AlienWorlds.io is a popular sci-fi game metaversion powered by the Wax blockchain based on the Play2Earn ("play to earn") model.
It is one of the most active virtual worlds. Alien Worlds has over 7 million registered users, of which roughly 200 visit the game daily.
The backbone of Alien Worlds' internal economy is the native Trillium Token (TLM), which is issued on the Wax, BNB Chain, and Ethereum.
The game also has an active market for NFT items and digital real estate, and the management of the economy is built on a network of decentralized organizations - "planetary DAOs".
Who made Alien Worlds?
The blockchain game Alien Worlds was developed by the Swiss company Dacoco, which was founded in the "crypto valley" of Zug by blockchain developers Michael Yates and Rob Allen together with financier Sarojini Makkena. All the founders have previously played an important role in the launch of EOS and a number of other blockchain projects.
The financing of the project took place in several stages. Shortly before the game's test launch on December 4, 2020, the developers held a Danish auction of virtual land in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Thanks to this, they managed to collect about 1 million dollars.
In an initial investment round in February 2021, Dacoco received an investment from the Korean fund HG Ventures. In March of the same year, a private token sale took place, in which 10 venture funds, including Animoca Brend, participated. Those two rounds raised more than $2 million.
Issuance and functions of TLM cryptocurrency
The native Trillium token (TLM) was simultaneously released on the Wax, BNB Chain and blockchains Ethereum. In the game, the Teleport cross-chain bridge allows you to transfer TLM tokens between these blockchains. For this Wax Cloud Wallet and MetaMask must be installed and connected.
TLM's maximum supply is 10 billion tokens, of which just over 3 billion are already in circulation. In spring 2021, more than 1 billion TLM were sold to strategic investors, with 150 million distributed through the Binance Launchpool.
The rest is for daily distribution to the planetary DAO, community and content creator support, marketing and other uses.
There are several ways to use TLM:
mining by miners on "earth";
improving game items, participating in quests and battles;
voting on DAO planetary initiatives;
rates in missions (only for TLM standard BEP-20).
TLM is traded on the largest centralized crypto exchanges, including Binance, Gate.io, Kucoin and Kraken, as well as decentralized platforms (PancakeSwap).
How to play Alien Worlds?
Alien Worlds is a browser-only version, but is available on both PC and mobile devices. You must create an account in Wax Cloud Wallet before registering for the game.
Unlike many NFT games based on the Play2Earn model, Alien Worlds does not require an initial investment. Every new player gets a free tool - a shovel with minimal power - and can immediately start mining the in-game cryptocurrency TLM. The mined coins can be freely withdrawn.
To start mining TLM you need:
choose one of six planets;
on the planet, choose one of the available plots;
place the mining tool in one of the three available slots.
The choice of planet and location for mining is done through transactions on the Wax blockchain, which must be confirmed in the Wax Cloud Wallet.
The mining process itself is by pressing the "Mine" and then "Claim Mine" buttons, then the transaction must be approved (press the "Approve:" button in the Wax Cloud Wallet popup) - and the cryptocurrency is credited to the account (0,002-0,01 TLM s using a "standard" shovel). This is followed by a tool "recharge" period that lasts from 80 seconds for a free shovel to several hours for the most powerful tools, after which the process can be repeated.
Apart from TLM coins, there is a small chance of getting NFT points that can be exchanged for digital items and then used or sold in the market.
Another component of the gameplay is the quests, which are presented as expeditions to distant planets. Basically, these are short-term campaigns of 1-4 weeks for staking a certain amount of TLM with rewards in the form of TLM and valuable NFTs. Staking takes place on the BNB Chain network and requires Metamask or another suitable browser-based wallet.
What are the playable NFTs in Alien Worlds?
The entire game is based on the use of various non-fungible tokens (NFTs) issued on the Wax blockchain. There are a total of six types:
tools - allow to extract TLM on plots with different efficiency;
avatars - give the player individuality, but do not affect the game;
minions - allow you to participate in PvP battles that appeared in the metaverse with the launch of the Thunderdome update;
minion weapons - improve character attributes;
artifacts - also improve the parameters of minions;
plots of land on planets - allow you to collect rent from miners.
The two most popular marketplaces where you can buy and sell gaming NFTs on the Wax blockchain are AtomicHub and NFTHive. Connecting to them is done through the Wax Cloud Wallet and payments are made in WAXP (the native cryptocurrency of the Wax blockchain).
