Across the endless expanse of the internet, our online activities often feel like disconnected islands, each with its own set of rules, rewards, and communities. But what if there was a way to unify these disparate experiences, weaving them together into a cohesive Internet MMORPG inspired by The Great Online Game?

We now live in a world in which, by typing things into your phone or your keyboard, or saying things into a microphone, or snapping pictures or videos, you can marshall resources, support, and opportunities. Crypto has the potential to take it up a notch by baking game mechanics -- points, rewards, skins, teams, and more -- right into the whole internet.

Imagine where your online activities, from coding to content creation, aren't just mundane tasks but quests filled with rewards, levels, and epic loot. A world where your real-life skills and achievements transform into virtual wearables, allowing you to flex your expertise through your avatar.

In the past couple years we have been testing a workflow that integrates Discord roles and GitHub contributions with crypto bounties to forge new incentive structures around fostering reputation and community building. This is how it works at a high level, note that some parts are still a WIP:

• Create 2D/3D avatars for identity using Character Studio

• Define tasks on Github / Dework (both integrated)

• Create rewards with stablecoins + NFTs for tasks

  • Automatic award system for completed tasks

  • POAPs / awards come in the form of interoperable avatar wearables

• Building online reputation, sharing progress, and user growth like an MMORPG

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Digital Status Symbols

There always seems to be some tension between market makers and cypherpunk coded builders over control of the narrative. I believe having skin in the game and the ability to prove mastery of skills + cultural history / context can better align us all to evolve the internet in a mutually better direction.

While the current landscape is dominated by financial status symbols, akin to the party hats in RuneScape, there exists a compelling opportunity to champion a new paradigm: wearables and collectibles that represent real-world achievements, skills, and milestones.

Many people in crypto today fondly remember RuneScape, the biggest free MMORPG of all time (350M registered accounts). During Christmas 2001, the year of Runescape's launch, they had an event where Christmas crackers were literally airdropped across the world and players picking them up would use them on others in order for both to receive a reward.

Party hats were one of a small handful of discontinued items that could no longer be obtained in-game after their release. Due to their rarity and high prices, wearing a party hat in-game became a symbol of wealth.

Cryptopunks, a 10,000 pfp collection released in 2017, are often regarded as a similar status symbol due to their rarity and high prices (floor as of writing is 29 ETH / 100k USD). Have one as your pfp signals you're either an OG or true crypto believer as evidenced by your conviction in owning one.

However, RuneScape had other status symbols like being on the HiScores page and achieving level 99 in a certain skill which unlocked a Cape of Accomplishment. If we have equivalents to Party hats, then where are the symbolic equivalents to Capes of Accomplishment or the Fire Cape, non-tradeable items that could only be obtained through mastery or via completion of a challenging quest?

What if there were cool items and wearable unlocks along the user journey into the Great Online Game? What does leveling up look? There’s a DeFi developer roadmap by OfficerCIA which maps out the skills one needs in order to gain competency in the field as they ascend to become field professionals. It's reminiscent of skill trees in video game design, particularly within RPG games.

Around 2021 I started experimenting with adding POAPs to my avatar wearables. Since then ideas around fashion, proof of attendance/work, achievements, reputation, and skill tree style MMORPG progression have been living rent free in my head.

Evolving the Airdrop Meta

Practically anything you do in a RPG game, from slaying chickens or completing quests, you earn points to level up your character and unlock special abilities, which sometimes includes the ability to equip new armor and weapons to distinguish your character.

In life you start out as a novice, as you do more things you gain experience, at which a certain point you pass a test and can ascend to the next class which can yield new powers and greater rewards like higher paying gigs. Award ceremonies with each their own traditions and outfits honor your ascension into the next class. This process has scaled into highly functional societies throughout human history.

Missionaries and Mercenaries

In crypto you have missionaries and mercenaries, and right now it seems like the airdrop meta is being dominated by mercenaries. IMO I view it as a skill issue versus thinking that airdrops are fundamentally flawed.

For example, Remilia Corporation did something really cool recently for those that have engaged with the ecosystem over the last 3 years via achievements. They tracked a decentralized network’s journey through history and commemorated events by how one responded to them like whether they bought, sold, or held. Loyalty was rewarded with the first half allocation for Milady $CULT, an upcoming token for all things Remilia.

What if getting on the allow list for a rare drop meant doing other types of useful tasks beneficial to the project? Bug testing, filing issues, writing guides, making content, etc.

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MMO Backend

DAOs are very similar to guilds in classic MMORPGs; they add a multiplayer aspect to the Great Online Game that enable individuals to self-organize and share resources / rewards. Tools like Dework, a platform for crypto bounties, have been a game changer in streamlining how we could actually build stuff together.

