Hey all, Leo here. We didn’t want to drop the full details on phase 3 until later down the line, but after the teaser wasn’t received as we expected, we decided to move forward with the announcement of the full economics behind the third phase of City of Greed!

First off, I’d like to start with an apology to our community. Our communication with the last teaser could have been much better to avoid misinterpretation and give clear information to our community. So this time, we’ve made sure we’ve included both players, investors, and partners in the discussions about the proposed changes to Phase 3, and we have come up with a revised plan that everyone is VERY excited about. You’ll read all about it in this long announcement, so make sure to keep reading!

$ASG Economy in Phase 3.

While developing this plan for Phase 3, we have kept three important pillars in mind:

1. The game economics should be net positive for players. If players can’t expect to earn more than they spend to participate, the game won’t be attractive to play, and we won't be able to scale our player base.

2. The game economics should be sustainable. Many P2E mechanics that revolve around being net positive for players ended up being unsustainable. So Phase 3 is designed to solve this.

3. The token economics should be rewarding for investors who are interested in getting rewarded for buying/holding the $ASG token without having to play the game.

With those pillars in mind, this is what we have planned for the $ASG Economy:

Land minting

Players need to mint a Land NFT to be able to participate in City of Greed, this is their “entry cost”. This cost is currently directly tied to $ASG, but when $ASG price fluctuates, the entry price becomes cheaper or more expensive, which was an issue we wanted to tackle as we want to be able to scale our player base infinitely. Having a $5000 entry price isn’t going to allow the masses to play.

In Phase 3, the land minting will still be done in $ASG. So potential players will have to buy $ASG off the market to be able to mint their lands. However, lands will be pegged to a stable dollar value. The value lands will be pegged to is to be decided.

Example: if we peg land mints to 100$, it will cost 1000 $ASG at a $0.1 $ASG price. However, if $ASG increases in price to $1 per $ASG, the land mint will now cost 100 $ASG. This keeps our entry cost competitive and increases our chances of mass adoption drastically.

We will need a small % of $ASG inflow for activities in-game that reward players (like quests, invite friends, etc.), but the vast majority (80%+) of $ASG spent on land minting will be burned directly.

Buying items and upgrades

Items and upgrades are a crucial element in each game. The current player base already knows about enrichment potion and land upgrade, but we have A LOT more of these planned.

Items/upgrades that enhance the game experience will follow the same economy as the land-minting process. People will have to pay for these items/upgrades in $ASG, which they’ll have to buy off the market. These items and upgrades will also be pegged to a stable dollar value, a value that has yet to be decided.

We will need a small % of $ASG inflow for activities in-game that reward players (like quests, invite friends, etc.), but the vast majority (80%+) of $ASG spent on items/upgrades will be burned directly.

Drop chance multipliers

Phase 3 of City of Greed introduces the Boss Fight feature. A highly anticipated feature that allows players to start earning ETH after successfully defeating the boss in their run.

Upon defeating the boss, players will have a % chance of receiving a reward package that contains in-game items and/or ETH drops in different values. Everyone will be able to participate in these boss fights, but it’s vastly more rewarding to play these while holding a large amount of $ASG, as holding $ASG improves your drop chance multiplier exponentially.

Exact holding amounts, corresponding multipliers, and obviously a certain cap to this will be announced closer to the Phase 3 release.

This creates even more demand for $ASG as the vast majority of players will want to increase their odds of receiving these juicy reward packages, and to do this they’ll need to buy/hold more $ASG. This multiplier will be active as long as a certain player holds the corresponding amount of $ASG in their wallet. If they sell their $ASG holdings, their multiplier will drop back to the regular 1.0x that everyone else that has just minted a land but doesn’t hold any $ASG has.

Conclusion on game economics

Phase 3 of City of Greed will bring a lot of changes that benefit both players and investors. We are moving away from a circular economy (players pay $ASG to play and upgrade, players get rewarded in $ASG), to an in-game economy that completely removes the $ASG emissions while still maintaining the $ASG sink (players pay $ASG to play and upgrade, players get rewarded in ETH).

