from Lisa…
A note from Josh…
Can you feel that? Has the shift happened? Lisa and I were talking the other day about how the crypto market is in a fascinating place psychologically. There have been glimpses this month that ‘the bottom could be in’ and ‘the next bull market is here’ and certainly plenty of hype but the be-all and end-all is that no one really knows. We can use both technical analysis and fundamental analysis to help us time the market but is there also a place for intuition? That deep knowing you sometimes get when you’re so sure about something but you just don’t know why. This article (https:// www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-rely-on-our-intuition/) in Scientific American suggests that collectively with analysis, intuition should well be something to take into account when forming an opinion. It really could hold value. So when you’re looking at the latest crypto projects and figuring out whether to get involved in them, I’m curious to know if intuition plays a part in your decision-making? And if so, how big a role does it have in your final conclusion? Enjoy this issue and as always, do your own research (and listen to your intuition’s opinion too!)
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TRADERS PERSPECTIVE How Much Security Is Enough? 06
The Cardano Vasil Upgrade 08
Ariva Digital & ARV Token 14
Is Proof Of Stake The Future? 22
The Race For WEB3
29
Figuring Out Fractionalization
35
Project update Polychain Monsters 45
DISCLAIMER All the content provided for you as part of the Moon Mag has been researched thoroughly and to the best of our ability however it is your choice, and your choice only, whether you wish to invest or participate in any of the projects. We cannot be held responsible for your decisions and the consequences of your actions. We do not provide financial advice. Please DYOR and above all, enjoy the content!
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CONTRIBUTORS Aldrich Shillian Aldrich (or Rhys to those in the Signals group!) has been HODL’ing since 2017 and is proud of surviving bear markets, rug pulls and still trading successfully enough to have paid off all debts. Recently, he’s jumped head-on into NFT projects - particularly ones that combine his love of gaming.
Kel Udeala I’m a quantitative analyst and a mechanical engineer. I took an interest in crypto because my line of work led me down the financial trading and investment rabbit hole, and it’s only a matter of time before you reach crypto. I enjoy researching different crypto projects, and attempting to forecast their roles in the future financial and technology systems. I also find the volatility of the charts and the resulting crypto-Twitter posts very thrilling.
Daniel Jimenez Daniel has been a blockchain technology evangelist since 2012 and is a faithful believer in the Crypto ecosystem. Daniel also writes for Coin Telegraph!
Samantha Jimenez Freelance journalist dedicated to digital media, enthusiast of the crypto ecosystem and disruptive technologies. MDC writer since 2018, currently writer for CryptoTrendencia.
Mrinal B Proud rugpull survivor since 2016; gem hunter; technophile; found asking ‘wen-moon, wen-lambo’ on Twitter; fundamentals driven asymmetric investor; making ends meet in an IT company.
There was a significant security breach with Australian Telecommunication company OPTUS Optus data breach within the last month. This leaves me with so many questions. OPTUS is the second largest telecommunication company in Australia, owned by Singapore company SINGTEL.
TRADERS PERSPECTIVE
How Much Security Is Enough? written by Lisa N. Edwards
Still, when we dive just a little deeper, we find this, and MANY international companies, including Singtel, are held by Parent Company Temasek Holdings. Wikipedia data states - Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited, or simply Temasek, is a Singaporean state-holding company owned by the Government of Singapore. Interesting? Among the companies they are listed to own is Trustwave Holdings, the cybersecurity brand of the SINGTEL companies. After hearing about the breach through trusted media sources, I contacted OPTUS as a customer and was stunned by the lack of security they actually offer, even with their very own cybersecurity arm.
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Security is an everyday thing (or should be) in the crypto, web3 and NFT spaces. I have unique email addresses with unique complex passwords, all with 2FA -this stands for two-factor authentication, and the ONLY time I have ever had issues with security is when the 2FA is sent to my mobile (cell) phone. This is a weaker link, as SMS messages can be intercepted, and SIM CARDS can be stolen and replaced. A hacker can access your SIM CARD: via SIM CLONING, SIM SWAPPING, or a more elaborate technique called SIMJACKING. Simjacking - is a complex attack carried out by sending a piece of spyware-like code to a target device using an SMS message. By opening the message and clicking the connection, the hackers can gain access to spy on your calls and messages and intercept those important 2FA messages sent from BANKS EXCHANGES and GOVERNMENT Organisations. Simjacking can also track your location - creepy, hey?
The link exploits a vulnerability within the SIM Application Toolkit (STK) by using software called S@T Browser. The quick fix is never to click any random links sent from someone you don’t know. While it might look like FED EX, if you’re not expecting a delivery, odds are it’s not. Hackers are cunning; more than likely, this is a devious hacker looking to exploit your data. Who knows, they may hit the jackpot and find someone with low security - lots of money/crypto credit cards. All exchanges (good ones) offer this protection, so make sure you are using it! Unlink your phone number, and get a 2FA security app activated - but make sure you back up the codes. If these are lost, or your phone gets damaged, it can be a nightmare. If you have an old phone, I recommend backing them up there. The OPTUS hack was a typical too-little-too-late reminder that security is essential to protect our data, privacy and, more importantly, our CRYPTO!
There are several different types of 2FA - knowledge tokens, hardware tokens and biometrics, like fingerprint or voice recognition. The easiest 2FA apps can be downloaded directly to your phone; the below links are 2 of the most popular and widely accepted. https://authy.com/ https://safety.google/authentication/ Also, look at getting a SIM LOCK for your SIM CARD. You can ask your service provider to activate this - but you MUST remember the 4-digit pin. Also worth looking at is the first Zero Trust Sim from Cloudflare. https://blog. cloudflare.com/the-first-zero-trust-sim/ While hacks can be disturbing, they are more of a reminder that security is a necessary evil today and every day.
‘The Cardano Vasil Upgrade’
and How it Compares to the ETH Merge Upgrade written by Daniel Jimenez
However, the above raises a problem: How do you ensure that everyone acts in the best possible way? This is where the concept of validators comes in; people or entities that can authenticate transactions on the decentralized platform. But in order for them to act in the best collective interest, consensus systems establish different mechanisms to eliminate them, making them pay for their indiscretion. In the case of PoW systems, each validator spends a significant amount of “time” and energy verifying transactions. If you do it wrong, you will have wasted all that time and energy for nothing, because you don’t get anything in return. However, the intensive use of energy in these PoW systems is well known, whereby only Ethereum consumes as much energy as the entire country of Finland, for example. This has given way to the need for a change in the validation process, which is why they have opted
for the Proof-of-Stake mechanism. In this case, you do not need validators to run massive computing systems. Instead, you provide them an in-game experience by “staking” some of their own coins. Thus, if they do their job well, they receive more coins; otherwise, they are penalized with sanctions (slashing) that can compromise a part of the guarantee of their assets or the entirety, depending on the rules that are implemented.
