Original title:"Wanzi Penmo, A Glimpse of the Peak of Chain Game Forms from Dark Forest and Loot: Games on the Whole Chain"
Original author:vanishk.eth
Original author:There are 3 articles in this topic:、"Volume: A Perspective on Loot Ecology in One Article"、"Part Two: The Enlightenment of Dark Forest and Loot, and the Possibilities of the Future""Part Two: The Enlightenment of Dark Forest and Loot, and the Possibilities of the Future"
Special thanks to @Taylor Zhang, a core member & evangelist of the Loot Chinese community, @Taylor Zhang, a veteran holder of Loot, and @byeddy, an active player in Dark Forest and a core member of DF Archon, for their guidance on the article and tireless answers to annoying authors , so that the author has a clearer and deeper understanding of the two ecology, thank you!
1 Introduction
1 Introduction
The concept of blockchain games has existed very early. It can even be said that if there is no imagination for blockchain games, there will be no blockchain today."After all, the seed of the towering tree of Ethereum is the evil centralized game that controls players."raidwhen buried,That year, Warcraft made a big cut to Warlock
, This made a young warlock boy who had a bright eye cry into tears. Since then, World of Warcraft has lost a warlock, and the world has gained a God V, and he has become the light of countless people.
When we go two steps back in time, we can see that the starting point of ERC-721, which has become an extremely important standard in the encryption world, also comes from a game called CryptoKitty, which caused the Ethereum network to be launched for the first time. At the same time, it also inspired the appearance of Axie Infinity, the originator of the follow-up X 2 E, and opened a new era.
With the wealth-creating effect of the 21-year NFT wave and the development of the BSC ecology, a large number of project parties have focused their attention on the game, which has been a favorite since ancient times. The concept of blockchain games has been brought up again, and chain games have entered a period of time. A "seemingly rapid" development cycle.
However, as of today in 2023, when we are faced with more than 2,000 chain games, only more than 700,000 daily activities with an unknown proportion of mobile phones, and a market value that has been cut to the heel, have we realized our original imagination of chain games? ? It's hard to get a definitive answer from this landscape of dead X 2 Earn games.
2. Fully On-Chain Game
2.1 What exactly is "GameFi"
It is very difficult to discuss the reasons for their failure. Everyone's definition of success is different, and perhaps they have achieved their own success on a certain level. What everyone wants to know more is why they did not survive well, and how can the game category grow better on the soil of the blockchain?Andre CronjeBack to the beginning of the chain game, the word GameFi was really spread, in fact, from the soul of the DeFi field, the CEO of Yearn FinanceStarted with a tweet in September 2020,
He thinks that the idea of putting the gamification mechanism into the monetary policy system is very interesting, which can change the environment of DeFi trading projects (TradFi) at that time, and make DeFi more gamified (GameFi).
So there were two ideas:One is: It is about to combine DeFi and NFT. The routine is still to pledge output, but a layer of NFT is set in the middle, such as theAavegotachiandMeme；
andThe second is toGame DeFiizationAxie Infinity
: That is to reduce the content of other parts of the game, strengthen the economic model, and move the game behavior closer to the pledged output, which has also become Play 2 Earn, which is actually liquidity mining in essence. The most popular at that time was
No matter what kind of thinking it is, its core is around Fi, and its user group is always DeFi users for the purpose of input and output.However, the popularity of Axie has successfully attracted many game practitioners and even players themselves. They feel that if this game is made like this, I can do it myself, so the overwhelming GameFi began to attack the market, thinking that they are the real decentralized games,Come to Fi everyone in the name of Game,
Finally, it is said that there are only speculators in the blockchain.Some people in these projects don't care at all, and most of those who care have never been able to figure it out that GameFi was not a Game from the beginning.
Gamification and Game are two different things in the underlying logic.
2.2 Classification of blockchain game forms
If we briefly split the module of a game, it can be roughly divided into 3 parts:Narrative part:
The background of the game universe, the story of the characters, in order to establish the motivation of the player, even a simple casual game can have a very influential narrative, such as Angry Birds;The main interactive part of the player is through various elements and rules designed by the game engine, and also includes the calculation and rendering of the game background;
Economic Model:The output, consumption and linking logic of assets and currencies, including the association with external currencies (legal currency).
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2.2.1 On-Chain Assets (OCA)Most of the current chain games mainly transform the economic model, that is, put the currency and some assets on the chain, but the core game logic and calculation, as well as the narrative and governance are still centralized. In Jump Crypto’s In the report, such games are referred to as
On this basis, in addition to increasing circulation efficiency, the behavior of putting currency and assets on the chain is not as meaningful as we imagined. Centralized control policies are also likely to make the assets held by players return instantly. Zero, and when the project party runs away, how much is the value of the so-called permanent assets in the hands of the players.
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2.2.2 Optional Cosmetic Mints (OCM)
There is also a mode that is less related to the blockchain and is still used by some games. This type of mode is often used by early traditional games that want to enter web3 in a very short period of time.
The above two types of games can be called games using blockchain technology, but obviously cannot be called decentralized blockchain games. Therefore, after understanding the status quo, more and more attention has begun to focus on the truly decentralized games: full-chain games.
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2.2.3 Fully On-Chain (FOC)Games on the whole chainRefers to the in-gameAll behavioral interactions and target states are all uploaded to the chain, that is, the core game logic and asset economic model are processed through the blockchain, and the blockchain is used as the server of the game, and all operations of the player are completed through the interaction with the smart contract, and even the narrative and governance of the game are also passed Decentralization is completed in the form of DAO, so as to realize the real。
decentralized games@Conquest、@TropologyAt present, the field of games on the whole chain has just entered the embryonic stage, and some very interesting games have appeared, such asMuMu、@0x CurioofTreatyof0x Monaco, Paradigm's, including the once very popularWolf Game Wolf GameWait, of course, the two mountains that cannot be avoided in this field are still。
Dark Forest and Loot
3. Full chain duo: Dark Forest Dark ForestInspired by the famous science fiction novel "Three-Body Problem 2: The Dark Forest", Dark Forest is the firstIncomplete information on the whole chain
game.As a space MMORTS game, it can accommodate thousands of players to explore, build and conquer each other in the randomly generated infinite universe at the same time.
Behavior and status will be updated on the chain, but not disclosed to others.
3.1 Background & History@GubsheepThe earliest proposer and founder of the Dark Forest idea is, he happened to attend a conference on zero-knowledge proofs, and he was impressed by the dark forest theory described by Liu Cixin, so he created a method using zero-knowledge proofs to create a"A Dark Forest in a Crypto World"
idea. (Note: The Mask team helped Brian contact Youzu, the copyright owner of Three-Body Problem, and gave him a copy of Three-Body Problem signed by Liu Cixin)
The main members of the early Dark Forest team consisted of Gubsheep,@Alan、@Ivanand@Moeand
constitute.team inAugust 7th, 2020Officially launched the game's firstbeta v 0.3
, deployed on the Ropsten testnet of Ethereum. Players need to obtain the invitation code issued earlier to participate in the game. The test version will be settled and deleted after one week of opening. Ranking will be made according to the points obtained. A prize pool of 1024 DAI will be set for the top 15 players. The first place will receive a reward of 256 DAI . Not long after this version was launched, it was personally recommended by V God.@Scott Sunarto、@spencecoin.eth、@AndyAnd other community members have made many outstanding contributions to the development of Dark Forest.
existexistOctober 2, 2020, of the Dark Forestv 0.4 version
Officially launched, this version is deployed on the xDAI STAKE network. The number of players that can participate is twice that of v 0.3. At the same time, it adopts the Burner Wallet (one-time wallet) and increases the opening time to 10 days. Similar to v 0.3, players need to obtain an invitation code to participate, and there is also a prize pool of 1024 DAI allocated to the top 15 players on the final leaderboard.Dark Forestv 0.5 versionthen go live onChristmas 2020, the opening time has been increased to 14 days (2020/12/25 - 2021/01/08 ), this version adds a very importantplug-in system
, while also adding special NFTs that can be explored.v 0.6 versionIt is the latest version of Dark Forest. This version is divided into 5 rounds with a time span of up to 9 months. Many new functions and game elements have been added, and very interesting events have happened.。
"An "Epic" Story"
3.2 Participation methodsThe current official Dark Forest v 0.6 versionhas endedzkga.me, and the next round has not yet been announced. According to the situation in the past version, players can
Fill in the email address on the web page to enter the invitation code candidate list, and players who have obtained points in the previous round of testing will receive the invitation code before the game. Generally, players with extra invitation codes will share them in the official Discord of Dark Forest. Ordinary players You can try your luck.《For Pioneer》But in addition to the official round, players can also pay more attention to the community rounds organized by relevant communities, such as the earliest MarrowDAOand dfDAO's。
"New Year's Community Wheel"On March 1, 2022 the Dark Forest t team went liveLobbies system
, allowing the community to quickly complete one-click service opening. Subsequent communities and individuals including 277 DAO have used this system to organize several rounds of community rounds.And if you just want to experience the basic game operation of Dark Forest, you can go toDark Forest official websitedeveloped by Lobbies or dfDAOArena systemCreate a small universe to experience it. For those who have relatively programming experience, you can use the project provided by ProjectSophonDarkForest local version
to experience.
