User PLAY ID

A player can opt to link their profile to cryptographic keys. Doing so turns the concept of a "wallet" into the "PLAY ID". The verified profile can then be used to initiate and respond to transactions on the blockchain.

• Once verified, the profile becomes a "trusted" entity in the "trustless transaction" context of the blockchain.

• The profile can be anonymous (decoupled from any “real world” identity) yet verifiably identified.

• It can also be sold to another owner, allowing for complex “play to earn” dynamics in a secondary market for profiles.

• The PLAY ID can be the owner of the player inventory, including tokens and smart-contracts affiliated to unique game objects they own.

Thus a “legendary player” can decide to exit the profile, and put their profile up for auction, receiving a material reward for their gaming efforts. The new owner inherits the profile and the unique owned inventory in the profile.

Leaderboards

• Verified player profiles enable deployment of cross-game leaderboards without requiring separate logins (e.g. via Apple or Google login), where the standings can factor in player performance in separate games.

• This opens up the enticing possibility for the sponsorship of pseudonymous players in an esports context.

Friends List & Invite System

• Web 2 conditioned people to register for services using their “real world identity.” In the context of a closed platform, like Google or Facebook oAuth, this creates the “trust” that allows for a “friends list” to appear.

• A verified user profile - backed by an ERC-20 token, is capable of generating “trust” without any association to a “real world identity” and Web 2 platforms.

• Trusted pseudonymity liberates people from being judged for their biology- their gender, age, skin color, body type.

• They can forge a new identity while permitting for the development of trusted reputational capital and social connections over time.

In-game Social Feed

• Trusted pseudonymity allows for the posting / sharing of game moments with confidence that the event is truly associated with that verified player.

• This allows for the development of reputational capital independent of “real world identity.”

• Social feeds can be syndicated across games, allowing for cross-game discovery.

• Trusted profiles remove the need for complicated Web 2 style “oAuth login” systems- the smart contract behind the profile handles authentication seamlessly in the background.

Achievements & Rewards

• Rewards pertaining to achievements can be optionally bound to a smart contract. The player who owns the reward can now trade it to another player (if the contract permits the trading of rewards).

• This opens up the core mechanic associated with “play to earn”- as players achieve goals, their reward(s) can be sold for remuneration.

• Developers can receive “downstream royalties” from the smart contract as the object is traded (if they opt to include this right in the minting of the reward).

UGC Asset Marketplace + Customization System

• Creators can utilize the marketplace infrastructure in PLAY to sell their NFT backed game objects. A creator could be another player, or a fashion brand.

• PLAY has developed powerful customization tools that can run in-game, at the option of the developer.

• This allows for a thriving “Creator Economy”, with ownership and property rights seamlessly bound into smart contracts backing the objects for sale.

• Tokenization of the UGC marketplace creates strong incentives for Creators to invest material amounts of time building high quality objects, building a design brand, fan followings, and promoting their designs.

Creator analytics

• PLAY provides live analytics on the performance of game economies, by leveraging the Google Firebase integration with Google Analytics.

• This offers developers and creators a uniquely powerful window into the game and product economies, with the ability to track and analyze performance.

• This data can be used to A/B test pricing, adjust pricing, and optimizing pricing as needed.

• It means blockchain-backed assets can be tracked- where they appear in the gaming ecosystem, the downstream royalties (e.g. from the sale and re-sale of an NFT where the dev has royalty rights)

• The integration of analytics with Web 3 economic management is a critically important aspect needed to “steer” a distributed economy in a healthy direction.

PLAY (former READYgg) aims to bring the first billion web2 game players into web3, by super serving game publishers and game players with all the necessary methods to make migration to web3 gaming from web2 gaming, simple, seamless, and financially rewarding for all participants.

This is achieved through two innovations:

• Layer3 Software as a Service (Saas) experience for game developers, enabling them to implement all the necessary elements to bring games on-chain, without players having to exit the game at any point to complete their web3 onboarding. These solutions include Unity and Unreal SDKs to simplify developer integration with the blockchain. Details on the methods and parameters provided by PLAY’s SDK and Layer3 services can be found in the company’s technical documentation.

• Layer0 interoperability: Enabling complete “account abstraction” for players and publishers, so that game assets, player identities and inventories, can easily migrate between Layer1 and Layer2 blockchain providers, without any friction in the publisher or player game experience. This includes interoperability of smart contracts between blockchains.

With an initial focus on mobile-first technology, PLAY’s tools and solutions reduce barriers of adoption with an untapped “mobile gaming” demographic for blockchain-based gaming.

By simplifying accessibility to small dev teams, allowing creation tools to work on low-end mobile devices, and innovating regulatory in-app store transactions - be it in Indonesia, Philippines, USA or Brazil- using PLAY, anyone can play, create, sell and buy on the blockchain, even from their low-end devices.

The use case and design for PLAY emphasized characteristics that are naturally compatible with the Web 3 philosophy of a distributed, cross-platform, interoperable ecosystem of games. Notably, PLAY set out to solve core problems found by many dev teams and studios:

• Managing Social Game Economies: Enabling the rapid deployment of casual PvP multiplayer games, with all the necessary infrastructure to manage players and the components of a mature social game economy. (See “Ecosystem Features” below for details.)

• Cross game interoperability: The ability of a player to move across games, with the same player identity, friends lists, and acquired assets, such as “cosmetics” (skins, accessories, clothing) and “achievements”, unified in one persistent profile. At the discretion of the developer, the player’s avatar and cosmetics acquired in other games can be loaded in their game.

• Enabling a User Generated Content marketplace (UGC): Central to the success of many “free to play” games is the deployment of a thriving UGC marketplace- from modding game levels and game items, to creating avatar cosmetics, with creators being rewarded for the effort by putting the items up for sale, with the host game receiving a portion of proceeds. The more inter-operable, cross-platform, cross-game the marketplace, the more it benefits all participants: developers hosting the market in their games with marketplace commissions, creators generating sellable content maximizing their reach, and players who purchase unique items finding an ever wider variety of virtual goods, with the option of re-selling them to other players in the future.

