Dear Alchemists,

you may have noticed that the current setup of the Test Arenas at Alchemy Arena does quite well. There are hundreds of staked HANDs and also a bunch of daily challenges going on. More than 0.15% of all existing GATs have been burned in the few weeks since the launch of the public alpha test.

Meanwhile we monitor the gameplay on our side and run checks and tests to ensure stability. In parallel we continue working on possible future Arena configurations and simulating many models and ideas.

Some of you have communicated concerns about what will happen when the GAT staking rewards are finished. This is a great question and the topic of this somewhat theoretical post.

That is indeed a dilemma of P2E (play-to-earn): in the long-term the “E” (earn) has to come from somewhere 😉

As far as we can tell there are 3 possible approaches to this in any given new game:

1. attract more users that bring “fresh” money into the ecosystem of a game – in a sense this is an equivalent of a financial pyramid. Not our favorite, and also nothing that can truly work in the long run. Most hyped games rely on this dynamic, which explains the rocket behavior: fast growth and fast crash.
2. continuously create (=mint) something during the gameplay that has a value (i.e. IS VALUED BY the players) – this can be fungible tokens (like XP) or NFTs that have further properties (e.g. collectible/tradeable value, like TOYs)
3. attract partners that bring valuable tokens of their own and are willing to “donate” them to the game, in exchange of exposure/marketing/promotion

Of course, the GAT rewards will vanish sooner or later. Our aim is to find a balance that pushes the gameplay continuously, even if those are just organic little pushes.

In a sense Arena has functionally a bit of all those 3 points.

1. TOYs and GATs that are in the Arena are an incentive for an attacker to win them – this may attract some new players.
2. You gain XPs (locked liquidity) in the battles as well as collectible TOYs
3. Arenas are built in a way that they can be used as marketing vehicles for new or existing crypto projects. We can launch a customized Arena for any fungible token (or even NFTs), where the “client” project decides the passive and active rewards, staking fees, burning rate, affiliate reward rate, etc.

Technically #3 is there, we just need to make it more attractive for projects and also partner with projects. We are pushing this in our channels. In any case, the basic idea is to launch new limited Arenas with different setups and tokens now and then. Of course, Arenas will “run dry” and new Arenas would appear continuously. Maybe even with small pauses along the way. This is an equivalent of “farms” you see on BakerySwap or PancakeSwap.

To summarize: P2E games need an inflow of “value”. That inflow is either

• objective (external input, e.g. listed tokens with an objective market value), or
• subjective (value given to the continuously appearing tokens, by the users).

This, of course, does create waves of activity, because no inflow can be upkept perpetually and valuations do change in crypto all the time.

So this is basically the mad scientists laboratory set-up that we have. With each launched game we learn more and more. Maybe we should write a book on this in the future. 😂

We are simulating ideas / setups for upcoming Arenas to see how it can function. Arenas have natural lifespans, a cycle of birth and death. This is something we cannot avoid entirely. What we can do is to re-launch Arenas with new exciting “perks” and/or feed them with tokens (from our partners, or Special TOYs, other NFTs, etc). Arenas are a tool for player engagement. These tools are useful, especially as we expand our partnerships and the ecosystem.

This is exciting – as we are literally experimenting on the edge here! Our advantage is that we learn a lot, we don’t get stuck in a single game or pattern. The ecosystem learns and adjusts and evolves all the time. All the next games will use the learnings and the tokens from previous games – pushing the ecosystem as a whole to new levels.