Disclaimer

This post was written from my personal perspective as a crypto founder. Nothing should be construed as financial advice. This post and Farm Frens are not intended for U.S. audiences.

TL;DR

Farm Frens = Farming Fun with Frens Forever

Farm Frens is a blockchain game-as-a-service with frequent meta updates that advantage and delight human players with rewarding interactions. Our novel development and community building approach will usher in a new meta that will change the face of gaming forever.

• Game: t.me/farmfrensbot

• Announcements: t.me/farmfrens

• Community: t.me/farmfrenschat

• Twitter: x.com/farmfrenslol

Farming

Blockchain gaming is broken. Farm Frens will pioneer a new playbook.

A recently updated analysis of six major crypto projects revealed a consistent pattern of users instantly selling their on-chain rewards upon receipt, driving their communities to short-term failure as opposed to fostering long-term growth. For blockchain gaming projects, this pattern has unfortunately persisted for both games within and outside of Telegram.

Token dumping behavior is not unique to the Telegram ecosystem, and has been commonplace for a long time. Even before the Telegram hype cycle started, Twitter-based SocialFi projects (e.g., Portalcoin, Pixelmon’s MON Protocol, etc.) ran similar tactics to artificially pump their follower count leading up to TGE, but attention quickly evaporated once their tokens launched.

This problem has become so pervasive in crypto that our team applauds crypto industry leaders, like centralized exchanges, adopting extra precautionary measures for their users. Earlier this year, Binance, for example, publicized a new set of project evaluation criteria for potential token listings, including:

• Business & Product:

  • Good product-market-fit (PMF)

  • Self-sustaining business model

  • At least a minimum viable product (MVP)

  • Innovation in technology or design is preferred

• Social Engagement & Community Base:

  • Organic user base

  • Sustainable user growth

Gone are the days where crypto games could default to a token-focused launch playbook at the expense of real players. It’s time for us to deliver a new, fresh way to farm with Farm Frens by putting fun first. We intend to trailblaze a new meta at the intersection of fun, community, and rewards that together synergistically form a unified and unforgettable experience.

Fun

Focus on fun first to foster true fans.

Developing a great game as our first priority offers an intrinsically rewarding player experience that is fun. In their recent 2024 State of Crypto report, Andreessen Horowitz estimates that only 14-27% of crypto users are human, meaning 73-86% are bots. Even within the small minority of human users, there are many who simply do not care about anything else other than making money from a crypto project. When a token’s airdrop distribution falls predominantly into the hands of extractive bots or airdrop farmers, the true fan loses.

At its heart, Farm Frens is designed to be a forever fun gaming experience. While there will be opportunities for rewards along the way, the players who find the most value will be those who learn to enjoy the journey with our community.

Our team started building games with crypto integration in 2021 and experienced firsthand the rise and fall of NFTs. Despite the foundational flaws intrinsic to their v1 design (unenforceable royalties and illiquidity), NFTs were a major driving force to onboard new retail users to crypto during the last cycle. One of the big reasons why was because, when times were good, they offered more than just the promise of financial return. They were FUN:

With Farm Frens, we want to bring fun back to crypto. Farming should be fun first and foremost, and true fans should reap the handsomest rewards.

To accomplish this goal, our focus is to put collection at the forefront of our economy design. Our in-game collectibles, though off-chain for now, will be mintable by players in the future as on-chain tokens with on-chain scarcity when the timing is right. In other words, collecting rare items early now will provide greater on-chain trading opportunities as our game and community continues to grow.

We will be pioneering a new approach to bring the spirit of NFT culture back, but whilst improving upon the original technical and liquidity flaws of their early v1 design from the last cycle. Our innovation will integrate less fungible collectibles with more fungible currencies together into a comprehensive and elegant overall on-chain economy. As a virtual economist myself with more than a decade of gaming industry experience, I am confident in our team’s expertise to execute on our plan well.

We know many of you want more specific details, especially timing, around our roadmap, TGE, tokenomics, etc. However, we have enough firsthand experience in crypto now to know what happens when projects share too much too soon: they attract the wrong audience of short-term extractors that are here today, but gone tomorrow. Again, our priority for community building will always be to emphasize quality over quantity because that’s what builds long-term value.

If you love Farm Frens for the right reasons, have no fear. Trust our process, and we will of course take care of our dear frens.

Frens

Cultivate community: from frens to family.

One of our Amihan team’s core values is “fan devoted.” Our studio seeks to redefine both what it means to be a player and developer in today’s connected world. We believe games are much more fun when there is a close and collaborative relationship between players and creators. This isn’t just lip service: our Farm Frens community has already inspired us to create and incorporate new content into our game!

We also added our first new Fren, MooMoo, to the game after seeing how virally the baby hippo Moo Deng was taking off in the crypto Twitter community.

These are just a few early examples that serve as teasers for how closely we plan to collaborate and co-create with our frenly community for future ideas. We want our players to feel true ownership over Farm Frens, and we know that requires a lot more effort than just giving you something to buy, hold, or sell.

We also are aware that, despite the name Farm Frens, our game currently does not have many meaningful social features. This is one of our top near-term development priorities to address before year end because we know farming is better with frens, and we want our community to not just feel frenly, but like family.

Forever

Farm Frens will be forever fun.

When we first launched Farm Frens last month, we were tremendously humbled by you all to receive the incredible reception that we did. Since then, our community has grown rapidly, already surpassing 300,000 players through mostly organic virality. As game lovers ourselves, we know that the current version of Farm Frens is far from perfect. Besides the aforementioned social features above that we’re prioritizing, we have also been actively working on more metagame progression systems so veteran players are given new reasons to jump back in and play longer. The first of these efforts will go live as soon as next week!

Since launching, we have shipped new game content or features at a breakneck cadence. We hope these consistent updates have been enough to convince you of our serious commitment to improving the game and growing our community. If not, don’t worry because we won’t stop shipping until you do become convinced.

Another core value of our company Amihan is to “ship good and iterate to great.” This might best be summarized by the Japanese term “kaizen”「改善」, which means “continuous improvement.” Our entire team is dedicated to making Farm Frens better and bigger each week. Whenever we ship something, know that it’s not final, and we always seek ways to improve the player experience based on your invaluable feedback.

Our fast-paced process of kaizen has another important strategic benefit for our community: ever-evolving meta updates advantage human players over bots in the long run. As mentioned above, we don’t just want anyone or anything to easily extract value from our ecosystem. Instead, we are architecting a holistic start-to-finish process to make sure we reward as many of our true fans as much as possible.

We have HUGE plans for Farm Frens’ future, not just in terms of what and how to play, but also where to play. Though we are grateful to Telegram for helping us find our early community, Telegram is just the beginning. We strongly believe Farm Frens has massive blockbuster potential across multiple platforms and devices, and we are already laying the groundwork for that bright future.

Our company Amihan’s vision is to equalize opportunity for all through play, and our mission is to onboard continents, not just countries, to crypto. We have a veteran team of game developers that have shipped and supported some of your favorite forever franchises, like League of Legends, MapleStory, and Candy Crush. Whenever you feel the onset of any temporary FUD-induced myopia, take a breath, zoom out, and realize just how early you are to something truly special, fren. 😸

✍️ Kaizen

TL;DR

Farm Frens = Farming Fun with Frens Forever

Farm Frens is a blockchain game-as-a-service with frequent meta updates that advantage and delight human players with rewarding interactions. Our novel development and community building approach will usher in a new meta that will change the face of gaming forever.

• Game: t.me/farmfrensbot

• Announcements: t.me/farmfrens

• Community: t.me/farmfrenschat

• Twitter: x.com/farmfrenslol