• Rapid deployment of backend game services: A persistent pain point for dev teams is deployment of gaming backend services (aka “dev ops”) and the ongoing maintenance of these services. The cost in terms of time and/or money raises a material barrier to access for smaller dev teams in deploying multi-player game experiences bound to an in-game virtual goods economy. PLAY’s services can be deployed in under 10 working days, and require minimal ongoing dev ops support. Approximately 80% of mobile dev teams are under 3 people, representing 90% of games in production, who with PLAY’s services are now unblocked from creating and maintaining complex social game economies. Even for larger dev teams and publishers, building new in-house technologies and infrastructure presents significant operational challenges and costs. Having an established infrastructure such as PLAY, simplifies integration, onboarding and launch, leaving internal teams to concentrate on building and scaling games in production.

This "sizzle reel" provides an overview of core PLAY functions:

By lowering the barrier to adoption, PLAY aligned its technical IP with the company’s core mission of democratizing access to game creation. Moreover, the company’s technical path aligned with a philosophy of cooperation.

By enabling interoperability across games, PLAY advances the notion that building an ecosystem of compatible games will, overall, benefit all the participants in the ecosystem:

• For Developers: More revenue and better retention and acquisition through collaboration:

  • Players are more likely to purchase in-game content knowing that NFTs can transport across titles, increasing ARPPU for the dev teams. In early tests with NFT-backed game objects, purchasable with in-game currency, participating games saw a lift in ARPPU from $4 to $23. This reflects the shift in spending behavior when a player sees a game object as ownable property (an “investment”) versus a consumable that has no resale value.

  • Players are more likely to try new games, knowing their profile, player identity, friends list, and inventory can be accessed across participating games, reducing “CPIs” for dev teams. These dynamics fall under the rubric of “network effects”: The value of any one game increases the more games are cooperating.

• For Players:

  • Hopping into a new game, and playing with existing friends is made much easier by having a transportable profile and friends list. Investing in a universal player profile rewards the effort, as the same profile appears game to game, enabling longer-term rewards and achievements across the ecosystem. And as noted above, for players, the incentive to own game objects- as opposed to consuming or “renting” them- opens a pathway to myriad “play to earn” mechanics.

• For Creators:

  • Simple to use authoring tools, a quick path to selling created items, across a marketplace that goes from game to game, with a mechanism to fairly reward all the stakeholders in the ecosystem for the effort that’s easy to use and understand.

  • When a creator can bind an object to a property right through an NFT, this dramatically raises the perceived value of the item- and increases the probability that creators can be fairly remunerated for their efforts, broadening and deepening the marketplace of virtual goods.

These principles in PLAY, and the technical IP supporting them, exist independent of blockchain-based protocols. The promise of “Web 3” is an existential transition from “Web 2”, notably a shift from walled gardens with proprietary protocols (aka “platforms”) to environments with shared ownership over the underlying protocols (aka “ecosystems”).

Thoughtfully integrating blockchain-based protocols into the existing PLAY infrastructure creates a fast-path to fulfilling some of the core tenets of the transition to Web 3. Specifically, by deploying a utility token with governance rights, affiliated to PLAY, many of the existing PLAY functions become geometrically more effective in fulfilling the core mission of democratizing access to game and game content creation.

In examining this opportunity to build a Web 3 aligned gaming ecosystem, PLAY concluded that:

• The issuance of a governance utility token is critically important to building a decentralized ecosystem with distributed governance and ownership rights. A utility token reduces technical complexity with regards to distributed transactions, while allowing trusted fast-scaling by aligning the efforts of all stakeholders. A purpose-built token incentivizes long-term thinking by rewarding stakeholders that patiently build towards fulfilling the vision.

• Existing PLAY technical IP is sui generis catalytic to the web 3 vision: when combined with a correctly designed token, it achieves the goal of a democratic, distributed, co-owned ecosystem of games at scale. This operating IP de-risks the overall effort, by removing key technical “unknowns” and providing immediately implementable “full stack” solutions to dev teams interested in participating in a Web 3 game economy. It provides a stable foundation for the effort.

The proposed token is named “PLAY” ($PLAY). The design of $PLAY privileges the interest of the ecosystem by emphasizing long-term growth, collaboration, and shared ownership:

• Fixed issuance: The total potential issuance of $PLAY is fixed at 1 billion tokens. Fixed issuance reduces the risk of inflation in the ecosystem.

• Governance rights: Through a staking mechanism, $PLAY holders receive the right to vote on issues germane to the future direction of the ecosystem.

• Rewarding early adoption: $PLAY can be strategically deployed in the first phase of ecosystem development, to reward devs (“dev to earn”), creators (“create to earn”) and players (“play to earn.”). $PLAY provides a potent method, combined with vesting, to incentive early building, and adoption, with an eye to long-term success.

• Supporting NFT minting at low cost and high scale: The utility of $PLAY includes enabling all the stakeholders involved to manufacture game content with persistent, tradeable ownership rights, at lower cost and higher efficiency.

• Reducing friction in transactions: Both the cost- down to microtransactions- and the “trust” are improved using a utility token to ensure a “fair trade.” This coupled with effective software to handle the user experience of minting an object reduces a significant barrier to mainstream adoption of token-backed objects as something you can “own” and not just “consume.”

• Tracking ownership across games: Token-backed content can freely move across games, and creates alignment between developers, creators, and players to recognize ownership rights. For developers, who have ultimate control over their game(s), recognizing ownership generates an immediate economic benefit, by working to increase the overall “GDP” of the gaming ecosystem and their revenues: when players and creators are confident that the rights to their assets are being recognized, they are more likely to a) spend on the acquisition of items, and b) spend more on each item.

Gaming is well understood to be the largest entertainment category globally. Across all categories of global spending, gaming constitutes a $317 billion industry. This sizing includes several key segments outside of gaming content and virtual goods purchases: other forms of content and IP sales, sales of any gaming hardware and equipment (including consoles) as well as gaming software such as streaming services (e.g., Twitch), gamer communication (e.g., Discord), game engines (e.g., Unity), and other items.[1]

Market categories, from hardware sales to in-game sales, include:

Several categories are germane to Web 3 economics, ripe for disruption:

Blockchain gaming, a category that is “only” $1.5bn is growing exponentially, at an estimated 100% CAGR. The potential market in 2025 for blockchain could reach $50bn.

