On Friday, February 18th our CMO, Charles Stanton and Team Lead, Harry Liu sat down to give some updates about PolkaPet World, as well as Protopets, the PolkaPet DApp, Mugen Minigame and more! Below is a transcript of the conversation as well!
C: Hi, everybody.
Welcome to today’s community update for PolkaPet World.
So just a brief introduction for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Chaz.
I’m the PolkaPet World CMO.
I’m joined today by Harry who, of course, is team lead at PolkaPet World.
H: Hi everyone!
C: And you will know Harry of course, PolkaPet World being a part of Bondly. And the aim fo today is to give everybody an update on where we’re at. I appreciate that we’ve been a little bit quiet recently and there’s reasons for that, which we’ll go into in the presentation.
There’s some super exciting stuff coming up, so stay tuned and everything in the deck will hopefully make sense and feel free afterwards to ask questions in the discord channel and certainly the community members, community team and also ourselves will be there to respond to any questions as well. So without further ado, let’s get started!
So we’re going to go over today, first of all, the game update, so the Mugen game update, also known as the mini-game, just to let you know where we are with that. Then we’re going to go into a bit more about the metaverse, where PolkaPet World is in regards to a couple of metaverse actually.
And then further expansion of the Pet universe; where is this project going and how far reaching will it get. Some new, very exciting partner initiatives coming up and then a couple of Q&A at the end. So we have a couple of community questions that we’re going to go through and tackle those as we need to.
So first of all, the Mugen game update. So for those of you who haven’t seen in our Discord, we updated the other day that unfortunately, the mini-game, the mugen game has been delayed indefinitely at the moment because of a legal issue which is around the mechanics of the play-to-earn element.
So in essence, to explain this in more detail, when you are offering tokens that can be earned by playing a game, you need to ensure that game is set up in a way whereby the way in which you win is not necessarily by chance. We had a model that we were happy with and satisfied with that we felt kind of bypassed this need. If you recall, the Mugen game is an AI vs. AI game and users will place wages of sorts on the outcome of a fight between the PolkaPet characters and then you can win tokens, or points that could be converted into tokens and in some jurisdictions this can still be classified as gambling. And even if there is no way of losing per se, it still encourages gambling, so we tried to bypass those legal issues and I appreciate it’s very frustrating for everybody and we just want to let you know that clearly this is not something we had anticipated and that’s led to the delay but we wanted to give you just an open and honest response to that and we are looking at ways to bypass that requirement.
Bear with us, we’ll keep you updated There’s of course lots and lots of other developments going on around other games which we’re going to very briefly, soon and of course our various different metaverse activities as well. Lots and lots of other types of stuff going on, so certainly, don’t want to focus too much on the mini-game which was always, you know, the clues in the name, was a small part of the project. We will keep you updated on where we are with that. I don’t know Harry, if you have any other thoughts on that one?
H: Yeah, there’s not much to comment, that’s the status right now. We’ve been working 6–8 months to make the mechanics work, but there’s elements that require legal approval to make sure it works. But at the same time, we have other exciting updates that we want to share to keep that momentum going.
C: Perfect, yeah, exactly — so some of those updates we can talk about now. Entering the metaverse. This is really exciting obviously, because for those of you who haven’t been following too closely recently, PolkaPets through our association with Metaprints and also our relationship via Animoca to a number of different metaverse projects, you know, we have a unique opportunity to place the PolkaPet IP across multiple metaverse platforms.
And I guess most excitingly, short-term, is the ability to provide some really incredible experiences and really unique experiences in The Sandbox, so there will be, I mean if Harry, you want to talk a little bit about what those will look like.
H: Yeah, The Sandbox is a particular type of experience: gallery museum, social hub, play-to-earn games and those are the most popular ones that are in Sandbox right now. As for PolkaPets, the first one is a social experience that we want to build to provide access towards all of the PolkaPet NFT holders, so later on we’ll explain and share that video on that too.
