Insights from a Veteran Crypto Mining Team during the Hype of GameFi

March 18th, 2022 at 1:31 pm UTC · 7 min read

A broad consensus has been reached that 2022 is undoubtedly the year of GameFi as it takes the storm of crypto market. According to Dappradar’s latest Blockchain Games Report, 1.1 million Unique Active Wallets (UAW) connected daily to a blockchain game on average in February, accounting for 49% of the usage in the wider blockchain industry. Investments also keep flowing into blockchain games and infrastructures; $720 million raised in February (with Animoca Brands becoming a leading player).

It’s not hard to understand the popularity of blockchain games in the blockchain world given how gaming itself acts as a massive sector in the traditional setups – after all in the ‘old’ settings, gaming industry represents a total of more than $180 billion business and more than 3.1 billion people from all over the world are active gamers. For some, it’s even a life necessity that people live and breathe in with.

The flourishing GameFi momentum also comes with challenges and problems though. How to identify trustworthy projects and choose the games that actually fit your personal interest can be time consuming. One thing is for sure, that to learn about each project’s roadmap and make sure the team is real enthusiasts.

First things first, users find joy and excitement while gaming, people don’t play games that they find no fun. But how do people choose the right type of games from the widely available genres in the sea of blockchain games now? The over 1 million UAWs must have their own preferences in gameplays, be it MMORPG, RPG, Strategy, Open-World and so on. Although their interest in game genres could differ, one thing is almost for sure – all blockchain game players embrace and fancy crypto as a digital asset, they game to enjoy and acquire cryptos as part of their earnings and financial assets.

When it comes to acquire cryptos, what could be easier than directly mine it? Yet current industry barrier is getting higher and higher for newcomers or entry-level miners to tap in, and here comes to what we are going to discuss today in the format of Q&A with the team behind CoolMining, an open-world mining simulation GameFi built upon real-life hash power with the mission to empower the community to participate in PoW mining in a decentralized manner.

M (the moderator)

Rictoshi – chief designer of CoolMing

M: Hi Rictoshi, great to have you here today! Tell us more about yourself.

Rictoshi: I am Rictoshi, the chief designer of CoolMining. I have been a crypto investor and a BTC miner since 2017.

M: What’s your backstory and how did you get the idea for the company/project?

Rictoshi: Our team is made up of a bunch of early BTC adopters that believe in the Proof of Work consensus.

We have witnessed the flouring development of Dapps over the years, especially last year’s gamefi fever that inspired us to combine two exciting innovations together and create this decentralized game so that all individuals are able to participate in BTC mining.

M: How is that even possible? I mean just thinking of the gamification of the crypto mining process, have you encountered any technological bottlenecks in developing this idea?

Rictoshi: That’s a great question.

The biggest challenges we encountered during the process were the technical restrictions brought by blockchain technology. Making a blockchain game was nothing like a traditional game.

We decided to make CoolMining a fully on-chain game from Day One. We tried to achieve all in-game functions on-chain and distribute rewards using smart contracts. That is why we have to sacrifice some functions that were frequently used in majority game designs.

We did encounter some difficulties during the development until we made some innovative changes to our NFT contracts and that’s one of the best features differentiating CoolMining from other gamefi projects. Our NFTs are capable of being assembled and disassembled at the same time.

M: I see. So how big is your team behind the blockchain game development? What are their roles?

Rictoshi: We are nimble team, about 15 people. Majority are game developers and visual artists. And a few in marketing and operation. They all have at least 4-5 years in each field and track records of excellence. Very proud of our team.

Along the way, we are very fortunate to be supported by a group of crypto mining veterans and organizations like Kucoin and KCC.

M: Tell us more about the role Terry Johnson and Antonio Landi have in CoolMing?

Rictoshi: Sure. Terry is our North American Mining Partner and CEO, while Antonio is our European Mining Partner and CEO.

Terry used to be in IT for more than 15 years and is the COO for a bitcoin mining facility in Minnesota. Terry joined the CoolMining team in 2020 and is currently the CEO of North American mines.

And Antonio is the founder of a crypto based e-sports startup, before which he worked in finance. He is currently the CEO of European mines.

M: So can we say that both North America and Europe are your strategic target markets?

Rictoshi: Sure. But fairly speaking, CoolMining has positioned itself to be global game with no geographical preferences, just like blockchain and Bitcoin.

Our mission is to enable all individual miners to participate in POW mining as Satoshi envisioned in the first place. All individuals on a global scale.

M: How does your community respond so far? Do they find this mining game idea appealing?

Rictoshi: Yeah I mean, who doesn’t love to get some BTCs without having to purchase pricy mining rigs right? So far we manage and operate our community in 7 languages, we can clearly see the passion and discussion building up everyday.

M: What promotions and marketing activities are you rolling out to keep the community and the project warm and liquid?

Rictoshi: We are excited to share that our project was first launched on KCC (KuCoin Community Chain) earlier this year as KuCoin’s first IGO (initial game offering) project.

During the pre-IGO activity on February 21, the CoolMining tokens sold out only within 3 minutes at the price of $0.6 per token, joining Axie Infinity as the most popularized project.

We are also the first Gamefi project with NFTs backed by real life assets. All hash power in the game corresponds to real-life hashrate. Every player has a chance to earn BTC rewards via playing the CoolMining game.

There are also a series of giveaway events happening on twitter, shilling your BTC rewards and get COOHA, for example. Hashrate subsidy event currently happening on the website, which basically means if you stake during this period, you get extra BTC rewards. Go check out now!

And another big one we are developing is a lottery event. Basically, you stake the hashrate tokens to earn BTC as usual, but at the same time, you get a chance to win BTC lottery. This will launch very soon. Just keep close eyes on our twitter.

And active community participants will have a chance to win free NFT mystery boxes, which is our next major plan you should definitely look forward to.

The game category is under constant development and expansion. Virtual worlds are also experiencing a consolidation phase after the Meta hype cycle, solidifying even further the status of this type of dapps. It’s exciting to see how this sector further flourishes and readjusts this year.

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