However, this blockchain gaming growth estimate could be an understatement. As noted by BITKRAFT in their market research:

For Web2 gaming studios, PLAY offers an effcient lower-risk path to testing and learning. Studios can use PLAY's live operations infrastructure and $PLAY tokenomics as a method to quickly standup a Web3 gaming test, generate real-world data, and reach a de-risked, qualified opinion on how best to integrate Web3 gaming into a studio's gaming portfolio, by answering these questions:

• Should studios adapt existing Web2 games to Web3 mechanics?

• Should studios release new "purpose built" Web3 titles from scratch?

• Should studios create their own live operations stack to manage Web3 gaming, if so with what features?

• Should studios issue their own utility and governance token to support their games? If so, how would their tokenomics work? What evidence can be shown to investors and players that these tokenomics effectively align all stakeholder interests for the long term?

• How can studios evangelize the Web3 opportunity and build goodwill with their existing Web2 player communities.

Working inside the PLAY ecosystem as a testnet enables Web2 studios to answer these questions (and more) with direct, hands-on data, generated in a safe, scalable, and accessible environment.

Post learning, the studio may conclude that using PLAY's live operations infrastructure, an the shared tokenomics of $PLAY are powerful de-risking factors, with material operating and financial upside. Or they may conclude that they have a robust empirical rationale to build their own game-affiliated ecosystem.

Whichever the path the studio may opt to pursue - within the PLAY ecosystem or in their own (or another) ecosystem- PLAY serves as their initial native guide towards reaching an informed decision.

provide a safe environment for the testing of Web3 features, without the hurdle of creating core technology required to conduct the test. This liberates teams to experiment with different blockchain methods, refine those methods with real-world data, and then deploy at scale, with more confidence.

A good existing example of this in action is , which defines itself as "an experimental development environment for teams who want to move fast and innovate on Kusama, or prepare for deployment on Polkadot." One of the largest blockers in gameFi for mainstream adoption are the hurdles studios must overcome to go live with a Web3 game, which makes testing and learning cost prohibive as described in the pervious section.

Web2 game studios entering gameFi face meaningful uncertainty pertaining to testing, deploying, refining, and scaling Web3 economics. The present state of gameFi requires Web2 companies to adpot material risk at the outset, in terms of complexity, capital requirements, and reputational hits related to Web3 initatives that mis-align with existing Web2 player community sentiment. Potential risks include:

• Over estimating the need for a purpose-built utility token associated to the game. In the absence of a testbed for web3 economic loops, the true necessity for a game token rests on conjecture, rather than disciplined real-world gaming data from players.

• Underestimating the complexity of issuing a utility token, in compliance with global regulations. Poorly executed token issuances create material downside risk for the parent company, in terms of potential shareholder litigation, money laundering and KYC regulations that can shift with minimal notice, and a chronic shortage of "seller side" law firms able to confidently guide the newbie issuer through the token generation process.

• A general "investor fatigue" at the cookie-cutter oversupply of vertically integrated, single-purpose gameFi utility tokens. Ultimate, these devolve into a simple equation for the seasoned investor: "Are we in the hit-driven game business?" Meaning the success or failure of token economy associated to the game is largely to correlated to non-crytpographic risks, notably- "Is this game super fun and going to be a mega hit?" Few, if any, investors like those risks.

• Player cynicism that - to date- Web3 "play to earn" mechanics appear to be devoid of fun, and exist as financial "schemes" masquerading as games.

• Underestimating the technical integration required for live operations on-chain by the game studio. Most game studios are not staffed with "core tech" engineers, let alone seasoned blockchain engineers. The capital expenditure to recruit a core tech crypto team, diligence the right partner set (layer1, layer2 solutions, smart contract methods, and more), and then crisply execute the concordant engineering strategy without errors, technical debt accumulation, and security risks- all prior to even validating the cost/benefit of web3 gaming in the conext of the studio's existing web2 games portfolio- presents a material go-to-market risk.

For the reasons above, Web2 gaming companies have largely taken an appropriately skeptical "wait and see" approach to Web3 gaming. Until "best practices" are fully developed, and player sentiment becomes more aligned with the "fun" and "play" possible in a Web3 gaming context, the "first mover" risks are material.

At the same time, with some adoption of risk comes the potential for reward. Thus some Web2 gaming studios are open to entering a Web3 gaming ecosystem- but would prefer to test, iterate, learn, and refine their strategy first.

The PLAY API is platform agnostic- it supports events on mobile, desktop, console. It allows for cross-game and cross-platform play. A convenience SDK for Unity, Unreal Engine and Godot supports easy access to the on-chain data calls from inside the game dev environment. .

The SDK supports player account abstraction via the PLAY wallet methods, enabling:

• Players to manage game assets that, technically, operate on different L1/L2 providers, such as Ethereum and non-Ethereum based chains.

• Players can easily connect their PLAY wallet to third-party wallets inside the player dashboard, enabling the management of game assets inside and outside web3 games operating on PLAY.

• The PLAY wallet is non-custodial, with PLAY having no access to the user's passphrase directly.

This video shows a player, inside an iOS game, creating their PLAY wallet and passphrase without leaving the game experience:

Central to a user-generated content marketplace is the ability to easily mint game object, or series of game objects, tied to a smart contract with ownership rights.

A key principle to minting is that it permits minting and melting. Minting is the act of converting $PLAY tokens into a smart contract. Melting is the act of destroying the contract, and extracting the underlying value in $PLAY tokens. From there, the tokens can re-enter the token marketplace- be traded for fiat, or recycled into other game objects. So, for example, where a game has been discontinued, players may wish to melt down their game items.

Central to the creation of smart contracts for tadeable game objects it the intermediate step of a FuseBlock. The FuseBlock provides the ecosystem with a powerful marco-economic tool, to help manage the overall token economy.

The Treasury is designed as a financing option for the future growth of the ecosystem:

• 5% of the tokens are allocated to the Treasury.

• The Treasury provides the option of additional private pre-sales, and an eventual public sale of $PLAY.

