Until now the builders in "web3 gaming" have focused on “play to/and earn”, meaning players collecting NFTs, semi-fungible tokens, and currencies that can be used in-game, and eventually selling them in exchange for cryptocurrencies such as Ether.

There is another paradigm within the space of web3 gaming: blockchain assets that have a value that is bound up with the popularity of a game, and their utility for making it more fun, but are not generated by players' in-game efforts.

At partition.gg we are building decentralized financial infrastructure for the next generation of games. Our first product, Partition Core (Core), is an Ethereum-based platform for game devs to deploy a unique token set with a supply that is fixed at creation. They can raise funds by selling these tokens to players with the promise that owning them will provide some kind of utility.

Some of the ways a developer might choose to give tokens utility include

• Gating content (game modes, world regions)

• Cosmetic items

• Voting on development priorities, decisions

• Early access

• Out of game rewards (merch, events)

There are more obvious use cases for multiplayer games that have ongoing development, but not exclusively, and a single token could provide utility across multiple games.

Incorporating a token can be experimental/non-committal, and does not need to replace any other financing methods. Tokens can even be given away for free, letting developers add utility as they please, without pressure.

We'll get into the specifics of Core, but first some philosophical reasons for why not just developers but also gamers should care about the future we're building towards.

The ultimate question is "why would this make games any more fun?" Developers need to get paid, and there are more and less popular ways they try to make it happen, with for example increasing in-game power "pay to win" being among the more unpopular. There are still poor choices that can be made with tokens, but there are also some reasons to believe they offer advantages over everything that has come before.

Weighting. One of the most common complaints players make is when changes are made to their favorite games that are perceived to be intended to attract newer, or more casual players, at the expense of their preferences. When a token is held by the playerbase, then its value will be responsive to the collective beliefs of the current players, proportional with each individual's financial commitment. In this way, developers who hold their own token will be more sensitive to the opinions of the players who have contributed most to their success.

In other words the more hardcore players, who will typically own more tokens, will have a greater ability to indirectly influence development, by voting with their wallet, and also directly influence it by formal voting mechanisms that will probably be adopted more widely.

Care. Players will know that the more fun the game is to more people, the more their stake will be valued. They will have a greater sense of responsibility, reducing some of the tendency for griefing, and encouraging creativity.

Appreciation. It might be more enjoyable to pay for extra content and utility, if it's an investment at the same time, and not just a one-time payment for DLC or an "access pass".

Core is built to be flexible, simple, and to capture network effects so that individual success helps everyone else building on the platform. The master contract is an NFT collection of 10000 tokens which can act as certificates that control ERC20s. What follows is a discussion about several key choices that were made during the design of the system.

Deflationary. Because each token supply is fixed from the beginning, the options available for taking advantage of financial complexity in order to obfuscate value are significantly narrowed. It also captures the intuition that "if I own a percentage stake in a venture today, it should be the same tomorrow if I don't make any trades". This is arguably the fairest and least exploitable model within the bounds of tokenomics. Long term, the name "Partition" will signal "trustworthy".

Single total supply. Every ERC20 has the same coin supply cap of 1 million coins, which leads to familiarity and ease of comparing values between different tokens.

Interoperable. The owner and chosen delegate can set a URI to be associated with their NFT. This makes it possible to develop standards for bundling additional data for off-chain processing. A web3-native Steam could use Core as a backbone, and use data returned by the token's URI to recognize any attached NFT or semi-fungible token collections, and any other kind of data too.

Public infrastructure. There is no administrator on the master contract, and each NFT owner is responsible for their own token set, and associated on-chain data.

Why 10k NFTs and not unlimited (or 1k, or 100k)? First because with 10k, one token can mean one vote, so it's possible to put the owners in charge of a treasury. Second, because we are trying to solve a bootstrapping problem, the possibility of making gains on the NFTs themselves is helpful for driving attention and resources into platform development. The choice of magnitude aims to satisfy both requirements that token launches should be real commitments, and that there should be enough space for every good "web3 game" that is built over the next decades.

Why Ethereum? Because it is the most future proof of all smart contract chains. It is technically feasible to move the ERC20 tokens onto a different chain, and this seems likely in the long term, as the ecosystem and scaling technology improves.

Core is now live on Ethereum mainnet, and our website provides an interface for minting the NFTs. Our attention now turns to Markets, which will be built on top of Core and is intended to make token sales as frictionless as possible. Devs will be able to activate their NFT and deposit their tokens in a pool for public sale in a single transaction, with configuration options. They will be able to link to a webpage that presents information about the token - current and historical data - and allows them to be purchased directly.

More details are to come. To keep up, follow us on twitter.

