Creating a Sustainable Play-to-Earn NFT Gaming Platform
Blockchain gaming has really caught the wider public’s attention recently. It has become one of the biggest crypto trends, attracting millions of new users towards cryptocurrencies.
The most popular type of blockchain gaming is the Play-to-Earn model — a unique amalgamation of Decentralized Finance and Gaming, allowing players to have fun while earning valuable assets in the form of tokens, NFTs, or other digital rewards. These projects are specific, and the gamer’s primary goal is to earn.
However, because these games involve the concept of in-game purchases and real-world currencies (stored in wallets), they offer scope for ponzi schemes and a possible platform for fraudsters.
How do some Gamefi Ponzi schemes work, and how to avoid them?
Ponzi schemes work when old investors are paid back with new investors’ money without any value being added at all. These keep functioning with potentially never-ending investors coming in.
Many Play-to-Earn models use this “pyramid” structure to lure in players solely on the pretext of “staking money to make profit”. This, in reality, turns out to be “pay to play” disguised under the “play to earn” analogy.
More players are added in a certain timeframe than the already existing ones, ensuring the demand for NFTs. If the number of new users falls below the level of existing users, the same will apply to the demand for NFTs as well — and the value of the token will plummet.
Play-to-earn games that attract gamers via high investment yields are quite unsustainable on account of high distribution of tokens without burning mechanisms and strong use cases in place to control the supply, eventually causing a bad plunge in token prices.
One must be wary of such schemes wherein people are required to invest in order to make some profit. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Pocket Arena setting an example for a sustainable play-to-earn model
Pocket Arena, a free play-to-earn NFT gaming platform, has developed a sustainable economic model with a robust mechanism in order to maintain a healthy economy by the strategy of combining NFTs and esports at its core.
Players here can play the games for free and turn the XPs they earn into POC tokens, that have real-world value, stored in wallets. There’s no obligation to invest, but those who wish to, can.
Take Pocket Arena’s flagship game, Castle Defense, for instance. It works on the premise of buying the fresh NFT Castle, earning XPs, and upgrading castles. In this case, one can choose to buy a castle and hire a player to use the castle in-game, or simply apply to enhance a castle owned by someone else. This way, all parties benefit.
NFT Castles with XPs collected will eventually have more intrinsic value because these XP can not be bought by POC nor by other financial instruments. This XP collected is purely due to the efforts, skills, and time contributed by eSports players. These are priceless and can’t be bought with money.
That is the reason that this XP can be exchanged into real rewards, which can be used for NFT item purchases or can also be cashed out. However, this doesn’t work in the opposite direction where XP can be bought with POC. That is a very clear principle for Pocket Arena that we value the spirit of esports.
Implementing burning mechanisms of these XPs is also important to prevent the inflation of POC prices. In order to win the battle and Esports, you will have to upgrade your in-game items and need to pay some entry fee with XP to participate in the battle as well.
This burning mechanism is very common for the traditional gaming industry as a Pay to Play. Users are required to pay considerable money to upgrade their game items. However, in Pocket Arena, these game item upgrades can be paid with your earned XPs. The XPs make your NFT Castle truly unique and valuable. These high-priced NFT Castle can only be enhanced with the help of highly skilled esports players. If your player has no skills, then he/she will just end up wasting your XP by upgrading wrong items and using them in non-strategic ways.
Eventually, Pocket Arena will pursue the mechanism that true and high-skilled Esports players will enjoy the biggest benefits. Also, those who have no skills can also share the benefits by hiring these pro-players.
From an end-user’s perspective, one gets to experience high-quality entertainment with eSports features (Castle Arena’s PvP battle and eSports mode within PA casual games), and get rewarded with POC tokens.
Moreover, we are fully committed to ensuring that the platform is safe, secure and fair for gamers by conducting regular audits of players’ wPOC in order to detect those which have been collected in illegitimate ways. These users will have no more room in Pocket Arena as we have introduced aPOC that makes sure these XPs are not manipulated via our strict audit process, including KYC. We have seen from a few pioneering gaming projects like Axie Infinity had suffered by some initial whales who used bots.
Pocket Arena’s mission is to create a sustainable eSports platform that everyone can enjoy and engage in safe in-game item trading via blockchain technology.
How to Identify and Avoid Pocket Arena Scams
Scams seem to be everywhere today and crypto land is not an exception. With the recent surge of interest in NFT’s, cryptocurrencies, criminals are finding new ways to scam users out of their hard-earned money.
The crypto space is full of opportunities and risks and scammers are actively targeting this space. In addition to fake groups on Telegram, we also spotted a few scam websites using our name to scam users.
Most of these scam websites have also used the identity of reputed organizations and have created fake pages to fool users. We also came across this website that was offering early access to users to buy the POC.
Warning signs of a scam
The ‘Squid Game’ crypto scam shocked the crypto world.
The token developers (scamsters) did a rug pull due to which the token value crashed to zero from its rise of 3000% which was achieved over a span of 3 days!
When the token was initially introduced, there were a range of red flags which were ignored by investors and hence all of them got duped.
Look out for warning signs of what may appear to you as a fraud or a scam. In the crypto space, any reputed organization will have their official channels. Be it social media, website or messaging platforms like Telegram, Discord or Signal.
