What is Eth Town and why should I be interested?
Eth Town is a decentralized application running on the Ethereum blockchain which has proved since last year (2017) to be a stable platform to launch DApps(until it breaks due to the high influx of users on a DApp. Remember Cryptokitties?)
The team of devs behind Eth Town stated that they'd worked on the project for some time before announcing the existence of such an interesting crypto gaming application.
What is crypto-gaming you might ask? ... Well, crypto-gaming refers to decentralized applications living on a blockchain that offers what may be referred to as "crypto-collectibles" and the platform allows enthusiasts and curious individuals alike to trade and exchange these collectibles.
Now that we've got that out of the way, Eth Town comes after an influx of decentralized apps attempting to follow in cryptokitties footsteps with less than pleasing aesthetics and faulty execution. This leaves a gaping hole in the market laced with opportunity for any dev team looking to commit and build a well-executed DApp. As most developers will probably know by now is that you can build a smart contract that lives on the Ethereum mainnet or testnet rather quickly but building a great and long lasting UI/UX capable of large volumes of traffic and security is the challenging part.
The developers at Eth Town promised during their introductory post to deliver the full package. Full beans with sauce if you may. The promise to deliver an all-inclusive game that revolves around the exchange (purchase and sale) of virtual real estate assets. Upon first access to the game as a user, you will be able to start off as a small investor and slowly work yourself up against the ranks in order to outplay and outwit other users. The developers plan on incentivizing your activity at some point in the game by allowing you to "benefit from other participants actions."
So where TF are these collectibles?
The game includes collectibles like most other crypto-games living on the Ethereum network with a twist. You'll be able to acquire rare characters and unlock achievements based on your actions in the game. No one likes a sour-puss. The dev team went ahead to state to us that they have a crew of awesome artists who will be creating some of the best artwork I've seen living on the blockchain thus far. Another really cool aspect of this game will be customization requests for your characters. If you've got a dope idea and what to see it manifested in your investment on the platform then all you have to do is let them know (probably pay for the tx too) and you could have yourself a unique and valuable crypto collectible on your hands that could exchange for a few thousand dollars in due time.
Okay so apart from another collectible game incoming, what else is Eth Town about?
Investor Tokens!
That's right. The dev team is looking to implement what seems to be a dividend based profit system where token holders stand a chance to automatically gain a share of the profits generated from all users' activity. Token holders will then be part of a further distribution in accordance with the share of Eth Town tokens they hold. The more you have, the better your divs of course. The devs go on to state that withdrawal of Eth will be possible from their platform directly. This, of course, is made possible through Metamask.
What is the devs growth plan?
Their growth plan is nothing short of a challenge. Their statement goes ahead to say and I quote,
"On their 1st week after launch, Cryptocountries managed an incredible 45K ETH turnover. This sounds impressive, but our team’s secret goal (ok, maybe not so secret anymore) is actually to gun for 100K ETH turnover in the first week. No kidding. And we’ll have a good chance of hitting our target too, with some other cool tricks up our sleeves!"
As a goal to set for themselves a challenge will be in order. I'm not one to speculate on a potential asset before having the chance to really review it but from my estimate of the current market sentiment when it comes to crypto-gaming, this will be an uphill climb for the development team. Great execution will undoubtedly see them hit this mark and probably exceed it.
So far, based on their marketing execution and branding representation I do have to say it looks promising but as you know in the crypto world, only time will tell.
As an investor, what do my rewards look like?
The developers tell us that those who show greater support receive greater rewards. That seems fair right? I think it does. If you want to make a significant dent in this one you can't just hop in to flip low-cost characters with multiple Metamask accounts for a larger overall profit. Or at least I hope that's the case. Market pool dilution happened to Cryptocities and I can tell you that personally, I did not enjoy how that was handled. With Eth Town bigger investors will get more profit per token (we can call that PPT) when held in comparison to smaller investors. They've mentioned a hierarchy structure that involves Tiers and as stated by the devs over at Eth Town, a Tier One investor could potentially get 50% more compared to what a Tier 10 investor could get out of their tokens. Whales anyone?