FuseBlocks as a long-term incentive to hold tokens

Because the minted objects have intrinsic value, it's now possible for Developers, Creators, and Players to examine the constant value of the game object, independent of the extrinsic value in the game context. This opens up interesting possibilities:

• Players can invest in acquiring game objects, knowing that they can have persistent value, even if the game ceases to operate: holders of objects that have lost all extrinsic value can "melt them down" and extract the underlying $PLAY associated to the object. This serves as a type of hedge- or insurance policy- for the player. In turn, this can spur more player spending on collectible objects, rewarding the developer in the immediate term as these consume In-App Purchases (IAP).

• The contract can also generate a type of player staking reward for holding game objects in their inventory, and comitting not to trade them for a period of time. For instance, the player staking reward could stipulate that when a player a) places their game objects "on ice" (meaning they cannot be traded, but can be used in-game) then b) they will receive a staking reward commensurate with the overall value of underlying $PLAY in the staked objects (their intrinsic value). Thus a player can be rewarded (and a developer, if they hold FuseBlocks and place them "on ice" prior to using them for minting) for holding on to game objects.

Additionally, FuseBlocks can serve as a powerful market-making incentive.

For example, the Ecosystem Fund could decide to contribute a certain amount of $PLAY to be converted into FuseBlocks. In turn, these FuseBlocks are allocated to a competitive devleoper and/or creator program.

Thus in the totality of uses, FuseBlocks serve to:

• Reward players for being long-term holders of minted objects, by providing a yield for "on ice" items.

• Reward developers by creating market-making incentives to attract high quality games to the ecosystem (with an appropriate lockup on the sale of the underlying $PLAY in the FuseBlocks).

• Allow for "bulk discounts" when devs or creators purchase large quantities of FuseBlocks.

Central to the success of the PLAY gaming ecosystem is the use of $PLAY to incentivise long-term investment and behavior by key stakeholders: developers, creators, and players.

The more tokens are held by active participants in the ecosystem- as opposed to passive investors- the higher the probability that the value of the ecosystem will work to everyone’s mutual benefit. To stimulate long-term cooperation, PLAY envisions strategic use of $PLAY, under the theme of “dev to earn, create to earn, play to earn.”

Tokens in the Ecosystem Fund finance initiatives to encourage developer, creator, and player adoption. This can be seen as a type of “marketing budget” for growing the ecosystem with high-quality participants. Examples by type of stakeholder include:

• Dev to earn.

• Create to earn.

• Play to earn.

In each of these cases, PLAY is mindful that it may be appropriate to put a vesting schedule on ecosystem development token issuances. It’s premature to reach a blanket conclusion on whether grants should or should not fall under vesting, let alone design a “one size fits all” vesting strategy for community grants. Rather, it is presumed that vesting schedules can be attached to token grant programs on a case-by-case basis. PLAY plans to carefully monitor token grant issuances, and adjust vesting rules if/when market dynamics indicate they advance the cause of long-term ecosystem building and stability.

Dev to Earn

• Developer teams and studios can apply for”up front” token grants prior to a game’s release, which in turn can be used to fund their internal game mechanics:

  • Minting NFTs, and creating their own relevant “play to earn” and “create to earn” mechanics with incentives, in each title.

  • Create branded game currency derived from the $PLAY token to be used to reward players in their specific game

    • For example, a PvP golf game that qualifies could use the token grant to fund achievement rewards by players and golf leagues; fund loyalty programs, rewarding players for inviting high-quality friends to the game; even fund IP tie-ins with golf themed “merch” by giving the IP holder an advance against future cosmetic sales in the game.

  • The dev team can also decide, at their discretion, to hold their tokens, to fund investment into the game, by covering engineering costs.

• Additionally, PLAY may opt to to provide “backend grants”- these are token issuances to dev teams whose games have met certain performance benchmarks, deemed markers of a valuable ecosystem contribution:

  • Games with retention metrics in the top decile of the ecosystem.

  • Games with relatively high ARPDAU/ARPPU in the ecosystem.

  • Games with highly efficient customer acquisition costs.

  • Games with high install rates.

• Dev teams building software solutions, more broadly, which are then shared with the ecosystem may also qualify for “up front” and “backend” grants. For example:

  • A dev team building a conversion tool to allow avatar content to be exported from the PLAY ecosystem to third-party ecosystems (e.g. Roblox, Minecraft).

  • A team working on more efficient “off chain” transaction processing, which reduces “gas fees” system wide.

Currency Systems

• The API supports the management of currency types. In a pre-blockchain context, these are referred to as “Hard Currency” and “Soft Currency.”

• Hard currency is game currency- such as “gems”- that is purchased with fiat typically known as an IAP (In-App Purchase).

• Soft currency is currency - such as “coins” - remunerated through game actions, such as successfully clearing a level, as a reward. It is typically not purchasable with fiat.

• In a Web 3 context, Hard Currency can be backed by a token, using a smart contract. A developer could opt to mint a fixed volume of gems, back them using fractionalized $PLAY tokens through the smart contract.

• Players can then use these gems for the purchase of in-game content, save those gems (assuming an appreciation of the underlying utility token), and sell their gems to other players.

• In-game currency backed by a smart contract is a powerful method to support “play to earn” mechanics by developers.

• Integrating the gems to a fixed asset - the $PLAY token- controls for cross-game economics. A game can then opt to “accept” gems from another game, into their game (at the developer discretion). This can be useful especially when developers control multiple titles, and want to create cross-game benefits as a means of rewarding player loyalty.

NFT Integration In-Game

• Developers can mint game objects to create additional value for game objects players purchase or receive as rewards.

• $PLAY tokens can be used to mint non-fungible tokens. The benefit of using a native token- the $PLAY token- for this purpose is faster “off chain” processing, lower gas fees, facilitating the type of smaller transactions that are the lifeblood of many casual games.

• The minting in-game democratizes access to the blockchain, by rendering the minting process in a context that is friendly to a mainstream adopter (as opposed to an existing early crypto adopter).

• An intermediate step- known as “FuseBlocks” sits between the $PLAY token and the final smart contract. The FuseBlock opens a development path in the ecosystem where, in the long term, the community can opt to permit additional tokens, such as Etherium, to mint game objects.

