Cryptodaily Admin: Hello everyone!!! And welcome back to another AMA with PolygonDaily đ„Iâm Daley, you host and today, Iâm joined by Maize Lau from KatanDAO!!!
Good day to you Maize Lau, howâs everything?
Maize Lau: Good. Glad to see you all.
Cryptodaily Admin: Hey man! Itâs a pleasure to have you here with us! Youâre doing good?
Maize Lau: Yeah.
Cryptodaily Admin: đ Aight man of few words I see đ No problem! Today weâre here to talk about KatanDAO, so I hope youâre ready to start the AMA! So, shall we start Maize Lau?
Maize Lau: LoL, sure. Letâs get started!
Cryptodaily Admin: Here we go đ finally get a reaction out of you. Alright, so my first question with KatanDAO:
Q1. Kindly introduce yourself and the core team members of KatanDAO. Is the team doxed? What are your overall experiences with blockchain and game development?
Maize Lau: This is Maize Lau, co-founder of DDEX.io and also degen. I have been in the position since 2018. I joined our team last year and became one of the core members. Now we are exploring web3 and designing KatanDAO. I have to mention that KatanDAO is our first product! We are a global team with 80 members. The HQ (headquarter) is based in Vancouver, Canada. The main game producer has more than 10 years of experience in game production. Other members are also excellent, including an Artificial Intelligence Expert, Blockchain Technology Expert, ex-Chief Scientist of Intel UMG China, and ex-Perfect World Game Producer. Every member is an expert in his area. What we should do is to make full use of their abilities. Well, I think we have done well so far. After working together, communicating, and sharing ideas, we have now reached an agreement. We cooperate well when developing KatanDAO. The first time I heard about Ethereum was in 2016. One of my friends worked at Ethereum Foundation, and she was the one who linked me with Ethereum. She told me about the distributed ledger and the smart contract platform. I bought some Ethereum because I wanted to have a try. Then I was gradually amazed by the decentralization ideology and smart contract platform design. In 2017, we worked on a decentralized exchange called dex. In 2018, we focused on their zero dex protocol to make a better order booked dex experience. In 2019, we built up a margin lending and borrowing dex in Ethereum. So we were powerful DeFi users before the word DeFi was created. I have been doing DeFi rotational farming since the curve was first introduced in 2020. I was in the top one hundred farmers. And in 2021, we started Smrti Lab, a venture studio we incubated, built, and invested our vision in, and a hub for crypto talents, capital, and ideas. Now, I am striving to develop SODA games.
Then, letâs talk about our rich experience in games: My co-founder Maize is a senior game producer with more than 12 years of experience. He is the Former Vice President of Game R&D of Gaea Interactive. Games developed by him have over $300 million in revenue.
Cryptodaily Admin: Iâm taking my time to digest all this, wow. Would you mind me asking why did you move on to create SODA games? It seems like you are extremely successful with your ventures, as well as a DeFi expert. Why co-found a gaming studio?
Maize Lau: I love playing different games myself. I donât think the current web3 games are well developed. We hope to bring good Web2 games to Web3. Especially our first game, Catan, Iâve been a fan of it since middle school
Cryptodaily Admin: So letâs move on and talk about the game:
Q2. What is KatanDAO about in the short term? What have you achieved with KatanDAO?
Maize Lau: KatanDAO is a strategic game based on traditional board games. Players earn benefits not simply by purchasing NFT or locking tokens. We pay more attention to the game rather than DI-FI when creating rules. We want the players to have fun in this game and to gain benefits based on their skills. Our current achievement is that we created a new gamefi category via KatanDAO. We received positive feedback from other DAOs that they really love this game and would like to spend time on it! We are also exploring the technical margin of blockchain. We want to make the game fully on-chain, but we may not gain benefits in the short term. Actually, the applications and development of public chains with high TPS depend on specific situations. And fully on-chain games are not the end of the industry, but a necessary path in exploration.
Cryptodaily Admin: Thatâs great! bringing more communities together through the game. Also, I have never heard about a Blockchain Board game, so yep, KatanDAO is a new category for me đ
Maize Lau: We want to make KatanDAO the first fully-on-chain, turn based strategy board game.
Cryptodaily Admin: Yeah and as we have talked about, KatanDAO is based on the traditional board game: Catan. We would love to understand more about the gameplay, so:
Q3. What is the game genre of KatanDAO? Please introduce the game mechanics of KatanDAO as well
Maize Lau: Based on the traditional game rules and the concept of âstrategic competitionâ, we would keep developing new game modes to attract more players worldwide. Compared with other games in the GameFi space, players of KatanDAO need to make decisions carefully to co-op and compete. In other words, you need to really play the game. Itâs more fun than just spending time exchanging tokens but using your intelligence and little luck to win and gain. Now letâs talk about the game mechanics. We have designed 3 Game Modes and one Building Mode. Just like traditional Catan, there are 6-8 players in each game but we increase the number to 20-36 and even more. The more players in one game the more joy there is. Players can practice skills and collect points in this mode and the points can be used for redeeming rewards. So this is a FREE-to-PLAY mode.
The second is CASH mode. Players need to pay for tickets collected as the bonus pool which will be distributed according to the final rankings at the end of the game. We would also contribute an extra bonus in some CASH Mode games.
The third one is battle royale mode, the Carnival. At the end of every season, we will organize a Carnival event â the fully on chain battle royale game. There will be more than 3000 players testing their skills at the same time to win huge awards. This event is our geeky and idealistic target to achieve, we would love to see players from teams compete with others on chain.
