6 Life Lessons from Bhagwat Gita
Like all prominent scriptures around the world I have noticed that every time I read the Bhagwat Gita it feels like some new aspect of spirituality has unfolded before me. Sometimes a teaching which I struggled to grasp during the previous readings suddenly appears to have become clear when I read it again.
Bhagwat Gita is like an unending ocean of knowledge and I don’t think I will be able to absorb it completely in this lifetime but in this article I have attempted to share what are the main takeaways from Gita which I have been able to decipher and start incorporating in my daily life as well.
**Perform your Duty without Fear**
The premise of Bhagwat Gita is that Arjun founds himself in dilemma over going to war when he sees his family members on the opposing side and Krishna shares the wisdom of Gita with him to help him overcome his doubts, apprehensions and fears and perform his duty as a warrior.
The first time I read Gita I did not see a way this could be practical or relevant in todays age. Since then after reading it several times I have realised that teachings of Gita is relevant in every age or time.
Majority of us do not fight wars on the battlefield but we do face doubts and fears in our day to day duties. The core teaching of Gita can be applied to our everyday lives.
Fear of the uncertain outcome can at times be so overwhelming that we find ourselves paralysed and unable to take any action. This can lead to the situation getting worse and out of control completely.
I noticed that on many occasions in my professional life I would find myself surrounded with uncomfortable situations where I will not be sure how should I react. Not taking any action would signify my failure as an employee and the stress associated will often lead to sleepless nights and feeling miserable for extended durations.
Once I was able to apply this philosophy in my life, I would only focus on doing the best I could in my capacity and in a manner I thought was the most suitable. I would discard unnecessary fear from my mind about what if something goes wrong and the blame comes on me. I would be content that I did the best I could and the rest I should accept as a decision of the Almighty.
Fear I have come to realise is the biggest deterrent to us leading a meaningful life. Only once we overcome this constant fear of what could go wrong, will we be able to lead a peaceful and productive life.
Being in a state of constant fear affects our mental and physical well being and our relations with our friends and family as well.
Overcoming all fear is the first step in advancing further in our spiritual journey.
**Strive towards a Sattwik Life**
The second teaching which has had a profound effect on my life is the importance of incorporating a Sattwik lifestyle.
Gita defines that this world is divided into 3 aspects- Sattwik, Rajasik and Tamasik.
Sattwik quality is associated with being calm, seeking true knowledge and always doing what is good for everyone around you.
Rajasik quality is linked to being ambition driven, always looking to be engaged and active. Being passionately obsessed with every action you do and getting emotionally attached with it.
Tamasik is defined as being lazy, ignorant and lethargic.
These qualities are linked to every aspect of our lives including our thoughts, speech, actions, attire, working style, food and our surroundings.
Over the years I have been making efforts to advance to a Sattwik way of living by finding options which are beneficial for everyone around me and do not harm anyone for my personal benefit.
I have also noticed that a very easy to implement change to adopt a Sattwik lifestyle is making your diet Sattwik.
Sattwik food is simple, fresh, nutritious, balanced food which is based on fruits, vegetables, milk and grains. There should be minimum use of additives, preservatives, condiments and taste enhancers.
Rajasik food is highly spicy, oily and cooked for a long duration.
Tamasik food is bitter and stale.
What kind of food you eat directly impacts your temperament, nature and personality.
If you are able to move towards a Sattwik diet you will very soon start realising changes in your personality as well.
**Take out Time for Meditation**
Gita describes meditation as a tool to realise the universal truth yourself. The more efforts you put to meditation the more clarity you gain about the true purpose of your existence.
Gita says that if we live our lives solely focusing about our material surroundings, our food and our homes then we are not living a life very different form animals. The almighty created humans with the ability to think and meditate so they use it to realise their true potential and advance further in the spiritual realms.
Adding even 20 to 30 minutes of meditation into your daily routine can have a significant impact.
The first benefit of meditation you would realise is that you become more calm. The things which used to make you restless will start to disappear and you would start focusing on things which are truly meaningful to you.
The more you meditate the easier it will be for you to discriminate between which are the material attachments which are holding you back in your spiritual journey and what actions you should take to advance higher.
**Lead a Balanced Life like a Yogi**
Gita lays emphasis on why leading a balanced life of Yogi can help us move towards Moksha or liberation from the un-ending cycles of karma.
