The Defi space has primarily focused on interfaces with simple numbers, where people are mainly looking for the highest APRs. The interfaces are often dull, not far away from ordinary spreadsheets.
If you have read earlier articles by me before, you probably know that I am focused on the Blockchain&Gaming and DeFi space. This happens to be the precise cross-section where Defi Kingdoms is putting itself. By combining DeFi earnings, gamification, and NFT's into one mix, we are getting a glimpse of what Blockchain is starting to do to these sectors.
There is a lot to digest here, so without further ado, let's take a DeepDive into Defi Kingdoms and see how they are changing the DeFi and Blockchain gaming landscape!
The idea
DeFi Kingdoms calls itself a "DeFi game built on the blockchain, designed with useable NFTs." They set out to create a DeFi experience where you still benefit from the juicy APRs but without the dull experience that generally comes with it.
They increase the overall enjoyment by adding gamification and NFT's with purpose. People, or in this case players, start to feel like they aren't just farming on a DEX, but become part of a world where gardens create income, taverns have specialized warrior and archer NFT's for sale, and potions can be created and bought at an alchemist.
Splash on nostalgic pixel art, and it becomes clear that this is not your typical AMM dex anymore but a true hybrid between sectors and perhaps the first step in the evolution of DeFi
.
However, if all of this seems overwhelming, rest assured that the game is easy to learn but hard to master. The player just starting out can earn passive income within minutes, provided that they already have some experience with DeFi in general. For the more hardcore gamers, there are a lot of stats and strategies available under the hood. Like in an action RPG it's possible to theory craft the best builds for your NFT's. The biggest difference? In DeFi Kingdoms, you won't only get the highest Critical chance percentage for your hero, but if you plan things out right, you will also receive the highest income available.
The world
DeFi Kingdoms' first world is called Serendale and runs on the Harmony blockchain. Yes, that's right, their first world. The second world is already in the making and will launch in Q1 on the Avalanche blockchain. It will be called Crystalvale, and there are rumors that there will be a total of 5 worlds on five different blockchains. More on that later.
The Serendale world map is already pretty big, and keeps expanding with new updates. Not only the world itself increases but also the available regions where players can interact with the world. Just to name a few:
The Bank, or now Jeweler is a single staking deposit area.
The Gardens are where you can deposit your Liquidity pool tokens to receive Jewel rewards.
Heroes (NFT's) can be bought and sold in the tavern.
Questing is done in the professions area.
Potions are created at the alchemist.
These options keep expanding as the world keeps growing.
Defi
The immersive world is fascinating, but it basically wraps all these aspects around an underlying DeFi engine. Essentially, the foundation blocks of DeFi Kingdoms are the DEX and the attractive Liquidity Pool opportunities.
In the marketplace, players can talk with the Trader to use the Dex, which is currently the only location where you can purchase DeFi Kingdoms native $Jewel token. Talking with the druid opens up the option to create Liquidity Pools. The liquidity pools mostly consist of pairs with on one side Jewel and on the other side a plethora of tokens that people know and want to invest in. Coins such as Harmony, Avalanche, Luna, but also Ethereum and Bitcoin can be used as a pair.
Currently, the APRs are high, most even above 200%, but they will decrease over time. However, these APRs make DeFi Kingdoms an exciting place for general DeFi farmers looking for great returns, without even playing the game. This creates a certain buy pressure for the $Jewel token.
Game concepts
However, the thing that sets DeFi Kingdoms apart is their game concepts. Everything that can be done, and will be developed, requires the use of the $Jewel token. DeFi Kingdoms has found a way of making NFT's very interesting.
There is still a myth around NFT's that they are nothing more than images that people might as well 'right-click-save,' but DeFi Kingdoms NFT's have a lot of interesting properties. Similar to RPG games, the NFT's have certain classes, skills, professions and can level up. In the future, they can hold different armor, weapons, and other equipment to improve their stats and even have companions in the form of pets, making them even more powerful.
Buying these NFT's can cost a pretty penny, the cheapest one being around 30 $Jewel, and with a current price of $8,00, that's a steep entry fee, but the NFT's have different ways of earning an income.