• FuseBlocks have an additional beneft of serving as a smart contract, governing the methods and rewards related to "melting down" a minted object. This serves to reduce the number of tradeable tokens, and inflation, by rewarding long-term behavior, and discriminating against short-term financial speculation. (More details below).

UGC Asset Marketplace + Customization System

• Developers can opt to accept UGC (User Generated Content), and receive “marketplace commissions” for hosting the sale of the item.

• For example, in the avatar system, cosmetic items can be designed by third-parties, known as “Creators.” A creator could be another player, or a fashion brand.

• PLAY has developed powerful customization tools that can run in-game, at the option of the developer.

• By accepting creator items in their game, developers reduce the obligation to expend resources designing every game asset. They can opt to bring in the marketplace feed, and allow players to equip items from third-parties.

• This allows for a thriving “Creator Economy”, with ownership and property rights seamlessly bound into smart contracts backing the objects for sale.

Dev analytics

• PLAY provides live analytics on the performance of game economies, by leveraging the Google Firebase integration with Google Analytics.

• This offers developers and creators a uniquely powerful window into the game and product economies, with the ability to track and analyze performance.

• This data can be used to A/B test pricing, adjust pricing, and optimizing pricing as needed.

• It means blockchain-backed assets can be tracked- where they appear in the gaming ecosystem, the downstream royalties (e.g. from the sale and re-sale of an NFT where the dev has royalty rights)

• The integration of analytics with Web 3 economic management is a critically important aspect needed to “steer” a distributed economy in a healthy direction.

The Ecosystem Fund fulfills a Web3 vision of inclusivity, diversity, and giving power back to the consumer - allowing anyone to be a part of the blockchain. As gaming becomes more representative of diverse populations around the world, PLAY’s vision is that the Ecosystem Fund helps empower and support underserved developers and creators that, for example, identify as women, BIPOC and LGBTQ+.

The Ecosystem Fund is designed to receive ongoing revenues from marketplace fees. As the marketplace GDP grows, along with the value of an PLAY token, the Ecosystem Fund becomes a self-sustaining investment arm of the ecosystem. In the first phases of governance decentralization, the allocation of funds from the Ecosystem Fund is governed by PLAY. The Ecosystem Fund is based on these principles:

• At start, 25% of the PLAY token issuance is earmarked for the Ecosystem Fund.

• In Q3 2025, the first votes are presented to the community to advise on the distribution of tokens from the Ecosystem Fund, under the rubric of “dev to earn” and “create to earn” - targeting high-value dev teams and creators who bring material benefits to the growth of the ecosystem.

• A portion of community token distribution must serve towards investing in the developer and creator ecosystem by empowering underserved communities, such as women, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ developers and creators.

The Ecosystem Fund also generates the yield for the Staking Vault. See “Market Making Mechanisms” below for more details on ways the Ecosystem Fund can manage and distribute rewards.

Play to Earn

• Individual games create incentives to reward long-term player behavior (see use of tokens in “Dev to Earn”). For example, players are active in the game on a sustained basis, invite friends to play who in turn act on a sustained basis, could qualify for token distributions from the dev running the game.

• In some cases, players will naturally progress to becoming creators, and by creating content of value, will receive rewards through the “Create to Earn” program.

• Players that acquire NFT-backed rewards through game play may opt to sell/trade or “melt” the reward, generating remuneration for their efforts.

It should be noted that PLAY is considering the potential of a secondary currency. Similar to SLP in the Axie Infinity ecosystem, the secondary currency would be primarily designed as an explicit "player loyalty program." It is premature to have firm conviction on the utility and design of a potential secondary currency, but important to signal that it could provide additional benefits to the long-term growth and health of the overall ecosystem.

In proceeding with a blockchain solution, PLAY identified the necessity of issuing a utility token with governance rights, for the purpose of enabling a truly distributed, community-owned gaming ecosystem. To proceed without a token would preclude the ability to generate distributed community governance, and would remove an important mechanism for rewarding the “early adopters” - be they devs, creators, or players- whose collective effort in building the ecosystem is central. A token with the correct design would solve these issues.

The proposed token has the following characteristics:

• Community Treasury: A token reserve distributed as advances against future financial needs or funding rounds, to fund ecosystem development.

• Ecosystem Fund: Enables incentive programs for early adopters to think long-term and work collaboratively towards the development of the ecosystem.

• Staking Mechanism: To enable distributed governance, the PLAY token is designed with a staking system that, over time, vests control to the community regarding ecosystem decisions, such as the technical roadmap.

NFTs as an entry point for mainstream players

While blockchain-specific games are seeing success with early adopters, mainstream adopters - highly engaged players that can fuel game adoption and virality - are gravitating towards NFT-powered games and play-to-earn games. These types of games appeal to a consumer-driven 18-35 demographic, looking to invest in virtual identities and curate collections of objects they own, while being rewarded for their time and effort in-game.

In Q3 2021, trading volume for NFTs showed the rise of gaming in the NFT market: in-game collectibles backed by NFTs grew to 22% of overall NFT trading volume, representing $2.3bn in sales.

What sets PLAY apart is that it enables developers to power their games with NFTs and reward players with simple “play-to-earn” components. Features in PLAY appeal to a more consumer, contemporary, social-media inclined demographic. By creating an infrastructure that at its core is mobile-first, developers have the ability to connect their games to a wide audience of players.

Web3 developer adoption

Developers are rapidly exploring Web3 technologies (across gaming and other sectors). According to Electric Capital’s 2021 developer report, they “fingerprinted nearly 500K code repositories and 160 million code commits across Web3” to generate a growth analysis of the Web3 developer ecosystem:

The note of caution regarding wider blockchain gaming, as known as “gameFi” adoption, is a macroeconomic risk and potentially a regulatory (both via government regulation and private platform regulation, such as the Apple App Store). It can be partly de-risked by addressing what PLAY believes to be the key hurdle to wider gameFi adoption- the developer, creator, and player experience in entering blockchain-backed gaming.

This is reflected in a recent survey conducted by the Blockchain Gaming Alliance in 2021. They surveyed game studios, and asked “What are the pain points for blockchain gaming?”

Several of the top “pain points” reported above are resolvable with PLAY’s technical ecosystem:

• Technology limitations.

• Poor user experience.

