🎮What is Sipher? I Market Design, Mechanism Design and Token Design Explained 🎮
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🎮What is Sipher? I Market Design, Mechanism Design and Token Design Explained 🎮
Economics Design
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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice
Introduction
MOBA/TPS blockchain game that has well developed graphics where viewers can influence the outcome of PvE matches. Soft resources plus utility token are inputs to crafting and other activities, but NFTs can Disintegrate to get a “refund” of random material fragments. Establishing a guild requires a Guild Token NFT that gives access to guild activities.
High Level Token Summary
The governance token is called $SIPHER and it is capped at 1,000,000,000 total.
Players get it by contributing to the ecosystem or purchasing it through the public sales. It is mainly used for cloning characters, marketplace transaction fees for in-game items, purchase from Sipher laboratory, governance, and staking.
The in game utility token is called $ATHER and there will be an initial 1,000,000,000 in circulation, but the actual number is uncapped.
It will be distributed prior to the launch of the game and can be acquired through PvP and PvE gameplay. It is mainly used as in-game progression, crafting, leveling characters and equipment, skill unlock, and building construction.
Market Design
Thickness of Market
Currently two of the three genesis classes have been released and are tradeable on OpenSea. There are 10,000 each of these genesis NFTs
3,700 wallets own a Sipherian Surge (Sipher Inu) and it has a total trade volume of 6,300 ETH, and a floor price of 0.179 on OpenSea.
3,700 wallets own a Sipherian Flash (Sipher Neko) and it has a total trade volume of 1,400 ETH, and a floor price of 0.13 on OpenSea
Player Archetypes:
Killers: There are weekly leaderboards that the killer player type will enjoy competing in. The 3v3 PvP aspect of the game can also be a source of competition, either through in-game tournaments or ESports matches in the future.
Achievers: The achiever player type will benefit from the PvE game mode as it looks to have a dungeon battle game mode where players need to complete a stage in order to progress through the story.
Socialisers: Sipher has a way to influence those watching a match. Users can burn $ATHER that allows them to help a player in PvE by giving them much needed drops, or provide buffs during gameplay.
Miners: Miners can be present in the economy as there will be a Play and Earn aspect to the game. Miners can be scholars looking to get as much tokens or resources as they can in order to gain an income from playing the game.
Creators: Sipher has a crafting component to it that requires a different inputs that can be acquired through gameplay. This feature makes it possible for the creator player type to thrive in the economy.
Investors: Investor player type in the game can be seen through the crafters. Those who can read the market well can predict which items to craft and try to make money off of it. Land gameplay was mentioned a bit through Sovereign Land shards and could be interesting to the investor class.
Mechanism Design
Collect and Level Up Characters → Skill-based Gameplay → Reap Rewards
PvE
Dungeon-style gameplay
team of three players can join together to defeat monsters and bosses.
chance to receive rare drops,
materials or cosmetic items, which players can collect or sell to other players.
PvP
Live-Action MOBA
teams of up to 3 players fight against other players.
If a player is going solo, they will be teamed up with other players.
Players compete in ranked matches to earn rewards
complete daily challenges for rewards.
Rewards will be $ATHER to upgrade their equipment and characters
Breeding
No Maximum amount of NFTs
Combine with an unused vessel core in order to clone
Vessel Core can be acquired through airdrops, gameplay or staking
Token Design
Drivers
The main supply driver of the tokens would be gameplay (for $ATHER), token sales and ecosystem contributions (for $SIPHER). Their main demand driver will be crafting, item need and character upgrades.
Allocation Mechanism
Majority of the $SIPHER allocation will go towards game incentives and marketing, while the next biggest chunk goes to the team and advisors. Its treasury and reserves constitute 14% of the allocation while 11.3% goes to the seed sale round. Another 9% goes to sales while 10% goes to liquidity market making. The remaining .3% goes to promotion and partnerships.
Risks
Systematic Risk
The initial NFTs are on the Ethereum layer 1 network, which can be congested and have high gas fees associated with each transaction. It is unsure if the game itself is also on the Ethereum network but that seems likely the case.
Potential Solution
Migrating to a layer two network, like Polygon or Ronin, or creating their own network can help mitigate this risk.
Idiosyncratic Risk #1
The game has a mechanic where people can give $AETHER in order for another player (a streamer based on the example) to get more energy to play the game. Though this is a great idea for a token sink, there are scenarios where $AETHER will become net positive, meaning that more of the token is created than burned.
Potential Solution
A way to mitigate this, while still allowing the feature to do its intended function, is to increase $AETHER cost depending on the win streak that the receiving player is on. This way, we can ensure that more $AETHER is burned than minted in the process. Another way is to just cap the number of times that this mechanic can be done, but this solution can have a negative user experience associated with it.
Idiosyncratic Risk #2
There is a high NFT inflation risk associated with not having a cap on how many NFTs can be cloned. This might cause its price and value to decrease significantly when supply of NFTs far overtake the demand of it.
Potential Solution
Making it more expensive or difficult to clone can be the risk mitigator here. Though in theory users can breed for an infinite number of times, having increasingly lower chances to successfully breed, or having more expensive input costs the higher the breed count can discourage players from using the same token to breed again and again.
Conclusion
MOBA/TPS blockchain game that has well developed graphics where viewers can influence the outcome of PvE matches. The governance token is called $SIPHER and it is capped at 1,000,000,000 total. The in game utility token is called $ATHER and there will be an initial 1,000,000,000 in circulation, but the actual number is uncapped.