For example, we are partnered with real life professional wrestlers because in wrestling, professional wrestlers are seen as independent contractors. They don't get life insurance. They don't get retirement. Uh, many of them have to deal with their own injuries, pay for that, uh, hotel rooms, travel, so many different things.

Uh, there's an issue. With wrestlers as a class of worker that needs to be looked at. It needs to be rectified. And that's what we are trying to do. Our whole mission is to leave wrestling better than we found it. Excuse me. I should actually say this. Crim actually wants me to change that, uh, building a better wrestling industry block by block.

I. Believe is how it goes, but, uh, when we were talking about use cases and we're talking about the existing hive user base and how do you expand from there are use case is that we are giving back to professional wrestling the NFTs you buy. If you buy a Mikey Whipwreck NFT, 5 percent the market fee will go directly to Mikey Whipwreck.

It will not go to the company. If you buy a land pack, which are currently on sale for 20 on our marketplace, 10 percent of that sale will be split with our partners. We are dedicated to giving back to our wrestling partners. And that gives us a different angle that not every game can have. Because we have a kind of a charitable aspect to that, but going back to the point of of the existing hive user base.

I was blown away how we were able to pull this off. We came into hive with zero followers. You know, zero interactions before that. And we just started writing posts. We put our white paper out there. We started putting out character profiles, start talking about how the game was going to work and slowly built from there, it was, it was, uh, it really was block by block that we built up our reputation on hive, which I'm very, very proud of.

Uh, as far as it goes to expanding after that, for example, this April, we'll be in Philly. Can't wait to see you there, Matt. Uh, we'll be in Philly with nine of our partner wrestlers at literally the biggest wrestling convention in the entire world, where we're going to be able to have these superstars, have these celebrities that are going to be able to endorse our product and endorse Hive, tell people about Hive and get them signed up for accounts to get discounts on it.

Autographs from these superstars. I am so, so, so incredibly excited for Russell con because we're also going to be unveiling the hive heavyweight championship belt. That's correct. There is a hive community championship belt that I cannot wait to show all you guys. It is created by the same guy who made belts for WCW, which is, uh, uh, One of the biggest wrestling promotions to ever have existed.

These belts are beautiful. Not only do we have the hive belt, we also have a woo title. Uh, and we're, it's adorned with the side plates for a bunch of different, uh, uh, projects on hive. For example, splinter lands is on there. You can see in Leo on there, fungaria. We are so incredibly excited to bring this out to web two users and people that Aren't even in the space in web three, we're talking wrestling fans that can now come to hive and use that platform, that social media platform to now have a greater interaction with professional wrestlers like Mikey whip rack, who is on hive right now, creating content.

Not because I asked him to, but because he wants to. So again, I'm very excited for the future. Cannot wait to, to showcase Hive at WrestleCon, literally the biggest wrestling convention in the entire world. I mean, hats off to you, my man. That is amazing. I didn't realize how, uh, how connected it was to, to the real world of wrestling and, uh, the fact that there's a championship belt and title.

Incredible stuff. Can't wait to see, uh, some, some footage from that if, if possible and, and some posts about it. So yeah, amazing stuff.

Eric, do you want to grab this for a second? I got to step away for a second. Yes. Yes. So Bookerman, I do have a question and I think, uh, you are, you're the best suited for this. So I know that Wolfers. Started with, with, uh, with some funding rounds with the main token or the native token. And then you had booster packs, the alpha packs.

And a little bit later, I think you came up with, uh, plots, if I recall correctly. So you, you, you, you have proven that you can actually fund the development of a game. through assets in the game and through, uh, you, you, you know, like, this is what we will build. This is what you are helping build community.

If you want to help us build it, you can buy this, that then you will be able to use on the game. So how was this experience? What would you change about it? What would you do differently and what definitely work for, for, for these funding rounds, just so that other games can, can emulate your good practices.

Yeah, what a great question, Eric. I appreciate that. And, and I want to be very clear. Without, uh, the Splinterlands team and a lot of the people that have built stuff on, on Hive already, Wu could not exist. So, when we started, uh, I believe B, the B token was about a dollar per token and I had no, I, I'm not a dev.

I don't know if you can tell I'm not a dev at all. Um, and I had no developer experience and we actually started this without a developer. So how we started this is we actually, uh. Eggie actually gave me the great advice of checking out something they call DeFi Dojo and also, uh, like Tribal Decks Pack Manager.

