(Intelli-Gaming: Article) Rollercoin is a virtual crypto mining simulator that pays real crypto. This type of virtualisation is to be expected in a world that is constantly expanding virtually. With the advent of the Metaverses, we will see an increasing number of virtual offerings.
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Rollercoin has much to offer for both the free player and for paying customers. But like everything else, it rewards in proportion of the effort you put in. Of course if you pay, you will have an incredible advantage but it will take you some time to recoup your investment. Overall, I want to examine multiple subjects in this article. But first, as usual, the pros and cons:
Pros
Provides semi-passive crypto-income (minimum activity is once per five days)
The concepts and features make it interesting
A marketplace should be coming but don't expect it before the end of the year (NFT Miners?)
The platform is solid and I very rarely had problems with it
Reward structure which provides income relative to referred miner's power
Multiple coins to choose from (and growing): BTC, ETH, DOGE, BNB, RLT
Native token similar to stablecoin can be exchanged in online wallet
Advertisements are targeted to be relevant: only crypto stuff
Growing and living - updated frequently
Cons
Games get repetitive
The income is capped
You compete with others for a share of the reward
The income they make is partly from advertisements, partly from miner/pass sales
Rewards best if constant moderate activity and if you pay
Introduction
Rollercoin is an online virtual mining simulator. There is not much to do on this platform other than playing online games. There are ten games available and they are quick taking about 30s to complete. Since the newest Season: Darkstar, you must win the game to gain power. Power is measured in Gh/s (Giga-Hashes per seconds) or in other multiples of 1000 (Tera and Peta).
You start with one room and a basic computer. You can buy additional rooms and also increase the level of your computer. The computer level defines how long the power gained through winning games will last. At level 1, your computer only keeps the power for 1 day.
You gain some power automatically by winning games. That power is only temporary and expires after 7 days at best. Of course, if you keep playing games, your power will expire but you'll get new increases, thus "rolling-over" and maintaining your power.
If you do not win a game in any period of 24 consecutive hours, your computer will revert back to level 0. You can then level it up again.
Another source of power is miners. Miners are similar to NFTs (but not quite yet actual NFTs) and they offer some direct power that needs to be recharged for a period of five days by playing at least a game.
So at a minimum, to have your miners working, you will need to login once per five days and win a game. If you want to increase your gains, you can then play as many games as you want to incrementally increase your power. All of this is entirely free however the miners themselves must be purchased.
You have a wallet directly on the screen where you can see your crypto. You can select which coins you will be mining with your power. You can split your power across multiple coins at once. You can only change this distribution once per 24h period. Those coins, as of now, are BTC, BNB, ETH, DOGE and the native RLT token.
They sometimes offer promotions where certain coins have increased rewards for a limited period of time.
There is an online marketplace for you to buy miners directly from Rollercoin. They have plans for an exchange of sorts where users could sell their existing miners but that has not been implement yet. I am certain that they are working to have such an exchange and to control the issuance of their miners on-chain in the future.
You can refer users who will then provide you some reward based on their use of the platform. This builds incentives for people to talk about the game and even write entire articles on the subject!
On miner efficiency
A while ago, I was chatting on Theta.tv with someone on channel TNT. We started talking about Rollercoin as we approached the million users. We started talking about the efficiency of the miners and I told them that the "El Monsto" was the most efficient. Both the host and someone else in the chat disagreed. I'll get to that subject in a section about efficiency.
The chatters and streamers on the stream were arguing that "Chupacabra" was the most efficient. They said that "El Monsto" was third. That really baffled me.
It did because I had made a spreadsheet myself on the subject and the efficiency, at the time, was clearly the highest with "El Monsto". But they provided a spreadsheet of their own, which was apparently circulating on Discord. Here is the spreadsheet they produced (this spreadsheet is WRONG!):
Why the values are wrong is not so obvious at first as it seems to make sense. But it doesn't. Whatever simulation you do shows you immediately that "El Monsto" was the best. Here's why the values in the last column are wrong: They divide the efficiency of the miner by the units of length that it has. Doing that for miners that have 2 cells splits their efficiency in half and that is incorrect. Miners will always have the same efficiency no matter if you consider the entire length of just a section of it.
