My take:

A silly game on the blockchain could be the multi-access bridge that strengthens gaming community adoption of Defi, NFTs, and crypto-assets.

I’d like to first begin by stating the obvious. I could be wrong.

Here’s my argument against that, though, with the goal of being able to explain this to a 7-year-old.

We’ll start here - DeFi Kingdoms

If you’re in my circle, you’re either rolling your eyes when I mention DeFi Kingdoms or opening them by wondering what the hell is DeFi Kingdoms (DFK). There’s a mix of both, and I welcome both to balance my conviction and to help me see something that I can’t on my own.

As of the writing of this sentence, it’s 5 am on 1/4/22, and DFK has been around for 4 months now. My discovery of DFK was in middle December, and since, my understanding is expanding as ill-experienced as I still am.

The what - What is DeFi Kingdoms?

A game - let’s start here.

DFK is a fantasy game eclipsed with pixelated user experience. If you’re a video game player at any point in your life, then think Indie game - Minecraft or Runscape. If you never played video games, could you give me a shot and stick around still? Please.

This game also has a marketplace, bank, workplace (profession), heroes (characters) and garden to plant/harvest seeds. As I dive into each - ask yourself is this really a game?

Marketplace - a trader, Druid, and a Vendor all walk into a…

That’s what you’ll discover in the marketplace of DFK. The trader allows game users to exchange in-game assets.

Well, well. What are these in-game assets? Quite a few. JEWEL*, WBTC, ETH, AVAX, USDC, UST → Gold, Spiderfruit, Bloater Fish, Shvas Runes.

Right now, individually, each asset is not important. Collectively, a lot is going on. Consider the collective group of assets seeds. In the four months of DFK development and more users entering, the in-game trader (also considered a DEX, decentralized exchange, in DeFi) is churning some serious volume spanning 24 hour periods.

My goal here is to break down the concepts, not numbers (try averageclayton.eth), so I’ll drop a chart and move on to the Druid.

Visiting the Druid is where a player could create a seed pool. In decentralized finance terminology, we’re speaking liquidity pools. A location where one could deposit two digital assets (ETH/WBTC/JEWEL/UST) to a LP pool and earns in the exchange fees of that pool and is rewarded for being a liquidity provider.

I mentioned a garden earlier. After visiting the Druid, and having deposited LP seeds in a garden/lp pool, a player could take those seeds to the garden and plant (stake) them to grow, then harvest JEWEL.

Jewel is the primary token of value in DeFi Kingdoms for players wishing to trade and quest heroes and participate in seed pools. It’s essentially an in-game currency or transfer of value for game utilization. Similar to other popular video games today with a token of value in-game to boost stats, or build within the game.

Once again, averageclayton.eth gives a better rundown of the supply and demand economics of JEWEL. This article serves a different purpose.

Heroes are characters (NFTs) that work for you inside the game by completing quests aligned with their profession, class, and stat characteristics. These hereos must be purchased with JEWEL, and are capable of working inside the game to help players earn JEWEL, and other valuable inventory, aside from leveling up.

BANK - you are the weakest link - ifkyk

The bank in DeFi Kingdoms functions like most banks do. It’s a place to store and secure wealth, valuable assets, or money. DFK players that have JEWEL in the game that they aren’t currently using may save their JEWEL in the bank and earn in doing so. These earnings come from a percentage of the revenue generated from seed pools and hero trades.

In other words, JEWEL is collected as fees during exchanges and swaps, and players staking their JEWEL in the bank for xJEWEL, receive a share of the those fees as interest.

This may be boring you so now is a good time to get away from the game and more towards the abstract concepts.

DeFi Kingdoms is a decentralized game that exists on the blockchain. Like centralized game developing companies, DFK generates value for the creators, builders, and developers of DFK for the time invested in doing so. However, the way the game was built by the creators allows game participants and users to share in that value creation.

DeFi Kingdoms isn’t the only decentralized protocol or application building out these products, but it is one that has scaled significantly in terms of volume of users, market cap, and trading volume. Here’s a snip from reddit on how the game was bootstrapped:

Here’s my intuitional, and somewhat compelling argument for what I see is happening in the realms of DeFi Kingdoms.

Imagine if early fortnite players who invested time and money (for V bucks) into the game were able to share in on the value created as the game grew and adopted more players. Those early players may not be playing in season 6, 7, or 8, but they were there in the beginning to help grow the community/game. Think if they could redeem some of that value contributed in terms of an in-game asset with appreciating value.

The way I picture players having created value for themselves is by building content around play, streaming content, or competing.

DeFi Kingdoms is a game in it’s early stage creation that allows the users to have direct access to some redeemable value of the DeFi Kingdoms network for being a player. This value could be in many forms, just like in any other games, however in DFK, this value may be liquid to other digital assets suchas crypto and stable coins.

I feel compelled to write this article because when I mention DeFi Kingdoms to people, it’s common to get asked “what should I invest?”

I don’t think that’s the question that should be asked.

Of course there is the potential for large ROI’s, but as always, I’m trying to bring it back to the theory of what’s developing in gaming, crypto, and DeFi.

When we go purchase a video game, we’re essentially asking ourselves “what am I willing to spend on this video game - this includes money and time.”

Think of all the Pokémon Go players that helped grow the mobile version. The individuals who shared in the value from the growth of Pokémon Go were the private shareholders of the private company.

The approach to DeFi Kingdoms, or any other metaverse gaming project, is the opposite. DeFi Kingdoms created a way to let game developers, active users, passive users, and even non-users to all have opportunity to extract value created within the game.

With many of these projects in the early stages, what else could be built and integrated that has yet be?

That’s all for today.

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