• Lack of technical experts.

• Difficult to implement.

• Too niche.

• Lack of on/off ramps.

• Lack of interoperability.

PLAY believes that key to broad adoption of blockchain-based gaming, is a simplification of each step in the pipeline. This, in turn, broadens the addressable market for each constituent group. PLAY has largely achieved these aims:

• Developers: A simple SDK (initially in Unity 3D, the dominant mobile game engine) that provides access to an equally simple set of API methods. Real-time dashboards providing the developer with game analytics, and “live operations”, including control of blockchain elements.

• Creators: In-game authoring tools, currently deployed, that allow for the creation of avatar cosmetics, with the ability to trigger a minting process to bind the item to an NFT, all within the mobile experience. The creation modules are available to developers as well, in the SDK.

• Players: The shift from a “wallet” metaphor to a “verified profile.” Profile verification is a cryptographic step, where the profile is bound to an NFT, and inherits functions associated with a wallet. Going forward, this enables transactions to appear inside metaphors like “my inventory” or “my purchases”.

"Crossing the Chasm" from early adopters to the majority

Each of these steps work to move blockchain gaming from a set of “innovators” and “early adopters” to the next tier- the “early majority.” This is known as crossing the chasm:

PLAY is mono-focused, market-making solutions to encourage mainstream market adoption of blockchain gaming. By targeting mobile-first development, widening the player ecosystem, and encouraging more developers and creators to join blockchain, PLAY is penetrating into an untapped market - crossing the chasm to wider adoption.

Investors in the $PLAY token will be joining PLAY in achieving this aim, contributing to the creation of a broad-based distributed, accessible, gaming ecosystem.

Requirements and assumptions

The $PLAY token is a utility token with governance rights based on Ethereum, operating on a third-party Layer 2 chain to lower gas costs and improve transaction time.

The market for Ethereum-based Layer 2 processors is rapidly commodifying. PLAY intends to abstract the Layer 2 processor from core ecosystem functions, enabling easy switching between processors as they compete with each other on pricing, up to and including the potential for parallel processing, with “just in time” switching between competing Layer 2 providers based on real-time processing costs. This will ensure the PLAY ecosystem gets the best possible pricing and fastest processor in the market. This is similar to Real-Time Bidding (RTB) algorithms in online ad networks, where buyer decisions are made in real-time on a per-impression cost basis, to pass an ad unit to the winning network.

PLAY intends to use Layer-2 processors to support the ecosystem’s need for smart contracts:

• ERC-20, to support the $PLAY token.

• ERC-721 and ERC-1155 protocols to support the minting of digital assets and trading.

NFT minting will depend on smart contract design:

• The first version is being developed in Solidity, an object-oriented and statically-typed programming language designed to allow developers to create smart contracts.

• Over time, migration may occur to the Vyper language, which deliberately has less features than Solidity with the aim of making contracts more secure and easier to audit.

• Users will have the option to list and sell their assets on third-party markets, such as OpenSea, programmatically on NFT creation.

PLAY will treat the blockchain network as the canonical database, giving it highest authority in terms of state. In some cases, client applications, such as the PLAY API, serving as a proxy, may connect directly to the blockchain to gather inventory about item properties, such as:

• Inventory.

• Asset properties, e.g.:

  • Creator ID.

  • Current owner ID.

  • Transfer history.

• Transaction state.

In the long term, depending on how transactions scale in the ecosystem, it may become more efficient for PLAY to develop its own blockchain to further optimize transaction time, and cost.

PLAY designed a token “market making” process that occurs in stages. The aim is to:

• Generate early capital to establish a market value for the $RDYX token via private sales.

• Use the capital raised to a) fund PLAY team expansion necessary for building and supporting the ecosystem and b) create a price floor for $PLAY that can translate into the first Ecosystem Fund grants for devs, creators, and players.

The presale cycle is divided into two phases:

• Pre-seed: these are the earliest investors, receiving advantageous financial terms.

• Seed & strategic presale: future tranches of private investors, at a markup from the pre-seed sale.

Based on the progress of the presale, and the ecosystem uptake during the presale phases, PLAY then envisions a public sale. The financial floor set in the pre-sales is used to determine the price at public sale launch. It is estimated approximately 1%-2% of the token supply will be made available in an initial public sale.

The problem FuseBlocks look to solve

In managing a healthy token-based economy, there are risks to be considered:

• Volatility: Triggered by either too many or too few tokens available for public trading.

• Speculation: Trigered by market incentives that reward short term "day trading" behavior among token holders, as opposed to "long term value investing" behavior.

• Inflation: The token supply grows in a manner that creates inflation- the supply of tokens exceeds demand.

• Deflation: The supply of tokens fails to meet demand, artifically constraining their utility for the ecosystem.

The FuseBlock system is designed to give greator macro-economic control over the ecosystem, by incentivising long-term value investing.

FuseBlocks are smart contracts in their own right, that govern the overally economy related to minted game objects. Without a FuseBlock, one could in theory mint an object directly. In practice, objects must be minted via an underlying FuseBlock contract. The PLAY ecosystem controls the rules beind these smart contracts, and these rules relate to to $PLAY token as follows:

• FuseBlocks are smart contracts backed by a quantity of $PLAY. For example, a "$10" FuseBlock contains $10 of $PLAY at that moment.

• A FuseBlock is a precondition to mint game object(s) on the ecosystem. For example, a developer purchases a $100 FuseBlock and mints 100 collectible in-game rewards. These rewards are given to players who've achieved a certain level of game mastery, by a metric set by the developer (levels cleared, XP earned, etc).

• The minted game objects in the above example now have two measures of value:

  • Extrinsic Value: The value as perceived a player in the game context. This is the artistry of game design, that gives status and meaning to a reward consistent with the quality of the game experience (e.g. a super-rare "Skin" for an avatar, where a player has reached the top 1% of players in skill.).

  • Intrinsic Value: This is the underlying value of $PLAY behind the game object. In the example given, the 100 in-game rewards, using a $100 FuseBlock, have an intrinsic value of $1 each (at the moment of minting, given the price of $PLAY at that instant).

The PLAY ecosystem for developers has two primary components:

• An API that contains all the methods required to run in-game and inter-game economies.

