The Skara Universe has had a virtual currency as its heart since inception. However, the decision to move towards a truly tokenised economy was not taken lightly — considerable time and effort has be taken to ensure that not only do we transition successfully, but that we create the chance to have an even deeper Universe for you all to play in.
Ahead of our impending token issuance, we wanted to take the opportunity to take you through our existing economy, our token and the transition between them in more detail. We hope you find it interesting.
Summary
Skara has an existing economy, which is at the heart of a multi-award-winning eSports video game. Skara is tokenising its existing premium currency, setting a limited supply and implementing an inflationary burn function to make sure that economy works for everyone.
As playing Skara well requires tokens, there will be a sustained and constant demand on the token pool, and as all game to player transactions burn 50% of the tokens, there will be a gradually reducing pool of tokens to be used in-game. As a result, the increased scarcity of tokens shall result in a value increase of each remaining token, particularly against the backdrop of ever increasing demand for tokens, just from the game.
SKARATs will be available from our Token Sale and also in-game from the beta launch on 23rd January, and their functionality will increase as the Skara Universe is expanded through eSports, betting, trading cards and eventually to be used in other video games. Skara is already in conversations with studios that have a desire to use SKARATs within their games — so the potential is unlimited.
Our existing virtual economy
Skara uses a loot-box economy based to randomly distribute a variety of cosmetic items (skins, dyes, tattoos), gameplay (weapons/armour with stats for single player mode) and social items (voice lines, emotes).
This loot box economy — common in the video game market — is sustained by Skara’s own existing virtual currencies. The SHARD, a free currency which acts to implement retention in the game, and a premium currency, KARATS.
The following assets and activities are attainable through SHARDs:
- Common, Rare and Epic skins and weapons.
- Avatars
- Frames for avatars
- Sprays
- Common Emotes
- Common Victory Poses
- Voice Lines
- Character Add-ons (beards, scars, tattoos, etc)
- Banners
- Dyes
The following assets and activities have been available until now only through spending KARATS (our existing premium currency):
- Purchase of unique player skins
- Purchase of Legendary weapons and items
- Epic and Legendary Victory poses
- Boosts
Key token stats from Skara alpha
340,000 users
43,000 premium transactions between SKARA the game and users in 3 months
$1.20 average transaction value
Skara’s alpha was an incredible success, winning dozens of awards, and proving the value and size of the potential in-game, blockchain connected economy.
A crypto economy
Video games have experimented with purely digital currencies and digital assets for years, often with great success. However, until the advent of blockchain technology, these economies existed in official isolation to the real economy.
SKARA is one of the first games to overcome this barrier by creating a new cryptocurrency in the form of an ERC-20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain called SKARAT (SKARA Token — SKRT). Through this new vehicle, participants in the SKARA community will be able to buy, sell and trade in-game assets without having to go to black markets.
SKARATs and blockchain will be embedded at the heart of the SKARA ecosystem, in order to decentralize the benefits of participating in the games, both casually and competitively. This is the future of gaming.
SKARATs will allow for new additional features:
- Buy and sell items with SKARATs
- Buy and sell SKARATs
- Purchase and access of in-game territory
- Purchase and trade cards
- Gain access to events and competitions
- Bet on different competitions — from tournaments, to championships and leagues.
- Deploy awards for event participants
- Professional players will receive at least part of their salary in SKARATs
Also, pushing forward the idea of professional gaming, Skara will offer SKARAT rewards in different stages of the game to those players that stand out in one way or another — be that through game skill, creativity in content creation, or positive contributions to the community. With SKARATs conversion rate to other cryptocurrencies and fiat, these players would be earning real value from a game without necessarily partnering with a corporate sponsor.
Transitioning to a crypto economy
Existing KARATs will be converted to SHARDs at a rate or 1:1. The conversion will occur on the launch of the beta game, on 23rd January, from which point onwards KARATs will cease to exist.
Functionality
Simplified diagram
Extended diagram
There are three, key, new features of SKARATs that the old premium currency did not have: A limited supply, a burn function, and a token split.
Limited supply
All in game activity will push demand for the token. However, whilst KARATs used to have a limitless supply, SKARATs will have a set, finite supply, estimated at 20,000,000 tokens.
Induced scarcity — the Token burn
Furthermore, in all transactions that are player-to-game (an estimated 20% of total transactions), 50% of the tokens sent from the player to the game will be burnt. This means that whilst 50% will be sent to a token pool earned by Skara, 50% will be sent to a publicly auditable smart contract with a burn function that will destroy the tokens.