C: Yeah, perfect! So, yeah, hopefully you guys will be really excited to see what we have there. There’s been a lot of hard work in the background and that is certainly that theme of this presentation — that just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. There’s lots and lots of development going on and we’re excited to show you what we have. So the social hub, Harry I suppose if you want to talk to talk the guys through this.
H: Yeah, so the social hub is, basically all Pet NFT holders can have access. For example, Mantra DAO, this is the character in the game. Every asset will be in Sandbox that you can play with all over the world, not just the PolkaPet social hub. This is an example of Bifrost — so every character that you can see, we can make for the community. Yeah, this is a 2x2 land and inside there is every single character paying around it.
So, this is a pretty long video, but an example, showcasing Raze network inside the house and then we see everyone getting access, but at the same time there is going to be some dedicated access, upgraded access, too. Like, for example, dedicated access will be based on community’s popularity or choice. We can build an experience and then use $PETS tokens and/or Pet NFT to grant further access. So that way, $PETS tokens get more utility.
C: And Harry, just to explain here, the Pets have actually got, you know, actions associated with their characteristics, so for example you saw Phala there attacking — hopefully we see Plasm as well, doing his thing, also known as Astar of course.
H: So yeah, those are special moves that we applied from the card, the special effects into the world. So every single character has a special move and special skills, so here there are going to be some npc elements in place. And yeah, we’d love to hear everyone’s feedback on this, but the thing is that the experience has worked and Sandbox is a great platform that we can build on and for the average utility that we can provide holders.
C: Just to be clear Harry, as well, these experiences are set up to make the most of the Pet’s abilities and kind of bring the PolkaPet world to life, in a metaverse context. You know, are the community going to have the ability to shape how this world looks and feels?
H: Yeah, I would say in terms of building parts, the creative option would be we can discuss on Discord in an open format. For example, for this character, what kind of dedicated experience do you want? Then we can build that in a separate 1x1 land.
Think about is as kind of a portal — then access another portal and another experience. Because we have like, 21 PolkaPets and there are more that are coming, so we want to prioritize with the community, with everyone of you, wants to experience. Later on, we will show you what the upgraded experience looks like
C: Yeah, fantastic, so, really, really impressive and I love how kind of immersive this world is and how there’s lots and lots of different segments to it depending on the type of pet as well. So, that’s really exciting and just to be clear, the name social hub is one that we’re kind of using internally, it’s not sort of necessarily, sort of the final way way we’re going to brand this sort fo experience, but if you just imagine it as a dedicated PolkaPet World within Sandbox in this case.
So it’s an opportunity for $PETS holders to come and celebrate the PolkaPet experience together in this kind of dedicated environment. And we’ve got Bridge there, that’s fantastic, great to see. And yeah, a really, really immersive sort of experience in itself, so that’s great. Harry, how long have we been working on this in the background?
H: Yeah, I think it’s good for now — we’ve spent months on this, from character design and the experience and then testing the Sandbox layer. Think about in the past two months, we’ve also had the launch of Metaprints collections and this paves a path for us to have a strong presence for the PolkaPets, so all of these elevated experiences accumulate all together.
And the Sandbox team has also been providing a lot of guidance and feedback on this too, right? So our goal is to continue to make the experience improve and then set up initial NPC and educate our audience better about what PolkaPets is. Think about Sandbox’s audience — it’s not just a DeFi audience, it’s a metaverse audience too, so you’re going to get listeners and people who may be interested in grabbing a Pet. And this is why we need that education layer for that.
C: Yeah, fantastic! And are we able to share this video with the community?
H: Yeah, we can share it.
C: It’s quite long and we’re not going to get through all of the Pets today, but you can certainly look out for your favorite and we’ll share this video. We’ll upload it to Youtube or something as a private link for everybody to view at their own leisure. As you can see, a lot of development and work has gone into this environment, so, really, really exciting and I can’t wait for this one to come out. So, moving on, we have an upgraded experience as well. So, talk me through this one Harry, what’s sort of the thinking behind this one?