They then go ahead to let us know that over-dilution of profits via an increasing pool of investor tokens has been looked at and potentially tackled. This was the extreme hiccup that Cryptocities devs encountered. Can Eth Town devs do better? I certainly hope so. Owing to the fact that it's been in the pipeline for so long, I certainly think they've had more than enough time to test this fact on the testnet.
To learn more about investor tokens and what "powers" investors will have, head over to their Medium article on that topic here: https://medium.com/@ethtown/eth-town-investor-tokens-f294de8b6f0b
Let's move on.
So what other features do they have in store for us?
In my opinion, I do have to say that the devs over at Eth Town are a really creative bunch. The styling and information delivery methods used thus far have been more than acceptable and accomplishing an interesting feature menu really speaks on their dedication and investment into the time for the project. So far here's what we have;
A crypto-tower!
This crypto-affiliated tower comprises of special offices and apartments. Some old some new and crazy.Every floor comes with its own rules, bonuses and profit structures with included feature twists that create a more elaborate gaming environment. Most other crypto-collectibles have you stuck with a virtual asset you initially loved but can't flip. Well, my hope is that with Eth Town the incentive and feature plays will keep the ball rolling for a lot longer than other collectibles.
Heroes!
Heroes seem to be the core of the game with everything revolving around the heroes activity in the game portrayed by you, the player. As a beginning of equality, all the heroes will begin at Level 0 and will have some basic pre-existing statistics tagged to them. Along the duration of owning your heroes, you'll be able to sire or "create" a Level 1 hero from a couple of your Level 0 heroes. Like in Cryptokitties, there is a birthing process that according to the devs will in some cases allow you to sire up to 2 kiddos from the process. The cool thing about the birthing process, in my opinion, is that the parent self-destructs soon after the child is born. This seems to be part of the way to tackle market pool dilution from ownership dumps and saturation of the market. Making what you own/invest in that much more worth it.
According to the game process explained by the dev team, level 0 characters will be born automatically and sold in an open auction platform and upon winning (using ETH TOWN investor tokens) you get your Level 0 character. Sadly for those of you who don't/won't hold any investor tokens the only way to purchase a character will be through other players in the marketplace using Eth.
The devs proceeded to state that a Level 15 hero is a Star Hero and that they will be the most powerful ones, I personally look forward to seeing what I can do with a Level 15 hero. Of course, hierarchy makes the character rarer and more expensive. The devs intend to control the economy by having this scheme in play.
The ability to buy low-level heroes will exist but the higher level heroes can and will only be produced by other heroes in this game or bought during a "pre-sale". This seems to be another factor/ruleset tackling the market dilution problem with crypto-collectibles. I look forward to exploring the interaction of heroes in the game during the alpha release in order to see what the hero hype is all about.
The DEV TEAM
What looks to me like a very capable team are the guys and gals over at On5 games. They've had a history in mobile games and it looks like the blockchain growth and diversity got them interested in what may be the next frontier in gaming.
The TOKEN thingys
The devs do say that the tokens will be the in-game currency and are importantly an ERC20 compatible token. The ERC20 token standard describes the functions and events that an Ethereum token has to implement. As mentioned before, the game will reward token holders automatically depending on their token ratio and these tokens can only be spent on in-game items. Once tokens are spent they are burned(removed from circulation). They go on to state that tokens can never be purchased directly and that they are only rewarded for certain actions and as added bonuses for pre-sale purchases. This evidently seems like a good thing because in the recent past with crypto collectibles there have been cases where wales swoop in and purchase most available assets leaving the marketplace in a dire state. The devs have plans to have the tokens traded on EtherDelta between players in their own time making assets transferrable for your needs.