Yoga is defined as balance in all aspects of your life. You should not eat too much or too less. You should not work too much or too less. Not sleep too much or too less. Similarly meditate and perform religious rites in a balanced manner so it does not affect other aspects of your life.
Once you start putting focus on achieving this balance and not get over obsessed with any one aspect be it your job, money or property you will realise that your life would start feeling more meaningful.
The serenity you will feel by having a balanced life will be much more than what you could ever achieve through running after material possessions.
**Let Go of Ego**
Gita defines Ahankar or Ego as the biggest obstacle in progress along your spiritual journey. If you start taking excessive pride in your material possessions and achievements it will lead to the downfall in your spiritual progress.
The more your ego grows the more disturbances you will experience in all aspects of your life.
Once you accept the universal reality that there is a supreme power in the universe greater than all humans and no human can claim to surpass it.
Consider whatever wealth and possessions that come your way as a blessing from the almighty which you should use in a way which is good for everyone around you. Only then will you gain happiness from your possessions.
**Material Possessions will not lead to Happiness**
As we are now in the Kaliyug it is expected that all of will be attracted to material possessions and not give the true value to knowledge and goodness.
Most of prefer amassing wealth even if it means hurting those around us and using unfair means to accumulate money.
Wealth and possessions can never give us happiness and satisfaction. We will always feel greedy for getting more and at the same time be paranoid of losing what we have and start mistrusting everyone around us.
The moment we realise that the material possessions are worthless in our spiritual journey that spans across multiple cycles of re-births. Only our good conduct and behaviour moves forward with us as positive karma on the spiritual journey.
I hope you found this article useful and even if it makes you realise a small improvement in your life I will consider it’s purpose served.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-s53JHxlfE
Earn Crypto Goodies: Layer3
In this article I will be covering what is the Layer3 projects and why I strongly believe that every crypto enthusiast should be a part of this community.
**What Exactly is Layer3?**
Layer3 in a nutshell is a portal where you are offered bounties where you need to perform a set of tasks in a particular project or platform like Uniswap, Arbitrum, Optimism, ENS etc. For performing these tasks you will be rewarded points which help you advance your level and higher your level the more bounties you will be eligible to participate in. The best bounties with biggest rewards will need a higher level to be able to participate.
**Improve your Chances for Future Airdrops**
I think the biggest benefit of joining Layer3 is that they offer bounties for most of the upcoming projects and to complete the tasks you need to carry out a set of transactions on the platform. Once you perform these transactions you will automatically become eligible for any airdrop that project will do in the future.
If you always felt about missing out on those big airdrops after joining Layer3 you can be assured of being included in majority of the airdrops that will be coming up in the future.
**Get to Understand the latest Platforms**
I always used to wonder what was all the fuss about Arbitrum, why people kept talking about Optimism or what was so special about Avalanche. When you perform the bounties on Layer3 you will understand step by step how to operate on these new platforms and also get to know the different projects which are operating on these platforms. You will be familiarised with the different staking, swapping, compounding, bridging features that are offered by these projects.
**Be Rewarded with Free NFTs**
This is my favourite part of Layer3. While you keep earning points and advancing in levels with each bounty you complete some of the special tasks or seasonal bounties will give you free NFTs.
In some tasks you will get free NFTs from Layer3 and for some tasks you will be rewarded the NFTs by the project whose tasks you complete.
For example Optimism offers its own chain of NFTs for completing bounties related to their platform.
In case you are wondering what is the use or utility of these free NFTs then you can see that there is already a high trading volume for these. It is basically driven by the condition that some of these task linked bounties are a pre-requisite for participating in future bounties with higher rewards. So people who missed the previous bounty will try to purchase these NFTs from secondary market so they can participate in the next set of bounties of that project.
I feel that in future Layer3 might introduce additional benefits for holders of these NFTs. I am holding on to all the free NFTs I have received till now.
Layer3 had also launched a contest section where they will collaborate with projects to launch content creation contests where the best blog or video will be rewarded in the native tokens of the projects. At the moment the contest section has been withdrawn but I think it will be reintroduced in the future.
Overall I think Layer3 is a great opportunity to stock up on free NFTs and be part of potential airdrops. Do let me know in the comments section if you are aware of any other platforms that are similar to Layer3.
In the current bear market I am in the constant lookout for such platforms where I can engage without making any big investments and still keep earning rewards.