The current game loop consists of buying a hero doing quests to gain experience and increase their skill in certain areas. By becoming better, both by leveling up and increasing those skills, the heroes will become more efficient at doing these quests. The better you become at a quest, and the higher stats you will gain by leveling up, the more income you will receive by completing quests.
This is just the beginning of what players can do with their heroes, though. PVE (player versus environment – or AI) and PVP (player versus player) quests and battles are already in development. Although not a lot is known at this moment, these will likely consist of a group of your heroes. So while it may be interesting for now to search for a couple of wizards that can increase your garden's APR (yes, they can do this, more on the quests later), it may cause you to be too specialized for combat in the future.
Besides the questing, there is an entire community built around summoning heroes. Instead of buying one in the tavern, players can breed new heroes by combining two others. Heroes come in different rarities, and some classes can be wildly better than others. The class on the top of the food chain – the dreadknight – only has a chance to be summoned by using two heroes of one of the classes below that tier. And even then, there's only a tiny chance that you will get one.
Is all of this worth it? Well, currently there are two dreadknights for sale. One will cost you 1650 $Jewel, the other one 3200 $Jewel. At the current price, that means $13.200 or $25.600. There are many other things to keep in mind though, that can increase the value of your NFT's.
Summoning will cost you a hefty sum in $Jewel, again increasing the utility and demand for the token.
Heroes
As mentioned before, your NFT's are called heroes (although land, pets, items etc., will be NFT's too), and they are the backbone of the game aspect of DeFi Kingdoms. Without this becoming a guide on heroes, to understand the underlying game mechanics and show the interesting possibilities of the NFT's we'll take a deeper look into what they are all about.
Hero card
Above you see a typical hero card with all the relevant information. Heroes have a specific class and subclass, making them better in particular quests and professions, but also giving them more stat points in attributes.
Warriors will generally have more strength, mages more intelligence, archers more agility, and so on. However, with every stat point given, part of it is random, which can result in builds that aren't really fitting or some that start out a bit overpowered. Remember the summoning I talked about before? The luck and chance aspect make it a fun and sometimes very profitable part of the game.
Imagine summoning a warrior that has way more points in strength and endurance than normal. These will not only be worth more on the market, but they will also be better at mining quests (again, more on quests later) and be the perfect tank for PVP battles. Add the same randomized numbers, with a particular bias to specific stats for every class, at every level up, and you can imagine how some NFT's can become really valuable over time.
Talking about leveling up, you can see your current level and the experience needed to level up on the card. The experience is gained by doing quests for now, but when the other aspects of the game launch, I imagine that battling and PVE quests will also grant experience.
After flipping the card, you can see all the points your hero has in their respective stats. Some stats are colored, giving them a bonus. Below that, you can see the level at the professions they can currently have. Fishing, foraging, gardening, and mining are now available, but more will be available later.
Every hero has one of these as their primary profession. Questing at your main profession gives you a significant advantage regarding rewards, experience, and so on. For example, a hero with a gardening profession will receive rewards every 10 minutes while questing instead of every 12 minutes. Especially in the long run, this will greatly increase the income you can create with a certain NFT. Buying a warrior with a fishing skill makes less sense than a mining skill, especially when he has higher Strength and Endurance skills.
You can probably tell already that there is an extensive theory crafting and metagame behind DeFi Kingdoms. Figuring out which heroes you want, both for questing, battling, team composition, with the right stats and profession skills, needs to be given some thought, especially with their high prices.
Professions and quests
The high prices can, however, be justified. All these NFT's can quest to create an income. So far, there are four different professions that your heroes can gain skills in: fishing, foraging, gardening, and mining. By letting your heroes quest in professions they can increase their skill, resulting in better chances for better outcomes.
Fishing and foraging are essentially the same. Your heroes will go out to retrieve items that are used in crafting potions or sold for either Jewel or gold. Gold is used in-game to buy and sell other items or create potions.
When you're lucky, you'll be able to get some rarer items such as runes, which are needed to level up and currently cost around $10, or eggs, which can later be hatched into companions.
The differences between the two are the different classes that excel in one of both and the stats that can help improve the quest's outcome.
Gardening and mining quests are a bit more complicated.
By letting your hero go on a gardening quest, they can 'farm' $Jewel. If you are farming, for example, a Harmony/Jewel Farm, and you let your hero do a gardening quest on this liquidity pool, they can increase the output of this farm, basically increasing your APR. The more you have in a farm, the higher the potential Jewel that can be farmed in the gardening quest. A strategy here could be to have a large farm set-up, and buy a couple of good gardening heroes to increase the overall output of your farms.
When you send your heroes out for mining quest you can either mine for gold or mine your locked $Jewel tokens—yes, locked $Jewel tokens. Let me explain. The gardens' high APRs come with a little twist. To combat flooding the markets with farmed $Jewel, a percentage of those jewels are immediately spendable, and another part will be locked. The share of locked $Jewel will decrease over time until around July 2022, when all farmed tokens will unlock while farming. These locked Jewels can be mined by going on a mining quest, making them spendable.
These locked $Jewel tokens will not all be unlocked at the same time. From the moment that you no longer farm locked and unlocked Jewel tokens, the locked Jewel will be released linearly over one year as not to create an enormous surge in available Jewel tokens at the same time (and subsequently cause a price drop due to increased supply).
These are the first four quests and professions currently available, but more will be added in the future. One that is already revealed is a crafting profession where your heroes can craft items and armor that heroes will use in battle or sold on the marketplace. With increased proficiency in crafting, heroes can create better equipment. If you ever wanted to become a blacksmith, here's your chance!
As you can see, there is a lot more to think about when you want to buy your heroes. It might be tempting to buy the cheapest hero available, but if you plan to play the game for a while, it's better to first determine what your game plan will be and search for suitable heroes accordingly. And don't forget that with the upcoming PVP and PVE battling quests on the way, a decent team composition is also important.
Land
A recent expansion increased the DeFi Kingdoms world map while introducing land plots. Land plots are also NFT's and are owned by players. While still under development, we know now that players can start building buildings on their plot of land, which can increase resource output, increase the outcomes of quests, and even help you create rare items for your heroes.
The position of your plot of land on the world map also matters—both in available resources but potentially also in available quests and battles. If your land is near a water source, perhaps you can have better results in fishing quests. For now, this is just speculation, though.
As of the time writing this article, there are 100 plots of land visible and available for purchase, but this will be increased to 1000 plots. Making them pretty scarce and perhaps too expensive for your everyday DeFi Kingdoms player. Not much can be done yet, and we'll update this article if new information comes out.
Other chains
DeFi Kingdoms is now only available on the Harmony blockchain. However, the first expansions to other blockchains are already underway. The next release will be on the Avalanche blockchain and called Crystalvale. The roadmap will be similar, with the team pushing out updates regularly, starting with the jeweler and heroes, then quests, etc. The roadmap below shows that the team will work on the two chains simultaneously.
Expanding to the Avalanch blockchain has a couple of distinct advantages. The most important one is the increase of available players. Avalanche has a much bigger userbase than Harmony. They can all be introduced to the game.
Crystalvale will have its own token, $Crystal, instead of $Jewel. That doesn't mean that the value of Jewel will be diluted perse though. The team is ensuring that the $Jewel token will stay the primary token in the entire ecosystem. Initially, staking $Jewel will be the way to gain $Crystal tokens, and the first gardens, although not yet confirmed, will likely be $Jewel-$Crystal. The team has a significant war chest filled with Jewel tokens, and it is in their best interest to ensure the Jewel token price doesn't tank.
Players can bridge their Jewel tokens to the Avalanche blockchain by using the Dock on Serendale. Another exciting aspect is the possibility to transfer hero NFT's to the other world. This comes with a risk, though. There is a big chance that your heroes will not make it across, burning the NFT in the process. Higher-level heroes will have a higher chance to make the 'perilous journey', but it's a trade-off that players will have to make.
For example, with the new gardens, the ROI could potentially be really high. Do you want to send your gardener heroes there to increase the ROI even more, chancing the fact that your leveled hero dies along the way? It's an interesting new development, and it's up to the players to make these decisions.
How it all will play out is too soon to say. Crystalvale will launch somewhere in Q1 2022. When we have more information, this DeepDive will be edited.
