AMA Recap: Avalanche Vietnam x MetaDerby
On Friday, July 8th, 2022 at 09:00 pm (UTC+7), we hosted a live AMA with MetaMike, MetaDerby Founder.
A revised transcript is available below:
Before we dive into the questions, please introduce briefly about yourself, your team and some key features of MetaDerby.
Hi, I am MetaMike, a founder of MetaDerby. MetaDerby is the first Free to Play to Earn Horse Racing Metaverse built on Avalanche. We launched the Beta Version of our game about 2 months ago, and since then, there have been over 200,000 races run. In our Beta Version, only the race module and market place are available, but we will add Breeding, Spectating and Prediction markets as well as Land ownership so that Users can Create 2 Earn by building farms for increased breeding capacities or even building their own race tracks and hosting their own races.
Next, could you please update some latest news or big events of Metaderby in the coming time?
We have recently released our Free 2 Play mode and Death Racing Mode. In our Free 2 Play model, users will be able to claim an in-game starter horse to try after completing some simple social tasks. These Starter Class horses compete at a low tier and have a finite lifespan, but it gives users a taste of our game and we hope to convert them into paid users by purchasing Loot Boxes, which give them a horse of random stats or through purchasing a horse on the secondary market in our in-game marketplace. The Death Racing mode allows users to race for a higher token prize pool, but the loser(s) will have their NFT burned. This is an exciting way for users to compete for higher prize pools with horses that may have reached its peak in class and its performance plateaus. We have many exciting things in development, one of the upcoming developments is Equipment for Horses. By equipping these items, they may boost certain stats of your horse.
1. How does #MetaDerby plan to increase adoption outside of the crypto space?
We plan to do this by being accessible and easy to understand and play. In order to achieve this, we are working on a mobile version of the game, and a sign up with email or socials that will create a wallet for the user without having them need to understand the complications of it. Then by utilizing a freemium model, these new users will be able to try and play our game for free. This combined with marketing directed at legacy web2 users.
2. When can I start watching races on my cell phone?
Can’t you create a system to automatically enter a race?
I’d like to watch the races on my mobile phone.
We are currently working on a mobile version of the game. We do plan to have different race modes in the future, with Death Race already launched, we also want to implement private room races.
3. Many games today set high costs to start the game and therefore start with a smaller player base. Does “MetaDerby” have an entrance fee or starting conditions & if so, what are they?
As I mentioned earlier, we also have a Free 2 Play feature. So users can claim an in-game horse to try our game and race with. We did this to be as inclusive as possible, and allow users a taste of what it would be like to continue on playing the game by buying Horse NFTs and competing at higher tier classes with higher entry fees and prize pools.
4. How can we earn in this game? What are the requirements to join? Can you also tell us the token utilities of $DBY?
Users can earn daily reward payour in $HOOF tokens by participating in a race and placing in the top 3. This is a daily reward that is allowed to be won once per day per horse. The amount of the payout depends on the Class level the horse is racing in. All users must pay some $HOOF token to enter their horse into a race, this Race Joining Fee increases with Class level. All the Race Joining fees per race are pooled and then a weighted payout is distributed to the top placers of the race. This system is zero-sum and means that ther will be winners and losers in a race. This model allows us to keep our token economy in balance without rampant inflation and then subsequent devaluation of the token. The use cases for our governance token $DBY is limited at the moment, but will be implementing more in the future with Land Sales and Breeding.
5. Could you share some plans for the upcoming year. Which part of the project are you most focused on right now and How many killer features of Your project that makes it ahead of its competitors Could you tell us 2–3 features the Project?
We are currently focused on releasing game modes and features that will be exciting for players. We are rushing these features out in beta, concurrently with developing the overall MetaDerby-Verse. Our goal from the start was always to build a game that was fun for players to play and that was sustainable in the long run. As we have seen the pitfalls of other P2E games in this space, as they grow there are too many NFTs and rewards tokens being paid out, this destroys the game economy in the long run. We are very mindful of the fine balance that needs to be maintained here so that players can enjoy our game, have the thrill of some risk involved in racing, and also enjoy building in our metaverse.
6. Does the game consume much of the players’ time? How many hours do i need to spend a day on the game?
The game does not consume much of players time. If you own one horse NFT. you can race that horse 10 times in a 24 hour period. It has energy charges that you can use all at once, but they recharge at 1 charge every 2.4 hours. Each race lasts about 2 minutes, from the matching till the end of race. So not too much time.
But of course, there are some players who onw multiple horses
7. What difficulties and opportunities will Metaderby face during the launch process? What are the strengths of Metaderby in general and the team in particular that contribute to the project’s explosive potential?
So, we don’t really want players to think of our game as a defi or yield farming type of thing. There are no guaranteed yields. All players have to pay a race joining fee to enter races, and the prize pool from the race joining fees for that race is fully paid out to the top placers. So there is some risk involved here with racing. But this allows us to build a balanced token economy that won’t have rampant inflation.
We have quite a large team currently, i believe we are over 20 team members at the moment. We were incubated by OFR fund and our seed round was supported by many Avax ecosystem players, including Ava Labs Blizzard Fund. Our team members also have vast experience in the crypto space, many of them have worked at Binance previously and built out many of their successful products/programs.
8. According to your roadmap, you are going to launch a “Breeding” in your Beta Version. Since I am not familiar with this term, can you deeply explain about this concept and how does this work? Can users earn profits/rewards by joining this platform?
Breeding will be when 2 Horse NFTs, one male, and one female, ‘breed’ to create a new horse NFT offsping. In our game logic, we made it so that the new Horse NFT has a chance that their stats could be even better than either of their original parent horse NFTs. Users will be able to breed and race or trade the new horse NFTs, so hopefully there will be some economic benefit for them there.
9. Is your gameplay can be easily understood by all kinds of players especially fwor those who are relatively new into crypto or just starting out?
Yes our gameplay is very straight forward and easy to understand. We want to further simplify the process by our app making a wallet for a user if they dont understand how blockchain/crypto works. So they will be able to just create an account (“wallet”) by using their email address and fund that account with their credit card.
10. There are many projects competing with Metaderby. So what is the difference of Metaderby compared to other projects? Why should users choose Metaderby?
As I mentioned early, we have a big team with extensive experience, and connections, in building successful products. Currently we are only in Beta so it is not our full game yet, and we are adding many new features and game modes to metaderby. We don’t want people to think of us as a ‘blockchain game’, we just want to be a game, thats fun for people to play, and perhaps if they are lucky they can also earn from it too.