3.3 The core gameplay of the gameAs an RTS real-time strategy game, resources are the core of the game development, and the core resources arecelestial energy, the player passestransfer energyTo complete the protection and protection of celestial bodiesencroachment
, so as to explore in the entire randomly generated universe. During this process, players will get as many points as possible according to the rules, and the ranking and rewards will be evaluated according to the final points.Every round of the game hasdifferentThe scoring rules, usually based on the player's obtainedtotal resources
The transformation is implemented according to specific logic, and there are also special rules like in v 0.6.3, which are judged based on the player's own distance from the center of the universe in Odaily.In this section, I will only briefly introduce the interface and core elements of the game. If you want to know more comprehensive and detailed content, I recommend this article by MarrowDAOThe Incomplete Guide to the Dark ForestVideo introduction to Spencecoin。
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3.3.1 Core elementsFog of War:The core of an incomplete information game, withgray areapresented, players can place their ownexplore cursorPlaced in the specified area, the cursor will be based on the CPU or GPUhash rate
to explore;
Celestial body:type:As of the latest DF v 0.6, there are five types of celestial bodies: Planet (planet), Spacetime Rip (black hole), Asteriod Field (asteroid field), Quasar (quasar) and Foundry (foundry). Different types have different functions Generally speaking, planets will be the main stronghold, black holes are used to extract and transport artifacts, asteroid fields produce silver ore, quasars are used as warehouses for energy and silver ore, and foundries produce artifacts. Each type of celestial body hasLevel (Level) and attribute class (Rank)
The settings of , the properties are divided into the following 7 types:[attribute/resource]Energy:
Presented in the value of "current energy/maximum energy (eg. 100 / 400)", it is the core resource in the game and the only consumption during defense, attack and transportation. After the energy is transmitted to the target celestial body, if the energy value reached is greater than the target (existing energy x defense coefficient) of a celestial body, the celestial body can be occupied;[attribute/resource]Sliver (silver mine):
It is presented by the value of "current silver mine/maximum silver mine storage (eg. 0 / 100)", which is also the core resource in the game. It is a necessary consumable when upgrading a planet, and it will be counted as points after being transported to the black hole withdraw;[Attributes]Energy Growth (energy generation rate):Except Quasar quasars, other celestial bodies will be based on thisrateandcurrent energy ratio, continuously over timegenerate energy
, up to the upper limit of the energy of the celestial body;[Attributes]Sliver Growth (silver mine output rate):
The rate at which silver ore is produced;[Attributes]Defense:Belong to percentagecoefficient
, which represents the percentage of energy attack that the current energy value can resist. If the current energy is 200 and the defense is 300, it can resist an attack of 600 energy; if the defense is 50, it can only resist an attack of 100 energy;[Attributes]Speed (transfer speed):Decidedtransfer of resources
speed;[Attributes]Range:The transmission of energy in the dark forest will decay with distance, this value represents the transmission energy decays to zero；
maximum distanceArtifact Artifact:
Artifact is a special NFT (ERC-721) prop with powerful abilities, which can only be obtained from Foundry or secondary transactions. There are two types of one-time use and reusable. There are currently 9 items including Spaceship. Artifact (artifact Spaceship was removed in v 0.6.5 and became a new setting);Spaceships Spaceships:In the last round of competition for DF v 0.6, the official addedThe setting of the spaceship
, the player is born with 5 different types of spaceships, each type can bring a good bonus effect to the celestial body;The final basis for judging the player's ranking is composed of the energy and silver mines of all the occupied celestial bodies of the player (v 0.6.3 is an exception).
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3.3.2 Interface
login interface
The first thing users will see when entering the official website is a command-line style login interface.
But the user only needs to fill in the number corresponding to the selection to complete the creation of the wallet, and the created wallet will store the private key in the memory of the browser.
If you need to change the browser or computer, you need to export the private key and re-import it on the new end.
game interface
After completing the login, the player will enter such an initial interface, in the center of which is the home star to which the player is randomly assigned.lower right cornerInside is the aforementionedAttributesAttributes
information, and below that there is also information about the object's class and owner;upper left cornerred circle
The inside is the player's current points status;
The code feed on the right is the record and feedback of all behaviors, and you can see whether the behavior has been successfully uploaded to the chain;And if you zoom the field of view, you can see that the blue area is covered withgray fog of war
At this point, the game officially begins. Players can press and hold the parent star and drag the mouse to the target Odaily they want to occupy to complete the first energy transmission.
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3.3.3 Simple game flow
Dark Forest is a very free and open MMO strategy game, and the game mechanism will change slightly in each round, so players need to use their imagination freely to build in-game or out-of-game styles of play. (That's right, you can go to the major communities to cheat each other to win LOL)
But generally speaking, the earliest period of the opening period belongs to the accumulation period of resources. At this stage, players will generally install the plug-ins they are comfortable with first, and then start to expand their field of vision, looking for the deep space in the black area outside the blue Nebula area. Use suitable planets as early strongholds, and continue to consolidate your stronghold network, and at the same time start looking for artifacts to increase your strength.
After having the early foundation, you can carry out different tactical deployments according to your own style, whether it is an exploratory player who yearns for the stars and seas, an artifact merchant who wants to make a little money, or an aggressive player who advocates struggle. room to display their own fists.@xiangcai.ethRecommend an article here by a member of MarrowDAOshared"Dark Forest Personal Strategy Experience"
, it will be a very good reference for newcomers.And if you want to understand the war on a larger scale, you can watch this war byBattles recorded by spencecoin, a cosmic battle between two top players, Ner 0 nzz (ranked 2 in v 0.6.1) and 0x 000 da (ranked 7 in v 0.6.2) in privately agreed rules, and Ner 0 nzz also usesan article
Explained the entire battle from his own perspective.
Earlier, we gave a quick introduction to the definition of games on the entire chain and Dark Forest, but why is Dark Forest so important? Why does a game that looks very rough and simple become an inescapable game when going deep into the encrypted world or playing games on the chain? open name? This requires understanding what the Dark Forest has achieved:
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3.4.1 Technical level: FOC + zk-SNARK
Fully On-Chain, FOC
Before Dark Forest, the feasibility of games on the entire chain has always been a conceptual assumption, because games are not the same as other applications, especially games that want to achieve multiplayer real-time online, which have a problem with network delays. Extremely sensitive and high-intensity interaction requirements.
For example, in MMORPG or MOBA, a player may have more than 10 operations in one second. Unlike ordinary applications that only need to interact with the system, the interactive objects of these operations include the system and other interacting objects. Players, and every operation needs instant feedback to advance the progress of the game, which was obviously impossible on the Ethereum network with an average of only 12-15 TPS at the time.
