The New Lepricon. Not the Same as the Old Lepricon
This article is part one of a three-part series on the next steps for Lepricon.
Part Two: The new timeline
Part Three: The Marketing Plan
- Gaming will be the first killer on-ramp to general consumer adoption of Blockchain technology.
- Blockchain companies have adopted gaming, but Game developers have not yet adopted blockchain.
- Lepricon building suite of technology solutions to facilitate mainstream game developers’ adoption of blockchain technology, starting with gas-free side chain, Leprichain.
- L3P is the lifeblood of Leprichain.
- A series of Games and DeFi services will demonstrate the capabilities of Leprichain and other technologies for third party adoption.
When Lepricon made its first public appearances in the blockchain community towards the end of 2020 and through the initial DEX offering on Uniswap in March, we had a long term vision. We believed that when the mainstream game industry adopted blockchain technology, it would be the first killer on-ramp for mainstream usage. Our goal was to build step by step into the company that could make this a reality.
That vision has not changed.
However, the strategy by which we will get there has changed. Some of the original activities described in the White Paper did not come to fruition; primarily, some 3rd party resources did not work out as expected. The consequence of this is that we have pivoted to a new strategy to achieve this vision.
We have hinted at our new direction for some time, and you have seen pieces of it, such as Leprichain, come into play. Now it is time we reveal our plans and where this road takes us:
The Vision
We passionately believe that gaming should be the preeminent on-ramp for the mass adoption of blockchain. After all, gamers understand in-game currencies (tokens), inventories (wallets), special in-game items and power-ups (NFTs) and which World of Warcraft player has not paid a visit to one of the big auction houses in the game (marketplace)?
Right now, blockchain gaming and its catchy descriptor, ‘Play to Earn’, is all the rage. Several games have carved out an entirely new niche in gaming, worth tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of players. This new category is the result of the blockchain industry adopting gaming. The onboarding process is very blockchain, with wallets, Eth transfers, and the purchase of an NFT. If you showed this onboarding process to any mainstream game developer, they would run as fast as possible, remaining fiercely protective of their players’ user experience.
The real opportunity is when the gaming industry adopts blockchain. This monumental change will lead to player-run economies with tens of millions of players, not tens of thousands. However, for this to happen, the technology has to develop to meet the needs of the consumer. It has to be about the game, not blockchain. It’s the experience that matters, not the technology. Technologies that allow AAA game developers to incorporate blockchain utility into their games will need to move beyond the ideology of DeFi, and the complex interplay of wallets and expensive NFT sales that count as the onboarding process. Players should not notice the difference when getting into a new game for the first time from any game they have played before, just the extra things they can do in their new player-owned economy.
This merging of the entire game industry and blockchain is the opportunity that Lepricon sees. Given the blend of traditional game development and blockchain in our DNA, we feel supremely confident that we have the right stuff to make that happen. Thus:
Lepricon’s mission is to make blockchain work for game developers so that the concept of player-owned and run economies becomes a feature of the mainstream game industry without the need to learn intimidating new behaviours.
We reflect this intention in our new tagline:
Reimagining entertainment through technology.
Now, how are we going to do all of this?
Lepricon’s Three Pillars
Our activities break down into three parallel tracks, or pillars:
- Technology
- Entertainment
- DeFi
Technology
The backbone of our technology stack is Leprichain, which is unique in that it operates without any gas fees, as demonstrated in the first game deployed to it, Lucky Wheel. Gas fees may make sense for occasional financial transactions, but if a game is frequently interacting with a blockchain as the contents of a player’s inventory change, or items are picked up, equipped, dropped or sold, an environment with gas fees simply will not work. Can you imagine having to approve almost every click of your mouse on the game screen with a MetaMask popup?
Beyond Leprichain, Lepricon is developing a series of technology plugins that solve other problems. For example, while in-game, sovereign wallets such as MetaMask are antagonistic to a good player experience. Thus, we are in the process of developing a custodial wallet solution for play. Lepricon will offer this wallet in the form of a JavaScript plugin for web-based games, C++ code for the Unreal Engine, and a Unity SDK. This wallet will enable seamless and gas-less transactions on Leprichain, with L3P as the base currency.
Additional components in our blockchain-enabled game development SDK include marketplace technology designed to be incorporated in-game and on the web for players to trade with each other and gas-free token minting for game developers using Leprichain.
Entertainment
To demonstrate the capabilities of Leprichain and showcase each new technological development, we will launch a series of games and other activities over the next few months. We have already opened the first one, Lucky Wheel, on our arcade and casual games website, Lepricon City. The next game to launch will be a digital version of Pachinko, which is very much a physics-based game, and will require the launch of a swap mechanism so you can buy balls to play in the machine. Yes, you will have BALLS in your MetaMask, essentially a play only token.
As well as games for Lepricon.city, we will be introducing NFT projects that combine the collectability of NFTs with game experiences.
The rollout of games will reach its pinnacle in Q1 2022 when we launch FansPredict, our gamified peer to peer prediction platform, which will operate on Leprichain, using L3P. This launch will mark the point when Leprichain is fully open for business.
Concurrently, we will use these games as a technology showcase and demonstration kit for third parties to consider hosting their games on Leprichain. We are already in discussion with some companies and will make announcements in due course. We are supremely confident that a gas-free environment on a fast chain will be very attractive to many game-related projects.
DeFi
The heart of Lepricon, and Leprichain, is our utility token, L3P. As a speculative ERC-20 token on Ethereum Mainnet, we must make holding L3P as attractive as possible. The development of Leprichain and the rollout of games and other entertainment that run on it add practical value to L3P as it will be one of the core tokens that you play games with, but that is only part of the story.
To this end, Lepricon will release its DeFi portal, Lepricon.fi. Initially, it will host the updated bridge between Ethereum and Leprichain, but we will add several facilities to it:
- Hard staking and farming options where locked L3P earns better yields in either L3P or other tokens
- The Shamrock Protocol will reward higher on-chain participation with tokens, NFTs and privileges
- Gas-free NFT launchpad and minting
- Governance opportunities for L3P holders to vote on future activities to be prioritised by the Lepricon team.
- Possibly, an NFT-collateralised loan platform, most probably through a partnership.
There are several other areas we are looking at and a number of potential partners with whom we are in discussion.
Summary
Gaming is the first killer on-ramp to the blockchain for mainstream audiences, but it is not about selling blockchain to consumers. It is about creating blockchain solutions that make sense to game developers, given that at this time, they do not. The utility of blockchain will make games more attractive if we can develop the technology to make the experience less obtrusive.
The Player-owned and -run game economy is the next stage in gaming’s evolution. This is the path Lepricon has set upon.
Part Two: The new timeline
Part Three: The marketing plan
About Lepricon
Lepricon is reimagining the possibilities for entertainment through blockchain technology and seeking to establish the general acceptance of player-owned economies in games. We believe that gaming can and should be the first killer-on ramp to mainstream adoption, and Lepricon’s stated mission is to catalyse this outcome.
For further information, please visit https://www.lepricon.io.
Contact:
Phil Ingram
phil@lepricon.io
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$L3P Contract: 0xdeF1da03061DDd2A5Ef6c59220C135dec623116d