So what we were able to do is we were able to get a marketplace website, like a front end, that allowed you to open fungible token packs that would then mint you NFTs. You would have a collection page so you could view those, uh, and a couple other things. It was pretty, pretty bare bones. But you would able you'd be able to actually interact and list your NFTs for sale on the marketplace and B was 1 at the time and we started this project with 2, 000 down and right now you could actually start it for like 260, but it was about 2, 000 down out of pocket that we paid and we had a website launch that we were able to hold sales.

All we had to do then was find some artists to to make the artwork. And really, uh, showcase what we're looking to do. So with 2, 000 down, uh, we had our marketplace up and ready to go. Uh, we also made some, uh, some strategic, uh, uh, uh, trades with other, uh, apps on, on Hive, for example, the pizza community, who I absolutely love.

Beard and Hive trending are amazing without them. They really gave us a booster shot, a steroid shot in the arm with the community. Uh, they allowed, uh, they told their community about us. They came over, they got excited about it. They were one of our biggest cheerleaders that we had. Uh, and, and those strategic partnerships, that was the best thing we ever did to start off.

That allowed us to, to now start moving, now start building. Uh, so we held our sales, our first sale was actually, uh, for some packs, uh, the Alpha packs. We had, uh, 10, 000 packs for sale, and, uh, 10 percent of that went to our partners, like I said. Um, and then we also allowed bonus packs, so if you bought an Alpha pack, you got a Perry Saturn pack for one for one.

So people were really excited about that and really, really, really like that, uh, concept. Uh, the biggest mistake I think we actually did, uh, this is the one thing that I, if I could go back and change it, I would. Um, so what we did is we were releasing the Woo token, which is our native token to be used in game.

And we were using that as payment, uh, for the alpha packs for our general sale, and which did great things for the token price, gave it utility, you know, all that. But, uh, because we have to pay our partners, And we have to give them that 10%. We were forced to actually liquidate and swap some of our token, which then push down the pool price, which then God zero and all those arbitrage bots, then fought back and forth and really push that price down.

So if I actually had to go back and change anything. That would be the one thing I would change. Um, I would have, I would have actually not sold the token. I would have just ate that bullet and I would have actually paid the partners out of my pocket, uh, without, without putting any, any pressure on the token.

That's my biggest regret. That's the one thing I would change. Uh, but that's very specific for us. So I don't know if that would. Really be a hurdle for anyone else because of the way we work and how we give back to our partners. That is the one thing I would change, but everything else has been a wild ride.

It's been so fun and so amazing to see. It's been a long time coming. Uh, we got some great animations we got done. We have some great partnerships and really the. Biggest thing I'm looking forward to going forward is I really, really, really want to see Hive become the place where wrestling fans interact with each other and interact with wrestlers.

I don't know if you guys are familiar with the subreddit r squared circle or anything like that, but it's a massive, massive place where people just talk about wrestling. And if we move that community over here and we show the benefits that Hive has, Mikey Wiprec's blown away with like how awesome it is.

He loves writing blogs now. I don't even, I don't even ask him to, he just does it himself. Uh, and so if he's willing to do it, others are going to be willing to do it and we're going to see Hive grow immensely over the next year, if I have any say in it. That's the attitude. Um, you know, I, I, I want to follow up with this, with this concept, but you just gave me a great idea and I do come up with some questions on the fly.

So, uh, Matt Bookerman, what, so do you include in your strategy or your social media strategy? I know Splinterlands does, I don't know if Woo does, but maybe you could share a little bit of insights on how you make it happen. You know, there's a reward pool and you can use that reward pool to encourage users to go speak about the project in social media in Web 2 or in Web 3 as well on Hive.

Does it play a big part in your strategy? When did you start implementing it? Or is it something that just comes and goes and you don't really consider this as a core focus? Of the social media program, Matt, maybe you can go first.

You know, I guess there's two reward pools. Um, there's, there's the hive blockchain reward pool and then there's reward pools typically with the game tokens. Most games, you know, have some type of tokens or reward mechanism. And I think both are really important and good tools to use. So what's, what's extra cool about the hive reward pool is it's external to the game or the project.

So it doesn't add any additional, uh, inflation or anything to the projects token and can be utilized by the project as long as they, um, They have a significant stake. So, uh, or even that their users like an aggregate have a significant stake. And, you know, they, they encourage their users to also curate posts on the topic.