If you want to check out the latest bounties on Layer3 you can use this link- https://beta.layer3.xyz/bounties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1kmvcBcC-I
Cheers,
SamBTC
My Strategy for the Crypto Bear Market: Part 1 NFTs
Many of us have the misconception that bull market is the time to be involved in the market and when bear market hits one should stop investing and run away to safety and not look back till the next bull cycle comes knocking.
In my view this is really counter productive as if you start entering the market after the bull run has commenced you would need to get lucky to make any significant gains. On the other hand if you do the heavy lifting during the bearish phase not only will you will be rewarded much you will also be able to make informed choices and not rely on luck to perform well during the next bull cycle.
I strongly believe that bear cycle gives you time to observe, research and pick projects and assets which are best enabled to perform well once the bull phase kicks in.
This holds true for all asset classes in crypto like crypto currencies, DeFI, NFTs, P2E Gaming, or any other new category that may come up.
A really important factor irrespective of the market conditions is to ensure that your portfolio is well diversified both in terms of which asset classes you include plus selecting multiple projects within an asset close to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. Next would be to decide the % asset allocation depending on your personal risk tolerance levels.
I am devising this strategy across all asset classes but in this post I will be focussing mainly on NFTs.
Before we go any further as always I would emphasise that all contents of this post should not be considered as financial advise and DYOR before making any moves.
**Let’s talk NFTs**
I have been in the crypto space since 2018 and have seen many ups and downs so now the bull cycles don’t make me so euphoric and the bearish times don’t make me too gloomy either.
By the time I started toying around with crypto BTC and ETH were already well established and I felt a bit late to the party but that’s not the case with NFTs as I saw the phenomenon start.
NFTs are one of the newest asset classes within the crypto environment and also probably the most volatile and inherently risky. It got so much attention and so much money so quickly that it was soon flooded with bad players causing rugs on daily basis.
Though I still feel that NFTs are here for the long term and will continue to grow deeper during the coming times, the only catch will be to select the good projects and weed out the ones that are bound to doom sooner or later.
NFT market has expanded so much that it will not make sense unless we give due consideration to the different categories within it.
**PFP NFTs**
This was probably the first category of NFTs that rose in popularity starting with Crypto Punks and then BAYC. The wild hysteria that these projects generated led to spawning of innumerable copy cat projects of whom more than 90% are already dead.
This is a category of NFTs that I am going to be really cautious about during the current phase and not touch anything new. Here I think new PFP projects will really struggle to survive if they are not able to offer any added benefits to holder than besides being a cute PFP.
Though I do feel the original group of PFP collections that were launched around BAYC and are still holding strong will survive the bear market.
The only scenario where I will consider investing in these projects is that if the bear cycle gets really bloody and some these holy grails of PFP collections start capitulating and I see a life changing bargain eg. someone trying to liquidate his BAYC for 1 to 2 ETH I will take up that offer. (Ofcouse after ensuring that it’s original and not a fake copy).
**NFT Staking Rewards**
This is a class of NFTs which can provide you a regular stream of income for holding the NFTs so you don’t need to sell them to realise gains.
The catch however is to find a solid project which will endure through the bear cycle.
If you are able to catch the next Cyber Kongz you will be assured a regular stream of income.
I am currently more biased towards NFT projects that offer staking rewards than the ones which are just PFP. My strategy here is to regularly check their discord groups about how are they building towards their roadmap and also does their reward structure look sustainable.
I am going to focus on the projects that I have been following for over a year and am confident that they mean business and are not just a quick cash grab.
I will wait for dips during the current bear cycle to accumulate further in these projects as my long term conviction on them is really strong.
I will not go into details about these projects as I will do a separate post soon.
Some of the projects I have been writing regularly since last year are:
**Mobox-** I was lucky to join this project since the day they launched and their reward system is so consistent that I have already made more than my investment through the staking rewards and I still have my NFTs which I don’t plan to sell any time soon.
If you missed my previous post on Mobox you can find it here. It covers details about what you need to invest and what could be your staking rewards. Keep in mind that reward payout rate might have changed over time. https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/mobox-this-nft-game-is-all-set-to-explode-xykryey
**Voxel Ville**- This is another favourite project of mine which I have been following since their launch. It is quite different from typical PFP NFT projects as each NFT depicts a different kind of land with a property built on it eg. Lake-side, ocean-front, jungle, suburbs etc.
