Aavegotchi on Kovan Testnet is Here! [Step-by-Step Guide]

It's finally here. I've summoned my first Aavegotchi and it feels great!

Aavegotchis are exciting because they are the first to introduce game items which are backed by actual money. The following gif is my imagination of what game items will be like in the near future.

This is made possible thanks to decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols and applications e.g. Aave.

There is a lot to unpack here if you're completely new to the DeFi. Hence, I'm attaching here some pre-reading that will be most useful for the beginner.

However, the purpose of this article is to give you straight up hands-on guide to experience summoning an Aavegotchi on testnet.

Step-by-Step Summary

Note that all the following you will do it on the Ethereum Kovan Testnet - thus is only a simulation of the real thing but does not involve real money. This however will give you an idea what to expect, help the developer team test functions, which you can feedback in their Discord Channel here. So, what we're going to do is:

First, get some money (testnet).
You will need ETH for paying transaction fees.
You will need GHST for buying portals.
You will need Aave Interest Bearing Tokens (aTokens) to attach to your Aavegotchi in order to summon it into existence.
Summon a portal.
Choose an Aavegotchi.
Name your Aavegotchi.

Let's begin.

Step 1 - Get money

For this exercise, we are using the Metamask wallet for Desktop.
_{If you do not have one yet, please use this guide to setup your first wallet.}

Firstly, connect to the Kovan Testnet Network on your wallet.

_{Change from Main Ethereum Network to Kovan Test Network. For new wallets, your ETH balance should be zero.}

Next, get some money from the following faucets.

0.1 ETH - faucet here.
10,000 GHST - faucet here.
aTokens - faucet here.
In this example, get yourself some DAI.
Deposit them into AAVE and receive aDAI tokens.

The difference between DAI and aDAI tokens is aDAI are interest bearing tokens... they appreciate over time thanks to interest earned from Aave's lending protocol.

Step 2 - Summon a portal

Go to Portal and click the purple button 'Buy'.
Enter quantity of 1. Each Portal costs 100 $GHST.
Click 'Buy 1 Portal' and pay the transaction fee (this will be deducted from your 0.1 ETH balance).

You now have 1 Portal.

Go ahead and open the portal.
You will need to pay another transaction fee (also deducted from your ETH balance).

Each portal will summon 10 Aavegotchis for you to choose from.

Choose one that you like.

In this example, I chose an aDAI-backed Aavegotchi that is

Sleepy
Neutral
Cuddly
Normal sized

I will now need aDAI to summon it into existence.
If what you need is aLINK, aTUSD, aLEND, please revisit Step 1 - get some aTokens.

Once you have the correct responding aToken, you can summon the Aavegotchi. Go ahead, pay one more transaction fee and summon your Aavegotchi into existence.

You now have one unnamed Aavegotchi backed by money and with the corresponding unique traits.

Click on the Aavegotchi, pay one more transaction fee to give your Aavegotchi a name.

Congrats!

You have summoned your first Aavegotchi and have given it a name.

What more can you do

We'll need to wait for the developers to announce more features soon.

Meanwhile, you can:

Try staking your unused $GHST tokens to earn $FRENS.
Earning $FRENS can be used to purchase raffle tickets from the shop.
These raffle tickets would enable you to a chance to win potentially valuable collectibles, wearables in the near future. Just collect the tickets first.

Takeaways

It is important to note again all the above is on Kovan testnet only and will NOT be carried over to Ethereum main net.
The purpose of this guide is to make easy, help you experience what to expect and potentially you get to be a front runner of opportunities when they arise.
As of time of writing, mainnet $GHST is trading at $0.64. If one portal is 100 $GHST, that's $64 per Aavegotchi. That a very expensive price of entry that will hurt the game in my opinion. I hope the portal price will reduce to 10 $GHST during actual launch. There was a community vote that has already got majority support for this. We'll need to wait for the official announcement and see.

I hope you have enjoyed this guide.

What are your thoughts? Are you excited for Aavegotchi mainnet launch?