So that's, that's like a really cool thing that, um, is different than projects that build on any other platform. They don't really have access to that as easily. Um, and then, and then there's also, you know, the game has their own assets or tokens or whatever it is, uh, that can be used additionally for, you know, off.

Yeah. Off chain things and type of promotion, although with things like posh and, you know, there's different ways that they've tried to incorporate the high blockchain rewards on external platforms like X, which is great. So, but I think overall, that's a, it's a fantastic way. To encourage, uh, participation and we've seen that from lots of other projects like in the space generally of, you know, uh, giving out rewards based on participation in like various social media platforms as a way to get the word out there and it's something that I think Splinterlands has only like really scratched the surface on.

It's not, um, it hasn't been like a huge focus of ours as compared to like just the internal product. But like later this year, my one of my plans. Um, Uh, in our roadmap is to really pick up the, uh, the marketing and promotion that we do. And one of the key ways of doing that will be to just, you know, heavily incentivize our existing community and, and new people also to go out and just talk about this everywhere in every way possible.

It is exactly what the Hive reward pool offers. You know, you, you have these, these pools that you can allocate to the users. without affecting the, the native token of your, your project, but while helping the allocation of the native blockchain token. It is a great use case. Uh, Bookerman, do you want to add something to that topic?

Yeah. Um, uh, it's, it's kind of in that same vein. Um, one of the, one of the things we've done, which was a great idea from our, our lead developer, Tobias G, uh, was to, Uh, redirect some of the, we had some woo token that we had set aside for private sale, uh, and we decided to redirect a large amount of that private sale to actually drip to people, uh, that, um, uh, delegate their, uh, hive power to our main account, which we use to curate our community.

And I know actually acid, yo, he stated in his blog that, uh, that was one of the big reasons why. He decided to release the Zing token that way, which I'm, I'm sorry to say, I wish Asidio was here. I was, I was so excited to actually talk to him. Um, but by doing that, we saw a huge increase, uh, in, in people writing about it, people going in web two and talking about it because it would call back to their web three post on Hive.

Uh, and we also implemented Zealy. Uh, I know, I know in Leo's a big fan of Zealy, but I actually. saw a huge, um, uh, ability to, to reward people, uh, with either, uh, upvotes or with native tokens, uh, and having them post on, uh, things that you can track through Zealy, like posting on X. Or, or the various other social media platforms.

I think it's a great way to grow, and I know at RussellCon, it's gonna really help us by Mikey Wiprec putting it over and telling all his, uh, his fans how they could start basically tweeting on Hive to him and earn. And so that's one thing that I think is gonna be really big to get some new Web2 blood from RussellCon on over, cause they're all, uh, used to talking on Twitter and Reddit anyway.

Yeah, no doubt. That's really, really going to be the most effective way to grow your project. Um, now I want to, I want to shift the focus a little bit, um, to maybe some of the smaller projects. Uh, I know Craft Inc. and Terracor, uh, and then of course Nathan Knight. Sorry, I can't remember the name of the game you're, you're representing, but, um, How has, how has your process been, and any of you can, of course, jump in and answer, of starting, um, how did you prepare your white paper?

How did you formulate what you were gonna do as far as the game? How did you get funds? What, what did that process look like? Uh, and anyone, like I said, uh, feel free to jump in.

I can start if that's All right. Of course. Yes, sir. Um, I'm probably not the best example because how Terracorps started was we just started, well, I just started blogging about it and building it kind of in the open right on, uh, on Hive. So if you go back to Terracorps first post, you can see it kind of just started out with idea and idea, and then it slowly.

I built it using devlogs right out in the open and I mean the Hive community was awesome and people started seeing it and coming in and supporting it and uh, I, I think the HP delegation that um, Halo Zing and Wu uses is a really great way um, to do it. I, I did not go that way because I hadn't. I didn't even, I hadn't even thought of that route.

Um, now going back, might I use a dual approach or, um, just the same method maybe, but we just have a, we had a simpler way, um, of thinking, you know, how can I support the time that I put in for this game and kind of make it more like a retail experience, uh, for buying a video game, so. We kind of just asked the community, you know, like, what would be a fair price to charge for the game?

