‘Work-to-earn’ NFT Game: SpeedStar
Name of Project
SpeedStar
Application type
We are looking for a retrospective game launch funding grant of $50,000 and also an investment of $200,000 over the coming 12 months.
Proposal overview
Li Jiang stated in 2019, that Harmony has a mission to create a radically fair economy and to scale trust for billions of people. However, whilst these are worthy and laudable aims, there appears to be an under-representation on the blockchain from parts of the world where billions of potential users are living. As an observation rather than a criticism, there appears to be a paucity of initiatives from Asian Countries on Harmony. Consequently, SpeedStar welcomes the opportunity of promoting a paradigm shift away from a ‘Western-centric’ cultural lens. In doing so, we hope our project can be considered to be one that does not pay mere ‘lip-service’ to, but will actively promote equity, equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) initiatives.
SpeedStar is a recently launched ‘work-to-earn’, horse-racing themed, Unity game built on the Harmony blockchain. It is the first of a suite of games to be launched by the Thai company, Hells Kitchen, and the team considers we are bringing a unique game to the blockchain. The team have chosen Harmony for several reasons, such as the proposed 1 second finality and we are planning to remain on the chain for the foreseeable future. We have previously been marketing the game in the Far East and are now actively developing closer links with Western markets.
The team are proud of the fact that the game has progressed from selling the initial NFTs to launching close to the finished game within only a matter of weeks. The presale of minted horses started on 27th January 2022 and sold out less than 2 weeks later on the 11th of February 2022. The actual game launched on 25th March 2022 and is relatively close to being fully functioning.
Therefore, we consider the rapid speed of deployment of the game to be noteworthy and potentially something that sets us apart from projects that remain in beta or in development for months on end. The belief in the project is such that the team envision SpeedStar will become one of the highest-grossing games on the Harmony blockchain. Our YouTube channel introduces the game here; https://youtu.be/4c9LN9pj2jw
Within SpeedStar there is no “Play to Earn” concept, but instead it is a “Work to Earn” philosophy. That’s because participants in the game will be rewarded with experience, fun, and financial rewards from working.
The game is currently playable on mainnet, and has active players throughout the world. The gameplay system is divided into 2 main groups; namely players and investors. The “racehorse” is in effect the game’s central theme. Consequently, every action of the player and investor is always related to this.
Players take on the role of taking care of the horses according to the career they choose (although level up bonuses are randomly ascribed). They could provide the necessary training to improve your horse’s stamina and results (Trainer). Obviously a horse can’t race by itself, so it needs someone to ride and guide it through the races (Jockey). There is also the option to play the game by caring for and treating any fatigue or illnesses of the horse (Therapist). Or finally the player might have the keen eye on lineage and pedigree in order to become an expert horse breeder (Breeder).
The game has a cleverly designed ‘dilemma’ element to it. So, a player might prefer a particular profession and hope to acquire the corresponding bonus aligned with this. However, there is always a risk in levelling up, where the player may gain a bonus they may not necessarily desire, and so would have to pay for the privilege of re-rolling or waiting until they gain more experience. This ‘risk to reward’ is a feature of the tactical gameplay, and means this could be considered a thinking person’s game due to the many nuances within.
Investors on the other hand focus on building ranches, buying facilities, buying racehorses, or even customizing their ranch. There are multiple revenue streams that can be created by the investor in order to make money. These include ranch asset management, investing in breeding race horses and selling them in the marketplace. There is the potential to develop racehorse teams to compete for prizes, or owning a racecourse to earn a return on race fees, owning a racecourse to earn a competition fee, or even betting on your own horses.
Farming earn $SPEED
The rewards for running the ranch are derived from various sources, such as the owner having racehorses use the facilities, or by staking various facilities there. The rewards are paid in $SPEED Tokens. These can be used to pay for various in-game activities such as the purchase of certain assets. They can also be used for hiring someone.
Breeding
There is the option of potentially selling horses that have been bred in-game. Initially 10,000 origin horses were minted that sold out. This number was only going to be enough horses for the game to start being played, and so it is anticipated a large number of horses will need to be bred to service future demand. The game uses a system of either purchasing ‘seed potions’ through a marketplace or through breeding in game.
Horse-racing
Horse racing is another way to gain rewards. If a player is good enough to win a race with their horse, they will earn a reward in the form of the Governance Token $STAR Tokens. In order to win, a skilled jockey will be needed to ride the horse, and this a can either be done by the player themselves or by hiring another player. The game is currently offering replays in game of the actual racing, but future updates include plans for live streaming of races.
Racecourse
There will also be limited options within the game to bid at auction for land to build a racecourse. When someone owns one, they can set the price of tickets for competitions, and potentially will be awarded a competition fee.
Bet license
There are other potential privileges for those who have racecourse land, as they can apply for a betting licence. These licenses are limited, and owners of them are rewarded through commission from the players betting in game.