Ethereum and The Merge: What to Expect With the change in the consensus mechanism in Ethereum to validate transactions in its consensus layer (Beacon Chain), what users and developers should really expect is a significant reduction in the energy consumption generated by the process of validating transactions in Ethereum under the PoW consensus algorithm.
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This will be the only immediate improvement we will see in the vast Ethereum ecosystem, as The Merge is not really an expansion of network capacity, and was never intended to reduce gas fees or increase transaction speeds. For both parameters of great importance to the Ethereum community to become perceptible, we must wait for the implementation of the technological improvement called ‘sharding’, which will then allow Ethereum to scale to better levels than the current ones.
Even if we look at the gas transaction fees after the entry of The Merge into Ethereum and transaction speed, it is mostly the same at layer 1 (execution layer) than it was before the move to PoS. Therefore, comparing both improvements at a technical level would be a mistake for both sides of the two blockchain networks, because although Ethereum applied an improvement to its network, it is part of an ambitious roadmap that will take at least a couple of years.
Cardano Vasil: Improving network scalability Very different from what we should have expected from The Merge of Ethereum, Vasil’s hard fork on the Cardano blockchain seeks to improve the platform’s transaction processing speeds, DApp development capacity, security, and overall network usability.
For this, the team implemented a series of improvement proposals (CIP) aimed at improving the usability and increasing the capacity of the Plutus smart contract language used by the Cardano network: CIP-31, CIP-31, CIP-33 and CIP40.
storing on-chain data for network participants.
Put simply, CIP-31 introduced a new referral input mechanism to allow Dapps to be more efficient and save time. For its part, CIP-32 was introduced to improve Cardano’s levels of decentralization by
Ultimately, CIP-40 will help improve block transmission without full validation, saving time and cost on the network.
CIP-33 was geared towards making transactions lighter by making changes to the system’s native programming script, allowing faster processing and reduced fees.
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In addition to these improvements, Cardano included an enhancement to its Plutus smart contract programming language and improved platform security by making it easier to interface with the UTXO model (designed similar to Bitcoin). It is worth mentioning that Cardano is a blockchain network based on the PoS consensus algorithm, where holders of its native ADA token stake to help secure the network while receiving rewards for their participation. Unlike Ethereum, ADA holders do not have to wait for another update to be able to withdraw their holdings from the staking process (Unstaking), something for which ETH holders will have to wait about 6–12 months when the Shanghai update is implemented, which will enable the withdrawals from the staking contract on the Beacon Chain.
Lots of delays on both sides Something that both updates of the Ethereum and Cardano blockchain networks do have in common has been the repeated delays for the application of their upgrade. Vasil was originally planned to go live in early 2022 and was implemented with a ninemonth delay. For its part, the Ethereum merge was planned for the end of last year and had almost the same implementation delay period as Cardano’s Vasil.
common point of justification and that is that the improvements maintain the security of the network at all times above any cost, even when it involves a delay in scalability (Ethereum case).
Opportunity for investors? Although the price of ADA and ETH have followed the downward movement of the entire market, there is no doubt that both improvements beyond the media spotlight have shown that blockchain technology is here to stay and generated sustainable use cases over time. The change of the PoW consensus algorithm in Ethereum to PoS is an upgrade that could draw the attention of institutional investors to staking, without worrying about the environmental complexities. The interest has reached such a point that the SEC’s chief official has signaled that staking-based assets could be considered as securities, which would ultimately be a positive for an industry that has been plagued by government accusations of illegality, scaring away institutional investors. For its part, the ADA token, although the price reaction wasnot significant to the Vasil Upgrade, has witnessed a drop in its transaction volume since then. It represents an opportune moment if we observe the activity of Cardano at the development level over the last year and an indication of what is to come.
However, the delays on both sides have found a
The above seems to be paving the way for great things in the short and medium term in both Cardano and Ethereum.
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Ariva Digital &
written by Kel
ARV Token Ariva is a cryptocurrency-based travel and tourism project enabling users of its platform and ARV token to participate in global and local tourism and travel networks. It is a cryptocurrency-powered payment and rewards system, eliminating the need for complex and delayed international transfers in different fiat currencies and high credit card commissions for travellers. Additionally, the project offers a worldwide B2C and B2B travel and tourism network where members can meet with global and local tourism service providers. In light of previous travellers’ experiences and comments (feedback), they can make bookings and earn cryptocurrencies from their reservations and valuable content sharing. Specifically, The project’s ARV token aims to eliminate the complexity and difficulty of using the local currency in the destination country and the need to carry cash or debit cards frequently.
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Ariva Co states that through its platform, thousands of accommodation facilities, yachts, transport vehicles, travel services, and ticket-booking companies worldwide can publish their products. Likewise, thousands of travellers can review and rate their experiences, make reservations in the fastest, easiest and safest way, and make all payments via a single platform. The platform comprises three ecosystems: Ariva World, Ariva Finance, and Ariva Wonderland
Ariva World Ariva World is a global cryptocurrency-integrated travel and tourism platform, seeking to offer better security than traditional systems, faster blockchainbased payment systems, significantly reduced fees compared to conventional payment gateways, multiple payment options, continuously updated prices and 24/7 customer support.
Ariva Finance Ariva Finance is an API that enables users to directly integrate Ariva’s payment methods into their websites with powerful e-commerce platforms. Some supported cryptocurrencies on Ariva Finance include ARIVA, BUSD, USDT, USDC, BNB, BTC and ETH, with instant transactions and minimum service charges, and supported platforms include Shopify and WooCommerce.
Ariva Wonderland In addition to the three ecosystems, Ariva Wonderland is now in the alpha phase and seeks to be a metaverse world where users can travel freely, participate in social events, own property, build tourism centres, and profit from all these activities. Ariva Wonderland combines various technologies encompassing blockchain, NFT, crypto and virtual reality to create a potential revenue cycle for participants.
On the roadmap is Ariva Club, a social media platform for everyone to share their experience about related tourism industries and get rewards in cryptocurrency. All Data Is Current at Time of Writing Circulating Supply: 72,553,169,190 Max Supply: 100,000,000,000 Total Supply: 93,639,999,939 BSC Contract Address: 0x6679eb24f59dfe111864aec72b443d1da666b360 ETH Contract Address: 0x79c7ef95ad32dcd5ecadb231568bb03df7824815 Token Allocation Main Wallet: 18.4% Developer Fund: 2.5% Marketing Fund: 0.16% Community: 78.94% According to the project’s Medium publications, there were no pre-sales or simple agreements for future tokens (SAFT), and the tokens held by the main wallet will go towards new exchange listings.
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Website
https://ariva.digital/about-ariva/ White Paper
https://ariva.digital/whitepaper.pdf Twitter
https://twitter.com/ArivaCoin Facebook/Meta
https://www.facebook.com/ArivaWonderland/ Medium
https://medium.com/@arivacoin Discord
https://discord.com/invite/nnFn8HgPhv Telegram
https://t.me/ariva_arv
Where to Purchase ARV Token Prospective users can purchase ARV tokens on decentralised exchanges such as Pancakeswap, Uniswap, and Apeswap. Centralised exchanges such as Gate.io, Huobi Global, Bittrex, AscendEX, MEXC, and BitForex have also listed the ARV token. A complete list of decentralised and centralised exchange markets and their respective liquidities are on the listing page of Coinmarketcap.
Core Team Ariva’s core team has chosen to remain anonymous, and its CEO, in a rare AMA on a Telegram group chat, stated their reason for anonymity. “This is a team job and almost 70+ people working for Ariva Project. If a name and face becomes more important than the product; people start following only one person’s success or mistake. And we believe this is not good once you’re building a new thing.”
What does ARV do for investors? ARV holders can book their holidays with ARV, share travel reviews or contribute content related to the project to earn the token. Holders can also use their cryptocurrencies during their vacation and at their final destination. There are no debit or credit transaction limits, no obligation to share financial information, eliminates the need for multiple payment systems and settles as fast as the blockchain - which can prevent the headache of waiting multiple days for fiat transactions to clear. Additionally, with Ariva Wonderland going live, users who choose to hold ARV and participate can buy and sell NFTs and virtual land on the platform’s marketplace. Aside from spending ARV tokens for travel payments on Ariva World, ARV holders, NFT holders and landholders may see their digital assets appreciate. It’s important to note that this value appreciation will depend on the health of the cryptocurrency market, the NFT narrative’s resurgence, and Ariva Co.’s success in achieving its visions.
Market opportunity Statista, a German company specialising in market and consumer data, projected the global Travel & Tourism market to reach US$716.80bn in 2022 after recovering from a devastating lull in 2020 due to pandemic lockdown measures. Market Analysts project revenue to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2022-2026) of 8.46%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$992.10bn by 2026. In the Travel and Tourism market, 73% of total revenue will come from online sales by 2026. Since booking through digital channels and online platforms has become more accessible, there are generally fewer barriers when it comes to travel. In the same vein, given the rapid growth in cryptocurrency familiarity and adoption, integrating the industry’s payment infrastructure on crypto rails will further expand this accessibility. As alluded to earlier in the article, instant payments, lower fees, and the negation of payment in specific fiat currencies will further facilitate ease of use.
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For instance, travel and tourism had a global online market of US$433bn (2021). Using the 2021 numbers, if crypto accounted for even 0.1% of this online market share, it would have a market share of about US$433m. Taking this exercise one step further, if crypto accounted for 0.1% of the projected 2026 market volume of US$992.10bn, it would have a volume of US$992m - close to the market cap of the current (2022) total cryptocurrency total market cap by 2026. Given the above numbers, it’s easy to see the potential of integrating crypto rails into the travel and tourism industry from a revenue perspective. Suppose Ariva succeeds in its vision and captures even a small portion of this projected market volume. In that case, the demand for its token and the overall market cap of the project could reflect such success, especially if global payment services for various industries integrate their infrastructure on blockchain and crypto rails.
The roadmap
The ARV project has a long-term and permanent infrastructure designed for integration into the real world. In the first half of 2022, the project team deployed the Ariva World Android and iOS apps, Ariva Finance payment gateway, Ariva Wonderland prealpha test, launch and more. In the second half of 2022, the project team has focused on building partnerships with hotel groups and travel agencies, implementing additional cryptocurrencies on the Ariva payment network, implementing VR support for Ariva Wonderland, implementing ARV voting and more.
Most importantly, the project team is working on deploying its own blockchain to scale as it grows in users, partnerships and use cases.
Conclusion With increasing digitisation across many industries, a narrative to remember is the similar adoption of blockchain technology in these industries. According to the Boston Consulting Group, there’s been a 2.5x increase in job hires related to blockchain infrastructure among the top 100 global companies. With this in mind, we could see a renaissance period for blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies and consumer industries like travel and tourism. With 73% of total travel and tourism revenue projected to come from online sales and a potential market volume of US$992.10bn by 2026, several projects in the crypto landscape are looking to capitalise on this potential. Projects such as Travala.com, Trips Community, LockTrip and dTravel are strategically placing themselves to take advantage of the trend. For instance, Issue 5 of the Moonmag covered dTravel, a DAO seeking to decentralise home-sharing discovery, accommodation bookings and payments - the Web 3.0 improvement on Airbnb and Booking.com. Similarly, Trips Community, and LockTrip follow a similar ethos, seeking to replace traditional travel platforms with improved Web 3.0 versions and leverage its decentralisation, community and narratives (such as NFTs) to ensure more equitable experiences. Furthermore, these projects complement rather than compete with each other in the true ethos of Web 3.0, and Ariva and its team aim to be well-placed to take advantage of this developing narrative.
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Is Proof Of Stake The Future? The entry of Ethereum to the consensus mechanism based on Proof-of-Stake has put this way of validating transactions on blockchain networks back on the radar since its invention in 2012.
written by Daniel Jimenez
Although it is not the first time that the possible benefits and disadvantages of using this type of consensus algorithm have been debated, the idea that Ethereum (the second largest coin in the market and the first Dapps ecosystem in the industry) has migrated from the PoW to PoS is in itself an unprecedented event of great relevance for the entire industry.
The entry of Ethereum to the consensus mechanism based on Proof-of-Stake has put this way of validating transactions on blockchain networks back on the radar since its invention in 2012. Although it is not the first time that the possible benefits and disadvantages of using this type of consensus algorithm have been debated, the idea that Ethereum (the second largest coin in the market and the first Dapps ecosystem in the industry) has migrated from the PoW to PoS is in itself an unprecedented event of great relevance for the entire industry.
Thanks to the constant movements and calls for attention against cryptocurrencies and especially against Bitcoin and its Proof-of-Work (PoW) for energy expenditure, the Proof-of-Stake is captivating insiders and strangers in the industry for its friendly feature. with the environment, to the point of being considered the savior of the future of cryptocurrencies.
But how does Proof of Stake work? First of all, it should be mentioned that the Proof of Stake was originally invented in 2012 by Sunny King and Scott Nadal and since then, it has had a large number of benchmark projects in the industry that
have used this algorithm as a mechanism to validate transactions and scale blockchain networks. Although Ethereum today is the most important network in the media to change its original PoW scheme to PoS, it should be noted that it is not the first to do so. In the same year 2012 when PoS was invented, Peercoin became the first cryptocurrency to adopt Proof-of-Stake as its main consensus algorithm when it switched from Bitcoin’s SHA256 hash function used in PoW algorithms and instead used a hybrid solution. called Secure Hash Algorithm 256v1 with chained hashing (SHA-256c).