The ETH TOWN PRE-SALE
The development team at Eth Town recently announced that a pre-sale would be happening for some select items and custom offers. The developers are using this as an opportunity to showcase a little bit of what the game will look like while giving interested parties a chance to get in on the ground floor. Their announcement begins with Level 15 Star Heores. Most heroes in Eth Town will be born as Level 0 heroes/peasants whereas some will be born as Level 15 kings. Level 15 heroes will be unique in the sense that none will ever be replicated and have a mixed variety of tactics in their stat-sheet. Owing to the fact that the estimate size of Eth Town growth is unpredictable at the moment, Eth Town devs are reluctant to announce the possible value of these Level 15 Star Heroes(which is a good thing in my opinion. I statement on the value of these would have been considered market inflation/manipulation) therefore all of these characters will be auctioned off to bidders in an open marketplace. The devs go on to state that the auction will be powered by an independent smart contract to ensure equality and overall satisfaction from all buyers. The winners of auctions will get bonus Investor Tokens proportional to the final price as a buyer incentive.
The Eth Town flor crowdsale will include in-game assets within the Crypto Tower. Each floor has been created as a unique item and has been carefully crafted by both the design and development team to create potentially very desirable crypto-collectibles. Each floor will be listed with an owner and during the presale anybody interested in Eth Town will be able to pre-purchase a piece of the DAO Hacker floor which is on sale at the moment. Floor ownership comes with perks and rules that the dev team has left as a surprise to all users and they claim that the unique game mechanics will enable returns with an acceptable profit margin. To keep a cap on whales, they've limited purchases to 1 ETH meaning no person will be able to purchase the entire floor leaving room for other players to snatch up sections of their own, increase competition and effectively drive up prices that benefit players.
This feature could be plagued by players using multiple Metamask accounts to buy up entire floors so we'll have to see what the devs have in store to regulate that.
The presale also includes Level 7 characters that of course have less impressive stat-sheets than the Level 15 Star Heroes but players will be able to acquire them immediately for a fraction of what the final market price will be. This could result in an ATH on marketplace opening with massive dumps from whales or players who snatched these up early to sell them back to new players. The devs, however, do go on to state that this effective price is only in play because players won't actually be able to "just buy them for Ether or upgrade with Ether" and that this option is only available at the presale.
The devs have gone ahead and added a feature that I personally admire which is a Custom Character feature where players who own at least 5 Level-7 characters can have a custom character crafted according to whatever unique design you may have in mind.
To continue the hype with game customization, they've also included the possibility of a certain floor of the Crypto-Tower. This spot has been reserved for someone who wants to feature their company in the game and based on what I can tell, if this advertising venture is successful we may end up seeing big brands advertising in Eth Town effectively making players assets more valuable and the overall game more entertaining and durable.
To read more about the presale and their roadmap visit their Hackernoon post here: https://hackernoon.com/eth-town-presale-roadmap-team-3ee730acaf23
Overall I think the idea the devs at Eth Town have is solid and expansion of features and customization potentially make the experience more durable than existing crypto collectibles.
A development by On5 Games Development Studio
To learn more about Eth Town and the development team, visit one of the links below:
Website: https://eth.town/
Btt Ann: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3062760
Btt Bounty: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3028492
Facebook: https://fb.me/eth.town
Twitter: https://twitter.com/eth_town
Instagram: https://instagram.com/eth.town
Telegram: https://t.me/Ethertown
Medium: https://medium.com/@ethtown
Discord: https://discord.gg/qWgw5f9
Personal Code: EXUO
Get your own personal code by signing up at https://eth.town.
If you want to help me gather more investor tokens so I can put up more reviews of Eth Town and its progress, feel free to use my referral link here: https://eth.town/air/DB5F
You don't have to though. I'll be back with more about Eth Town as the devs make progress. More thoughts after the launch of the Alpha testing phase and weekly posts when the game finally launches depicting progress and overall potential of the platform.