The story behind KQJ and the situation with the game (and Lepricon) today
KQJ to debut in Rio Wallet in early June
A Bit of Background
Last December, an eternity in Crypto-time, we announced our very first partnership. It was with Rio DeFi, the developers of RioChain, a DOT-compatible parachain. We stated that our primary line of development would be to use RioChain as our first transaction mechanism. We noted two reasons. First, it is blazingly fast, handling over 3000 transactions per second, and second, the gas fees paid in Rio Defi’s native token, rFuel, are minimal.
There was another more profound reason for this. Lepricon was born out of the same family of DeFi projects that gave birth to RioChain. RioChain is more than just a partner to us. In many respects, we are all part of the same family.
Within that family of companies and projects, there were two games, KQJ and Bitpool.
KQJ had previously been developed on Android as Lucky Live by Alice Live, a development studio in Shanghai. It did not connect to the blockchain in its original incarnation. Still, the gameplay, where you would guess the next card to be drawn and use your pool of winnings towards discounted consumer products, was essentially the same. Early in 2020, the idea came about that KQJ would work really well as a blockchain game, if the blockchain itself was able to provide transaction speeds that would match the speed of the gameplay.
Bitpool was developed as an idea by James Anderson and Stephane Laurent Villedieu, both Co-Founders of RioDeFi, as a technology showcase for RioChain. The game was simple; players would predict whether the price of BitCoin would go up or down and contribute to a peer-to-peer prediction pool. Periods for the prediction ran from one month down to 60 seconds. The speed required for the fastest pools’ on-chain transactions was unobtainable on Ethereum Mainnet, but possible using RioChain. Hence, it would demonstrate the power of RioChain.
The Birth of Lepricon
Josh Galloway, who would go on to found Lepricon and become its CEO, posited that these games should be wrapped up in a separate blockchain project focused on gaming and gamification. A seasoned executive of over 20 years within the video games industry, he was already formulating ideas on how the worlds of gaming and blockchain would eventually collide.
And it was here, in early 2020, that Lepricon came to be. Lepricon would create games, starting with KQJ and Bitpool, and our first transaction platform would be built on RioChan, using a customized version of the RioChain wallet. We called this, surprisingly, the Lepricon wallet. Alice Live were the developers for the wallet as well as KQJ, so this entire package was under development by a single team.
Over several months, the Lepricon project would solidify in scope and take on a much more complete life of its own. The team developed an entire tokenomics package specially designed for a platform focused on hyper-casual gaming. The white paper was written. By now it was November of 2020.
At the same time, RioChain was in development, as was KQJ. KQJ had to be refactored from its original Cocos development platform to React Native, essentially re-coding the entire game. Most importantly, KQJ was designed specifically to run on RioChain, and thus it would run in the mobile version of the RioChain Wallet (and the rebranded Lepricon version).
For Lepricon to launch KQJ, not only did KQJ have to be finished but there had to be a RioChain-compatible wallet with a built-in web browser so that KQJ could be side-loaded via HTML5 into the wallet the same way you would access dApps using the MetaMask app’s built-in browser.
In January, we believed all these parallel activities would meet by the end of March, but that was not to be. And we simply had to wait for all the pieces to fall into place. Several launch dates were given to us and communicated to the community. All turned out to be incorrect.
The State of Play Today with KQJ
RioChain is live. It works. You can download the RioWallet in Apple and Android form, or you can create a wallet via their website.
However, the current version of the RioChain mobile wallet does not have a built-in browser and thus cannot load KQJ yet. For those asking, we cannot deliver KQJ as a standalone application because it would not be allowed on the app stores given it centers around peer-to-peer prediction pools. It has to be delivered via HTML5.
We now have a working version of KQJ running in a test configuration on Rio’s testnet which we can run now. We will post some screenshots/video of it in operation later this week.
Our development partner, Alice Live, has told us that an updated version of the RioChain wallet featuring a browser and thus the ability to run the free-to-play launch version of KQJ will be available in early June. We will keep the community apprised of updated information regarding this.
At the same time, we are also investigating an alternative version of KQJ which will work with MetaMask wallets using Leprichain.
With the development of Leprichain, and given the changing circumstances, we have decided to put on hold our plans for a custom version of the Rio Wallet as it is no longer a mission-critical asset. We will revisit that in the future.
Parallel Paths
In the time since we launched Lepricon to the public, many things have changed, some critical issues outside of our control, as detailed above. Our response has been to speed up several parallel paths of development. These include:
- The launch of Leprichain, our gas-less Ethereum-compatible side chain that opens up a wealth of opportunities to connect L3P with existing web 3 websites.
- Development of games designed for the mobile app stores which will tie in less directly with prediction games — the first example is Get the Cats which we released information on in a video on Friday. These games give us a new revenue opportunity and revenue can be used for buy-backs.
- A whole host of lotto-based games that will run using Web 3 connect, and in the hands of a game designer right now and for which we will release development screens in the next week or so.
- FansPredict, in co-development with BePro and built on the Chainlink Oracle.
When we have a critical mass of L3P utility and gaming activity, enough that a YouTube Influencer could put together a really strong video with gameplay, then the marketing can start in earnest and we can begin to grow the community again knowing that they will not be dissatisfied when they encounter the Lepricon brand.
This is especially true given the market conditions. Any relaunch, while the downward pressure is as strong as it is now, would simply be sailing into the wind. Timing will be essential so that everyone gains the most value from any efforts we make.
About Lepricon
Lepricon is a community-owned and governed hyper-casual games platform that allows stakers, developers, and gamers to enjoy the benefits of DeFi in a gamified way, backed by a vibrant community in which all participants receive rewards for positive contributions and interactions.
Lepricon will evolve into a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) — an organization represented by rules enshrined in computer code; transparent and controlled by the network participants and not by a central authority.
For further information, please visit https://www.lepricon.io.
Contact:
Phil Ingram
phil@lepricon.io
LinkedIn | Website | Telegram | Twitter
$L3P Contract: 0xdeF1da03061DDd2A5Ef6c59220C135dec623116d