Tax system
Players who are hired within the game will earn $SPEED. However, in order to maintain liquidity in the economy, players who are hired in the game will be taxed on their earnings. These taxes and the trading fees within the game are set by the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) that will be established for holders of $STAR only. A system of voting will be implemented in order to restructure the in-game taxes and fees. Therefore, the majority vote will determine the direction of the economic system within the game, such as lowering the tax ceiling, or the raising of taxes to reduce liquidity within the system in order to keep the valuation of various assets constant.
Marketplace
We intend to launch our marketplace in Q2. Currently the project is using ToFuNFT and at time of writing over 34m ONE has been traded in SpeedStar NFTs on the platform.
Overview
As an overview, we are suggesting the actual gameplay is fun, innovative and really rather exciting! In line with the Harmony mission statement, we want to attract new players to the Harmony ecosystem, and believe our game can do so. We also consider SpeedStar are not simply paying lip-service to ‘accessibility’ and ‘inclusivity’, as the game can be played with no upfront costs and players can start earning tokens immediately. This work-to-earn philosophy has the potential to empower a number of people from developing nations, and this seems in keeping with the over-arching ethos of Harmony. Any person can play the game who has internet access and a suitable devise for playing the game. This can currently be played through MetaMask on mobile and laptop, and so can be played on android and iOS. The team also have plans to launch the game on the App Store and Google Play.
Milestones to date
- We have sold out of 10,000 Origin Horses
- We have successfully launched our game fully on mainnet
- We have been audited by Inspex.
- We are building a supportive and passionate community and currently have 8,700 members on Discord – we are an international project and have players playing the game in numerous countries. We also have 9,478 Twitter followers.
- We have launched 3 tokens, $STAR, $JOC and $SPEED and when the game is fully launched there will be significant utility for all tokens in and out of game.
Upcoming Roadmap milestones and timeline
Q2 2022
- Marketplace
- Horses
- Facilities
- Materials
- Wild Horse Run mode (Material Reward)
- Facilities Building (Crafting)
- Facilities blueprint
- Material crafting
- Player Training mode
- Mastery system
- Horse Training mode
- Launch DEX
- Swap
- Yield Farming
- Launch Chicky Star
Q3 2022
- Racecourse
- Land sale
- Bet license Auction
- Tournament
- Seasonal racecourse
- Ranking
- Release Game result API
- In-game Betting ($SPEED Only)
Q4 2022
- Speed Star World Grand Prix
- Expand Starverse
- Launch Worker Star
- DAO Taxes and Fees
- Roadmap 2023 Voting ($STAR Holder)
Metrics for success Q2
- 2,000 unique visitors on website
- 10,000 Discord followers
- 10,000 Twitter followers
- Successful achievement of roadmap milestones
Metrics for success Q3
- 3,000 unique visitors on website
- 12, 000 Discord followers
- 12,000 Twitter followers
- Successful achievement of roadmap milestones
Metrics for success in 2023
- We fully anticipate the game having in excess of a $250 million market cap within the next 12 months
Proposal ask
We are seeking an investment of $200,000. In addition, we want to develop a collaborative partnership with Harmony, in order to benefit from the expertise and marketing support they can provide in order to further increase adoption on Harmony.
As part of this proposal, we would also like to retrospectively apply for the $50,000 game launch grant. The standard metrics for this are as follows (we are aware a number have already been achieved);
Milestone Tranche
Launching game to provide feature-full experience for players $10k
For forming a DAO with multisig (5-out-of-9 ) $10k
After launching SpeedStar on the Harmony mainnet with audit $10k
After 1K daily active users (with video launch, full PR promotion) $10k
After 10k daily users $10k
How the game launch fund will be used and how it could help SpeedStar
• The grant could help gain exposure from the West towards improving awareness of the game. We envision this will enable us to market the game internationally in order to help meet the Harmony mission statement of billions of users throughout the world.
• As the team is based in Thailand, we are looking to employ a team member to specifically liaise between the Thai and English speaking communities.
• Funds will also be specifically used to translate the Harmony gnosis multi-sig information into Thai from English.
• Funds will be used towards the continued development of the in and out-game systems such as the marketplace.
• Funds would help the team to develop the current suite of games planned.
The investment of $200,000 would be used for the following
• $13,666 per month – towards the salary for our full-time devs & their assistants (frontend, backend, contracts, apps, 3D modellers, artists, mini-games designers, visuals, etc) and to fund our community moderators.
• $2000 per month – towards community marketing (including collaborations with YouTube, TikTok influencers, affiliate programs, contests, bounties, raffles, giveaways etc).
• $1000 per month - numerous miscellaneous overheads including contributions to office space, website hosting and maintenance, domain registration, discord bot hosting subscriptions, audit costs.
Our team
Details and photographs of our team are available at Hell Factory We are extremely proud of the young, vibrant team we are developing and also of the large number of females on the team (over 25%).
External links:
Website: https://speedstargame.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpeedStarGame
Telegram: https://t.me/speedstar_global
Discord: https://discord.gg/speedstar-game
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/speedstar.game
Whitepaper: ENG https://docs.speedstar.io/en/
THAI https://docs.speedstar.io/th/