“Scammers usually target an organization’s communication channels, try to replicate them by creating fake profiles and target users to join these channels.”
If you are added to groups who pose themselves as an organization, there are high chances that it’s a scammer targeting you and this is a warning sign.
Even a person contacting you via DM posing as a company representative, is a major red flag.
Identify a scam and report it
Keeping the promotional aspect of marketing out of this discussion, no organization will contact you first or add you to groups.
At the time of writing this, Pocket Arena has over 18k followers on Twitter and over 10k users on Telegram. None of these users were invited by Pocket Arena admins to join these channels. Our growth is organic and happens through word of mouth, and pure marketing efforts.
But not all community building efforts are considered scams. As complex the work of scamsters may seem, it’s relatively easy to spot and identify a scam.
This can be done by going to the source and verifying the authenticity of any information or update you have come across. As mentioned earlier, scammers replicate organizations and brand names. So a simple Google search will provide you with the data required like Website, social media and customer support channels.
Done merely go on the SSL certificate of the website. Ensure the company website is correct or error free. For example, scammers often trick users by changing an alphabet in the scam website’s domain name. For example, Google.com is different from G0ogle.com
Take Away’s
As an organization operating in the crypto space, it becomes our responsibility to shield our users from scamsters. We figured the best way to do this is to inform users of the official communication channels. In the case of Pocket Arena, we have created a single source, with link.tree, where everything that is official about Pocket Arena is listed there.
We have also periodically notified our users via social media to exercise caution while dealing with scamsters.
Going forward we would like to inform users that if you spot something suspicious, kindly flag it to relevant customer support teams to verify if the message is valid or a fraud.
How to Grow Your Crypto Portfolio From Gaming
You must have heard this….
“There’s never been a better time than now to invest in crypto.”
Whoever says this, in a way, is right. Crypto is on the lips of every major economy and business leader. People are jumping on the crypto bandwagon mostly by investing in cryptocurrencies and/or Non-fungible Tokens (NFT’s).
Blockchain games have also become a mode of earning crypto rewards. Thanks to the Play-to-Earn model games. Technically, rewards earned and accumulated by playing NFT Games can be called as a user’s crypto portfolio.
Now that everyone’s talking about crypto and investments, how do you join in?
In this article, we’ll talk about how you can grow your crypto portfolio from gaming and most importantly, within the Pocket Arena ecosystem.
What is a crypto portfolio and how does it work?
That’s a good question. A crypto portfolio is nothing but a collection of online currency or instruments. Let’s put it in this way… say for instance you have invested in several cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, NFT’s etc. All these investments put together collectively are termed as your crypto portfolio. It’s as simple as that.
When it comes to Pocket Arena, we have created a healthy ecosystem where eSports gamers (players) and investors (sponsors) play skillfully, have fun and in-turn get rewarded for their continuous efforts due to our Play-to-Earn model.
Similarly, a crypto portfolio works in the same way where a person grows his investment over time by using skillful growth techniques.
Start Your Crypto Portfolio on Pocket Arena
XP’s and owning NFT Castles are 2 aspects of how a user can get started with their crypto portfolios on Pocket Arena. XP’s have become a valuable asset, especially in Castle Defense where players upgrade Castles with earned XP and more importantly, exchange XP for POC.
Our Players earn XP from our flagship game, NFT Castle Defense and other casual games as well. The best part is, unlike legacy gaming, the XP earned can be used by the player to exchange it for POC, an ERC20/BEP20 utility token, a key currency of Pocket Arena NFTs.
Our Sponsors on the other hand, have made fruitful investments in NFT items, predominantly by owning NFT Castles. The castle is rented out by the sponsor to players who use it in-game to battle across different levels. By doing so the value of the NFT Castle increases and XP is shared between players and sponsors as well.
Growing Your Crypto Portfolio on Pocket Arena
The best way to grow your portfolio on Pocket Arena is by earning XP and/or investing in an NFT Castle. Due to our Play-to-Earn model, players start earning XP the moment they sign up and start playing any Pocket Arena games.
We have players and sponsors who have built a strong crypto portfolio on Pocket Arena. Apart from playing other casual games, players have accumulated XP by playing NFT Castle Defense too.
Sponsors have also built a strong portfolio by investing in NFT Castles. By purchasing an NFT Castle with a EUR 98 investment, sponsors have seen their NFT properties grow in value over time. Lucky are those who had taken advantage of our NFT Castle sale where castles were sold for a discounted price of EUR 49!
Now that all 5000 NFT Castle’s are sold out, castle sales are restricted only to the P2P market, where castles are listed for sale from EUR 100 to EUR 500.
Conclusion
Better late than never. It is wise to get started and create a decent crypto portfolio. Follow the steps below to get started on your Crypto Portfolio on Pocket Arena.
- Create your Pocket Arena account,
- Rent a castle from the main menu
- Earn XP by playing NFT Castle Defense in Adventure Mode, 1v1 Challenges (castle required) or Daily Challenges (castle required).
- All XP earned will be stored in your Pocket Arena Wallet where you can later convert it to POC or wEURO.
NFT Castles are also good investment instruments as they are fetching sponsors good returns. But as for now sale of newly minted NFT castles on NFT Castle Market is paused as we have recently concluded our targeted sale of the 5000th castle.
So what does your Crypto portfolio look like?