Both the success of Axie and the renaming of Facebook to Meta in 2021 have made the metaverse and GameFi prosper, witnessed by the soaring tokens of related concepts within the next few days. Such a boom has also attracted droves of developers and capital ventures to join the upsurge of on-chain games.
Following them are copycats on various public chains, notably on BSC and Solana. Relying on the inherently low transaction fees and high transaction speed as well as traffic from Binance Exchange, BSC has drawn most of the popular chain games, both good and bad, in early days, in response to blockchain users’ zest for this emerging section.
As revealed by the official information on Solana, another major gathering place of GameFi projects, most of the games to be released are delicately designed blockbusters, in stark contrast to their shoddy counterparts on BSC. Backed by crazy players and lively communities, many NFT game assets were snapped up as soon as they went live, and their prices even jumped over tenfold in the secondary market.
In contrast, Avalanche, a public chain that has emerged this year, appears to be in decline, with few well-known chain game projects. As BSC and Solana turn into a red ocean, Avalanche, which also boasts high performance and low cost, may be the next magnet for chain games. Crabada, for instance, is a popular and profitable chain game on Avalanche. Its special Looting mode has attracted many players, which may herald the boom in chain games on Avalanche.
A hermit crab-themed battle P2E NFT chain game
Crabada is a battle NFT game based in the underwater world filled with fierce fighting Hermit-Crabs called Crabada.
Similar to other traditional games and chain games, Crabadas have different attributes and characteristics, and can be customized and multiplied. In terms of the NFT design mechanism, each Crabada has basic attributes such as speed, attack and defense. Players can build a team by combining different Crabadas to deliver various battling effects.
As a chain game, Crabada also falls into the Play-to-Earn category, as represented by the following game rules:
- It requires 3 Crabadas to build a team, which is the threshold;
- Teams can mine in the undersea mine for rewards. This way, players complete system missions through PvE battle and are rewarded according to game rules;
- Teams can loot the treasure from other players. So they need to defeat others through PvP battle to grab part of others’ gains from PvE battle;
- Players can also lend or sell their idle Crabadas to other teams for profits. These are gains from lending/selling NFTs.
Each player can have 3 teams at most at the very beginning, and each team can go for one battle. Players can get Crabada Amulet-CRAM by staking CRA to increase the number of teams or participate in lucky draws.
With CRAM, players add up to 3 teams, and gain tickets for lucky draws. Every week, there are 3 Genesis and 7 Pure Crabadas in the prize pool.
A dual-token model with TUS/CRA under the Play-to-Earn mechanism
Without much innovation on the token economy, Crabada adopts the dual-token model that has proven to be relatively stable: governance token (CRA) + in-game token (TUS). The former is the in-game governance token that can be acquired through staking, Mining (PvE) or Looting (PvP) in game. The latter can only be obtained in the form of Mining, Looting and Lending Crabadas via the Tavern. Similar to SLP in Axie, TUS is subject to an inflation mechanism, with its total supply controlled by repurchase and burning.
Crabada is built on Avalanche. CRA and TUS mostly circulate on DEXs on Avalanche such as Trader Joe. Users can also buy and sell the tokens on centralized exchanges such as CoinEx.
https://www.coinex.com/exchange/CRA-USDT
PvE mode: Build a team of Crabadas to mine treasure under the sea for profits
Crabada enables the PvE battle. Players gather 3 Crabadas to build a team for mining. The Mining Expedition takes 4 hours. Afterward, players will receive 3.75 CRA and 303.75 TUS as rewards if they’re not looted by Crabadas from other teams (if so, the rewards depend on their defense against looters).
Deep-pocketed players can have up to 6 Mining Expeditions a day (each taking 4 hours). Assuming that a moderate player participates in 3 Mining Expeditions a day, his expected rewards are shown in the figure below. The maximum rewards he can get in one day (participating in 6 Mining Expeditions a day) are roughly 22.5CRA+1822.5TUS.
PvP mode: Build a team of Crabadas to loot others’ treasure in battles
Compared with its counterparts, Crabada innovatively creates a special mechanism of Looting, which makes the game more interesting. Players can form a team to loot the treasure other players are mining. By intervening in others’ PvE battles, players have more ways of earning profits. Looting takes less time than mining in the PvE mode. The looting comes with reinforcement. During the one to three hours of the Looting Mission, players being looted can reinforce their attack or defense to safeguard their rewards and chase away looters.
Active players with a strong Crabada Team could potentially benefit more from participating in Looting Missions instead of Mining Expeditions. Obviously, they are motivated to consume more CRA and TUS.
According to game rules, players can theoretically complete up to 24 Looting Missions a day (each taking 1 hour). But facing reinforcements from the players who are mining, they are able to complete 16 Looting Missions in one day. The whitepaper also provides a list of mining rewards under 50% Mission Success Rate and 100% Mission Success Rate respectively, as shown below.
With 16 Loots completed a day, a player can get the maximum rewards of 43.8CRA+3547.8TUS, almost twice the mining rewards in the PvE mode. As we can see, players are encouraged to loot each other.
Crabada Launches the Subnet Swimmer Network
On March 1 this year, Crabada launched its Avalanche-based game subnet Swimmer Network, of which the transaction speed is about 10 times that of the Avalanche C-chain. TUS will function as the gas fee for the subnet. In addition, developers on Swimmer Network can bear the gas fee, allowing players to enjoy the game for free. Crabada will provide 1.25 million CRA to support the new project. The Swimmer testnet has gone live. The release of the subnet will further optimize Crabada's game experience and game speed, and at the same time get players more involved in the game's ecosystem.
Conclusion
Building a team with three Crabadas to complete missions, such gameplay may remind players of Axie. When designing Crabada, the team may have learned from Axie's combat mechanism. But unlike Axie, Crabada has designed a Looting mode that allows players to intervene in other players' PvE activities for more rewards than from PvE alone. This combination of the two modes makes the game more strategy-intensive, adds more fun to gaming, and diversifies the team makeup. Such a gameplay is an innovation based on Axie.
Dominated by DeFi projects for the time being, Avalanche badly needs chain games like Crabada to diversify its ecosystem. If Crabada remains popular, players' enthusiasm for the game will generate more demand for CRA and TUS, and bring Avalanche to more developers and users, which is a big boon for the entire ecosystem. As can be seen from the announcement of the stablecoin issuing company Tether in October 2021 that it will issue additional USDT on Avalanche, this platform, which features high speed and low transaction fees, is moving toward the spotlight of the market.
Games play a vital role in the cultivation of user habits. As the first promising GameFi project on Avalanche, Crabada has been vigorously supported by AVAX. Following the success of Crabada and driven by USDT, the leading token in TradeFi, the chain games on Avalanche are worthy of expectation.
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