H: So yeah, the thing about the social hub is that it’s sort of the general experience everyone can access, but think about how we can empower $PETS tokens and Pet NFTs. To have ongoing demand — that’s the gaming experience we want to build. We want to test the limits too, within Sandbox, what we can build or not. So in this area, you can use the different PolkaPet characters to race and get some sort of reward.
Right now it’s in the exploratory phase, cause we see that not only have you have more than one experience, where you can use $PETS tokens as a pass, sort of like a seasonal pass and then it tracks gamers and then the PolkaPet audience and also, let’s say projects, let’s say Phala network. So in order to access the game, they will need a Phala Pet plus some $PET tokens, right, to purchase their pass.And yeah, then they get experiences and yeah, there is ongoing demand for the $PETS tokens.
C: Yeah, fantastic and just for those of us who aren’t necessarily aware of the functionality of the Sandbox, what of, in terms of sort of the gamification opportunities in the Sandbox, you know, obviously they developed a whole platform to bringing interactive game experiences. Can you talk us a bit more through how that kind of works and.
H: Yeah I can talk a bit about that — think about right now, you use cars and then if you upgrade your vehicles and your Pets with faster speed, to go through chargers much faster, to give you a boost or delay other characters, so those are the economics. Accessories that you can use, still Sandbox.
They have gems — gems is like, you have magic, power defense and all of this can be embedded within in the accessories and items and all of these accessories can be purchased in the Sandbox Marketplace too, so we can play around with the mechanics, with the $PETS tokens as we go to buy those assets, either through our own platforms or through the Sandbox, OpenSea. But yeah, as you can see the $PETS tokens throughout the whole ecosystem.
C: Amazing. I assume that obviously through the Sandbox, your options will extend maybe just racing games. Obviously there will sort of other gaming mechanisms we’ll be experimenting with as well.
H: Yeah, more like Fantasy Kingdom, like sci-fi games and others and yeah, we’d love to hear feedback from the community too, but in terms of creativity, it’s almost unlimited, so yeah, I think that’s where community comes from. We have an incentive to build what the community wants. .
C: Brilliant, yeah, really, really exciting. I love this, it’s, yeah things I didn’t even know you could do in the Sandbox and obviously I work for a company that deals intimately with them. I’m always amazed by just what we you do. Fantastic. So let’s talk a bit more about the expansion of the wider Pet universe. When we talk about Pet universe, we mean, you know, PolkaPets and sort of the Pets brand.
So, let’s talk a little bit about cross chain pets. So, I’ll give a bit of a summary here. In regards to the future of where the project goes, obviously Polkadot is where this project was founded and very much an integral part of what we’re doing here, but clearly there’s a number of amazing projects out there and we want to try and extend the model to other ecosystems beyond Polkadot and obviously we started doing that with Protopets, but we’re also looking at launching an entirely new collection on new chains to bring in new audiences and to increase collaboration cross-chain as well, which is really exciting.
If we think about the ultimate ambition of PolkaPets was all around introducing audiences to projects on the Polkadot network, giving them a chance to utilize NFT utility in their communities and allow discovery by, obviously owning Pets can give you utilities across different projects. Imagine that kind of scenario, but across chain as well. It opens whole new doors and obviously one of the most exciting ones that we were looking to do is around Cardano.
So for those of you who aren’t aware, Bondly has an intimate relationship with IOG, obviously the company behind Cardano and we are building the official NFT bridge between Ethereum and Cardano network. And of course, with that as well, we’ll doing a number of NFT related projects in their ecosystem and one of them will be a Pets expansion into Cardano which is really exciting. Obviously, the CNFT, what they call the Cardano NFT community, is booming at the moment and it’s really, really hot.Now is a great time to be on that network.
Benefits to the community include things like staking $PETS to earn NFTs and of course using $PETS as the predominant currency to purchase upcoming NFTs as well. Now, exchange Pets is an interesting one that you might now be aware of yet and Harry, maybe if you could give everyone a bit of an update on exchange Pets and how that works.
