Shards App, Guild building and monetization tool for GameFi

Approved CVP
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Introduction

Shards is a free-to-use SDK built for game studios that boosts in-game engagement and revenue by allowing players to create, fractionalize and trade in-game guilds. Shards is fully compatible with Metis Blockchain and ready to be integrated into any game on Metis Blockchain.

Value proposition

Based on our analyses and research we have discovered that nearly 80% of games lose their TVL and active users within the first 4 months of the game’s release, in many cases the slope goes down to 90% within the first 6 months.

Despite being well funded by backers, venture capitalists, and receiving blockchain foundation grants, Game Studios struggle to find the best economically efficient strategy to retain in-game users.

NFT sales, token launches, airdrops do not seem to be an ideal solution, and users expectations are always beyond the reach of game’s deliveries. In a bear or calm market, these strategies do not work. Often play-to-earn, users have to purchase expensive gear, lands, equipment and other in-game assets. Game studios on the other hand gravitate towards return on their investment and mainly focus on short-term cash incomes.

Uniqueness factor

We have recognized that Friend.tech was one of the few blockchain projects not only to sustain the bear market but generate a revenue of $30M+ being a social platform. We have also examined the expanding integration of guilds in all major Web2 games and introduction of social platforms into Web3. Pooling these two engines, we have come up with an idea of providing guild building capabilities and allowing to fractionalize guilds and trade them.

Shards SDK will allow game studios to be able to implement guild building and allow users to monetise their guild and start earning while progressing in the game.

Benefits for users

We cover all participants of the ecosystem, players, non-players, game studios, and the blockchain foundation.

Asides from the increasing engagement, retention and spending in the app, studios actually generate revenue on these fractions. Below please find the benefits of each participant. The mechanism implies a 10% trading fee for every fractions traded, which is then distributed among the participants.

  • Game studio - receives a 3-4% of the total trading fee
  • Guild - receives 5% of the total trading fee (whenever their fractions are traded)
  • Shards - receives 1% of the total trading fee
  • Metis - have an option to receive 1% of the total trading fee as a revenue or for Blockchain’s prize pool and other incentives.

Benefits for Metis

Metis’s gaming ecosystem will have a new mechanism to power up their guild system with additional benefits, such as:

  • Motivated and engaged user-base who love to compete against other players.
  • Auxiliary liquidity source, with the cash inflow coming from players, spectators, and frequent traders of Shards App, increasing the game’s TVL.
  • Auxiliary monetization source, where the studio earns from the fee generated by ecosystem participants as they create, buy and sell seats or fractions.
  • Attract major Gaming Guilds, who are already part of the Shards Tech ecosystem and are open to discover and explore new projects and markets.

Summary

Gaming niche is still uncovered and the potential of blockchain gaming is yet to be fully revealed, hence we see an immense potential in our partnership. Shards would like to be part of Metis Blockchain’s ecosystem and participate in scaling the gaming ecosystem of Metis bringing a sustainable TVL and growing user engagement.

Links

Video tutorials

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  1. How does the Shards SDK address the common challenge of retaining active users and TVL in games beyond the initial release period?
  2. What are the specific mechanisms by which Shards SDK enables the creation, fractionalization, and trading of in-game guilds, and how do these mechanisms benefit game studios and players alike?
  3. In what ways does integrating Shards SDK into the Metis Blockchain enhance the overall value proposition for both game developers and the Metis ecosystem?
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Hello, great proposal. What made you guys choose Metis for this… Like what’s special about building on Metis compared to other chains you could’ve picked??

Also the concept of fractionalizing guilds is innovative. Have you encountered any regulatory challenges or concerns with this model, particularly in different global markets?

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Thank you for your questions.

  1. Shards has a scoring mechanism integrated into the system which allows games which are in beta-testing of the guild building to invite users for testing, whilst users will be earning points redeemable to actual guild tokens. Games which already have partnered with Shards automatically get listed on the platform and labelled as “Coming soon”, whereas all Shards users and partner Guilds will receive a notification on this upcoming game launch.
  2. The complete operation of this mechanism is similar to what Star Wars: Heroes and Rise of Kingdoms have in guilds building. The benefits of having guild building has been proven by major Web2 games, whereas it always increases the in-app user expenses, while shrinking and making the challenge component of the game more sensible. The same reason why there are only 10 teams with 2 main pilots in Formula 1 rather than 20 teams with 1 pilot.
  3. Shards does solve two major issues of the GameFi - decreasing liquidity and active users. We have identified that most of the games fail not because of the game being bad but due to the high earning expectations of users which are not met. When users leave, so does the liquidity from the game and it blocks the further development of the studio. Shards adds extra quick earning opportunity to users and attracts liquidity from outside of the game’s ecosystem.

Hope this helps! :slight_smile:

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Hi there. Thank you for your questions.

Below please find our replies:

  1. Metis is a solid growing ecosystem. Shards is chain-agnostic and is compatible with majority of chains, though we like the initiatives undertaken by Metis with regards to their Gaming section of the ecosystem. Shards is coming to Metis not to solve existing problems but with a strategy of going into the GameFi with an innovative solution where these problems are already wiped out.

  2. Fractionalization of guilds is similar to fan tokens, which essentially what they are represented as, as of now we haven’t faced any regulatory challenges.

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