• An SDK, compatible with Unity 3D and Unreal, that allows for easy access to the API and integration of the ecosystem into the game.

Current API functions:

• PvP Matchmaking

• Cross platform play (mobile/PC/console)

• Leaderboards

• User Profile Management

• In-Game Chat (audio, video, text)

• Friends List & Invite System

• In-game Social Feed

• Achievements & Rewards

• Currency System

• Portable Avatars

• UGC Asset Marketplace

• NFT Integration in-game

• Customization System

• Dev / Creator Analytics

Many of these functions are enhanced by integration with a utility token. Functions for each key stakeholder- devs, creators, players- are enhanced by integration with a dedicated token for the ecosystem. From a high level perspective, the use case can be summarized:

• “Dev to Earn” - Developers can issue rare items- both in the forms of in-game currency backed by an NFT, or in-game obje cts designed to have scarcity and ownership rights, also backed by NFTs. In turn, those items can be used by devs to strategically motivate player behavior- by designing in-game “play to earn” mechanics under their control.

• “Create to Earn” - Creators, such as artists designing rare items for sale, can easily manufacture and place those items for sale. Developers can opt to syndicate the Creator content into their games (categorized by hashtags, which in turn are “storefronts”), and work with Creators to build in-game virtual goods economies. Owners of these items- players- can opt to trade them, or put them for sale in-game or in third-party marketplaces, creating a robust economy for the virtual goods.

• “Play to Earn” - Players through game play can acquire rewards (economics set by the dev) in exchange for their in-game actions. Thus players who dedicate time and effort- aka “good players” - can generate tangible rewards over time, which in turn- such as game assets or premium game currency they earned- can be sold.

What follows are more detailed explanations of the mechanics for each stakeholder group.

Create to Earn

• Brands, fashion labels, artists- each may bring a community of fans to the ecosystem, interested in purchasing virtual goods related to creator IP. In exchange for incentivizing “high quality” IP to enter the ecosystem, PLAY could provide token grants as an incentive to create a “collection” for sale in games.

• In other cases, PLAY may provide “backend” incentives, similar to “dev to earn”, according to benchmarks set by PLAY:

  • Creators with sales in the top decile of the ecosystem receive bonus grants.

  • Creators meeting other predetermined criteria set with PLAY, receive bonus grants.

Staking Mechanism

• Holders of $PLAY tokens can stake them by placing them into a staking vault.

• Tokens in the vault are not available for other use- they are effectively taken out of active circulation.

• Staked tokens receive the equivalent of ecosystem rewards, on a weekly basis, in the form of additional PLAY tokens (or fractions thereof).

• The distribution of staking payments comes out of the Ecosystem Fund.

• The distribution amount is initially set by PLAY, and over time will transfer to a DAO.

• These revenues are distributed pro-rata to the stakeholders in the vault.

• To qualify on upcoming votes, stakeholders voting power correlates to the staked amount over a set period of time prior to the vote.

Longer-term: Incentivizing distributed ecosystem development

While currently the PLAY SDK supports avatar portability for games using the system, it is possible through the concept of “dev to earn” that developers interested in furthering the cross-game portability of content could create translators for this purpose. For example, if Roblox, in the future, were to recognize ERC-backed assets, this would create an incentive to build a translator from PLAY enabling the “export” of cosmetics from the PLAY ecosystem to Roblox. The smart contract would be agnostic to the fact that the cosmetic item has moved from “Game A” to Roblox. Similarly, the translator could allow an “import” function, meaning the object from Roblox could be brought into the PLAY ecosystem.

The ultimate barrier to extensibility for content is the social contract- not a technical contract. The more developers agree to accept ERC contracts in their games or metaverses, the better. Whether the object itself was minted in PLAY, or Axie, or Roblox, or XYZ Game- the smart contract can be designed to enshrine ownership- what matters is whether games receiving the object care to “honor” the contract behind the game object. The ultimate driver of the social contract is economic benefit and player demand.

What is PLAY?

A next-gen gaming platform that empowers game makers and game players - that’s YOU 👊 - to become an OWNER of the next-gen platform for gaming… by simply becoming an active member of the ecosystem.

Become an owner by either making games or playing games on PLAY, and by participating in the PLAY community on socials. The more you do, the more you own!

What is $PLAY?

$PLAY - is the native utility token for the PLAY gaming ecosystem. As a player $PLAY can be used to:

• Unlock ecosystem level rewards - subscriptions, discounts, and other perks - that can be used across games in the PLAY ecosystem.

• Purchase assets from other players within PLAY marketplaces.

• Earn fiat once $PLAY is trading on exchanges.

For devs, $PLAY unlocks cross-chain minting for in-game assets, with price discovery for ultra-low gas fees, and serves as loyalty currency for rewarding player staking of assets they’ve purchased in-game.

What games can I can play?

Games are constantly entering the ecosystem. An up-to-date list can be found at https://myplay.network in the carousel at the bottom of the page. Scroll through and discover what you can play today!

Do I need a crypto wallet to play?

Yes.

OK that’s not helpful. What kind of wallet? Help!

As a player of any game on PLAY you are auto-magically given a PLAY ID wallet. This happens in-game without having to do very much to claim your wallet. The first time you play a game on PLAY, PLAY generates a custodial wallet - meaning you have a wallet just by entering the game, and starting to play.

Once you decide to start purchasing anything in the game, PLAY converts your wallet into a non-custodial wallet, meaning you now own your wallet directly. This requires you to generate a seed phrase- aka a password- to control your wallet. PLAY won’t be able to save or read your seed phrase. You’ll need to write it down somewhere safe or memorize it.

After the first time you play a game on PLAY, the next time you play another game, PLAY will know you’re a returning player and let you use the same wallet for any other game(s) on PLAY you decide to play.

Your wallet then essentially becomes… your identity! Everything that goes into your wallet is really going “into you” as a gamer- all the stuff you’ve bought, achievements you’ve earned, level progression in various games, friends lists - really anything gaming related - can go into this PLAY ID wallet/identity and it becomes yours forever. You now OWN your game history. You now OWN your game data. You now OWN the game assets you’ve purchased or earned by playing.

Welcome to ownership gaming!