H: For sure, I can share more about that. Exchanges, for example, like Gate.io, as an example of one of the partner exchanges we have at Bondly and yeah, they’re looking for mascots and yeah, we see PolkaPets as very complimentary and to use our creative team as a way to build Pets for them.
And yeah, multiple exchanges have expressed a strong interest and they have a strong presence in GameFi and the metaverse. So building mascot for them that are similar to what we already have — they can use them for promotional events, like Twitter, socials, but also, they can participate in things like trading competitions.
Let’s say that the top 100 traders get the opportunity to obtain the Pets and then that allows exchanges to drive more volume and at the same time, they can propagate their brands to metaverses. Tier 2, tier 3, In terms of BD, business development, we have encountered a lot of request like that. And for tier exchange, I would say two of them are interested to get involved. So yeah, we release with a few exchanges and now we are in the process of making Pets for them and then yeah, we will have some updates after the first developments done. But yeah, to go back to Charles’ comment on fostering Pets.
This is also of interest, how many like, Cardano and other chains that show interest too, how can we bring the PolkaPet experience to other chains. Partner projects would like to experience that too.
C: Yeah, absolutely and I think the exciting thing about Pets as well, and just to explain the strategy behind this, you’re talking about reaching a vast new audience of individuals who may not be immersed in NFTs just yet, so it’s a great opportunity to get the brand in front of these audiences. If you think about, I mean, Gate.io is the one we just mentioned there, but obviously there are some big ones as well interested.
H: Gate.io for example, has over 10 million users and 22 million monthly visits. That’s the volume of it and in the past, we have done some campaigns with them. And yeah, the popularity is super when it comes to engagement.
C: That’s it, exactly and you think about the audiences that we drive into our community from that activity, you know and again, just to put everyone’s minds at ease, I know there will be questions about this in a bit, but the objective of these cross chain Pets and exchange Pets isn’t in any way to undermine the kind of original, first edition Pets and obviously utilities that came with those.
Exchange Pets are going to be more of a watered down Pet. There will be more of them, but the idea being of course that we can reach more audiences and they’ll have, you know, perks associated with those exchanges. And equally, with the cross chain Pets, again as with the PolkaPets, there will be perks related to the chain of which those Pets are on and of course, the projects those are associated with.
You know, each of these different sets has its own kind of contained set of utilities and perks and we’ll be announcing more about that near the time. Just to let you know, this is very much a strategy around building up the community, building out the project and obviously expanding the IP well beyond even just the Polkadot network, which is super exciting.
H: Yeah, think about the metaverse experience just in Sandbox — we have more additional audience for that, in terms of asset demand, right, in terms of $PETS token demand, it’s going to be higher too with these additional partnerships.
C: Exactly, exactly, so speaking of new partnerships, yeah, let’s talk a bit more about new partnership initiatives. So, you will hopefully have seen the announcement around the expansion of our partnership with SpiderDAO. So we have our Liquidity-as-a-Utility program, which is now available to our users, so you’re able to stake $PETS and receive a free VPN, which is fantastic, so right now you can go and utilize your $PETS in that way.
We also have another really exciting announcement regarding SpiderDAO, which is coming out imminently, so keep your eyes open for that one. Really, really big one that’s exciting. And of course, there’s a number of other big partnerships in the pipeline as well. We’ll obviously let you know more about those when we’re allowed to. Harry, if there’s anything else that we’re allowed to say at this point, any sort of other big partnerships that we know about?
H: Yeah, we have Bounce Network, which is another partner that already got listed in Coinbase and Binance and is a big partner in the Polkadot space. They’ve shown strong interest in partnering with us and we are already building a Pet for them, so it’s under development and we are discussing more on the utility side, because that’s one thing, what are the metrics of the ongoing utility of the Pets? Right, so that is still in discussion, but after we finish that discussion we can make an announcement about that.