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Unlike PoW, PoS focuses on financial incentives. In this consensus users can stake their Ethereum (for example) to become a validator and are rewarded with a transaction and block fee, just like a miner. This system does not require network participants to solve complex cryptographic problems before adding a new block. Validator selection is one of the biggest differences between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake. A pseudo-random process is used in Proof of Stake validator selection to choose who validates a new set of transactions. Other factors like stake size and stake age also influence who ends up as a system validator.
Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake: Who will win?
One of the big setbacks for cryptocurrencies has been the rhetoric promoted by regulators around the world about their long-term sustainability due to the energy consumption of miners.
As a result, the energy consumption of the main PoW reference network, such as Bitcoin, reaches the average equivalent to the annual consumption of countries such as New Zealand, to mention one.
As you know, miners in the PoW system are rewarded for cracking complex math puzzles that require high computing power, thus it is directly proportional to energy expenditure as complex interface upgrades and specialized mining equipment increase. of cryptocurrencies in order to become more competitive over the rest of the competition.
In addition, it is increasingly observed that only a few powerful ones are privileged to be able to participate in cryptocurrency mining due to the high cost of entry, generating a centralization around the network’s hash power that puts its integrity at risk.
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Given the aforementioned problems, Proof of Stake has emerged as a viable solution due to its advantageous scalability and power consumption benefits over PoW networks, for example:
• •
•
•
•
● As mentioned, the Proof-of-Stake protocol uses less energy and is considered more environmentally friendly. ● Network participants are rewarded according to funds wagered, not computing power spent solving cryptographic equations ● They promote decentralization, even though this is a considerable point to improve in some blockchain networks derived from PoS ● PoS-based blockchain networks improve chain security by discouraging malicious activity better than traditional Proof of Work consensus mechanisms. ● They considerably improve scalability, to the point of reaching high transactions per second equivalent to the traditional financial world
Understanding the system investment opportunity
is
a
long-term
Proof-of-Stake networks continue to grow and appear to have the potential to debunk ongoing government concerns about energy waste, while also paving the way for more scalable, low-cost solutions for industry newbies. Without a doubt, the possibility of generating passive income through staking practices attached to networks as important as Polkadot, Ethereum or Cardano, to name a few; It is today the best decentralized investment instrument for investors of all sizes to the point that even the SEC is already considering regulating this activity. Keep in mind that staking is, in a nutshell, the act of lending your network capital to attest to the credibility of transactions performed on the network. In practical terms, users who have a certain amount of tokens from a particular PoS network can delegate their capital to a set of specific validators that carry out the computational surveys to testify each network transaction, in case they do not have the capital. necessary to become a validator.
In addition to quickly replacing PoW as a green alternative, PoS-based networks allow us to envision a future for cryptocurrencies where investors of all sizes can participate either by delegating or validating network transactions through their portfolio, in exchange for receiving fees. transaction for it. If we look at the average gas expense of networks like Ethereum and the millions of transactions that occur daily in this large and complex ecosystem, we can see that the opportunities are gigantic. As of June 2022, the market capitalization of PoS networks, including the Ethereum Beacon Chain at that time, exceeded USD 40 billion, and the trend is that it will continue to increase in the coming months as Ethereum convinces the viability of these systems. for such a large and complex ecosystem of decentralized applications. Staking is more of a business than a way to help secure PoS networks, to the point that validators charge delegators a management fee (typically 5 to 10 percent of gross staking rewards), which has generated another millionaire sector in the industry that is equivalent to a market capital that exceeds USD 25 billion (only in what corresponds to delegators).
However, it is worth noting that there are some safe practices that must be taken into consideration when staking or delegating your capital to unknown validators. Simply put, validators who do a poor job are cut at a fixed or accelerated rate for “bad” network behaviors, such as having significant downtime or attesting to tampered or erroneous transactions. Delegators who delegate to poor validators miss out on rewards and typically also bear negative liability when their validator is a particularly poor network actor. Hence the importance of having the quantitative and qualitative parameters of the validators quite clear, such as the validator’s total commission rate, voting power, percentage of signed blocks and number of unique delegates, among other parameters that are not the subject of this post and that every investor must take into account if he delegates his coins in PoS networks.
Not everything is pink As fascinating as the benefits of PoS-based systems can be over the PoW consensus algorithm, there are some considerations to keep in mind when exploring these blockchain networks. A first point is the possible centralization of some networks based on PoS. We have the most outstanding example in the BNB Chain, which has
only 21 validators chosen based on their holding power in BNB tokens, which is one of the highest in the ecosystem. Recently a hack in one of the bridges deployed in this network revealed how centralized a blockchain network based on PoS consensus can be, which was momentarily stopped by the few nodes that validate transactions in this network. Another point to take into consideration is the possible high barrier to entry that some PoS networks may experience to become a validator. The most iconic example is Ethereum 2.0, which requires a minimum of 32 ETH to become a validator on this network, an amount estimated at just over forty thousand dollars. Due to the above, there are participation groups that allow people to contribute to a particular validator and receive a part of the rewards. Services like ANKR, RocketPool and SafeStake are some good examples of this that you can find in our dedicated post in ISSUE 9 of our magazine here. Due to the above, there are participation groups that allow people to contribute to a particular validator and receive a part of the rewards. Services like ANKR, RocketPool and SafeStake are some good examples of this that you can find in our dedicated post in ISSUE 9 of our magazine
Some important PoS networks in the industry Besides Ethereum 2.0, there have been some PoS networks that have been in the market long before Buterin even announced ‘The Merge’. Today, if we visualize the crypto market we can see that from the top 10, 4 blockchain networks based on PoS are positioned in this exclusive ranking (Ethereum, BNB, Cardano and Solana), with a shared market capitalization of almost 282B dollars ( almost 30% of the total cryptomarket). The list gets more interesting as we look inside the top 50 with projects like Polygon, Polkadot, and Cosmos offering excellent APY returns to users who help with their funds to protect these networks. According to Staking Rewards, around 146B dollars is the Proof-of-Stake Marketcap of the ecosystem and the assets of the Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, BNB Chain and Avalanche networks lead the table of good options for staking with rewards on average at 5 % for this activity.
The list continues with Polkadot, Cosmos, Polygon, Tron, and NEAR Protocol at the bottom of the Top 10 Crypto Assets by Staking Marketcap.
Of all these options, Cosmos, Polkadot and NEAR Protocol offer double-digit rewards for helping to secure these PoS-based networks.
