MetaVault Mini: Nov 24th Town Hall Recap
This is MetaVault, a community-built weekly newsletter that tries to make sense of the Pixel Vault universe: PUNKS Comic, MetaHero, United Planets, DAOs within DAOs within DAOs.
The drum beat of releases continues. PV is settling into weekly claim windows that open on Thursdays. Whether it’s your MetaHero’s planet of origin, Jupiter tokens, or the planet giveaways. Thursdays will be the day the claim window opens.
Before jumping into the individual updates, I think this comment by GFunk is important to capture for the community. This very small startup of only about 20 employees has very big ambitions for 2022:
A lot in store with regard to game development, animated series development and some major strategic partnerships, as we look to take the Pixel Vault ecosystem to the next level, trying to build a a sustainable business spanning across many different mediums, traditional media, but always existing with the principles of Web3 at heart.
Giveaway 1: Planets to MetaHero Holders
Ends this morning!
Giveaway 2: Jupiter Tokens to Planet DAO minters
Claim window opens today and remain open for a week
Giveaway 3: Mercury, Venus, and Earth token
Next week
The Earth giveaway for PV core set holders (Comic #1, PVFD, Mint Pass #1, and MetaHero) moves into Giveaway 3!
Snapshots at the beginning of the week — specific date to be announced by PV
Launch Staking (Comic/$PUNKS, MH/$POW)
Next week for both tokens
$PUNKS is over two years, $POW will be shorter to account for the gamified staking mechanics — likely 30-day cool down for both tokens
Gamified $POW token at the “turn of the year”
Sidekicks will be stakeable for $POW when they are released in Q1 2022
No update on $POW allocations by Core, MH Generative, Sidekick
Sidekick $POW allocation will be based on level — which brings up the gamification of staking 10 Sidekicks or 2 higher-level Sidekicks
GFunk and VGF had a ton of interesting things to say about staking in the wake of the Wolf Game madness over the last week. Here are snippets from various parts of the Town Hall:
GFunk: Initial staking launches will be a pretty traditional staking. And then we do have things in the works to introduce a more complex and fun mechanic for sort of interactivity across our ecosystem. The $POW token will have intermediate use as we work towards this longer term, AAA style game being built. So being mindful of attention spans wanting to keep everything as gamified and fun as possible. There will be sort of an intermediate gameplay of sorts, while we collectively build the gameverse through the DAO mechanics.
VGF: Just be clear, a lot of those kind of tokenomics conversations have been ongoing for a while. But how the market’s reacted to Wolf Game, I think, caught everyone a little by surprise. And and that it kind of just reinforced the desire and that the market is looking for those kinds of practical applications for the tokens themselves… and just to clarify, we do not have any relation to Wolf Game, but I think that Wolf Game has definitely cemented in our minds that the gamification and tokenomics, even on on a simplistic level, are eagerly desired by the market.
Danielson was curious about how various mechanics from Wolf Game might apply to MetaHero and $POW. Here’s some highlights of responses:
When asked about whether a Wolf would equal a Core: GFunk: I’m thinking along similar mechanics — nothing confirmed.
GFunk on simple blockchain gameplay to start: that's sort of the core concept of this is to have a very simple, true blockchain gaming experience as we build this more traditional sort of video game type experience
Rusty asked if PV would be providing liquidity to the $POW token:
GFunk: Yeah, so I mean, you know, there is the possibility that that we do set up these liquidity pools, but I think you've seen through wolf game that that wasn't really necessary. So we're still, you know, nailing everything down as to exactly how we want to implement it.
Core Giveaway
Next week!
Official snapshot date via Twitter
Interesting pressure dynamics building between the very small, but real possibility of winning a Core via Mint Pass #1 OR using the MP to generate an MH and staking for $POW now
Comic #2
December 8th — had to push a day due to some changes in the background
Max mints: Yes, it’s been decided but no announcement yet
Elite Ape Week
Week of December 13th
GFunk: “Probably somewhere closer to the 20th for that one”
Physical Claim for Comic #1
Week of December 13th
Mint Pass #2
Claim is likely to be “turn of the year”
Game Development
In an earlier Town Hall someone asked a question about PV building their own Discord-like functionality. GFunk laughed and said The Virtunaut would love to do that. Well, here’s Virtunaut talking about the socialization of gaming — and if you squint, you could see a lot of the community spending more time in-game chatting than in Discord:
There are always social systems in place, how do you find your friends and party up because in a battle royale or a hero shooter, you have your friends online, and you can get to a party, and wait in the lobby, and then chat or hang out. And I think that there are lost opportunities currently in modern gaming, when you look at how players hang out in the menus. I think the fun thing about gaming is getting players to be embodied as early as possible in their player avatars. Instead of sitting in a menu, waiting in a queue, or just waiting for your other friends to get online, I think the menu itself should be dimensionalized, right. And you should be embodied as soon as possible waiting for your friends. So underlying all that are just simple social mechanics of “hey, we can chat, we can send messages, we can see people online.” So I think there's going to be interesting ways to build the experience up from like a very skeleton, social system, and then build gameplay mechanics around it.
Netti pointed to some gameplay elements that can be built earlier in the dev process and Virtunaut jumped in:
The earliest that we can get people doing something collaboratively, whether it's designing their icons together, whether it's just chatting, it feels like this is the MetaHero chat system for you guys just to hang out and be friends. And I think it'd be cool to be using software that the interface begins to grow around you. And additional features and functionality comes online as you use it, instead of like, “Hey, here's the product, it's done.”
Dark Moon
Netti asked a question about the Dark Moon: Are we excluding the Dark Moon or is there a new set that includes it? A: The focus is on the DAO token set, but the Dark Moon is certainly part of the ecosystem and PV will find interesting way to use it.
Community Supported Comic #3 Drama
Richard is willing to lay on his sword for the good of the community:
I wanted to know, or actually just kind of put out the information for you guys, that if you're looking to kill someone, like a hero, and you need that drama bait, that could be my guy. I'm willing to take that gambit and take the L. He's ready to go if you need some drama for the comic at some point.
The Pixel Vault Moat
Josh asked an interesting question regarding the future of Web3 being this beautiful mix of interoperability with moat building. GFunk’s answer:
We're trying to be a powerhouse across several different verticals of media, right. And so we have this strong IP that we're building, and we are able to do a variety of things with that. So even in sort of an NFT winter, Pixel Vault will be strong through that with traditional gameplay, animated series, and leveraging that IP to make our sort of NFT Web3 native products still relevant even in a potentially reduced market. And this interoperability is important in Web3, and I think we've shown about as great a willingness as any other team in the space to work with others. And I think that, especially if you're in its infancy that we don't have to have this famine mindset, right. I want all the other creators that are doing unique things in the space to succeed. We are not competitors. To drive forward this industry, I think you need to have teams that are willing to work together and try and create something collaborative for the ecosystem. So I don't really see that interoperability being a threat to what will be Pixel Vault moat, because our moat isn't something technical, right? It's the IP, it's the brand. And sort of our willingness to stay on the cutting edge really has distinguished us as a business and a team versus most others in the space.
Misc
Bull asked about release eligibility for future drops. GFunk’s A: It's a safe assumption that if you are in the community in any way, right now, you will have some sort of added benefit in terms of access.
BV asked about splitting PV products out on OpenSea (OS), specifically the PFVD token from the Comic. A: Yes, working with OS to get this done.
Bobby asked about releasing new PV products on other chains. A: Ethereum for now.
Some Disclaimers: None of this is financial advice. DYOR. And yes, I’m obviously a PV collector and long-term hodlr.