There are six "rarity" levels for all NFT types (except countries). NFT items also have a Shine stat with five tiers: Stone, Gold, Stardust, Antimatter, and Dimension X. (Dimension X).
Four NFT items with the same "rarity" and "brilliant" can be "merged" into one with the next level's "brilliant". This requires between 100 and 2000 TLM tokens, depending on the rarity and brilliance of the items.
What are digital properties in Alien Worlds for?
Now the Alien Worlds universe consists of 6 planets, each of which is divided into 150-200 regions, presented in the form of NFTs.
On December 4, 2020, the primary NFT sale took place where 3 plots (out of 000 existing) were sold at a strike price of 3 ETH (less than $350 at the time). Now plots can only be purchased on the secondary market at a price of $1.
There are 20 types of soil (rocky, desert, volcanic, etc.). Each type has several basic parameters:
“Recharge multiplier” (Recharge multiplier) – can both speed up and slow down tool recovery;
“Mining power” – increases or decreases the amount of TLM mined;
“NFT Power” (NFT Power) – increases or decreases the chance of NFT point dropping out during mining;
"Commission" (Commission) - the amount of fee that the site owner charges from the production of the "miner". It can range from 0% to 25%.
Lot owners can choose to make them available to public "miners" or introduce an access fee that must be paid with WAXP coins. Site owners on some planets can also run their own miner reward programs in the form of a chance to win NFTs in the game.
Each planet in the Federation of Alien Worlds is governed by a planetary DAO composed of TLM holders. Each planet has its own treasury and a council of 5 members who are re-elected every week by players who have staked their TLM.
All planets receive a certain amount of TLM each day, which can be divided between stakers and landowners or sent to mining incentive programs to increase the attractiveness of the planet.
How and how much can you earn in Alien Worlds?
Since this NFT game follows the Play2Earn model, most players join Alien Worlds to earn money.
Here are possible sources of income:
mining TLM when mining lands and in missions;
selling NFTs obtained during the mining process and in missions on the market;
rewards for staking TLM into planetary DAOs;
for planetary land owners - they receive their share from the planetary treasury and tax miners in TLM tokens.
Alien Worlds maximum yield for miners was at the beginning of 2021, before the launch of TLM on Binance. After that, using the simplest tools, it was possible to get several dollars worth of cryptocurrency in a few hours of playing. But as the number of players increased and the value of the TLM token decreased, profitability plummeted.
Special services for calculating profitability show that from October 2022, with one free shovel in 24 hours of continuous play, you cannot get more than 2-4 TLM, which is less than $0,1 at current quotes. Buying more powerful NFT tools helps to multiply productivity and significantly reduce the time spent in the game, but requires an initial investment of about 20-50 USD.
What are the problems in Alien Worlds?
In 2021, due to the NFT and Play2Earn hype, the number of active players in Alien Worlds was in the hundreds of thousands. However, studies show that a significant part of game accounts were controlled by bots, i.e. programs for automated TLM mining. Although the developers of Alien Worlds tried to create a reliable anti-bot system, they clearly failed.
A study conducted in the summer of 2021 identified several large botnets that included thousands of accounts and obtained a significant proportion of all TLM allocated daily to the planetary DAO.
According to the report, one of the botnets received up to 160 TLM per minute, which was 10% of the total daily supply of the token. Another botnet that managed more than 6 accounts was able to earn and sell more than $000 million worth of TLM and NFT tokens in just a few months of operation.
The popularity of the bots has decreased along with the drop in TLM listings in Spring 2022. Bots for Alien Worlds currently sell for $200-800 and the source code of the mining bot has been published on GitHub.
How is Alien Worlds evolving?
Alien Worlds aims to become a meta-version, that is, to provide players with diverse gameplay and third-party developers - the opportunity to develop and add to the game world.
In May 2022, we opened the Galactic Hubs grant program to support third-party teams developing projects for the Alien Worlds metaverse and building Web3 infrastructure around it.
In July 2022, Dacoco entered into a cooperation agreement with the high-performance blockchain platform Zilliqa. We are talking about the creation of a game center that will allow the integration of esports projects already launched on the Zilliqa network into the metaverse.
The most anticipated update, already announced in the fall of 2021, should be the launch of Thunderdome. This is a Battle Royal based Player-to-Player (PvP) platform. In this mode, players will be able to use minions, their weapons and artifacts, and will be paid in TLM tokens for participating in battles.