What is ownership gaming?

Ownership gaming is how PLAY thinks about this new world gaming on the blockchain. Because every transaction on a blockchain is probably yours, without any central authority able to revoke what you’ve earned, achieved, or purchased, you’re forging a provable identity for life as a gamer!

The old days - or the current days - in traditional gaming, where all your achievements, friends, level progression, assets and so forth are locked up inside the servers of a game company that, at their whim, can delete them forever, or hide them from other games, is over.

Ownership gaming is a true revolution in gaming- it’s a change from the old to the new. No one knows for sure what it will mean over the coming months and years for you to build your own reputation as a gamer, that no one can take away from you- but we’re pretty sure it’s going to be awesome. It will unlock all kinds of future possibilities we will build together, once people can collectively carry with them, wherever they go, all they love and achieve in gaming. We think of your ownership of this as your reputational capital.

How can I get in touch with someone at PLAY?

Discord is good. Come over here.

What does the wallet do?

The wallet is used to hold players NFTS that they acquire in different games in the ecosystem. A player has a PLAY Vault that holds within it multiple wallets. When a player creates an account with PLAY and secures their vault with a password, we create a wallet for each of the supported chains. This allows players to get NFTs in any game with the same account.

Is it custodial or non-custodial?

We use both, custodial and non-custodial, to leverage both the easy onboarding and simplicity of the custodial wallets without trading off the security and more advanced features associated with non-custodial wallets.

In another words, you can play with a guest account, but is not really "yours" until you complete the PLAY registration.

What can people see in the wallet?

People can see their unique Player ID displayed in the Player Dashboard. We are planning to come up with a more comprehensive wallet display of their owned wallet to the upcoming Player dashboard releases.

How many people will get whitelisted for public sale?

Up to 3000

Are there any rewards for playing any PLAY games?

Yes. Rewards will vary depending on PLAY, developers or other partners. But here you can see some rewards already given to some players: PS5, Nintendo Switch, 100$ Play Store Gift Card.

Some games are giving NFTs to early users right now like Runestone Keeper, Cooking Yuumy, Quest 4 Fuel and on May 22nd, Oh My Cat: Survivor

I’m a Dev, what can I do to bring a game to PLAY?

PLAY provides all the tooling and documentation you need to get started as a dev building on PLAY. If you build in Unity, Unreal, Godot- we have SDKs for you that will make your onboarding super smooth. If you need an open API because you’re in Javascript or run your own game engine, we got you covered. Go to myplay.network and dive in- you’ll find links to the Gitbook documentation and access to the SDKs over there. You could be up and running with basic calls to the blockchain in a half day. From there… we’re so excited to see what you’re working on!

Wen token?

TGE and listing is targeted for Q3-2024. So, like, this quarter!

LFG!!!! 🔥

Governance is designed to move towards a true Decentralized Autonomous Organization (“DAO”), it is essential that in the early phases of the transition, PLAY ensures governance stability in the ecosystem’s nascent phases.

Note: any rewards for staked player objects related to FuseBlocks contracts are not envisoned to include governance rights.

Envisioning the future: market democracy

Web3 presents an opportunity to empower the consumer and while supporting developers and creators. PLAY’s vision is to create an ecosystem where:

• Distributed wealth creation is a possibility

• All participants receive direct benefits from their efforts to build a viable ecosystem- you are no longer the product- you are an owner.

• Distributed governance ensures community-led decisions about the future of the organization, and everything it does.

• A collective ecosystem permits everyone who wants to develop, to develop, everyone who wants to create, to create, and everyone who wants to play to play.

What is proposed here is one small step towards that new future.

PLAY is for Everyone. PLAY is for every platform. PLAY is gaming.

Roadmap and long term development

In the first 36 months of operation, PLAY takes lead responsibility for ensuring technical and product innovation persist on the network. As control shifts to a DAO, these decisions - the long term roadmap, the technical priorities for innovation - will shift to the community.

In the near term (12 months), PLAY prioritizes:

• Developing more efficient on-chain and off-chain methods to reduce transaction fees, to a level as close to “0” as possible.

• Building modular UI/UX conventions that can be syndicated into games, that address the need to simplify access to blockchain transactions, such as wallets, inventory systems, minting / melting systems, that can easily be incorporated in-game.

• Creating “frictionless” methods to merchandize / syndicate / sell creator content in both PLAY-powered games and the wider Web 2 ecosystem. For example, enabling avatar cosmetics to be sold in an Instagram feed, or on Roblox, and developing web-based modules that integrate with blockchain transactions. For example, enabling the purchase of a skin directly from an Insta ad, connected to the Aura token.

• Collaborating with other Web 3 ecosystems, to enable cross system content sharing.

• Building a distributed backend cloud compute system to wean the ecosystem from dependence on any Web 2 providers, such as Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, with gas fees subsidizing a cost-efficient backbone.

• Developing methods to enable DAO participation that favor a wide diversity of stakeholders, by making it easier to a) place items to a vote; b) debate the decision; c) vote, setting a standard for “crossing the chasm” when it comes to Web 3 governance.

• Developing methods to properly surface “the wisdom of the crowd” in advance of full DAO transition, so that the overall quality of decisions proposed loses dependency on any one individual or group.

The PLAY Fuseblock is a combination of a smart contract abstraction layer- templated for easy configuration inside the developer's dashboard on PLay - which also contains a quantity of the $PLAY token. PLAY's Fuseblock innovation supports game publishers in the minting of assets, chain-agnostically.

PLAY operate as follows:

• The game developer, after acquiring a PLAY, has the activation necessary to mint and distribute in-game assets to operate on the blockchain.

• The PLAY unlocks the necessary smart contract templates, funds the minting (gas fees).

• It allows the developer to infuse the in-game assets with some quantity of $PLAY to unlock player staking of purchased game assets.

• This in turn serves as the method to generate "loyalty rewards" for players that make in-game purchase actions.

Fuseblocks can be sold to partner L1/L2s in bulk, enabling the participating layer to incentivize game publishers to operate on their chain, at a discount, with a turnkey solution in partnership with PLAY to go from game ideation to activation.

This video shows a game developer using a Fuseblock to mint a series of NFTs for sale in game.