I have first introduced Neon District in my Play2Earn idle games guide and since have been online at least once a day to start a new virtual pizza delivery. It only takes about three clicks and will earn you a fifth/sixth the amount of NEON required to buy a crate with NFT items that can be used in the game.
At the time of writing I have 24 armor and weaponry NFTs sitting in my account, plus one tokenized character that has become a tradeable asset by levelling it up with JUICE (that can also be bought with NEON earned by the pizza deliveries).
The Custodial Wallet
When signing up at the game, you are not required to link an ETH wallet or have any knowledge about blockchains at all. This is a smart move by the developers, who can address a much larger audience with this setup. Still, the in-game items are NFTs and as such stored on-chain. The devs solved this by creating a custodial wallet for each account. The wallet holds any new items you earn and you will not (have to) come into contact with it, unless you dig deep into the account settings.
For those crypto savvy out there (and if you are reading this, you probably are one of them), I would recommend transferring your items to your own wallet rather than keeping them in the custodial wallet which is managed (and owned) by the Neon District team. Not your keys, not your assets, right? So, if for whatever reason your account is banned or you simply lock yourself out of it (almost happened to me after setting up 2FA and forgetting about it…), your assets would be lost.
But the gas fees, right? No, don’t worry! Neon District is built on Ethereum’s scalability solution Matic. The gas fees here are minimal (like close to zero), so that you won’t even have to pay any for withdrawing the items from the game! And with Matic being an Ethereum side-chain, you can simply use your Ethereum wallet address and Meta Mask setup for managing everything.
Linking your own Wallet
First, you have to deactivate the newbie safety mode by opening the last tab in your account menu and activating the Wallet Manager.
You will now be able to connect a new wallet. Simply click the button and select Meta Mask to authenticate. Sign the message in the Meta Mask AddIn to complete the setup (signing does not cost gas). Your wallet will show up in the list of linked wallets now:
Any Neon District item stored in a linked wallet will also show up in your in-game inventory. For the game it makes no difference whether these items are stored on Ethereum or on Matic. The wallet address is the same, after all.
Transferring the First Item
Select any unequipped item in your inventory or any character at or above level 4 and you will see a transfer button on the screen.
“Transfer to Matic Address” is the option you are looking for. Note that transfers to Ethereum are also possible, but you will have to pay the gas fee yourself (not a smart move with the current gas prices).
Now enter the address of your ETH wallet and confirm the transfer.
The item will now show up in your matic wallet. You can use this explorer link (substitute the address with yours) to view the token transfer on the Matic chain: https://explorer-mainnet.maticvigil.com/address/0x167a874afcBB7B39F47d9911706E9f66df5DA30C/token-transfers
The is going to disappear from your inventory for a short moment, but don’t panic. Due to my wallet being linked to my Neon District account the Factor Fabricators showed up again (lower right of this screenshot) after a minute and a site reload.
Opening the transfer option for the same item again, will now show you that this item is indeed stored in your own private wallet.
Trading
In addition to true asset ownership, having the items in your wallet will also allow you to trade and sell them as freely as you want to. Matic already has an Open Sea equivalent at matic.opensea.io, which is currently still in Beta but looks very promising to earn wrapped Ether by selling Neon District items you got from playing the game for free.
Oh, and if you are wondering how to use Meta Mask with the Matic network, check out this post by on Publish0x.
Disclaimer: No financial advice included in this article. Just sharing my personal experience. Do your own research!
Some links in the article are referral links, feel free to use other sign-up methods.
All images taken in-game.