And to put all the games on the chain means that these interactive programs need to be deployed in the form of smart contracts, which brings great challenges to the selection of game types and the design of game logic.Dark Forest is the first project to put this conceptual idea into practice. It deploys all game rules and logic on the chain in the form of contracts, so that the state of the player and the universe will be changed after any interaction occurs. All are updated on the chain in real time. Therefore, even today, Dark Forest can still be regarded as the。
One of the most complex applications
zk-SNARK realizes incomplete information gameAmong the types of games, if they are divided according to the degree of information that the participants have, they can be divided intoComplete information game and incomplete information game, the difference is whether the participants can fully grasp each other's information,perfect information gameThe most typical case in is chess, because the chessboard is public, so the participants make decisions based on the same information; andincomplete information game
A typical case of Texas Hold'em is Texas Hold'em. In addition to the five open cards on the table, players also have their own two hole cards, which increases the challenge of decision-making.
In online video games, the most typical element of incomplete information games is the "fog of war", which achieves information asymmetry by obscuring the field of vision. However, this method is almost impossible to implement in the previous blockchain, because once all the game interaction logic is on the chain, the player's interactive content and status will also be updated on the chain, becoming a transparent and checkable state, so the fog of war will also Lost meaning.However, Dark Forest uses the zero-knowledge proof algorithm zkSNARK for the first time to hide the player's interactive information.Make the game of incomplete information on the blockchain feasible,Also enrichedpossibility.
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3.4.2 Experience level: a free and open high-combination game ecosystem that fully follows the concept of encryptionopen sourceGames on the whole chainThe pattern of gives Dark Forest a very important quality, that is。
"Permissionless Interoperability Permissionless Interoperability"Dark Forest is essentially aEthereum Smart Contract, like some kind of agreement or rule, which means first of all that it no longer, anyone with the ability can use their favorite visual form to create a front-end client to call the parameters of the back-end contract; at the same time, this also means that anyaddressaddresscan interact with it, regardless of whether the address is behind a human, a robot or another smart contract, which not only expands the boundaries of the game strategy, but also creates a(Plugin)。
Prosperous plug-in ecologyIn this ecology, players spontaneously combine, build and try various things and gameplays, thus forming an organic community. The things created in the process have completely exceeded official expectations, such as the trading market for artifacts, the trading market for celestial bodies, the bounty system for planets, and even combat AI, etc. The emergence of these plug-insAdded more game objectives and gameplay
, and also allows more types of players to participate. With the introduction of the Lobby system and the development of the on-chain engine, even the rules have been released, and players can freely set the rules of the universe to develop the game.This open and highly combinable attribute has undoubtedly greatly expanded the boundaries of game possibilities, allowing gamers toCan participate in the construction of game experience
Among them, instead of relying on the official team.
As mentioned above, with the development of the Dark Forest, the ecology has become a very important existence. It can even be said that after the core rules/contracts are deployed, there is nothing official. Just as they position themselves, they will Just like a scientist in a laboratory, after arranging the growth environment of the petri dish, he quietly looks forward to the free development and evolution of the flora. Here is a brief description of some predictable communities and plug-in ecology. If you want a comprehensive understanding, it is highly recommended to participate in the entire ecology to experience it in person:
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Dark Forest3.5.1 Community Ecology
Project Sophon: The first is the official community, which belongs to the concept of petri dish and ecological square. Except for the release of specific activities or announcements, and daily problem solving, there are few operational activities;: It is an American team that resolutely does not consider itself a DAO organization. It recognizes the concept and vision of Dark Forest very much, and cooperates closely with the core team, becoming an inseparable part of the Dark Forest ecology. They have very strong technical capabilities and focus on technical construction at the infrastructure level. They once wrote aDark Forest native library
Orden_GGAllow users to start a round of games by themselves off-chain or on-chain;: It is a very hard-core Ukrainian game organization, both in code ability and game technology have a very high level, once in the v0.6 versionTop 1 for 4 consecutive rounds, but also a high-quality builder in the ecology, with strong action and execution ability, and built aArtifact trading market
D_F DAOAnd added a liquidity pool, and is also a core player of Aavegotichi (little ghost), and even made an open source client for this game;: It is an early American-based DAO established in version v0.6. It is an organization that pays great attention to the innovation of game experience. It also has excellent development capabilities. It has created many interesting things in the Dark Forest universe, including sacrifice streams. style of playColossusDark Forest Arena(It is a smart contract that allows members to contribute their own galaxies to the contract, allowing them to win collectively), Dark Forest's magical revision
MarrowDAO|GuildW(a DF competitive game in the form of MOBA), etc., are also good at organizing and trying new strategies in the game. Overall, it has a good brand promotion and operation, and it is a very dynamic community in Dark Forest;: is a ChineseChinese DAO, very active in assisting the expansion and advancement of the Dark Forest ecology, belonging to the core evangelists of the Dark Forest, especially in the Chinese-speaking circle. The MarrowDAO organization has produced a lot of high-quality articles and strategy sharing, and also has good development capabilities, includingArtifact trading market, GPU drawing toolMany plug-ins including , and also the first in the entire Dark Forest ecosystemOrganizations Hosting Community Wheels
277 DAO, since there was no Lobby system at that time, the community needed to modify the codes of the client and the contract by itself, and the workload and technical content were not small;: Is a dedicated blockchain gameChinese community
DF Archon, is good at organizing events, and has held 5 consecutive rounds of Dark Forest community events after the Dark Forest Lobby system was launched; at the same time, he is also the main preacher in the Chinese area, translating and writing many Dark Forest-related tutorials and materials, and Developed some interesting little plugins;: It is a game focused on the whole chainsmall group of developersDF-Gaia, mainly developed and integrated many plug-ins in the Dark Forest ecology, and packaged the tool functions in DF in a more user-friendly way, and built it into
P DAO: It is a relatively mysterious small-scale Chinese organization that appeared in the v0.6.5 round. Different from the large-scale use of plug-ins and group-style expansion strategies of large-scale DAOs, P-DAO focuses more on the efficient collaboration of team members. The strategy of voice and shift rotation achieved an excellent result of 7 members occupying the top ten in v 0.6.5.