1. New user finds a community, joins discord, makes an intro, reacts for a role

2. Joins the Dework space, completes some evergreen bounties and tasks

3. Levels up, graduates to new roles that unlock bigger bounties

Over the last 2 years we have been testing a workflow that integrates Discord roles and GitHub contributions with Dework bounties to forge new incentive structures around fostering reputation and community building. Dework has the integrations that can glue it all together into something greater than their individual parts:

Setup (backend):

• Create a dework or charmverse space to issue bounties / grants

• Add a wallet (like a Safe multisig) for payments

• Integrate Dework + GitHub to automatically create tasks from gh issues

• Integrate Dework + Discord for notifications and threads for task tracking

Quests and rewards:

• Tasks = Quests, Bounties = Loot (Gold + Items)

• Add as many tasks as you want, like a wishlist, can add bounties later

  • People can apply and the person who made the task can assign a person to it

• Add bounties to various tasks

  • Start with smaller bounties for tasks anyone can apply to, use stablecoins

  • Can combine rewards with other tokens

• Give established members ability to create and assign themselves to tasks

  • Dework allows you to reuse existing server roles for such

  • Tasks that higher roles can do can be more difficult, but also more rewarding

Other Observations / Learnings:

• Completing bounties helps build out your portfolio, also a proof of humanity method

  • This relys on the reputation of the humans reviewing the tasks

• Empower others to lead spaces or rotate hats every now and then

  • If only 1 person does DAO ops it becomes too centralized

  • Let everyone become more familiar with the tools and process

• Practice while the stakes are low to seize opportunities to test new features and tools

  • Even if the objective of a formed DAO is designing merch or running a hackathon, it becomes a means for members to git gud at operating new tools and processes

• Tokenizing tasks as NFTs can build onchain reputation based on skills (not just trading)

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PFPs -> Interoperable 3D Avatars

I've been using my avatar as a canvas to explore new ideas with; like the backpack as a metaphorical metaverse inventory system, a sword from Voxels on my back representing Openvoxels interop, and badges of my skills + DAOs I'm part of. It's a lot of DIY work, and so I've been thinking about how to streamline these workflows better for wider adoption.

• https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/3d-skill-role-badges-and-pins-e3329ed59b874aad98586657a5f11630

• https://zora.co/collect/oeth:0x1a3a6e18f50fcc943b64d92098e1ca6b9b4d0812

What if the experience of creating a wallet and creating a character were one and the same? What if you could unlock new wearables for your avatar based on your achievements and interactions on-chain or even off-chain from across the internet? One major blocker to these questions was how existing avatar creation tools are often closed-source, limiting our ability to study, improve, and/or customize the process.

To address this limitation, open source developers have dedicated the last couple years to build an open-source alternative called Character Studio. With this we have full freedom to commence with our crazy ideas.

• Personalized Creation: Point and click to build 3D characters

  • Drag and drop local 3D files (VRM) and textures

  • Export creations to glb, VRM, sprites, screenshots

• Effortless Optimization One-click VRM optimizer

  • Merge skinned meshes + Texture atlassing

    • Can reduce avatars to a single draw call!

• Batch Export: Randomize or adhere to metadata schemas

• Transparent Development: Open-source MIT licensed codebase

I was inspired to work on this post because we just had a recent breakthrough in character studio: the ability to connect with a wallet provider and load traits based on ownership. What I’m thinking about next:

• What counts as XP in leveling up?

  • Perhaps it’s on a per-guild basis, like schools / karate dojos

  • Some of it could be all on-chain using platforms like rabbithole.xyz/quests

• Hats protocol / ERC6551 support?

  • Many creating ways to earn a Hat + utilize 6551 for avatars + wearables

• Researching skill trees and creating art for progression rewards

  • Buidl Guidl and Metagame have some cool material maybe worth using

• How to encourage others to contribute to Character Studio and make it more of a community lead effort

  • Implement NFT minting capabilities?

  • Maybe add some bounties for the docs?

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Wearables Integration Ideas

Can think of Character Studio as like a personalized wardrobe / character select / inventory system. Our next major milestone involves reading from a connected wallet in order to load certain collections and wearables in, and optionally to mint wearables / avatars as well. That said, here are some ideas we been exploring for universal wearables.

Procedural Keyblades

What if creating a new wallet address meant creating a new weapon? Concept of a soulbound generative keyblade weapon based on an public Ethereum wallet address.

Loot (for adventurers)

There’s still so much we can learn from Loot (for adventurers) and the community around it about bottom-up innovation, permissive licensing, and composability. I still come back to this thread every now and early day posts to refresh my memory.

Every Ethereum address has a unique bag of soul-bound loot, so every new account could start with a keyblade and set of loot to begin one’s journey. Here are some notes from last time we worked on shipping m3taloot:

We worked on a 3D website that had a door opening animation when you connected your wallet, a metaphor for your unique key unlocking different parts of the web.

Character Studio could have a fantasy RPG aesthetic as a default optional template that comes with the app on Github. In the spirit of loot of course we’d love to see different takes on the art, this would just be a way to showcase the possibilities.

We already rigged all of the 3D loot assets with Anata and Tubbycat base meshes. The Anata base mesh is pretty advanced and contains blendshapes useful for vtubing and VR while the Tubbycat is CC0, low poly, and would be so cute as a pet: composability!

POAPs (Proof Of Attendance Protocol) and Badges

What if instead of just viewing POAPs on a 2D website they could become badges / patches / stickers / pins you can add to your digital wearables? The art is standardized in terms of aspect ratio and size which makes integration into a 3D pipelines easier.

I’ve made a great many number of badges and pins that are free to download off Sketchfab and GitHub. In a future version of Character Studio we could make it easier to automatically load all of your POAPs you collected and easily add them onto your jacket / hat / backpack / etc.

There’s also this badge case which could be useful for making a 3D website for displaying your badges with. Perhaps placeholders could be implemented like quests that have yet to be unlocked or completed as a form of onboarding.

Want to get involved? Jump into the M3 Discord and make an introduction.