Open Source Play-To-Earn - Revelar

[IMPACT]

NFT games present a new way by which players can earn value out of time and resource investment into a game. The usage of game tokens allows for a game to have its own system of value that rewards existing players and makes it affordable for new players to be on-boarded.

In addition to the conventional one token idea, two-token systems can also be used to provide players with value, driven by their involvement in the game and a say in the governance of the game whilst still allowing for inflationary movement. One of these tokens can also be exchanged bidirectionally for in-game assets. Governance say can be distributed according to value involvement in the game. This bi-directional exchange allows for a true play-to-earn model that is community oriented and creates an ecosystem of value where the community owns the value. The token should also be engineered to allow for a value withdrawal method. This means that value generated in-game can be withdrawn as real rewards without opening the system to exploitation and liquidity rugging.

These tokens should also be engineered to prioritize rewards for active involvement within the game's ecosystem. However, there should also be opportunity for passive value generation given historic activity to allow for long-term value investment. All of these threads should be captured within a framework that also provides some consideration for the free-market decisions made by players.

Within the academic fields of game theory, stochastic modelling and economics design, tools do exist by which these tokens can be represented and their design enhanced. We therefore propose the creation of a framework for token design that pulls in tools from these fields and creates a baseline for token engineering within the NFT gaming ecosystem. The creation of a such a framework would provide game creators with valuable insight into:

1. How does the token scale within the game given certain market conditions?
2. How can this token provide long-term sustainable value to players?
3. How is this token affected by different scenarios and free market decisions and what does that do to the token’s value?

The mathematical nature of the framework would also open the door for more technical tools such as sensitivity analysis, what-if analysis and Monte Carlo simulation all of which provide valuable insights for technical design.

Play-to-earn is here to stay and could greatly benefit from some dedicated research. We also recognize that there are others within this ecosystem that could make valuable contributions so our goal is to establish the seed framework to which community experts could contribute and drive subsequent research.

By establishing a seed framework, we create a standing invitation to academics in the fields of mathematics, game theory and economics to focus their research attention towards cutting edge technology that is accessible to everyone. By creating this seed framework as an open source framework also gives anyone in the community the opportunity to continue and add value.

This proposal is inherently academic in nature and so many of the risks associated with academic research are also relevant here.

• Rabbit hole and scope creep: It is very easy to hyper-focus on a small subset of the real problem and over solve for that one nuanced problem. Likewise it is so easy for the original scope to grow to try to solve all the problems. We mitigate this by having two technical founders with formal education in both mathematics and engineering as well as experience with academic research. Along with a local University partner with committed graduate assistants. As the cliche says, this isn’t our first rodeo

• Lack of problem understanding: Academic research aims to develop new solutions to existing problems, however sometimes the problem is much larger than originally anticipated. We plan to mitigate this risk by devoting a significant amount of time toward a literature review and state-of-the-art evaluation. The results from this will be used to revise the scope of the original research task.

• Lack of Time: Arguably the biggest risk with academic research is a lack of time to be able to do thorough research and provide holistic solutions. We aim to mitigate this by providing a time risk adjusted timeline (below) as well as revising the research outcomes upon successful completion of the literature study

• Research sniping: In academics there is always a risk that someone else will take some of your shared findings before publication and create a derivative work, thereby claiming “ownership” of an idea. In a decentralized ecosystem, we plan to mitigate this risk by publishing initial results in a manner that promotes auditability, whilst still preserving record of the timeline, thereby preventing someone from running off and claiming ownership of work they did not do.

• Subjective budgeting: Every team builds and spends differently. A risk if funded is being transparent with the community through open accounting on what we are spending. Thankfully the Catalyst team allocates awarded funds in traunches and as we report our progress every month for ongoing funding. To create accountability and offset this risk we use them as a community arbiter to review our spending & hold us accountable by withholding or delaying funds if we abuse the budget.

[FEASIBILITY]

The week estimates are derived by taking risk seeking (25% shorter) and risk averse (50% longer) estimates given a moderate allocation of 20 hours per week. Research is difficult to predict accurately hence some contingency for being under and over the initial allocated time is factored into the planning.

Min / Max

Milestone 1 (5-9 Weeks): Literature and state-of-the-art review.

Milestone 2 (6-12 Weeks) : Development of the math modelling framework

Milestone 3 (3-6 Weeks) : Creation of a long-run simulation mechanism

Milestone 3 (2-3 Weeks): Testing of the model and simulation framework using a use-case

Milestone 3 (3-6 Weeks): Compiling the complete model and results into a document for open-source publication

The requested funding amount for $85,000 will be allocated as follows.

$15,000 : Literature Review and State-of-the-art Evaluation

$42,500 : Model framework development

$20,000 : Simulation framework development

$4,500 : Use case testing and analytics

$3,500 : Compilation of final publication

The cost estimation is obtained using an average hourly rate of approximately $35/hour utilizing both Jason & Benjamin will act as Lead Researchers along side 1-2 graduate assistants from Wichita State University (our local alma-matter)

Jason Toevs - CEO / Founder

Jason’s formal education is in Mathematics with a focus on Set Theory. With 10+ years as a full stack developer and technical founder, he has experience building business systems and scaling software products and teams. His most recent experience has been focused on systems architecture design and leading an engineering team for global enterprise SaaS product used in Fortune 50 companies and in 127 countries with 99.95% uptime. Plutus Pioneer Cohort #2, Atala PRISM Cohort #2

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-toevs/

Twitter: @JasonToevs

Discord: ₳ussieGingersnap | DUO#1037

Benjamin Beer – CTO

Ben’s formal education is in Computer and Electronic Engineering with a focus on both hardware and software based programming and system design. His Masters degree specialty focus is on the creation of decision support systems. He was on the NWU Solar Car racing team in South Africa as an engineer to create a web-based Race Strategy Optimization System that provides near real-time feedback in a race scenario by collating and processing large amounts of telemetric data. As part of his post-graduate thesis he focused on the incorporation of blockchains, specifically smart contracts, into the supply chain. This research involved significant work on Ethereum with Solidity, before being introduced to Cardano. Plutus Pioneer Cohort #3, Atala Prism Cohort #2

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-beer

Twitter: @bigbenbeer

Discord: KarooSeun | DUO#2202

[AUDITABILITY]

• Literature and state-of-the-art review: Article/Video describing findings at a high level)
• Development of the math modelling framework : Article/Video of preliminary results
• Creation of a long-run simulation mechanism : Output dumps from the simulations with figures and results
• Testing of the model and simulation framework using a use-case : Publication of a subset of results
• Compiling the complete model and results into a document for open-source publication : Github release of relevant coding and an open-access published article

Success of an academic research project is difficult to pin down to a particular metric.

Short term success: A model that performs comparatively well against a known use-case plus at least 5 forks

Long term success: 10 Citations on the published paper (Puts the paper in the top 25% approximately)

Upon publication we will also seek to present the paper at a conference. The exact conference will be determined at the time of publication.

This is a revised & improved version of a proposal from Fund 7 that was approved but not funded.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/383935