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3.5.2 Plug-in ecologyPlug-ins are a very important part of the entire Dark Forest, currently only included in the official reviewplugin library
There are 55 open source plug-ins, and here we will only give an overview.
We can roughly divide plug-ins into 3 categories by usage purpose:Visualization:
Since the original game interface of Dark Forest is relatively simple, there are many plug-ins that can help the information to be presented better. The relatively commonly used ones include:Data visualization:
Heat Map, Mini Map, Voyage Time, which can calculate the transfer time between Odaily, Map Filter Export, a map export tool developed by DF Archon, etc.Highlighting or marking of specific objects:
The two must-have plug-ins developed by DF Archon are friendly logo Peace Dove and Highlight Friends, Highlight Odaily buff's Hightlight Buffs, etc.market place:
It mainly matches the exchange of different resources for players, adding new game motivations to players, including but not limited to:Artifact trading market:Artifact MarketD_F DAO'sDark Sea
, Marrow DAO'sCoordinate reward market:NightMarketDeveloped by 0x Sage and xyz_pierre using zk technologyBroadcast Market
, and the project developed by Project SophonOdaily bounty market:Artemis
Developed by DF Archonautomation:
Such plug-ins are usually used more frequently, mainly through scripts to help players simplify complex and cumbersome operations and improve execution efficiency:Resource related:
Artifact capture and management Two-piece set Hunt Artifacts, Artifactory, one-click distribution of silver mines Distribute Silver, one-click collection of resources Centralize Resources, etc.Combat related:
Capture nearby Odaily Crawl Planets with one click, repeat attack automatically, Simultanous Attack with one click, even Wage War that can directly target players, etc.In addition to the open source plug-ins that are officially reviewed and included, there are also a large number of plug-ins or clients independently developed by players or the community, thus creating a rich game experience and diverse gameplay. Some community players even develop a game that can be played by themselves.。
AI in the Dark ForestThis kind of core universe rules, infinitely expanding downwards to enrich the flesh and blood,An open ecological model in which players freely build game experience and combination tools,
Let Dark Forest have wider possibilities than traditional centralized games.
4. Full chain duo: Loot
Unlike Dark Forest, which has a clear game purpose and game mechanism, Loot, as an NFT project, has no rules since its launch. It caused a sensation in the entire encryption circle at that time with only 8 lines of black and white characters. Today, many participants are still confused about Loot, so what exactly is Loot?
Loot (for Adventurers) 4.1 Origin@Dom HofmannyesBlitmapsAn experimental project released on August 28, 2021, after another experimental project was released beforeNouns, and he is also the famous CC 0 projectSUPA member of the founding team, and his earlier identity was one of the founders of Vine, the most popular overseas video sharing application (Vine was later acquired by Twitter). its new projectAlready Secures $12M From Tier 1 Crypto Fund Paradigm。
Seed round investment
The concept of Loot was first announced by Dom on Twitter on August 25, 2021, and the contract was officially deployed on the 28th. The sale structure was a total of 8,000 Freemints, of which 7,777 were for public sale, and the remaining 233 were sold by Reserved by Dom, all 7,777 NFTs were minted in less than 3 hours after the project was announced.
4.2 Philosophy
The most different between Loot and mainstream NFT projects is the "Bottom-up Approach" behind it.
In a traditional NFT project, we purchase a complete artwork/IP from the project party/creator, and expect the project team/creator to build more content around the universe of the theme/IP. The mode in which the holders actively endow them with core values and rights, while the community and holders are more passively receiving or creating some peripheral content is classified as **"top-down"** mode. This path often relies more on the core role to promote the project. Once the core role is absent, it will bring huge obstacles to the sustainable development of the project.
However, from the success of projects like BAYC and Azuki, we can find that in addition to the active operation of the project party, the cohesion and creativity displayed by the community members are also amazing, and they have played an indelible role in pushing the project to success. role. What Loot wants to try is to stimulate and release this unparalleled potential to a greater extent, creating a project that is completely decentralized and defined by the community.
Loot never wanted to be an IP from the very beginning. It is an IP without any images or colors, just 8 lines of white text with a bunch of characteristic fields on a black background. Presentation, everyone can use these feature fields to construct the world they understand.The founder, Dom, has hardly been involved in any matters of the project after the project went live. This behavior of not restricting any development and completely leaving governance to the holders has also achieved true openness. as：
What Vitalik said
"Almost anything anyone creates will 'exist,' but what really matters is the extent to which others can build on top of it."But the advantages and disadvantages of this model are very obvious. Loot is like a pile of stone bricks, and people can use it to build a variety of huge, magnificent, or delicate and ingenious buildings. It has, the underlying technology of the blockchain also endows it withComposabilityComposability
features, which means that any other blockchain project in the future can quickly obtain a large amount of traffic and content by introducing Loot or combining other projects of Loot.And if no one comes to discuss, use, design and build, then Loot will eventually becomeMeaningless
, not even a small image. At the same time, just as Rome was not achieved in a day, the construction and accumulation of the early stage ecology also needs to go through a long process, and only through it can we accumulate a lot.Fortunately, judging from the current situation, Loot is steadily accumulating, and has been recognized by many excellent developers and senior encryption believers. Under the background of community autonomy,Dozens of naturally gathered teams continue to actively contribute to the community,
4.3 Development overview
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4.3.1 Loot secondary situation
The transaction price of Loot's first secondary market was only 0.05 ETH, which did not attract much attention in the NFT market at that time, and the price stabilized around 0.1 ETH in the next 2 days.
But no one expected that starting from August 30th, Loot began to enter a period of crazy promotion, and the price has been rising all the way. On September 3rd, it reached the highest daily average transaction price of 18.5 ETH, and the highest floor price on that day reached 20. ETH. But the good times didn’t last long. In the next few months, with the decline in popularity, the clearing of speculative profits, and the differences with the mainstream ideas, many players could not understand the Loot ecology, and the funds in the market were gradually withdrawn. At the end of 2021, it will fall to around 2 ETH.
At present, the price of Loot is hovering around 0.7 ETH, the number of holders is 2,520, the total historical transaction volume is as high as 140,000 ETH, and the total market value is 82,200 ETH, ranking 16th in the market, but the average daily transaction situation is relatively deserted .
(Data Sources:NFTGO.IO， 2021/08/28-2023/02/18)
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Loot (for Adventures)
4.3.2 Loot core series
Synthetic Loot
The Loot ontology, also known as OG Loot, was launched on August 25, 2021, with a total of 8,000, and currently 7,779 are in circulation. Each NFT represents a loot pack containing 8 pieces of equipment, and each line of text describes the corresponding equipment: Weapons, Chest Armor, Head Armor, Waist Armor, Foot Armor, Hand Armor, Necklaces Necklaces, Rings Rings. But in the end, the right to interpret the text description is completely open, and anyone can define the visual presentation of the description and even the meaning itself.Synthetic Loot is not an NFT, it isSeptember 2, 2021 by DomA copy released**contract
, which is essentially an algorithm that converts wallet addresses into random numbers**, allowing more people to participate in Loot. Any address can use this algorithm to obtain and only obtain a set of characteristic fields of the Loot structure. Logical It is a bit like the concept of the Loot version of the SBT soul-bound token, and any developer can realize the linkage with Loot by calling this contract.
Genesis AdventuresThe released series of derivatives, starting with the number 8001, are dynamically produced at 1/10 of the block production speed of Ethereum, with an annual output of about 250,000 and a total of about 1.5 million copies. Currently, 135,335 have been minted. Users can choose their own casting number, except for the difference in number, other attributes are the same as the Loot ontology.@TimshelIs a core community member of LootGenesis ProjectInitiatedIt is the core product of Loot Ecology, and it is also the first derivative series developed from the narrative level in the Loot ecology.Feature field parsing
To try to explain the origin of Loot, and extract the concept of **" 16 Orders "** (16 Orders/16 Clans) around the Suffixes suffix (similar to the concepts of factions and tribes).「Genesis Mana」Loot holders can distill the Loot with the Suffixes suffix field to obtain intermediate products**
This is a very interesting process, in which a large number of collaborations between community members and ecological organizations occurred, including the timeline compilation in cooperation with DivineDAO, the issuance of $ATIME tokens, etc., and finally gained wide recognition in the ecosystem. And by virtue of the narrative, it has become a role symbol with advanced status in the Loot universe. Later, it can even give specific NFT status stories and exclusive names through the Scroll project, forming a relationship like Zhuge Liang (GA) and ordinary people (Loot) in the Three Kingdoms universe. became a very unique project.
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4.3.3 Loot Related Tokens
Adventure Gold ($AGLD)
As an open ecological project, Loot has not released any official tokens. All related tokens are issued by organizations and project parties in the Loot ecosystem. Currently, the two tokens with the highest market capitalization are $AGLD issued by Will Paper and $LORD of the Loot Realms ecosystem:Will Paperearliest byAtSeptember 2, 2021
At present, $AGLD is hovering around $0.5, FDV is 36.33 million US dollars, and the circulating market value is 31.97 million US dollars
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Lords ($LORD)
(Data source: Binance, as of 2023/02/18)
The core organization in the ecology, BibliothecaDAO, revolves around the derivative project Loot Realms to release ecological tokens in December 2021, with a total of 500 million tokens, and 89.65 million tokens have been issued so far.(BIP-7)February 1, 2023 The community completes the 7th governance proposal*
Currently, the price of $LORD is floating around $0.13, the FDV is 12.22 million U.S. dollars, and the circulating market value is 6.94 million U.S. dollars.