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Final thoughts
Many cryptocurrency-focused projects are watching the Ethereum PoS experiment with great interest. Its success or failure will determine the future not only of this network and those based on PoS, but of the entire world and the blockchain-related industry. With faster transactions and an ecofriendly environment, Proof of Stake seems to have everything going for it to become the savior of cryptocurrencies and its way into the mainstream. More interestingly, staking will improve access to blockchain networks and promote the adoption of this technology among all users and investors of all sizes due to its long-term sustainability and better chances of mass adoption compared to schemes like PoW. However, like blockchain in general, PoS is still a new technology and as such, it still has many points to improve to become the future of cryptocurrencies.
The Race for Web3 Gaming: written by Mrinal
Chasing the hype or real business case?
Playing video games has been one of the most popular pastimes in modern history. We often assume gamers as children or teenagers playing Xbox/PlayStation for hours a day, but that might not be the case. A recent study revealed that globally there are over 3 billion gamers, with average age being 35, and almost an equal number of male and female gamers. Such huge is the gaming industry that in a separate study, it was even reported that the industry earns more revenue than the music and film industry combined. With these statistics as prelude, I now hope your decades old perceptions about video gaming has seen a 180 degrees twist :)
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However, only a small percentage of gamers are able to earn professionally, while the rest simply use video games as an outlet to unwind or for entertainment. While the virtual world of video games is being explored through VR experiences and the metaverse, there are currently opportunities to earn real money through games. All assets in a game, ranging from avatars, the outfits (skins), virtual land, and weapons, can be bought and sold with cryptocurrency. This is the world of GameFi, or as some call it, Web3 Gaming. GameFi is a combination of “game” and “finance” and refers to games built on the blockchain that offer economic incentives to players. Web3 games offer players in-game rewards such as crypto tokens, NFTS, and virtual land through completing levels and battling other players. The dynamic of Web3 gaming typically works under a model known as “Play-to-Earn” (P2E). Players under the P2E model essentially connect their crypto wallets to the game of their choice and buy an NFT to use that platform. From there, as the player advances through levels, they win gaming tokens that can be converted into Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even fiat currency through an exchange, such as Coinbase. The NFT can then be sold on an NFT marketplace for profit.
How blockchain improves gaming In blockchain/Web3 gaming, value is no longer accrued to only just the game developer / publisher.
Source: The Compelling Case for NFT Gaming, Nansen (May 2021)
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Web3 gaming outlook: Bearish or bullish? Over the last year, there has been a massive surge in Web3 gaming narrative, with metaverse and P2E taking the charge. However, it is far too early to comment on whether Web3 actually represents the next generation of gaming. The established video game market, dominated by consoles, operates very differently, and caters to a different market altogether than many of the more decentralized alternatives for several reasons. Crypto games were once touted as digital nation states enabling a form of universal basic income through the medium of online gaming. Now that popular GameFi titles like Axie Infinity, Defi Kingdoms, and more recently STEPN have faced large downturns (if not outright collapses), for the naysayers and critics, the future of crypto gaming doesn’t seem so sure.
Daily revenue of Axie Infinity (AXS) in past 365 days (Source: Token Terminal)
In the aftermath of such a large swing, the crypto community has fallen into two camps. On one end, many in the community have written off the concept of crypto gaming entirely, dismissing it as one of the many fads to come and go within crypto. On the other end, investors like facebook and a16z have committed hundreds of millions towards developing crypto and Web3 games, betting on a future in which Web3 gaming finds massive adoption. Not only that, Microsoft’s $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard (creators of Call of Duty and Warcraft) allows it to secure its potential spot in the Metaverse. This, along with their recent funding to ConsenSys (in Mar 2022, link) and Space and Time (in Sep 2022, link) clearly show Microsoft’s Web3 ambitions. And the list doesn’t stop here. The number of large corporations showing interest or entering Web3 space is growing by the day. Based on these trends, can we say that the critics of Web3 gaming need to smell the coffee and make way for mainstream Web3 adoption? Well let’s analyze the bearish and bullish cases to understand the POVs of both sides.
Going to Zero — The Bear Case In honor of the downtrend in both GameFi projects and the market at large, we will start with the bear case. Skeptics of crypto gaming point to a few outstanding factors in their case against GameFi, namely that: • Gamefi economics are unsustainable at best and predatory at worst • The failure rate of traditional games is very high — the failure rate of crypto and Web3 games will be even higher • Real gamers hate crypto - they see it as an extension of the hyper-monetization trend gaming has seen over the last 10 years. GameFi never actually had any real product-market fit beyond speculator-subsidized yield farming.
Unsustainable economies The Axie revenue chart above tells the story of an economy which experienced 4,000% growth in daily revenue from $400,000 to $17 million in less than two months, only to have daily revenue drop over -99% to $10,000 over the following year. It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to recognize that swings this drastic are bad for the long-term viability of any protocol, gaming or otherwise. Play-to-earn games are particularly difficult to manage because, to date, these games have often featured inflationary secondary tokens. The risk of capital flight from an in-game economy is high when users can instantly swap their in-game currency for the latest meme coin on Uniswap. Consider these risks double if players are supporting their real lives using income from in-game currencies. In contrast, traditional games only have to manage money as it enters an ecosystem; users typically cannot easily convert in-game currency back to dollars.
Failure rates Video games are actually very similar to crypto companies. In both cases, even the most casual community members know the biggest names – Call of Duty, Fortnite, OpenSea, Binance, etc. In both cases, these extreme successes serve as the north star for aspiring builders. Generations of builders have been inspired to go all-in on their
creations after hearing the tales of immense profits made by companies like Epic Games (the studio behind Fortnite) or by individual founders like CZ at Binance. Unfortunately, not every crypto founder becomes the next CZ, and not every game becomes the next Call of Duty. Most traditional games – just like crypto startups – fail. Add in the difficulties of creating and then managing an open economic layer, and the failure rate of crypto games is likely to be extremely, extremely high. The cost of failure is important as well. Building AAA quality games does not follow the “lean startup” methodology, where teams can iterate on their product with relatively small sums of money. The average AAA game costs $60-80 million to make. Venture economics break down if each bad game investors invest in collectively costs them sixty million dollars.
Lack of Authentic Product-Market Fit Both Axie Infinity and STEPN found plenty of success as play-to-earn games, but how much of their respective adoption was driven by the “play” versus the “earn”? The exact answer is unknown. But when people were being paid hundreds if not thousands to breed Pokemon-esque pets or to literally just walk around in real life, chances are people were mostly driven by the “earn” part of the equation. Emphasizing the “earn” in play-to-earn games created a problem: the money players made on these games was 99.99% derived from other users speculating on the value of the in-game assets. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a gamified speculation bazaar. It becomes a problem for crypto games because, unlike a bazaar in the real world, a digital speculation bazaar dies when you run out of speculators. To summarize the bear case: the play part is hard, the earn part is hard, and marrying the two is even harder. Crypto devs have struggled and will likely continue to struggle to design games that deliver on either component (let alone both of them) for a prolonged period of time. In the end, those devs may find that true gamers were never interested in the first place.