They recently launched their staking system rewarding users in their native token. I feel once their marketplace is up this project is going to explode. Check my last post here- https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/most-promising-nfts-in-2022-1-voxel-ville-xwwxqwp
**P2E Gaming NFTs**
Now I will come to my favourite category of NFTs which is the Gaming projects built around NFTs. The reason I love this category is that if you fins an entertaining game that rewards you for playing it’s basically making money for doing something you would anyways do just for fun.
The trick here is that it the most saturated market as well because last year there were thousands of gaming projects launched and more than 95% of them do not exist anymore. Some were rug pulls, some could not sustain their token value, in some cases the devs got frustrated and gave up in between.
The good news however is that if you know projects that have survived the market volatiles and still going strong there is a strong chance it is going to do well long term.
Here also I have many projects I am convinced to hold long term but I will focus on the ones that have already established them as strong players which are prepared to survive a long bear cycle.
**Project Nebula**- This project is built on the ICON ecosystem and they have been steadily building over the years a really elaborate NFT game around the planetary systems. One of the most engaging gameplays I have seen where you explore the space roaming in your spaceship and can colonise the planets you encounter.
I have written many posts covering it in details- https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/project-nebula-why-i-am-really-bullish-on-this-nft-based-gam-xdnwpnm
If you would like to try out this game you can use my referral link to get a free spaceship for a trial period: https://play.projectnebula.com/login?signup=181df0c8-f0c8-4478
**Splinterlands**- I am not going to say anything about it as you can find innumerable posts about it and I also write regularly about it. I will just mention that it is my strongest conviction in the area and I plan to consistently invest in this project no matter how long the bear cycle runs. I have a gut feeling this project will help me achieve early retirement in the coming years.
My last post on Splinterlands- https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/splinterlands-beginners-guide-to-gameplay-xpzpvvm
If for some inexplicable reason you have still not tried Splinterlands and will like to give it a shot then feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=sambtc
If there is any other NFT project you are really excited about then do let me know in the comments.
Cheers,
SamBTC
Splinterlands: Beginners Guide to Gameplay
This post is specifically aimed at people who have recently started playing Splinterlands or are considering to get started with this NFT game. The game is actually quite intuitive and in a while you will be building advanced strategies based on your card preferences and experience gained by playing. For a beginner though it can be a bit overwhelming as there are many card parameters and gameplay factors that one needs to understand before playing effectively.
The Splinterlands website does have a section on gameplay but I feel it is not explained at a level that a complete noob who has just started playing will be able to grasp the nuances.
I do not want to scare the newcomers to this game as sooner or later you will get the hang of the game and experience is the best teacher. If you are able to understand the gameplay well during your initial days with the game it will surely give you a head-start.
**1. Summoners Vs Monsters**
There are 2 type of NFTs in the game ecosystem- Summoners and Monsters. To play the game you will have to basically create teams by configuring a set of cards as per the specific conditions set of each particular fight.
Summoner is the leader of your team and controls your entire team. Whatever boosts or special strengths it carries will be applied to every monster in your team.
I think Summoner is the most important card in your collection as it decides what max level of monsters you can use in your team. You can combine multiple NFTs of the same type to get a higher level card with enhanced stats.
If your Summoner is not sufficiently levelled up there is no sense in levelling up your monsters. The most important rule of gameplay is to level up your Summoners first and then your Monsters.
**2.** **Understand the 6+1 Elements**
The NFT cards are divided into 7 categories and you should aim to have a well distributed set across the different elements. It will be difficult in the beginning to have strong teams in all elements but you should slowly build your teams in a balanced way. This is really important once you advance to silver and gold levels of the battle as each fight will allow only a few elements to be used. If you have have collected strong cards in only one or two elements then it will strongly limit your fighting ability when theses elements are not allowed to be used.
You also need to keep in mind that Fire, Earth, Water, Life and Death are standard five elements. Dragon is a special element and if you select the summoner of this element you can select another element and combine dragon cards with it. Neutral is the 7th element which can be combined with any element you have selected to play. So if you select Dragon summoner and combine it with Fire element, then in this fight you will be able to use Dragon, Fire and Neutral cards in the fight.
You will also quickly realise that some elements are better suited for different fighting strategies. Fire monsters will generally have stronger Melee attack and Death and Dragon elements will have superior Magic attack in general.
You need to combine the special powers added by your summoner to the cards you select so you can maximise your attack. If your summoner adds to the Ranged attack then it will be to your advantage to put in as many ranged attack monsters as possible.