The fourth mode is a building mode. It has not been announced and is still under development. We will hold a press release of this mode and brand upgrading in June. Based on the classical rules of Catan, we would like to design a play-to-earn mode with a constant strategy in play with longer game time as the current game modes will only last around 40 minutes per game. This mode will be played based on the NFTs held by players with a long term mining and gaining mechanism. If you have interests in this mode, follow our TW and join our DC. We are going to share its fascination with you.
Cryptodaily Admin: Those are some details youâve given us there đ Thank you. So KatanDAO has a free-to-play mode, I love it. Yes, all players can play KatanDAO for free. Because of that, here comes my another question about this matter:
Q4. How can both free-to-play and pay-to-earn users earn in KatanDAO?
Maize Lau: You can take part in free mode to earn credits and redeem rewards. Also, you could pay some tokens to play CASH Mode. You can share the bonus pool of entry fees as long as you rank at the top in one game. Your accumulated investment will be converted to credits for you to use to redeem for other rewards or draw the lottery.The amount of this reward might be decided by voting in the community. Except for the above two modes, NFT holders can also gain benefits in Carnival and Building Mode. The rules of Carnival are basically the same, just with more players. As for Building Mode, itâs upgraded gameplay as mentioned before. We will announce a detailed version of it in the future. There are some interesting gameplays about holding NFTs to share a reward pool.
Cryptodaily Admin: Ok so what about the battle royal?
Q5. I can see KatanDAO will have a battle royal mode that supports more than 3000 online players simultaneously. Please elaborate on that
Maize Lau: The Carnival event will be the first battle royale game based on blockchain technology. It is different from regular games as all the rules and calculations will be conducted on-chain rather than on the centralized servers. This event will support over 3000 players to participate concurrently with all their operations run and recorded on chain. We will choose a Polygon to deploy the fully-on-chain version of KatanDAO. To be honest, we have no idea whether it worked or not, it may lead to the congestion of the chain. Hope more players can test the new game with us. We want to explore a better on-chain-game-solution for the whole industry.
Cryptodaily Admin: 3000 active players at the same time?
Maize Lau: Yes, thatâs what we are doing now.
Q6. What are KatanDAOâs NFTs? What are the benefits of holding it short and long term?
Maize Lau: KatanDAO NFT is a special ticket for each season, also the reference in Building Mode. In Regular Seasons and Carnival, NFT determines if a player can take part in specific matches and the weight of allocating bonuses. In Building Mode, NFT is a piece of land that can directly produce resources. All NFT holders will share project dividends. The value of holding NFT for the long term is mainly reflected in Building Mode which will be released in the first season. NFT, as a land piece producing resources, will contribute value to holders. The more NFTs you hold, the more reasonable the numbers and resource types will be, and the more you can gain from competing with other players. Due to the huge randomness of the numbers and resource types of the tiles, a large amount of transaction value in the secondary market will be generated after NFT is revealed. The price of a good tile could double immediately, and this also can be an reason for users to buy NFTs. đ
Q7. What is your business model? Most GameFis are struggling to sustain its economy, how can you make sure that KatanDAO will not fall into the same spiral of slow death?
Maize Lau: A good economic model is the key for products to last longer. At the early stage, players can make in-game purchases and buy tickets by transferring USD stablecoins into their in-game wallets. Of course players can exchange USD in their in-game wallets for USD stablecoins at their addresses. At the same time all the treasury income will be recognised as ETH and USD. Shared by NFT holders. At the second stage, we will launch the KatanDao governance token â HLT (ERC20). Players can make in-game purchases with HLT, or to exchange them into in-game wallet USD. At that time , the treasury income will be ETH and HLT.
How do we avoid dying slowly? The basic thing is, we make a fun game. The gaming industry is healthy and sustainable, its products satisfy usersâ entertainment needs, so they will constantly contribute their time and money to it. Our players will gain from DeFi designs and some other benefits such as winning awards from cash modes in-game purchases. And the economy is based on the P2E model of the value of the game, players can earn when having fun. Also the coming building mode is another good tool for us to control tokenomics. I think we will share more details about building mode next time.
Q8. What are some upcoming features in your roadmap?
Maize Lau: In late May or early June, we will launch an ALPHA version that supports CASH Mode and in-game purchases with USD. We will hold an Alpha Test for players in the community. We will also prepare for the sale of NFT, getting ready to start the first season. Building Mode will be launched in June with the first season. We will add some new rules, like supporting players to form teams to compete for the team victory. Players can cooperate with friends to win the game together. The first fully-on-chain Carnival will be tested in June and is expected to be officially launched in July. So we will be very busy in the coming months.
Q9: What events are you having right now that users can join and get to know more about KatanDAO?
Maize Lau:
1. In order to celebrate the upgrade of the economic system and upcoming public beta, players with Alpha WL are allowed to play Alpha Test for unlimited times during May 1st to May 6th. You can participate in discord if youâre interested.
2. NFT Whitelist event. According to the game rules, sheep + wheat + ore can be exchanged for a development card. Our whitelisting campaign also adopts this rule. We have designed 3 tasks, donât worry they wonât be too difficult, and each task corresponds to a different resource card. After completing all 3 tasks, you can use sheep, wheat, and ore to exchange for a âdevelopment cardâ, that is, the whitelist!
You could follow us on our official website, Twitter and Discord. The events of KatanDAO are available on our official social media. Join the Free Mint lottery, the bonus of follow-up project cooperation, etcâŠ
Cryptodaily Admin: With this we are now at the end of our AMA session with KatanDAOđ„đ„đ„
Time for wrapping up, any last words you would like to say to our community?
Maize Lau: Thank you all for joining us tonight, please follow us on twitter or join our discord channel for latest news and events. Have a good night/day.đđđ
Cryptodaily Admin: Thank you Maize Lau for being here with the PolygonDaily community! We wish you all the best and may the KatanDAO project prosper in the future đȘ Take care!
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