This will result in a gradually reducing pool of tokens. And as it is a limited supply that cannot be increased, this game mechanic will create a scarcity in the tokens that will gradually increase the value of SKARATs. However, the fiat value of in-game assets will remain steady.
Token split
Over time, the pool of available tokens could dwindle to such a small size through sustained token burning, that there are no longer enough tokens in circulation to even play the game.
To combat this, Skara are implementing a token split function that adds tokens without decreasing the market cap, or the value of any individual token holders’ holdings.
This is done in the same manner as a share split for public companies on stock exchanges — for every token owned by a wallet, a certain number of additional tokens are issued to that same wallet as required.
This ensures Skara never runs out of tokens, despite the token burn.
Roadmap to a connected, crypto economy
Smart contract to run the sale
Complete and under audit.
- A publicly auditable burn function
Complete and under audit.
- A method to sell skarats to players for fiat with zero knowledge of tokens
Complete and available from beta launch.
- A method to buy skarats from players for fiat with zero knowledge of tokens
This is currently not complete. It is also not mandatory, and a final decision remains to be made. Skara could have the option of buying Skarats off players in-game.
- A method to transfer skarats bought on an exchange into the game
A holder of SKARATs outside the game would have to do the following to transfer and then use SKARATs bought on an exchange, into the game:
Create a Skara account
Add the wallet address they want to send tokens from to their account profile
Send tokens to the wallet address specified — Skara’s wallet for in-game SKARATs
Wait, whilst Skara validates they have received the tokens and adds them to the players in-game account.
- A method to transfer skarats earned/bought in the game, onto an exchange
A holder of SKARATs inside the game would have to do the following to transfer and then use SKARATs outside of the game:
Create an ERC20 token compliant wallet address
Submit the wallet address and the amount of SKARATs to withdraw from the ‘SKARAT withdrawal’ option in the game
Pay any small fees to cover the cost of the transaction
Wait whilst Skara processed your transaction and you receive your tokens.
On completion of these 6 steps, the Skara economy will be completely connected to the external blockchain economy. More importantly, both players of the game that have no knowledge of cryptocurrency, and cryptocurrency experts will respectively be able to engage with Skara’s economy and universe, as they desire.
Building and expanding the crypto-centric Skara Universe
Phase 1: Conversion — 23 January 2018
Existing KARATs will be converted into SHARDs. SKARATs will be sold in-game at a 200% price over ICO price.
Phase 2: Token Sale completion — 23 February 2018
After the token sale, all tokens will be issued to the relevant parties and the limited supply will be set. Tokens will be trading on exchanges and the beta will be in full motion with the funds players are using to purchase SKARATs in-game being used to purchase SKARATs from exchanges.
Phase 3: After the first Skara tournament — March 2018
Priority will initially be given to allowing players to deposit tokens into the game, followed by withdrawing tokens from the game.
Phase 4: Expanding the Skara Universe — April 2018 onwards
With priority based on feedback from the community, Skara will launch official tournaments and leagues, and will push out betting on those competitions and events, purchasing and accessing in-game territory, purchasing and trading cards… or any of the tens of other ways Skara can bring even greater use for the SKARAT token.
Phase 5: Rolling out SKARATs to the world
While SKARATs will have an immediate use with the family of SKARA products, most notably from our multiplayer game, the potential to increase the use of the tokens is unlimited.
For example, it is common practice for game currencies to be exchangeable with one another on platforms such as Steam or Playstation. To that end, we are already having conversations with studios that have a desire to use SKARATs within their game. Since we are miles ahead of most studios in this field, we can help each other and benefit significantly.
Projections
Our Assumptions:
20% — of transactions are player to game
80% — of transactions are player to player
50% — of tokens burnt in every player to game transaction
$2.00 — average transaction when game to player
$0.50 — SKARAT token sale anchor price
14,000,000 — total limited supply of SKARATs
A global economy inside a game
Economics are about supply and demand. The less there is of a given asset and the more people desire it, the higher its value. By designing our token economy as above, we are creating pressure on both supply and demand — increasing the likelihood that individual SKARATs will increase over time in our Skara Universe. This is because the more SKARATs are used, the more will be lost to our burn mechanism, increasing the scarcity of this in-game resource, whilst, as the number of players increase, the demand on this scarce resource will only increase.. This design is critical to making sure everyone wins, including SKARA players, SKARA contributors and yes — even the studio itself. Although we like to create games where some people lose, in the game of life we believe the best outcomes are win-win. Thank you for your time and please join us on Telegram or Discord to discuss!