Win to Earn - Uppercut

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Michael Yagi

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

4

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Uppercut will allow fighters to settle disputes with sponsored automatic, on-chain payouts. 

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

Smart contracts will be open-sourced while game source code will remain close sourced.

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG 8 (Decent work and economic growth)

• 8.10 - Backing fighters and covering entry fees allows higher income regions to subsidize growth of other regions.
• 8.1 - In some regions, this can even prove to be a job with good working conditions and growth

SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure)

• 9.4 - Using web3 for automated payment payouts is an innovative alternative especially on Cardano's proof of stake system

SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities)

• 10.1 - By enabling higher income regions or individuals to sponsor others, they can help lift them up and progressively achieve and sustain income growth

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Friend and foes will be able to 1v1 in a sponsored match in an MMA-styled bracket where the winner of the match earns a payout. The player may then share a percentage of their winnings with their sponsors as a way of reciprocating the support. The proposed solution would formalize that shared percentage by leveraging Cardano blockchain. Each player would be issued a token using CIP-68 and CIP-102 standard. The token would represent their participation in the match.

The royalty token will be stored at a validator for the match. The player can user their participation token to set a price to buy a percentage of the royalties. The player can also set a maximum royalty percentage.

A backer may buy a percentage of the royalties by submitting a transaction to update the royalty metadata for a player. They may also just directly contribute to the winnings pool.

Uppercut will look at the royalties when distributing winnings to the winner and backers according to the royalty percentages.

We have "Fight Nights" (publicly testable) in discord.

A little more about the game this will be tested can be summarized as

Success hinges on overwhelming opponent pressure, astute predictions, or the artful interweaving of attacks. Instead of grappling with controls, players can immerse themselves in honing creative combos and devising strategies and fighting styles.

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community.

Releasing a fighting game which lowers the bar to fighting your friends that is positively received by the masses will bode well for Cardano user adoption and perception. When players and brands realize new use cases of backing fighters and automatic tournament payouts, we aim to help put Cardano on everyone's attention not just in web3 but to the masses.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

https://youtu.be/cmvk90Lsf58

Although quiet builders, Genun Games has a fulltime team and vast game dev experience and web3 experience from Ikigai Technologies (parent company) which shares talent which built a fully on-chain marketplace on mainnet.

The team has done some test streams and public footage of development, live testing and debugging, attending game conferences showcasing steady, quiet progress. As the game has become more publicly testable/demoable, we hope to spread a success case of Cardano publicly with continued streams and soon start developer/community updates.

We intend on testing our approach with "spikes" and continued consulting with partners. Agile and scrum methodologies help us quickly identify mistakes to move as quickly as possible.

As we flush out some new features, we will resume streaming for increased transparency and more fun! Check out a recent stream here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fciUnli_MnQ

[Project Milestones] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Tournament mode and protocol

• Initial contracts for creating a tournament or season and initial draft of formal protocol specification
• UI mocks for in-game flow
• Tournament mode supported in game (mocked smart contract)
• Acceptance Criteria: Formal protocol specification draft published

Smart contract deployed to preprod and Backer System

• Smart contracts for minting player tokens and creating tournament are complete
• Backers can pick which fighter to root for and cover their entry fee into a fighter bracket
• Acceptance Criteria: Tournament created on Preprod with smart contract.

Royalty Tokens and Payouts

• Finalized protocol specification
• Smart contracts for player royalty controls and backer buy-in completed
• Fighter bracket results automatically pay out fighters and backers
• Acceptance Criteria: Royalty token modifiable via contract by player and backers on Preprod

Backed fights!

• Acceptance Criteria: Demo of using user interface to create a tournament, players setting their royalty info, and backers backing a player. Finally the demo will show a winner being declared and distribution of winnings.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Core Developers - and Previous Experience

Alejandro Hitti - Technical Project Lead; Rockstar Games, DigiPen

Jason Dempsey - Senior Engineer; Microsoft, DigiPen

Zander Jensen - Gameplay Engineer; Treyarch, DigiPen

Hiago Desena - Senior Engineer; Firewalk, DigiPen

Aleksei Seleznev - Pixel Artist; Indie

Michael Yagi - Engineer; 2K Games, DigiPen

Other developers from our team (Genun Games, Ikigai Technologies)

Steven George - Lead Engineer; Level 11, DigiPen

Stan Hayes - Aesthetic Engineer; Epic Games, Nvidia, DigiPen

Michael Yagi - Creative Director; 2K Games, DigiPen

Ming Chi - Artist; NetEase

Scott Meyers - Audio Engineer; Respawn Entertainment, Riot Games

Jeff Uong - DevOps Engineer; Samsung, DigiPen

Clifford Garvis - Solutions Architect & Smart Contract; Level 11, DigiPen

Advisors

Lowell Vaughn - Principal Strategist Epic Games

Shoutout! 1+ Year(s) Fulltime contribution

Ahn Do - Producer; 343, GEC, DigiPen

Mickey Cushing - Designer; 343, Blizzard, Wizards of the Coast, Rockstar Games

Brian Park - Designer; Riot Games

Anon Developer - Senior Engineer; Respawn Entertainment, DigiPen

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

We have taken significant pay cuts leaving AAA in order to pursue our passion of making games ourselves. As such, we have based the proposal off of international average of $108,471 USD salary as opposed to our previous salaries reaching upwards of $400k USD.

Milestone 1: Tournament mode and protocol

• 1.5 devs, 1 month = $13,558.87 / ₳37,663.54

Milestone 2: Smart contract deployed to preprod and Ingame Sponsors

• 2 devs, 1.5 months = $27,117.75 / ₳75,327.08

Milestone 3: Royalty Tokens and Payouts

• 1.5 devs, 1.5 months = $20,338.31 / ₳56,495.31

Milestone 4: Tournament Testing!

• 1 dev, 1 month = $9,039.25 / ₳25,109.027

TOTAL AMOUNT

• $70,054.18 / ₳194,594.96

(ADA amount estimated based on an ADA price of $0.36)

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

We're confident that the traction we've gained from and the potential user base we anticipate bringing will significantly benefit the ecosystem as we up the ante for gaming and web3 consumer use cases. We hope the community sees our passion reflected in the game's results which can help adopt mass users. We've poured years of fulltime development, leaving behind previous roles, into creating this game we hope to share with the whole Cardano ecosystem!

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund Rules and also that data in the submission form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept