PLAYER REWARD POOLS AND LOBBIES COMING SOON

Greetings, Degens! There are some very exciting developments we would like to share with you all. Most recently, we have concluded our website revamp and we believe you will all be very impressed with its latest aesthetics. Check it out here to learn more about who we are, what our priorities are on our interactive roadmap, where you may mint our collections, how you may practice or compete in our tournaments for rewards, and ultimately understand what makes our gaming experience truly unique to the user-owned internet. Our next exciting major revamp will regard the gameplay itself.

The rest of this update will provide you all with what our priorities are over the course of the next few months to make Stacks Degens a truly unique blockchain-based game. We have taken the initiative of updating our roadmap appropriately to reflect on some of the new changes being pursued. We will begin by discussing what to expect from our rewards pools and integration of lobbies coming soon. Then, we will go over future ambitions to enable further NFT customization and integrate lootboxes into our Gaming Universe.

REWARDS POOLS AND LOBBIES

Player rewards pools and lobbies are right around the corner. Our wizard developer has been working overtime getting the Clarity contracts ready for rewards pools in tournaments and in lobbies, as well as working out the integrations necessary for connecting the game to the Stacks blockchain. You can expect these features to go live very soon.

Tournaments will be organized by the Stacks Degens team. Players who would like to record runs to compete in the tournaments will commit the required STX for recording a run, sign off on the transaction, and begin racing with their NFT. A majority of the committed STX will be sent into the rewards pool, while a small portion will be sent to a Stacks Degens custodial wallet so we may continue building out the project. After the race, our database will record the time for that run. The total results in the database will be recorded on-chain every few hours or so (probably every 6 to 12 hours) until the conclusion of the tournament. After the tournament concludes, the STX in the rewards pool will be distributed to players based on the final results of all runs recorded on-chain. The runs with the best times recorded will earn players more STX from the rewards pool, and vice versa.

It will follow a similar structure for lobbies, with a few minor differences. Users will be able to create a public or private lobby by calling the contract from the game interface. Public lobbies will be open for any Degen or SDGU StacksPunk NFT holders to compete in, and private lobbies will be accessible by invite only from the lobby organizers. Lobby organizers may also set a cost for recording races and a timeframe for which all players must record their best time by. Once created, qualified players may join the lobby, pay the required entry fee, and begin recording runs as much as they would like. When time expires, rewards from that lobby will be distributed to players based on their best times recorded in that timeframe.

Displayed above is a mock-up of how the main menu for the game may look. (Quick Note: the team may incorporate a Degen staking function required for registering in tournaments and potentially yielding more rewards — more on that later)

NFT CUSTOMIZATION

We will soon be allowing players more customization options for their NFTs. As we are all well aware, the Degenerator was completed near the end of January for StacksPunk holders to equip their punk with a ride for racing in our game. Building on this, we aim for maximum customization ability for all Degen holders as well. This may involve us merging our two current Degen collections (Miami Degens and NYC Degens) together into one collection and allow holders the ability to customize their racer with their desired ride and attributes.

The framework for establishing this is currently being worked on, and more details will follow on what exactly it will look like and what players can expect. We aim for players to be able to take different characters, cars, rims, attributes, components, etc and mix and match them for their desired racer. These interchangeable items will be in full custody of the holder, and swapping of items will not result in the burning of the swapped-out item. Players will be able to exchange all interchangeable items peer-to-peer via any third party marketplaces. In the future, Stacks Degens has plans for launching a Degen Marketplace to allow players to freely trade these items directly on our platform.

LOOTBOXES

In addition to establishing further NFT customization, we are also creating the framework for establishing lootboxes into Stacks Degens. For those unaware of lootboxes, they are a staple in the current gaming world and are essentially virtual consumable items that, when opened, yield the opener some sort of reward. Once opened, the lootbox is rendered ‘consumed’ and may not be opened for any further rewards. These rewards may come in the form of items that may be used in-game or enable further customization opportunities for players. Paramount to any lootbox system is transparency into the randomization function that determines what item may be yielded from a lootbox based on varying rarity levels.

Stacks Degens is working to develop and deploy an open-source on-chain contract for incorporating lootboxes into our game. We will utilize a VRF randomization function to randomly determine what item a player may earn from a lootbox. The items yielded from the lootbox may come in the form of customizable components or in-game items (yes, we will also be launching items to be used in-game as well). Holders will have full ownership of these earned items in their Hiro wallet. We have not yet determined exactly how players will earn lootboxes, but we speculate it will probably involve the staking function touched on earlier. We believe the incorporation of lootboxes into Stacks Degens will add another layer of excitement and further enhance the Stacks Degens gaming experience. Ensuring the lootbox system is fair and ethical is of utmost importance to the team.

Thank you for reading this latest installment! If you have yet to play the game, you may still mint yourself a MIA or NYC Degen or create a raceable StacksPunk in the Degenerator. Once you do, you will be able to compete in tournaments and have a chance to earn rewards. Links below:

MIA Degens: https://create.stxnft.com/collection/nyc-degens

NYC Degens: https://create.stxnft.com/collection/miami-degens

The Degenerator: https://stacksdegens.com/stacks-punks-degenerator-front/