**3. Analyse Battle History of Opponents**
Before you start assembling your team you should check what elements and what kind of card types your opponent has used in the recent fights. This will help you to customise your strategy to block out the strong points of your enemy.
If you notice that your enemy generally uses summoners and cards that enhance Melee attack then you can add card with “Demoralize” ability which will reduce Melee ability of the opponent. Similary if the opponent has used mainly magic attack cards then you can place cards with “Magic Reflect” and “Void” abilities to counter the main strength of the opponent.
There are several kind of abilities assigned to different cards so you will have to customise your team as per the best combination to counter your opponents.
**4. Sequence your Cards on the Battlefield**
After you have analysed how your opponent structures his team you need to select the cards you want to use in the fight and also need to decide the sequence in which they will be placed.
This is critical as each card work best at a particular sequence. Melee is usually best suited for the first place as Tank. Unless there is a special ability included the Melee card will not be able to attack from the back position. Next you should place Magic attack cards as they can attack from any position front or back. You should avoid placing Magic cards in the first position as they generally have low health and no armour so they can’t handle heavy attack in the first position. The Ranged attack should be placed in the end as they can not attack from the first position.
These are the standard practices and you will have to customise after considering the special abilities your cards have.
**5. Armor, Speed and Health**
When assembling your team you need to consider what are is their rating in terms of Armor, Speed and Health. If your opponent uses a lot of ranged attack then you need to make sure your Tank in the first place has a lot of armor to withstand it. Magic attack can pass through the armor and reduce the health directly, so when you are against an opponent that use a lot of magic attack then keep cards that can counter magic attack and have higher health rating. Cards with higher Speed will attack before one with a lower speed.
Keep in mind that these are basic guidelines and you will have to tweak your gameplay according to the special conditions which will be in place for each fight.
If you have still not tried out the game and would like to start playing then feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=sambtc
If you have any doubts related to the gameplay then let me know in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av53GdRkDt4
Cheers,
SamBTC
Splinterlands: Beginners Guide- 3 Things to know before playing
I have been playing Splinterlands for many years now, sometimes regularly and sometimes I stop playing for long periods. At times the gameplay feels really engaging at times it feels repetitive. Sometimes the rewards payout is really generous and sometimes it feels the rewards given out are peanuts.
Despite all the ups and downs in my sentiments towards this game one thing I have to hand to them is their consistency. They have been regularly building and improving the NFT gaming ecosystem. Honestly speaking initially I did not expect the game to be sustainable long term. Looking back this is probably one of the few NFT games that has survived the ups and down of market over the years and is doing well in the current bear market when most of the competing NFT games have disappeared completely from the scene.
I know many people who played it regularly since the start and have already made life changing gains. I think it still not late though as the user base is still growing and there is still a lot of scope to expand over the years.
In this article I will be focussing on the aspects of this game I wish I knew when I started to get the maximum out of it.
I will not be dwelling much on the gameplay aspect as I plan to write separate posts on that.
**1. Summoners come First**
If I was to give just one advice to anyone starting with Splinterlands it would be to focus on levelling up your Summoners as early as possible. This was probably the biggest mistake I made when I started playing and it took me years to fix it.
During my initial days I only focused on getting the fancy legendary cards and did not pay attention to levelling up my summoners. I did not realise then that the level of summoner controls what level of cards you can use for a fight. It does not seem like a big deal during the Bronze level fights but as you advance later to Silver and Gold levels you realise what a major handicap it is to not have levelled up summoners. They make the difference between a winning spree and a losing spree.
Summoners are also the most expensive cards so many people think you need to invest a lot to level up the summoners but you can get there by trading the cards you earn through rewards. It will surely take more time but if you are patient you will eventually be levelling up your summoners.
When you reach the Silver level for the first time you would be really glad you levelled up your summoners as without a high level summoner all other cards in your team are basically useless.
**2. Learn from the Fights you Lose**
Once you have the summoners levelled and got your hands on your favourite set of cards you will reach a point of exuberance and after your first winning spree will might start thinking of yourself as invincible. Sooner than later there will arrive a point when you will start losing more than you win. You will be asking yourself how is that possible, you got the best cards and you levelled up your summoners and have even got a few of those mighty legendary cards.