And they came up with, uh, 10. And then we just pegged that 10 USD price to, uh, Hive. And in the background, it kind of, in our API, it says, Hey, you need to use this much, much Hive to sign up for an account. And it's been like that since the start. And it's worked out pretty well. And we also have some, we make a small amount, uh, through marketplace fees, uh, for people who trade the NFTs.

Uh, the in game NFTs, it's, uh, about 5%, um, per transaction and that's in Hive value. It's not in token and yeah, we don't use any of the tokens currently, uh, that are, that you get rewarded in game, um, to create any revenue. It's just the signup fee and then the trading fees of the. Uh items that you you get in game.

Yeah, I think uh, like you said they're not involving the reward asset Uh, the reward token in game, uh is a is a better strategy Like bookerman was saying with woo. Uh, you know, they had to put a little bit of cell pressure on the token. So Uh being that it's all in hive and and the user doesn't even have to worry about Oh, how much hive do I have to send to get an account?

It's pretty amazing. Uh, if you had to give any advice to anyone that's not a developer that maybe just wants to start putting a project together, if you had to give any advice, uh, if you have any, what would that be?

Oh, that's a, that's a tough one. Uh, if you're not a developer, you need to have a very Uh, well laid out plan, I think, because just communicating your idea to a developer, uh, or a team of developers is a very hard thing to do. Um, just over word because you can think one thing and then they go to build it and it could be far more complex and some things could not even be possible if you're trying to do things on chain.

So I think just having a really, really good outline. Like step by step of every process, um, is the core thing that I would suggest. And then basically because of the kind of fee less environment that Hive has, a lot of things are possible. Like there's not many things that are not possible. And like, uh, Matt said on Hive Engine, they already kind of.

Some have laid out all the tools that you need. They have the swap services. They have order books for tokens. They have token creation. So, um, you have kind of the, the L2 aspect of that. And then the core stuff you need for Hive. I mean, Hive is basically a database. I mean, it is a database. Pretty much, um, that you can use for free.

So if you hold a little bit of stake,

yeah, no doubt. I mean, we have a, we have one of the most robust database blockchains that exists, if not the most, uh, robust. And, and like you said, there's no fees, so, uh, you can do all kinds of testing and stuff like that with no issues. Um, Smoomes, what about you guys, um, for crafting, what has your launch been like?

What does that look like? Um, so the launch was, uh, yeah, it was an adventure. I mean, it all took place while Hifest, as you can imagine, I guess. And, uh, there were, there was still a lot of bugs that we have to, uh, that we had to fix for the mini game. But, uh, yeah, in the long run, we did it finally. And, uh, it's also what, uh, Uh, also with TerraCore and, uh, we, we, we try to use as much, uh, from, from Hive, uh, uh, yeah, what, what Hive offers in tech, uh, so like technology wise, we, um, if, if you want to pack your, uh, deck in the later game, you have an NFT that gets, uh, minted every time with the cards that you want to have in your deck inside of that NFT.

So, uh, yeah. With this technology that we use, we, uh, you, you don't have to have, uh, uh, an own database with the cards that the players have in their deck, but you don't, uh, you, you only have to read the NFT from the blockchain and in the properties of this NFT is every card that he has in his deck. And that is pretty awesome.

So we, uh, like he said, you have a working Uh, database on Hive and you can use it if you have to stake for that. And we also think that's really nice. And we also use it for the mini game already.

I think the, I think the puppy wants to speak. Can we put them on the mic? Okay. SMOs, I I do have a, have a question related to that. So this is pretty interesting. So you have the NFTs, which of course are, are, are fungible, well are, uh, non fungible. But the cards are, so do you have the, the ability to, to, uh, modify.

The cards that, that are linked to that NFT. Do you use that with another smart contract that is unrelated to the NFT or, or how, how's the tech behind? Because that's, that's pretty cool that you don't like, you don't have to read the high blockchain, the, the complete high blockchain to know, Oh, this user has these assets.

No, you just read the NFT and the NFT is connected to the cards. So, or well to the assets. So how, let's go. I, that's, I think that's, that's key. Yeah, so the, uh, the cards are NFT instances, uh, from the PAC manager, NFT, uh, uh, NFT functionality that, uh, hi engine offers. I mean, you can, I, I, I guess, uh, Matt from who, uh, he, he told us about that.