For instance, you can compare the miners to baseboard heaters that run at the bottom of houses to heat them in the winter. If we took the formula above and divided the heating efficiency by the length of the heater, we would get poor efficiency on long heaters and great efficiency on small ones. As you can see, this doesn't make sense. A long heater will provide the same efficiency as a small heater but on a longer distance, thus overall producing more heat but also consuming more energy.
Another hint that the spreadsheet was incorrect is the fact that the last column's title looked suspicious. When do you ever see X / Y / Z? Never! You don't see that because in math you need to specify an order for this operation. You could do that with parentheses or with a more common math representation which consists of using longer lines for the divisions that are to be done last.
Keep in mind, the miner's efficiency is the same no matter the length of the unit. A miner using two cells just has twice the power and twice the cost, thus exactly the same efficiency as its single cell version. Here is an example of correct math to illustrate:
Miner: El Monstro
Power: 110 Th/s
Cost: 99 RLT
Efficiency: 110/99 = 1.11 (Th/s)/RLT
Miner: Single Cell El Monstro
Power: 55 Th/s
Cost: 49.5 RLT
Efficiency: 55/49.5 = 1.11 (Th/s)/RLT
Miners
Miners in Roller are sold on their internal market. Not all miners are available for sale at all times however. The platform provides some specific time periods during which some Exclusive miners are on sale. That exclusivity concerns a period of time, general a few days or a week at most. Here is one such example:
Also, sometimes, the platform will offer sales on the permanently available miners. Those sales are worth it and end up giving a powerful miner for not much RLT. Often those rebates can be at 50%, which effectively doubles the efficiency in terms of what you paid per GHash.
Here is the current ranking that I have, based on the prices that I have. I am only presenting the top of the list so that the best miners are put in highlight.
The most powerful miners is the mighty Pepperoni 10K, offering a staggering 1.5 PH/s. The cost is unknown but that miner is obtainable as a rare drop from the Halloween themed Lootboxes, which sell for 50 RLT each:
As of 2021, November 14th, a new type of Loot Box has been added. It is called the Limited Galaxy Explorer Case II:
All of the miners in the Limited Galaxy Explorer Case II are new as of 2021, November 14th. At the time of writing this article, they did not exist. I will thus eventually update the spreadsheet to take a better look at those miners and evaluate their efficiency.
Let's take a look at the top miners. As I said above, the Pepperoni 10K is new and is only available in the loot boxes. The global power bonus it offers applies globally to all of your mining power.
Number 1 - Pepperoni 10K
Power: 1.5 PH/s
Bonus Power: +10%
Cost: Unknown - A rough price estimate based on what it offers is about 600 RLT.
2 - Singularity
Power: 1.0 PH/s
Bonus Power: +5%
Cost: Unknown - A rough price estimate based on what it offers is about 380 RLT.
3 - RollerMillion
Power: 1.0 PH/s
Bonus Power: +5%
Cost: Unknown - A rough price estimate based on what it offers is about 380 RLT.
The Best for you buck
Amongst the miners you can buy, here is the list of their efficiency. It is easy to calculate this because we have the price. I have not taken into account the possible deals that you can have. I instead used the standard market price. This listing includes miners that are exclusive. Those are not always available in the market. Instead, look in the special deals section to find them periodically on sale. The blue lines are the ones that are always on sale. As can be seen, the best of those is the Icarus, with a 2317.5 (H/s)/RLT efficiency.
Again, this table is sorted on the Hash Per RLT, as discussed above, the efficiency remains the same no matter the number of cells. The table is sorted on the efficiency and includes the bonus power to the miner itself. For instance, the El Monstro now delivers 112200 GH/s given its 2% global Collection power bonus. That bonus power also applies to everything you have but this cannot be taken into account here. Keep in mind that the more power you accumulate, the juicier those Bonus power % become.
As the table shows, the Boneyard is the most efficient miner that I have seen on sale. The retail price is steep, at 250 RLT but well worth it, considering the performance which is half that of the Pepperoni 10k seen above.
Up next in terms of miner efficiency, we have the DOGER420. It is only sold in exchange for DOGE. As such, whenever it goes on sale, the price is fixed in RLT. That means, it is never on sale for a long period of time. Given both instances used, the average price was used. This gives a result of roughly 75 RLT for the DOGER.