Until now the builders in "web3 gaming" have focused on “play to/and earn”, meaning players collecting NFTs, semi-fungible tokens, and currencies that can be used in-game, and eventually selling them in exchange for cryptocurrencies such as Ether.

There is another paradigm within the space of web3 gaming: blockchain assets that have a value that is bound up with the popularity of a game, and their utility for making it more fun, but are not generated by players' in-game efforts.

At partition.gg we are building decentralized financial infrastructure for the next generation of games. Our first product, Partition Core (Core), is an Ethereum-based platform for game devs to deploy a unique token set with a supply that is fixed at creation. They can raise funds by selling these tokens to players with the promise that owning them will provide some kind of utility.

Some of the ways a developer might choose to give tokens utility include

• Gating content (game modes, world regions)

• Cosmetic items

• Voting on development priorities, decisions

• Early access

• Out of game rewards (merch, events)

There are more obvious use cases for multiplayer games that have ongoing development, but not exclusively, and a single token could provide utility across multiple games.

Incorporating a token can be experimental/non-committal, and does not need to replace any other financing methods. Tokens can even be given away for free, letting developers add utility as they please, without pressure.

We'll get into the specifics of Core, but first some philosophical reasons for why not just developers but also gamers should care about the future we're building towards.

The ultimate question is "why would this make games any more fun?" Developers need to get paid, and there are more and less popular ways they try to make it happen, with for example increasing in-game power "pay to win" being among the more unpopular. There are still poor choices that can be made with tokens, but there are also some reasons to believe they offer advantages over everything that has come before.

Weighting. One of the most common complaints players make is when changes are made to their favorite games that are perceived to be intended to attract newer, or more casual players, at the expense of their preferences. When a token is held by the playerbase, then its value will be responsive to the collective beliefs of the current players, proportional with each individual's financial commitment. In this way, developers who hold their own token will be more sensitive to the opinions of the players who have contributed most to their success.

In other words the more hardcore players, who will typically own more tokens, will have a greater ability to indirectly influence development, by voting with their wallet, and also directly influence it by formal voting mechanisms that will probably be adopted more widely.

Care. Players will know that the more fun the game is to more people, the more their stake will be valued. They will have a greater sense of responsibility, reducing some of the tendency for griefing, and encouraging creativity.

Appreciation. It might be more enjoyable to pay for extra content and utility, if it's an investment at the same time, and not just a one-time payment for DLC or an "access pass".

Core is built to be flexible, simple, and to capture network effects so that individual success helps everyone else building on the platform. The master contract is an NFT collection of 10000 tokens which can act as certificates that control ERC20s. What follows is a discussion about several key choices that were made during the design of the system.

Deflationary. Because each token supply is fixed from the beginning, the options available for taking advantage of financial complexity in order to obfuscate value are significantly narrowed. It also captures the intuition that "if I own a percentage stake in a venture today, it should be the same tomorrow if I don't make any trades". This is arguably the fairest and least exploitable model within the bounds of tokenomics. Long term, the name "Partition" will signal "trustworthy".

Single total supply. Every ERC20 has the same coin supply cap of 1 million coins, which leads to familiarity and ease of comparing values between different tokens.

Interoperable. The owner and chosen delegate can set a URI to be associated with their NFT. This makes it possible to develop standards for bundling additional data for off-chain processing. A web3-native Steam could use Core as a backbone, and use data returned by the token's URI to recognize any attached NFT or semi-fungible token collections, and any other kind of data too.

Public infrastructure. There is no administrator on the master contract, and each NFT owner is responsible for their own token set, and associated on-chain data.

Why 10k NFTs and not unlimited (or 1k, or 100k)? First because with 10k, one token can mean one vote, so it's possible to put the owners in charge of a treasury. Second, because we are trying to solve a bootstrapping problem, the possibility of making gains on the NFTs themselves is helpful for driving attention and resources into platform development. The choice of magnitude aims to satisfy both requirements that token launches should be real commitments, and that there should be enough space for every good "web3 game" that is built over the next decades.

Why Ethereum? Because it is the most future proof of all smart contract chains. It is technically feasible to move the ERC20 tokens onto a different chain, and this seems likely in the long term, as the ecosystem and scaling technology improves.

Core is now live on Ethereum mainnet, and our website provides an interface for minting the NFTs. Our attention now turns to Markets, which will be built on top of Core and is intended to make token sales as frictionless as possible. Devs will be able to activate their NFT and deposit their tokens in a pool for public sale in a single transaction, with configuration options. They will be able to link to a webpage that presents information about the token - current and historical data - and allows them to be purchased directly.

More details are to come. To keep up, follow us on twitter.