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Hope for Gaming — The Bull Case The arguments for gaming bulls boil down to the following points, some of which are direct rebuttals to the bear cases laid out above: • The total addressable market (TAM) of crypto gaming is huge, and it only takes one big hit to win big. • Major brands and investors making a beeline to Web3 • Improvements in mechanism design can solve or mitigate the problems which have led to the unsustainable economies we’ve seen to date.
etc. making a beeline into Web3 gaming either by associated product launches or in way of bigticket investments into Web3 gaming companies, the space is heating up for sure. Not only big-tech, virtual reality and gaming companies are also planning to adopt Web3 principles to unlock the next growth wave. Roblox, for e.g., was recently seen hiring Web3 senior engineers possibly to put virtual world items & transactions, possibly NFTs, on the blockchain. Meta platforms such as Niantic and Roblox are racing to build the first true metaverse experience and, in doing so, an interesting growth trajectory plays out for users.
Designing Sustainable Economies STEPN’s user growth came on the back of a relatively simple mechanism design. At a basic level, users buy NFT shoes to play the game, earn tokens for walking, rinse, and repeat. At a deeper level, the team included various mechanisms which required users to burn or spend both GST tokens and the shoe NFTs. The idea was to create token sinks which incentivize players to consume items and/or currencies within a game economy, as opposed to selling tokens outside of the economy. A quick look at the GST chart will show that these token sinks were not enough to stop the profitability of the game from dropping off a cliff. While the 97% drop in GST price can’t solely be attributed to game design — the market dropped heavily at the same time — the token sinks were clearly not enough to stop players from electing to sell en masse. Both the STEPN and Axie teams put in effort to actively manage token sinks in their respective economies (such as STEPN’s recent action plan). Even if these measures don’t succeed in the long run, the lessons learned will transfer over to future game builders.
Gaming TAM Gaming in general is a huge market. Statista estimated $200 billion in revenues across all gaming platforms for 2022. data.ai in its report counted 174 mobile games that each brought in $100 million in annual revenue during 2021. These figures are impressive and likely to grow from here. As Web3 gaming studios attract more developer and research talent, these games will become more engaging. Whether or not they become good enough to crack the $100 million annual revenue mark consistently remains uncertain. Big brands entering Web3 gaming With tech titans like Microsoft, Meta, Google,
Final thoughts Web3 gaming exploded in popularity, usage, and investment during 2021–2022, but remains unsustainable as-is. If GameFi fails to solidify itself as one of crypto’s main verticals going forward, it will simply be forgotten, just like so many other flash-in-the-pan subsectors of crypto. Conversely, if crypto-native developers can harmonize with new devs from the gaming world, GameFi may become the number one driver of user adoption in all of crypto. But now that big tech firms like Microsoft, Meta are bringing their clout to the game, Web2 and Web3 gaming models could begin to merge in the mainstream.
Figuring Out Fractionalization written by Samantha Jimenez
NFTs are transforming the cryptocurrency world in an unprecedented way and have firmly established within the ecosystem. All because of the non-fungible tokens’ capability of powering complex value preservation infrastructures and effectively redesigning the concept of uniqueness and scarcity within digital assets. As the popularity of NFT collections increases, so do their base prices, which is amazing for investors, collectors, and artists who came early to the NFT environment. But what about those trying to enter the market now?
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The concept of fractionalization is similar to owning shares in a company. It opens up ownership of NFTs to multiple collectors, making them accessible to anyone, thus allowing those who can not afford the more expensive NFTs to explore the possibilities offered by fractional NFTs. There are some major fractional NFT platforms that hope to make that possibility a little more accessible and attractive. We will see what this is all about later.
What are Fractional NFTs? Fractional NFTs (F-NFTs) are cryptographic tokens that represent fractional ownership in a non-fungible token. In other words, F-NFTs allow investors to have a stake in an expensive tokenized item rather than the sole owner, similar to shares in a company, except that your stake is in an NFT.
How does the NFTs fractionalization work? NFTs can be broken down into smaller units, through a process known as fractionation. F-NFTs can even be found on platforms such as Fractional. Fractional is a project aiming to pioneer the fractional NFTs trend.It is a decentralised protocol that allows NFTs owners to coin fractional ownership of their NFTs as ERC-20, with each fraction acting as governance in the underlying ERC-721 asset, making it easier to buy and sell percentages of the entire NFT. In addition, fractionalisation allows the NFT holder to obtain liquidity from its assets without selling the whole piece.
In other words, the Fractional protocol objective is to facilitate the process of buying and holding a certain percentage of an NFT. In essence, the Fractional mechanism allows, for example, users who hold valuations of specific high-end NFTs of renowned artists, such as Beeple and its “Everydays” NFT, to purchase a portion of their artwork.
How does it work? As an NFT owner, when you access the Fractional platform, you will be able to mint an NFT Vault. This vault then stores your NFT and, in return, will give you 100% of the fractional ownership tokens. At this point, the NFT owner can do whatever they want with their fractions.. For example, they can sell them at a Dutch auction, add liquidity to Sushiswap or simply give them to friends. Fraction owners retain collective ownership in the locked NFT.
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You can send ETH equal to or greater than the reserve price of the asset should a buyer emerge, thus initiating an auction. Furthermore, this allows the NFT holder to see some liquidity for his asset almost immediately, rather than waiting for weeks or even months for a buyer. Because of the inherited governance advantages in fractions of the ERC-20 token, fraction holders also have the ability to vote on the reserve price of the entire NFT asset. This reserve price is the price in ETH to be bid by a third party willing to purchase the NFT by auction. At the end of the auction, all fraction holders will be able to cash out their fractions in ETH.
Fractionalization process Now, the fractionalization process involves taking an NFT (ERC-721 token), locking it into a smart contract that divides it into many fungible ERC-20 token fractions, and then making these tokens (F-NFT) available to the market.
By doing this, the expense that could have been paying US$500,000 for a single NFT can be divided among 100 potential owners, each paying US$5000.
sale of works of art as of NFTs. However, the this technology may have other use cases.
A real-world example of NFT fractionation is the Doge NFT sale. The Doge meme, the official face of Dogecoin (DOGE), was sold for US$4 million in June 2021.
Cryptographic play-to-win games involve winning, buying, selling, and trading game elements, most of which are NFTs. However, with the introduction of F-NFT, multiplayer games such as Star Atlas and Axie Infinity could use the technology tallow players to get together and buy more expensive items, such as spaceships and planets from Star Atlas.