Finally, the last in terms of efficiency but again another miner that is only sold exclusively is the Steamwheedle:
Also, you should expect new miners to be released in the future. With each new season, new miners should be exclusive and represent unique opportunities for players to get them. As such, with the launch of the future marketplace, a true virtual NFT miner economy could rise. As I said in the introduction, everything is going virtual these days!
Bear in mind also that the global power you gain from miners can add up to substantial values once you collect enough miners. This gives an added incentive for people to hold on to miners that are not the most efficient (just for the global boost) and also it helps to provide a bid for missing miners.
With the upcoming addition of Mining Combinators, new combinations will be formed and allow for increased boosts. Stay up to date with the latest news about those changes.
Seasons
Since summer 2021, Rollercoin has seasons. Already one season has completed as I write this article and we are now in season 2. The current season, like the previous, has some unique miners to offer.
S1 - Perfection
The level up process involved winning 150 games total during the 7 day period. I was unaware but in fact, you didn't have to win the games, just to play.
S2 - Dark Star
Only four games allow you to level up: Token Blaster, Cryptonoid, Crypto Hamster and Token Surfer. Another major change is that now you must win the games to get the power. New miners have been added to the shop such as the Icarus. Previously, the El Monstro still ruled the most efficient miner in the standard shop but now the Icarus has taken the top spot. Check the Announcements and Latest News here.
Games
The games are displayed along the video and you can see the challenge (and the publicity.) Also don't think about just blocking the ads with a browser tool (such as Brave shield) as Rollercoin detects it fairly well.
The advertisements were their main source of income while users were playing or right after the game during the verification phase.
Now the platform also gets income by selling their season passes, and miners, discussed above. This is our review of the game before the seasons launched as we crossed the million players threshold:
Here are the games and some comments regarding each:
Crypto Hamster
Can get difficult at higher levels. Since September 2021, they have nerfed the game quite a lot by giving you 3 lives. So now you die by hitting an alien and you will just respawn at the bottom of the screen. Shooting can help but I find jumping around enemies to be somewhat easier. Also, I've found the technique of waiting on a platform for a few jumps allows you to see ahead and plan your route, much as you do when going down river rapids in a canoe!
Token Blaster
One of the very first type of video games that I played in my life, back on an Atari or Commodore 64 that belonged to my father. This was around 1984. This modern version is fun and easy. It can be won fairly fast but I would recommend playing in Full Screen to prevent a bug that scrolls down your window.
Cryptonoid
Same classic game as Arkanoid. The trick is obviously to send your ball between the top of the screen and the upper row so that it creates a bounce effect. In the higher levels, doing this is essential. Notice that the ball always starts with the same angle. So you can get used to that starting angle and position yourself correctly to send it at the top.
Coin Flip
A classic memory game, it is one of the easiest game of Rollercoin. You will learn the names of those cryptos by heart!
Token Surfer
Probably the chillest of all games. You feel like playing Mario Bros and you just have to jump. Double jump is essential and the second jump's timing is key to many difficulties. Sometimes you'll want to jump once and wait before another time. Sometimes, quickly jumping twice in a row will make you rise vertically faster. You can land on a flying duck and jump from there. Also you do not need to gather the coins.
Dr. Hamster
Same as Tetris but you have special blocks already on your screen. If you can clear those special blocks, you'll win automatically. Just like in Tetris, you can force the block down to be efficient with time and also you should look the next block in advance to plan where it will go.
Coin-Match
You should try to match series of 3+ in an horizontal line near the bottom of the screen. Sometimes, a single click will make you win. This game is thus probably the only one that can be won so easily and so quickly. As such, this is your fastest game to win when you can only play (and win) one game per five days in your busy schedule.
Coming Up Next
Next will be an article about a dog that went rabid. Find out more in the review of Cujo. Cujo was written by the King but it did not bite me. Or it did not have the intended effect. The bite of vampires is much stronger than that of Cujo. Read the upcoming review. Thanks for reading, subscribe here for more content.
Resources:
I just added a brand new "Limited Galaxy Explorer Case II", which was added 2021 November 15th. It is going out fast as I write this. I will eventually update the spreadsheet so it stays up to date with all the new miners added.