Launching Dark Forest Community Gaming Round

Last month, we ran our first NFT mint campaign with the objective to showcase AltLayer’s capabilities in hosting a large-scale mint event on a mint-dedicated execution layer. The event was extremely successful and presented a smooth UX while removing any negative externalities such as gas war typical of most mint events. We gave away 300 of AltLayer OG NFTs during the campaign. These NFTs have since been trading on OpenSea and have a floor price of 0.35 ETH (at the time of writing this article).

Our next showcase consists in hosting a game called Dark Forest on a game-dedicated execution layer. For those new to Dark Forest, it is an on-chain MMO Space oriented game that makes use of zkSNARKs (a privacy-enhancing cryptographic primitive). The goal with this event is to showcase AltLayer’s capabilities in hosting a large-scale blockchain game that runs all its core game logic on-chain.

Why Run Games on AltLayer?

Most of the blockchain games today have their core game logic off-chain and on-chain transactions are limited to token trades or withdrawals. One of the main reasons behind keeping the game logic off-chain is the lack of scalability and poor latency offered by general-purpose blockchain platforms. In fact, earlier this year, a simple play-to-earn game called Sunflower Farmers on Polygon PoS became so popular that it started to consume over 40% of the entire blockchain space which in turn resulted in a spike in high gas fees for the gamers as well as for users of other dApps. Therefore, any on-chain game that enjoys some level of popularity should have its own dedicated blockspace to avoid any negative externalities to end users. AltLayer can be a great solution as developers can easily spin off a game-dedicated execution layer that can offer over 2,500 TPS with 1–2 seconds of latency.

Moreover, most indie games have a short lifespan (i.e., usually about a few months) and as soon as the demand among gamers tapers off, it would be ideal to be able to wind up the resources required to maintain the network. AltLayer is uniquely positioned in the market to provide such disposable execution layers and hence can be an ideal solution for game studios looking to build fully on-chain and transparent games.

With the Dark Forest community round, we aim to showcase this ability to the gaming world and invite all gamers as well as blockchain enthusiasts to join this gaming-focused campaign to play and win 20 OG Badge NFTs.

What are AltLayer OG Badge NFTs?

AltLayer OG Badge is a collection of 1000 NFTs that represent the OGs of the AltLayer community. 400 of these NFTs have already been minted in the previous events. In this new gaming-focused campaign, we will be giving away a total of 20 more NFTs as a part of a new series to the top players in the leaderboard at the end of a Dark Forest gameplay.

Purpose of OG Badges

As the name “OG Badge” suggests, these NFTs have a symbolic value. It represents the OGs of the AltLayer community. These OGs will play a crucial role in helping spread the word out about AltLayer and form the foundation of our community. The OG Badge holders will be provided tickets to our future events and will have exclusive access to the internal team via a private Discord group. They will also be assigned an OG tag on Discord that they could flaunt to other community members.

The OG Badge holders will also be given the first access to any new products or features that we release in the future and 20 randomly selected OG Badge holders will also be sent a limited edition merchandise pack. Last but not the least, OGs will be given priority in future participation in the project and will be whitelisted by default for any future non-NFT airdrops.

How to Participate?

We plan to run a community round of the Dark Forest game from September 9, 2022 until September 11, 2022 (i.e., for 48 hours). Top-20 players in the leaderboard at the end of the gameplay will be awarded with OG Badge NFTs. In order to qualify and win an NFT, you need to follow the steps below:

Step 1: Get whitelisted by completing a few simple Gleam tasks.

Step 2: Whitelisted users will be given a pre-funded account address that they can use for the game play. Funds in the account bear no market value but will be needed to send game-related transactions to the network.

Step 3: Play the game for the required duration, i.e., September 9–11 2022.

Step 4: To win an OG NFT, you will have to be a top-20 scorer in the leaderboard at the end of the gameplay on September 11, 2022.

If you haven’t played Dark Forest before, we will open our game server for everyone to try out, learn the game mechanics, and practise any necessary tactics you wish to deploy during the community round. In the meantime, you may want to check out this detailed YouTube game walkthrough if you wish to understand Dark Forest a bit better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUtIiVUwB5o

Timeline

August 23, 2022 (12:00 GMT) — September 2, 2022 (12:00 GMT): This is the whitelisting period. To get whitelisted you need to complete a few simple tasks via Gleam. Whitelisting is crucial as it will allow you to get a pre-funded account to be used later for the gameplay.

August 26, 2022 (12:00 GMT) — September 5, 2022 (12:00 GMT): This is the warm-up period for players to get familiar with the game mechanics. It will be open to all. You can get test tokens from our faucet (link to be provided closer to the date), try out the game, and practise any strategies.

September 8, 2022: Those who have completed all the Gleam tasks will receive a private key via email on this date. The key corresponds to a pre-funded account address that you can use to play the community round. Do not use this key for any other purposes other than the game play.

September 9, 2022 (12:00 GMT): Community gaming round commences on this date. You will be able to enter the game by importing the private key you received via email.

September 11, 2022 (12:00 GMT): Community round ends and the 20 winners get chosen.

Game Objective

Simply put, winners are decided by their final score at the end of the game play. Your running score will be shown at the top right corner of the game screen. The top 20 players will be awarded with OG Badge NFTs. You can see your final score and ranking using the leaderboard plugin from the left-side menu in the game.

We will release more information along the way as we approach important timelines.

Stay tuned and get ready to go dark!