In August 2021, PleasrDAO, the NFT owner, offered fractional ownership as $DOGE tokens, which could get purchased by meme fans for as little as US$1. This instance shows the potential of F-NFTs in the art space, which was also on the Fractional platform, and several projects at this level, such as UkraineDAO, which raised $6.75 million ETH for Ukrainian relief funds earlier this year However, many sectors can benefit from F-NFT.
F-NFT and gaming
Axie Infinity tested this through the ultra-rare Axies sale, which is the game’s NFT assets. Community members fractionated the Axies and sold them through Niftex, a fractionation platform based on blockchain technology that works on its NFT fragmentation technology, whereby NFTs get transformed into “fragments” to purchase in an IPO-like format.
Fractional NFT use cases Fractional NFTs have been inspired by the
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F-NFT and the metaverse The metaverse is a day-by-day growing concept. With companies like Decentraland, Sandbox, Facebook building in the virtual universe, there is bound to be a lot of investment from the “physical world.” F-NFTs could allow individuals, groups of individuals, investors and even conglomerates to come together to buy virtual land and other assets in the virtual world.
F-NFT and real estate But it is not only landowners in the metaverse that can benefit from F-NFTs. In the real world, F-NFTs could be used to leverage fractional ownership of the real estate.
Fractionalization incentives Undoubtedly, F-NFTs have quickly become a vital aspect of the crypto sector. There has been a surge in NFT development and we have seen several innovative ideas emerge in the industry.
Fractional NFTs are a market reaction to the demand for a more affordable investment to increase liquidity and allow investors with fewer chances to purchase NFTs to obtain them. Their debut has made the experience more affordable. There are several reasons why a NFTs owner might want to fractionalize their asset. Let’s look at some of them and why fractional NFTs might be an investment option:
Price discovery The asset is valuable, and fractionalizing it and selling 20% in the market can be a valuable tool to help understand how the market values the NFT.
More asset liquidity NFTs distinguish themselves by their unique and singular characteristics. Their non-fungibility and scarcity have always been their focus and their most important selling point. However, one of the most pressing problems with regard to NFTs and their exchange is the generally illiquid market that encompasses them.
As is well known, liquidity is an important factor for trading in the NFT market. The higher the liquidity, the better the NFTs price. The typical NFT market has limited depth due to its native nature, i.e. ownership cannot be shared on the blockchain in any formal capacity. In fact, given that some NFTs sell for millions of dollars, it is not surprising that only a few investors
The Fracton Protocol unlocks the financial attributes of NFT collectibles by fractionalizingNFTs and improving the liquidity of the NFT market. They consider liquidity an essential key for decentralized and centralized exchanges, so Fracton aims to build a liquid market and become a solid financial infrastructure of the NFT ecosystem. When fractionalizing an NFT, the ERC-20 tokens representing each fraction of the NFT could be exchanged on decentralized and centralized exchanges, thereby increasing the assets liquidity of the NFT itself. Instead of an artist waiting weeks for their NFT artwork to sell, numerous investors could buy fractions of NFTs immediately at a reduced price, effectively solving some of the illiquidity problems of NFTs.
Curatorial fees NFTs owners that lock up their assets will receive custodian fees set by the NFT owner but guided by governance so as not to allow excessively high fees.
around the world can afford to bid for them and get their hands on some of the highest-quality NFTs out there. However, the Fracton Protocol manages to split normal NFTs into a new form in a cost-effective and DeFi-oriented way. The Fracton Protocol enables two-step split NFT liquidity, turning expensive, non-fungible assets into affordable shares.
The curator’s fees are similar to asset management fees. Annually, a curator will earn a percentage of the total supply of fractions unlocking properties for your NFT.
Investment democratization NFT market prices prevent small investors and collectors from participating in NFT auctions, leaving only a few investors to buy the most expensive NFT pieces. Splitting an expensive, highend NFT into multiple fractions lowers the entry barrier and ownership costs, essentially allows more investors to gain exposure to the market for the most recognized NFTs. In addition, if the price of the full ERC-721 NFT increases, so will the price of individual fractions in the form of ERC-20 tokens. By design, fractional NFTs can boost the NFT liquidity market by fragmenting the base NFT asset into multiple natively liquid components and can also open up more investment opportunities for smaller collectors, democratizing access to the previously exclusive NFT environment.
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Increased visibility for creators With fractionalization, digital creators can gain even greater exposure online because they can reach a wider audience in a more liquid market.
However, some assets have been pre-selected based on their current market value and pumping. Below are some fractionable NFTs that are worthy of investment:
CRYPTOPUNKS NFTs Ownership benefits Once a user owns fractions of an NFT, they have the right to vote on the reserve price of the asset. This reserve price is the price in ETH that a third party must bid to initiate an auction for the entire NFT. The reserve price of a new fractional ownership token collector defaults to the current reserve price but can change at any time. At the end of a successful auction, all fractional owners may cash out their fractions for ETH on a pro-rata basis; fractions are normally functioning ERC20 tokens to use as such.
Fractional investment NFTs There is no limit to the NFT assets fractionalization. In 2021, for example, Addidas partnered with the Boring Monkey Yacht Club and disclosed its entry into the NFT community. Their main focus was solely on fashion NFTs, which they mainly use to promote their wearables and other accessories. Recent OpenSea statistics have shown a huge pumping of fashion NFTs, gaming, metaverse, and terrestrial assets. There is a long list of NFT fractionalized assets.
This particular collection has up to 250 million fractions in the Unicly market. Early investors in these collectibles bought each fraction for $0.05, with a value of $0.07, albeit at a fluctuating price.
NFT GRIMES If you are looking for fractional NFT gear to invest in, Grimes NFT gear is your best option. The artist Grimes created these pieces in the early stages of the NFT community. Grimes created two pieces labelled Newborn 1 & 3, fractionalized in different markets to over $6 million value. The shares are now selling at affordable prices on the common markets.
DOGECOIN MEME TOKEN Dogecoin jumped into the limelight in 2013 and got interested in the NFT community with its dogecoin meme token. Divided into about 17 billion collectibles, the first sale of 20% of the collectibles to about 1,700 investors generated about $45 million in the MISO market. The remaining collectibles are available on other marketplaces like Opensea and Sushiswap. According to its official report, the Doge meme tokens have facilitated severalexchanges outside and within the NFT market.
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Why could they be a great investment?
Fractional NFTs may be the next big thing to watch out for as it continues to make the NFTs world more accessible. There are plenty of use cases for fractional NFTs in the digital art world, augmented reality, gaming, fantasy sports and, most importantly, preIDO liquidity. In addition, it is worth noting that the most important benefit for fractional NFT holders is that they can own a percentage of a larger and more expensive NFT. Depending on the NFT and the platform on which the fractional NFT is purchased, the holder can obtain exclusive access to the NFT community and other benefits, such as voting rights. Some fractional NFT projects even support staking, which allows holders to lock their fractional NFTs into a platform or protocol to receive staking rewards and other benefits. In the recent past, only large investors could own these “expensive” NFTs. However, to make it easier for smaller investors to benefit from these collectibles, NFTs have been segregated into smaller, more affordable units, allowing many investors to claim joint ownership of a particular NFT. While the development of the NFT ecosystem is still young, that of fractional NFTs is perhaps even younger, but, it is very likely that fractional NFTs are destined to disrupt not only the world of fine art and gambling, but potentially that of decentralized finance and investment as a whole.