And you can buy the PAC manager, NFT for, I guess. What was it? I think it was 1000 B or something like that. And then you can create a booster pack edition that you want to fill with cards and you put the cards in the pack manager, which you want to have in your packs. And when the, I mean, I can, I can go totally into detail about that, but I guess it's not that interesting, but if you unpack one of this packs, you get, uh, one to, uh, an amount of cards, which are.

Uh, NFT instances of this pack manager NFT that you created, and you can take this NFT instances and. Pack it into other NFTs and if you burn NFT, you get, you get every, uh, token or NFT that you put into this NFT back into your account so it never gets lost. So, so either way, if you burn this NFT, you get everything that is stuck in inside of this NFT back onto your account.

And this is all built with HIV technology and all? It's all HIV technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all HIV technology. No, nothing we came up with, no, no, no. But I mean, that's amazing. Yeah. The way you're leveraging this, I mean, I think it, it works pretty smoothly. I mean, and the, the CPU power that you would need to read all the NFTs is way less than you would need to just scrape the whole blockchain.

That's that's amazing. Nathan, I know that you just dropped your white paper today. So apart from from from maybe letting us know what's the focus of it. What can you share in terms of do's and don't do about? Uh, you know, setting the basics and the foundations for, uh, for a project. We still don't know if it will be a successful one.

We wish the best, but you are in the planning stage, uh, in terms of, of launching. So how's that been for you? Yeah. So, um, the whole idea of the game. Came about a couple of years ago, actually. Um, the, some of the first that had heard about gaming on blockchain was way back, but it just didn't make sense because there was fees.

Um, and the first game that really made sense to me on blockchain was splinterlands. And, and I spoke with agro. I don't know, it was maybe three or four years ago, and he was telling me about Splinterlands and, you know, trying to get me to invest, um, and what I ended up doing was spending around 2, 000, um, buying packs of some of the original Splinterlands cards, and then I kind of, I played the game a little bit, I left some of the packs unopened, I opened some of the packs, um, and then I just kind of forgot about it.

And then, uh, guess in 2021, um, Chris Rice called me and asked, he said, um, did you not buy? Splinterland assets or Splinterland cards like way back when they launched? Yeah. He said, well, have you checked to see, you know, what they're, what they're worth now? Um, so I was like, no, I haven't, you know, I haven't really kept up with it.

I'm gonna check it out. So when I, when I actually checked the, the value of all those cards, um, ended up being over a hundred thousand dollars. And that just really like set me off. Like, wow, this is really cool. Um, And the fact that Hive has a fee less, um, transaction layer where you can actually build applications and build games on it that don't cost you, but you can actually make money.

Um, and at the same time, I had a friend, Craster Liu, um, and he was doing some graphic design stuff for me, um, but he was always making, like, these character designs. Um, and so I, I, I talked to him, I said, hey, why don't we try to make some NFT characters. And, you know, this NFT thing is like really taking off.

Um, and so he started creating characters, um, and then, you know, a year passed. Um, and. We had talked on and off about it, but he was always creating art and making all of these game assets and writing the story. Um, and so after about a year, which would have been, uh, 2022, um, we all sat down and looked at that art and I was just like, wow, this is really good.

You have 162 characters here, let's design a game now. And we just sit down and started looking at other games, games that we liked. Always loved playing poker. It's like, how can we integrate poker into it without making a casino? And that was like the, the, um, brainstorming stages. And so over, um, the last few years, we've just, you know, collected all of our ideas and always documented, wrote down, you know, everything I'm a developer.

So a little over a year ago, I sit down and started coding out in unity, the game. That we had designed. So we wrote out the game mechanics, um, in a document, like how it should flow. And so I started coding out in Unity and then, you know, how to connect Unity to the Hive blockchain, how to mint the NFTs, and doing all of this research and work.

So it's taken, it's a huge amount of research that goes into something like this, um, to do it right and to actually have, um, a viable product to bring to market. Um, and so now we're at the stage where we actually have a working app. Um, where we can play the game is connected to the hive block chain. Um, we know how to mint our NFTs and now we have, we've released our white paper to the public.

Um, and so now what we're interested in is gathering feedback. Um, so before we actually launch, we actually, um, Can look at the feedback we have and see is there any you know? modifications or adjustments that we need to make and then we're planning to bring it into a Beta stage where people can actually go and test the game out and see how it works And then once we're we're sure that you know, we have all the tokenomics right and we feel confident Then we're going to, um, do the official launch where the game will start and all of the tokens will be issued.