The Dynamic Nature Of NFTs
The NFT market has exploded, becoming a mainstream phenomenon that has captured imaginations, reinvigorated artists, and generated billions of dollars in market volume. Athletes, musicians, artists, corporations — even the 250-year-old Christie’s auction house have become involved in digital assets.
Until recently NFTs were static entities. Their value was driven by speculation, aesthetic preference, and perceived worth instead of actual function. The gamefi phenomenon, however, has unlocked the full dynamic potential of NFTs.
NFTs have become a catalyst for gamefi projects with their ability to act as in-game items with multiple utilities. Blockchain games use NFTs to represent ownership, give out rewards and define incentivization mechanisms for games.
At ZONE, we believe NFTs can still be so much more.
ZONE NFTs
ZONE is creating a new gaming ecosystem on top of Algorand, a Pure Proof-of-Stake blockchain with working smart contracts and near-instant transaction settlement times. Algorand is fast, secure, and unlike many popular blockchains today, it is truly decentralized. Algorand is the perfect partner for our mission to monetize gaming for all players.
At ZONE, gamers not only have the opportunity to monetize their everyday gaming experiences but also have access to better gaming dynamics than found in their centralized counterparts.
FIXING THE BROKEN REPUTATION SYSTEMS
For gamers, there is no better feeling than beating difficult opponents and challenges while leveling up. The bragging rights are an integral part of the gaming and video game subculture, however, currently in the gamefi space, there exists no way for the players to show off their hard-earned reputation and skill. Tied to the same problem is the unique case of PFP NFT (profile picture NFT) avatars and how they fail completely to reach their promised utility in the gamefi space.
To begin with, gamers and crypto users highly regard their PFP avatars and of course their prized NFTs. At ZONE, we combine both these aspects to make ZONE NFTs a unique and tangible reputation signal that goes beyond just gaming.
Currently, when users sign in to any defi platform, all they have to show for their PFP is just a bunch of random colors while they put effort into showing off their rare NFT collection on Twitter by putting up a picture of it on their profile avatar. OG CryptoPunks’ buyers on Twitter have them as their profile picture and people do the same for other popular and coveted NFT projects.
ZONE NFTs will be releasing the AFK Elephants NFT collection on the Algorand blockchain.
The AFK Elephants serve as gamers’ digital avatar PFPs and pseudonymous identities across Algorand. Gamers are able to show off their unique PFPs while playing games, challenges, and doing other social activities. The identity and PFP are not limited to ZONE only but across other projects on Algorand as well.
ZONE NFTs solve the fundamental problem in the current gaming industry where the reputation systems are inherently non-rewarding or severely limited to certain in-game elements. Players have no way to earn from their honest contributions to the game, including, moderation and gameplay. Even after earning thousands of experience points in one game, nothing translates to monetary or social rewards for the gamers and much less across another game.
Furthermore, the possibilities go beyond merely accumulating reputation and rewards. Users will be free to trade their ZONE NFTs with fellow gamers in the marketplace.
The ability to get immediate value for your accumulated reputation in the marketplace is powerful. It goes beyond just having high scores or total wins in a game, ZONE NFTs represent the entire history of a user’s gameplay, contribution, and reputation in the ZONE ecosystem which has immediate monetary value due to the fashion in which they are designed. Any change in the overarching incentive structure for contributors will impact contributor behavior and as such gamers can be more fairly rewarded for their gaming experiences on ZONE than anywhere else.
POWERING UP THE GAMEFI EXPERIENCE
ZONE NFTs promptly express the spirit of gamefi where not only are the NFTs themselves gamified but they, in turn, gamify the ZONE ecosystem as well. They are multi-utility and dynamic in nature with both aesthetic and gamefi features.
In the Zone GameFi ecosystem, the NFTs additionally serve as power-up cards. Instead of just digital cards or art, they can be used to power up both the gaming and finance aspects of the Zone gamefi experience. Gamers only need to select their NFT before any game to activate the powerup.
Holders of the ZONE NFTs receive a range of other cool benefits like:
- Tournament and Solo Challenge Payout Multipliers
- Discount Loot Boxes
- Staking Reward Multipliers
- Transaction Fee Nullifiers
- Airdrop Rewards and more.
And since ZONE isn’t limited to any particular game and supports a majority of popular gaming titles, the NFT powerup function also isn’t limited to any one game. All games in the ZONE gamefi system benefit from the NFT powerup function.
Much like finding a treasure chest in a game that gives you special powers, ZONE NFTs are an added feature that powers you up across all games!
There is also a secondary level of gamification built into ZONE NFTs apart from the powerup mechanics. Users are able to combine a bunch of different NFT cards to level up the card themselves. ZONE NFTs are thus upgradable in nature, allowing users to combine NFTs of the same tier and type, to upgrade them for an NFT of a higher tier. In this way, users continuously level up and acquire rarer and more powerful NFT cards.
VALUE FOR THE ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM
Apart from the awesome incentives for the players, ZONE NFTs are designed to benefit the entire ecosystem with increasing usage. After upgrading, the base NFTs are burned. Not redistributed. Not resold. Gone — forever.
Since the number of ZONE NFTs are hard-capped, this creates deflationary pressure on the NFTs of a given tier and type by taking them out of circulation. There is an element of scarcity that becomes more powerful as the community grows.
While the higher tier NFT cards are desirable for obvious reasons, the base level NFT cards also become desirable due to their rarity in the ecosystem and their virgin properties.
It will also create a marketplace for these NFTs based on power-up hierarchy and how few remain in existence. Thus, this deflationary mechanism ensures that any upgrade creates value for all ZONE NFT holders.
THE FUTURE
With multitudes of novel asset-tokenization mechanisms that have contributed to the explosive growth of the gamefi industry, there is still an abundance of interesting financial and entertainment designs that ZONE NFTs will deliver to players in the future — As the ZONE ecosystem evolves, so will the ZONE NFTs.
Welcome To The ZONE!
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