In total, the team has already announced that there are plans for five worlds on different blockchains. For now, we only know about Crystalvale on Avalanche.
There are some concerns with the upcoming upgrade. Why expand to another blockchain when not even half of the roadmap for Serendale is complete? What does this mean for the development side and the demand for Jewel?
It's not for us to say, but the team has made it clear that they keep expanding and that there is enough manpower to work on both chains. Furthermore, the tokenomics so far for Defi Kingdoms $Jewel are impressive and make sense. If they can ensure that the Jewel token will be used in the other worlds, the large userbase from Avalanche will increase the demand for the Jewel token. Again, it's all too soon to say, and there is a lot of speculation. We can say that it's an interesting new concept filled with ambition.
Roadmap
You've already seen the roadmap in the previous section. While there is a lot to enjoy in DeFi Kingdoms at this time, there is still so much more to come.
Currently, we are at the land release section, but the land, for now, doesn't have any usability. When buildings are released and specific quests in specific areas come available, the world will open up dramatically.
Pets and equipment will enhance the heroes, with possible new professions to be released as well.
After that, we can expect both PVE and PVP missions and battles, giving more usability to the heroes and increasing the tactical and strategical gameplay. This also opens up the guilds in DeFi Kingdoms. How that all will play out is still a bit uncertain, but I expect players to be able to join ranks, go on missions together, buy and cultivate their lands, and recruit new players via a scholarship system similar to Axie infinity.
And that is all to come just in Serendale. With the prospect of development on five different blockchains the roadmap is essentially five times as large.
Add the fact that during every AMA, new functions and possibilities are discussed, it seems that DeFi Kingdoms is only getting started and has a lot more in store for us.
Conclusion
DeFi Kingdoms has blown me away in what used to be only imaginable to do with NFT's. They have gamified the DeFi aspect, creating valuable NFT's in the process.
The game creates a certain addiction where you want to grow your $Jewel just to get to that next step. Whether that means getting a new hero to mine your locked jewels, create the perfect summon, lock more in the Bank for possible airdrops or generally increase your passive income in the gardens. There's always something to work to.
It may disguise itself as a pixel browser game, but for me, it's the first iteration of a real Play-to-earn game with good rewards and enticing gameplay. In some ways, you can compare it to the very first Pokémon games on the Gameboy: New, revolutionary, and very successful in the years to come.
There is still so much under development that we can look forward to. However, that's not only positive. Because it's relatively early to invest in DeFi Kingdoms there is the possibility that some aspects of the game don't work as intended, that specific updates can destroy the various (economic) gameplay mechanics, or that the team won't deliver on their promises. The latter so far has not been the case. Every week updates are pushed out, some more extensive and more critical than others, but it shows that the team is working hard to make their vision a reality. Deadlines have always been met, and it creates confidence in their abilities.
Another subject that could either be positive or negative is the development on different blockchains simultaneously. If they can work on different projects at once while still delivering on their roadmap and not letting attention slip from the initial blockchains, then it should be a net positive, especially with the tokenomics in place that require the Jewel to get started in every consecutive world.
DeFi Kingdoms managed to create a DeFi game where there is enough to do for different kinds of people. Both passive and active. If you're looking for good rewards, feel free to use the gardens. If you're into the 'breeding' game, go wild with summoning to get that lucky draw. If you enjoy seeing your heroes grow in stats and leveling up, there's questing to be done. Add in all the future developments and it's clear why DeFi Kingdoms is already on top of the charts of any blockchain game regarding volume.
Personally, I love the entire thing. I have some heroes that I send our for questing, have my gardens set-up, and have $Jewel in the Bank for the expansion to Avalanche. Q1 should be an exciting time. Hopefully, Crystalvale will open up without any major issues, giving me even more things to do and higher rewards to receive.
DeFi Kingdoms is on the right track. If they keep this up, in 5 or 10 years, we may look back at it with the same awe we have now for legendary titles on the Gameboy such as Pokémon red and blue. A true revolution with the DeFi Kingdoms team being looked at as trendsetters.
We'll continue to follow the development and will be sure to keep you informed on future updates!
Follow us on Hive for more DeepDives and DeFi Kingdoms updates.
For more reports check out our site CryptoDeepDive.com