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(Data source: DexGuru, as of 2023/02/18)
4.4. The Narrative and Ecology of Loot@TimsheXYZlAs the founder, Dom hardly intervened in the development of Loot after founding it, but chose to let it grow naturally. During this process, many excellent contributors and community organizations gradually began to emerge, especially Timshel@lordOfAFew, they have gradually become the core figures and even spiritual leaders in the Loot ecosystem through their continuous positive contributions to the community, leading the community to move forward. At present, Timshel is more focused on the depiction and development of the macro-narrative of the Loot universe, while Loaf is more helping the Loot eco-related products to land.
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4.4.1 Narrative: Loot.Foundation
First of all, it needs to be reiterated again that Loot has no official statement, so it is really important to obtain the recognition and consensus of other participants in the community, and this requires continuous contribution and high-quality output.Loot.FoundationIn the whole process of narrative expansion, Timshel undoubtedly played a crucial role, and the
It is also the base of current community contributors, and the Loot universe interpreted by them through early in-depth excavation of attributes and contracts has become the current mainstream narrative.
In this narrative, "round and round" is the background color of the world. Loot is a relic of the predecessors, which was accidentally explored and excavated by later generations. Later generations obtained new revelations through continuous learning and understanding of the relics, and under the guidance of these revelations, they created new things and explored further boundaries. The Loot in the hand becomes stronger, and the generations have their beginnings and ends. After the intergenerational change and the cycle, we have come to the third cycle, which is the era of "us".
On the website of Loot.Foundation, we can see that the description of each period only has a general framework, and the content and direction of historical stories leave a lot of blank space for anyone to fill in and expand.「Open Quil」In order to promote the development of some content, Timshel even launched a new project **「Genesis Scroll」to collect and select high-quality creative content, and
** is a content expansion project for the first cycle "The Genesis Era".Loot-talkGenesis Scroll was first started in Loot's community forum
, and later continued to the openquil platform, which is a narrative co-creation project open to everyone. Participants can freely use their imagination around the world of the Genesis Era period, and create content about characters, families, wars, poetry, etc.
If Loot is compared to the "Three Kingdoms", then Genesis Adventures is like a king who left ink in history, and Genesis Scroll is the "Three Kingdoms" that depicts the entire period, which may contain different chapters just like " Romance of the Three Kingdoms Shushu Zhuge Liang Biography, Loot can also have Genesis Scrolls The Fox Raeven.
At present, Genesis Scrolls has successfully completed three rounds of Writing Grant, and the main sponsors of this round of Grant include Loot ecological projects such as Loot community, Genesis community, Realms community**, and Mask Network as a decentralized narrative Core supporters also provided a $10,000 grant**. At present, Scrolls has accumulated a total of more than 100,000 words of rich content.
If so, for Loot, even if there is a new Loot narrative of the Eastern Xianxia version in the future, it is not impossible, as long as the content in it is attractive enough, and contributors can be recognized by other participants, the same The ecology surrounding the narrative can be gathered. After all, the greatest significance of "meaning" lies in being believed.
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Loot's openness and inclusiveness made it attract a large number of derivative projects at the beginning. Even though many projects did not continue to develop, they still built a huge Lootverse. For detailed projects in the ecosystem, you can find them in Loot site'sResourcesandLoot WatcherandI also recommend this article written by Hill, a core contributor in the Loot Chinese area and an investor in SevenX"BAYC to the left, Loot to the right, eight months after its birth, explore the ecological development of the "NFT new paradigm" Loot"
For detailed understanding, this section will only give a brief introduction.
Loot Realms (Bibliotheca DAO)
Basically, after a relatively long period of baptism, the projects and organizations that have persisted in the Loot ecology to this day all have good development or content output capabilities, as well as a sincere belief in the Loot concept. In the current Loot ecology, relatively Some of the more active projects/organizations include:
Crypts & Caverns
Loot Realms is currently a Loot land derivative project managed by Bibliotheca DAO. It will be launched on September 14, 2021, with a total of 8,000 shares. Bibliotheca DAO is a decentralized open source game studio developed around the StarkNet ecosystem. It has a relatively clear roadmap. It will make two products around Realms. It will conduct a private round of financing on January 31, 2023, achieving a super-raised 6.35 times Shengjing, successfully raised 625,000 US dollars, and is currently conducting the internal test development of the game Realms: Eternum on the whole chain. (see 4.5 for details)as wellLoot's land spin-off project
, launched in November 2021, with a total of 9,000. Compared with the city-like territories of Realms, Caverns are developing towards small maps. Each Crypts & Caverns is a randomly generated **"seed form"** dungeon map, which continues the underlying "clues" of the Loot ecology concept, which means that any developer can perform their own front-end visualization by calling its contract to generate a random dungeon. A game like Hero.fun uses the metadata of Crypts & Caverns to generate a dungeon similar to Beacon small games.
HyperLoot
HyperLootAt present, C&C is constantly trying new ideas and actively cooperating with Realms. There may be a very interesting model in the future. For example, in the Realms ecology, Loot holders enter random C&C dungeons to fight and win If you die, you will take away the loot in the dungeon, and if you die, the dungeon will increase experience, and the equipment on your body will be eaten by the dungeon, and given back to the holder of the corresponding C&C.
It is a relatively good quality among many Loot visualization projects. It will be launched in April 2022. All holders of Loot, mLoot and GA can spend 0.05 E to cast a corresponding HyperLootNFT, with a total of 20,000. 8585 were minted.