C: Absolutely, fantastic. So, other updates on the Solarbeam Pets. We appreciate that there’s been some delay around the Solarbeam Protopet claims, so I’ve been reliably informed by my tech team that we are on the precipice of being able to launch this. So my understanding is that we are going through final testing at this stage, so I hope this will be out imminently.
I say that hesitantly because I’m not the tech guy, but that’s what I’ve been informed. I really do appreciate your patience on this but the great news is that we have a fantastic utility associated with the Solarbeam Pet which we’ll be announcing soon.
The guys over at Solarbeam really knocked it out of the park with this one, so can’t wait to announce that one to you and keep your eyes peeled. And if you managed to secure one, congratulations, you won’t be disappointed. Really, really exciting update there. Is there anything else to add from an updates perspective, Harry?
H: Yeah, so Solarbeam is the first Pet that we did for the Moonriver ecosystem, so yeah, looking forward to seeing more updates on that too.
C: Exactly and actually, before I forget, the DApp as well, the PolkaPet DApp. Conscious at the moment that we don’t have any active pools, but that is being managed. There were just a couple of things that had to be resolved at the backend with our tech team to make a more secure application and we’ll be relaunching that, hopefully, well we’ll provide you an update soon.
I know the tech team is working hard behind the scenes and I don’t want to take the words out of their mouth, but that should be coming, you know, again in the near future. Fantastic, so in terms of Q&A, I did have a few questions that were sent to me by the community and I will just take a second just to double check that we haven’t already answered some of those. So, what happened to the Solarbeam claim? As we just mentioned there, that is coming imminently. We hope to have that live, well, we hope to have it live next week so again, that’s up to the tech team.
What is going on with the game? We’ve given you the update — in terms of $PETS token functionality, there’s a number of opportunities in regards to the utilities. So as we mentioned, there’s loads and loads of great opportunities to utilize the tokens in a voting structure. So, you’ll have the opportunity to dictate some of the experiences within the metaverse and some major decisions around Pet designs and we’re setting up a voting mechanism as we speak, so that’s something that will be going live very soon.
The DApp, we’ve talked about, so again, that’s going live again soon as well.
New utilities — so obviously, the new utility associated with Solarbeam Protopet is being announced ASAP. Other utilities are being announced as well, so we’re working hard behind the scenes with our partners as you know, to work on even more great utilities associated with Pets. So we’ve got some updates coming as well on those.
And in regards to the PolkaPet NFTs, as Harry mentioned, there will be lots of opportunities in regards to those NFTs being utilized as part of our metaverse experience. Don’t want to say too much more at this point, because we’re still working through the final details, but yes, some very exciting opportunities for original, first-edition Pet holders.So yeah, certainly keep hold of your Pets because they will come in handy.
And I think that’s it from me — any sort of final thoughts, Harry?
H: Yeah, I think that as we enter the era of the metaverse, we are able to propagate the brand from just a pure NFT for utilities, to adding more utility in the metaverse. So we see more updates coming in terms of developments.
Within Animoca as well and also Sandbox as a wonderful advisor, we are in very good positions in terms of propagating different projects that we have as well as onboarding other projects in the pipeline to different metaverses. So yeah, this has been great and happy to catch up with you guys and give updates.
C: Absolutely, wonderful, well thanks Harry and appreciate everyone’s time, everyone who’s got to the end of this presentation and we will see you soon in our community channels.
About PolkaPet World
PolkaPet World is an NFT project created by Bondly in partnership with some of the biggest names in the Polkadot ecosystem. Each PolkaPet is embodied as an artistic creature that represents a specific Polkadot project.
All PolkaPets hold unique project-specific utility to reward community members for holding their PolkaPet NFTs in their wallets. The utility can offer a discount on fees, an airdrop of tokens to PolkaPet cardholders, or various other utilities.
The $PETS token is the utility token used to engage with PolkaPet World products and services, as well as allowing governance rights and access to exclusive sales.
Follow PolkaPet World:
Polkapet.world | Twitter | Telegram | Discord