On top of burning the vast majority of $ASG that’s paid by players to either start playing by minting a land, or enhance their game experience by purchasing items/upgrades, there will also no longer be any $ASG emissions as rewards to players. This makes the $ASG token highly deflationary.

On top of that, the demand for $ASG will be even higher, as holding a larger amount of $ASG directly enhances the players’ game experience by increasing their drop chance multipliers. This not only gives them a much higher chance at receiving in-game items but also increases their chance of receiving the highly anticipated ETH drops, which makes it possible for our player base to start playing and earning!

The above section covers the game economics being rewarding to players, as outflow > inflow, and our players will actually be able to profit while playing City of Greed, which will be a major contributor in onboarding the masses.

Now you might be thinking, “This all sounds very good for players, Leo, but how is this sustainable?”. I’ll answer that in the following section!

Making City of Greed a sustainable P2E experience

A lot of games have given P2E a shot, and the vast majority failed. Players want to be able to earn more than they spend, and investors want to be able to benefit from appreciating token value. The vast majority of games used inflationary reward tokens, scaring off the vast majority of investors as the token got more and more diluted as more players won rewards.

We will be doing things a little bit differently.

Our payouts will be exclusively in ETH. As ETH is relatively stable, players can always expect to get value out of their rewards. And investors don’t have to worry about endless selling pressure coming from the players selling their in-game rewards.

So where does this ETH come from? Easy, 1% of our trading tax on $ASG will be allocated to the reward pool.

After our recent surge in volume, our trading tax has also accumulated. So to make Phase 3 extra exciting for players, we’ll kick off the reward pool by funding $150,000 in ETH to kickstart the Phase 3 economy. They will be added to the reward pool right when Phase 3 releases.

The in-game reward pool will be manually managed. As Phase 3 launches and reward packages are introduced, the Nekoverse team will manually add ETH amounts in varying sizes to the drop pool periodically. The reward pool will be managed to ensure that there are enough rewards for players to make playing worthwhile while also making sure the reward pool remains at sustainable levels. This means that there will be more and higher value prizes added to the pool during times of high volume and fewer and lower value prizes added to the pool during times of low volume.

And did we tell you about our special, extremely high value drops yet? No? Ahh, something to look out for in future announcements then :)

The above section covers the sustainability of the P2E mechanics in City of Greed, as long as there is trading volume. So how do we make sure there is trading volume? Great question, I’ll explain in the last part of this update.

Making the $ASG tokenomics interesting to investors

I think we have covered the profitability for players and the sustainability of the game pretty well. But what about the investors that are too busy to play the game and earn, but are interested in investing in $ASG? We have made sure our improved plan for Phase 3 doesn’t forget about them.

1. Every new player will have to buy and burn $ASG to mint a land. This will drastically decrease the supply of $ASG over time, making $ASG a deflationary asset.

2. Every existing player has the option to enhance their experience and profitability by buying and burning $ASG to acquire upgrades and items. This will drastically decrease the supply of $ASG over time, making $ASG a deflationary asset.

3. Every existing player has the option to improve their drop chance drastically by buying and holding more $ASG tokens. This will “lock up” these tokens and make $ASG a scarce asset that gets even scarcer with every new player that starts playing the game.

With incredibly addictive gameplay and the ability to profit while playing City of Greed, we expect our player base to expand rapidly, which will also hypercharge the burning and locking up of $ASG tokens.

On top of that, our revenue share program is set to go live very soon. 1% of our trading tax on $ASG will go to $ASG holders. Revenue share details will be released soon, so keep an eye out for it.

All of this should attract enough interested investors to keep the volume rolling and the game economy sustainable.

I would like to close this large announcement off with a final apology for our previous unclear communication; we do welcome and take feedback very seriously and are constantly trying to improve. Our vision is on the horizon, and we are very thankful for our great community! We are looking to expand this exponentially next year with Beam expansion and all the upcoming important partnerships and initiatives. They have been in the work for a long time and we can’t wait to share it with you guys when it’s time!