Project update -
Polychain Monsters https://polychainmonsters.com/
How do you capitalise on being one of the biggest collectible platforms in Web3, with delivered token and NFT offerings, staking opportunities and partnerships galore? You build, deliver, and keep a community engaged through the rough times as well as the good - which is precisely what one of Moon Mags’ earliest covered projects has managed to do. Polychain Monsters has delivered, delivered, and delivered for their community, and continues to do so. By this, they’ve developed an exciting ecosystem upon which they’re building games, community incentives to keep collecting, and more.
management. These upgrades can be broadly placed into three categories:
Recap We wrote about Polychain Monsters back in our first issue of Moon Mag, in August 2021. In that issue, we looked at their token - $PMON – and their NFT booster packs. The platform was set up a bit like a collectible card game, where you’d exchange $PMON for boosters, drawing 3 new Polychain Monster NFTs at random, with them appearing in a variety of rarities, including different characteristics, such as colour, horn type and glitter (like the holofoils in trading cards). With major platforms like Binance and Kucoin supporting their NFTs or token, their launch could only be described as a success. Since then, what have the team been up to? The project has now been launched for over 18 months, and is still developing and releasing new features at a regular cadence. This is impressive given current market conditions and a mark of sound
1. 2. 3.
Token utility NFT utility Ecosystem and game development
All three of these interlink in some way to create a stronger overall offering for their dedicated and enthusiastic community. Looking at token utility updates first, you may recall that the $PMON token historically was used for opening booster packs and staking for a share of tokens spent on booster openings. This is pretty usual for an earlystage project and provided incentive for users to invest and hold, or to invest in the NFTs while also giving the token a deflationary outlet. Over a longer term, tokens often need to provide additional utility, particularly when prices are depressed in the way they are now with the recent global market decline.
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To do this, the Polychain Monsters team have depreciated token staking in favour of farms and what they call “collector staking”. Looking at farms first, enabling this has become a key plank of the Polychain Monsters partnerships offering. Farms – as you may be familiar with from Pancakeswap or other DEX’s – allow you to stake the platforms’ token in exchange for tokens from the partner project. This offering was first tested with MoonieNFT as an incubator trial and was successful enough for the team to explore it further. Additionally, enabling farming offered $PMON holders the opportunity to continue staking individual tokens for other ecosystem offerings, or to provide liquidity for swaps.
offerings through staking, upcoming features, or NFT minting.
At time of writing, there are farms for PMR (an alternative Polychain Monsters token used for creating rarer NFTs) and PMLG (their land token to purchase land in Polychain Islands, the game offering). Through this, Polychain Monsters have offered additional opportunities to “recycle” into the Polychain ecosystem for those invested in the project and participating as community members. And there are more efforts to support the token with their refreshed roadmap, including NFT customisation, fusions, in-game item purchases, evolutions… Lots of additional options to really accelerate deflation in the coming months. While it has not kept token prices as high as some might have liked so far, it now provides a straightforward way of entering the ecosystem (by purchasing $PMON), after which you can enjoy the rest of their
Collector Staking basically grants you $PMON rewards for holding a varied and full collection of Polychain Monster NFTs. The rarer your monster, the more points it is worth, with bonuses for full collections of colours, breeds, horn types and other elements. As you build your collection and score, you’ll receive increasing proportions of the booster opening pool, which is filled up with a higher percentage of tokens than the farms or staking pools. As a result, you’re incentivised to keep pulling boosters in order to fill out your collection, or head to secondary marketplaces to buy individual ‘mons which you’re missing for those bonuses. This works in reverse too – if you’ve managed to pull an ultra-rare monster, these can fetch a pretty price on secondary markets, even with the recent decline in volumes seen across crypto.
Gotta catch them… More? Speaking of NFTs, what additional features have the team added here? Firstly, they’ve offered regular partnership NFTs. These NFTs are usually small in number, hidden amongst the booster packs, offering whitelist spots or automatic token allocations to the lucky few who manage to unearth them. While this is a great utility in itself and drives booster openings, these ultra-rare NFTs are also worth thousands of points in the biggest part of the Polychain NFT ecosystem; Collector Staking.
Expanding the “poly” in the Polychain title, since our original coverage, Polychain Monsters has continued to evolve to other chains too. Alongside the perhaps low-hanging fruit of a Polygon port, capitalising on the work already done on Ethereum, the ‘mons have also expanded over to Solana with their Exomon NFT offering. Exomon is the Digimon to the Polychain Pokemon, looking more cyberpunk-y and mature - but no less detailed than the OG offerings. With only 10,000 minted, Exomons are a little bit rarer generally and also feed into collector staking, and give Polychain collectors a reason to join the vibrant Solana ecosystem.
experience familiar to any trading card collector. To alleviate a market full of common ‘mons, the team have recently introduced Reverse Swap, where you can cash in your myriad mongrels (15 at a time) for another chance at a booster pack. This makes the NFT supply itself deflationary, and with the upcoming Generation 2 boosters, you could see a lot of Gen 1 ‘mons get exchanged for the new boosters. This will simultaneously make Gen 1 NFTs rarer, reduce supply of Gen 2 boosters and kickstart the next offering of NFTs – a canny move from the team who rely on booster openings to fund ongoing game development.
Back on the Polymon side of collecting, you might end up with a lot of less rare NFTs over time, an
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Finally, the game. Polychain Islands is the main focus of the development team, with the game currently in a community Alpha state, with a few dedicated folks getting the chance to play the early game. The game has been broadly well-received as it compares favourably to other current Web3 titles, but is also at an extremely early stage of release. What’s heartening is to see the game development not shift focus too much from the NFT/collectible ecosystem that’s already established. Games take time to build, and in the meantime, Polychain Monsters seem to be striking a decent balance between new features and offerings to keep the community alive with the natural slow progress on building a promising Web3 game.
Conclusion Where other projects have fallen in this depressed market cycle, Polychain Monsters continues to build, iterate and engage. The team is open with the community, hosting regular fireside chats, and the offering has expanded in a substantial way since we first wrote about them. Their move to Discord has given them a new platform to share and grow, too, which has been good to see. As a project, they’ve consistently delivered and look to be in good shape for the long-term time horizon that we look to cover in Moon Mag. Keep an eye on the ‘mons!
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