Perhaps because the co-founder is a senior art director and has rich experience in the field of game character design (he has participated in game projects including Hearthstone, Clash Royale, and Netease Harry Potter), compared to other The most popular visualization project, HyperLoot has a more acceptable style of painting, as well as a clearer roadmap and progress.On February 10, 2023 they announcedlatest progress
LootMMO
LootMMO, the 3D version of NFT modeling has been completed for all HyperLoot, and the original holders will be able to upgrade the NFT to the 3D version in the near future. At the same time, the self-developed mobile game "HyperLoot: CC 0 Wars game" will also be launched soon , Judging from the disclosed information, the painting style is a bit similar to Clash Royale and Brawl Stars, and it will be a MOBA mobile game with OCA assets on the chain.
It is a Loot ecological MMORPG game developed based on the open source game engine CORE (the bottom layer is UE), which is connected to many projects in the Loot ecosystem. Although it has not yet realized the form of the whole chain, due to its open source characteristics, it has also attracted and encouraged many developers to participate in the construction of the game.
The Crypt Game
The CryptJudging from the gameplay video of the game on the official website, LootMMO already has a pretty good game presentation, and the style of painting is a bit like World of Warcraft. I also look forward to the game experience that can be presented on it as the narrative of the Loot universe expands in the future.
It is a Loot ecological full-chain game developed by web3 game studio PlaymintUK (completed a $4 million seed round of financing in April 2022). Players need to hold Loot, mLoot or GA to participate in the game. The game mechanism is relatively simple , mainly through the cooperation between players to complete the raid dungeon, so as to obtain NFT loot.
Banners
At present, the game has opened three chapters, and the game mechanism of each chapter has changed slightly, but no more progress has been announced recently.
Banners is a flag-type NFT with a total of 10,600 pieces. It aims to become a social layer in the Loot ecology, by turning the factions and pursuit images of characters in the Lootverse into specific icons, and the banner composed of icons carries their will.
The Rift
The RiftBanners is currently an active content producer in the ecology, and they are often included in the expansion of Scroll and other solicitations.
It belongs to the DID type of infrastructure in the Loot ecology, which endows each Loot NFT with an experience value attribute. When Loot interacts with items in the ecology, it can obtain a certain experience value, and the experience value can be used by other derivatives. Project references thus give more powerful functionality.
It provides a solution for the accumulation of value in the Loot ecosystem. At the same time, The Rift also participated in the EIP-5050 proposal to create an interactive mode between NFTs in a new way.
Realms is currently one of the most core projects in the Loot ecology, and with its development, it has also grown into an ecology with great vitality. Realms is currently actively developing two full-chain game projects: Realms:Eternum and Realms:Adventurers
4.5.1 Realms: Eternum
to experience
According to the perception of the overall experience, the game already has a relatively clear structure and logic. If the underlying narrative of Loot is Romance of the Three Kingdoms, then Eternum is similar to the game "Three Kingdoms". Although there is still room for improvement in terms of interactive experience, and Since Starknet is still in the speed limit stage of the test network, it takes too long for L2 to return to L1 for transaction confirmation. However, as one of the few full-chain games, Eternum still shows a very good performance.
And with the further access to Loot ecological narratives in the future, such as Loot, GA, etc., the game model and volume will be enriched in a lot of time, which is a project worthy of attention.
4.5.2 Realms: Adventurers
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According to the news disclosed by the team, Adventurers’ plan is to become a full-chain RPG game platform. The platform provides various tools to allow developers to quickly access Loot ecological projects and complete the development of RPG games, such as accessing C&C dungeons, and players can operate characters to explore in different dungeons to obtain NFT assets and $LORD.
What's interesting is that the team very much hopes to add the concept of "risk" to it, that is, players can stop as soon as they are good in the exploration process, or they can continue to explore deeper, but once death occurs, they will lose some/all The corresponding NPC or developer will get this part of the asset as a reward (such as the holder of the corresponding C&C), the team calls this model **"Play 2 Die"**, this concept increases the game of the overall game sex.
However, since Adventurers is still in the stage of closed development, the idea is still in the process of verification, and we need to wait and see for the final presentation in the future.
Finally, the current overall Loot ecology has begun to focus more on Starkware cooperation. As a gathering place for games on the whole chain, the "Steam on the chain" Catridge and the "Full chain game incubator" MatchboxDAO in StarkNet are also very worthy of attention.
5. Dark Forest and Loot
It took a lot of space to explain the two very important projects in the current full-chain game respectively, so that everyone can understand the basic concept of the project. Then if we analyze them together, what similarities and differences can we see, and what enlightenment will it have for the proposition of games on the whole chain?
5.1 Differences in Narrative Frameworks: "Rules" and "Clues"
Narrative is undoubtedly the most important part of the content industry, and the decentralized property of the blockchain has also been utilized in different ways by Dark Forest and Loot to construct two different forms.
Loot As mentioned above, the abstracted text at the same time releases infinite possibilities about the world view and rules, and only provides players with "clues" about the basic elements, and the right to interpret the "clues" is completely left to everyone. A participant, in this process, players can not only explain clues (eg GA), visualize (eg Hyperloot), but even associate other elements related to clues (eg Loot Realms) and create bridges linking different elements (eg eg The rift), which allowed Loot to grow a content ecology that is completely jointly constructed by the participants themselves. This is exactly the tolerance of all possibilities that this "bottom-up" model can open.