The reason is that there are innumerable strategies to be used and there are many players who have been playing day in and day out for years. At this point you will be tempted to throw any extra money you have to buy some more special cards, but that is an emotional mistake you should avoid. You might also get frustrated and stop playing, which happened to me at times. This would be costly mistake as well as if you stop playing you will lose out on the rewards. The rewards are always cards from current season which are cheaper compared to older season but if you think long term you will know that once the next batch of cards comes these will rise in value.
Best approach is to be patient and keep playing regularly and whenever you lose a fight don’t skip it but watch the full match to see what strategy did the opponent use to gain an upper hand. I personally have not watched or read any guides on gameplay, I only observe what the opponents did to win and it has helped me to learn a lot. It includes basics like how to sequence your cards to advanced tactics like which card is better suited for a specific battle conditions. It gets more trickier as you advance through Silver and Gold levels.
**3. Strive to Maintained a Balanced Team**
When you start playing you will soon develop your favourite element and set of players and would get inclined to level up cards of only that particular element. In the bronze stage it will not seem like an issue as most of the fights will not have any conditions set so you can get away with selecting your favourite element in all the fights but as you advance through silver and gold levels you will see that each fight will have restrictions on the elements that can be used and the type of cards allowed. If you only have one element strong you will be in for a rude shock made worse by a losing spree.
To avoid such a situation it is better to start focusing on having a balanced team. It might not be possible to be strong in all elements but you should strive to be strong in at least 3 to 4 elements. This way you will have a competitive team ready for most of the fights. Also you would be able to pick up multiple strategies for different kind of elements and also start getting a view on which element is better suited under which kind of fighting conditions.
I would soon be making videos on strategies related to the gameplay.
In case if you have still not tried out this link I would strongly recommend you to give it a shot and feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=sambtc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3Sdrme5fuA
Cheers,
SamBTC
Splinterlands: Why I Started Playing it Again?
**The Early Start**
I started playing Splinterlands quite early after it was launched. I invested $10 to get the starter spell-book and the rewards system was quite generous in the early days and you would regularly be rewarded legendary and gold foil cards. I was also loaned several useful cards by @Costanza whose post on Splinterlands had motivated me to start playing. Once I used his referral link he gave me several cards which helped me get a head-start and I was soon moving into the silver and then the gold league.
I really liked the daily reward system which encouraged people to play every day to claim their daily reward chest. I had soon formed a routine to play Splinterlands for 15-20 mins after my 9 to 6 life finished.
The excitement of opening a reward chest was like scratching a lottery card and every time I found a epic, legendary or gold foil card it just made my day.
As I was playing regularly my card deck kept getting stronger with each passing season of 15 days. The end of season rewards were even more valuable and I will always wait eagerly for them.
**The Sudden Sabbatical**
As I was moving and progressing from the 3 tiers within Bronze and then Silver leagues I was always very excited. This abruptly stopped after I moved into the Gold league for the first time. I thought I will be really satisfied with this achievement as each higher level meant higher number of reward chest and better quality of cards awarded. What dampened my excitement was the realization that the competition at this level was with pro players and my win rate took a hit. I was losing more fights than winning which added to the frustration. I had 2 options then, either to buy some strong cards or go to a lower level so my win rate was better. I felt at that moment that the reward rate was very biased for whales who had a big pack of high end cards. Rather than patiently waiting to earn more cards and strengthen my play I just stopped playing and soon lost interest to do the daily battles.
**The Comeback**
For over 6-7 months I never logged into the game and completely forgot about it and was more involved in the new things which were coming up in crypto space specially the new 10K sets of NFT collections. Towards the end of 2021 I read a few posts from people talking about the pump in Splinterlands native token DEC and how the card prices had started mooning. There were people who had made life changing gains through the cards they got while playing Splinterlands. I rushed and opened my account and was shocked that some of the gold foil legendary cards I had got for free were now trading for over $500 each. There was a particular gold card called Ancient Lich which I had been rewarded just before I stopped playing. It was trading for more than $1,000. I realised this was another opportunity I had let slip.
If I had patiently kept playing the game just spending 10-15 mins everyday I would have also been writing a post titled how I made life changing gains on Splinterlands.
I then started playing on and off again but not as regularly as earlier. This changed once I heard about the new reward program introduced by Splinterlands. This I found in a post by @Heruvim. When I went and checked the site I realised that in the new system players at each league can earn upto 30 daily chests and 150 season chests.
I am now playing daily again and I will not repeat the mistake of rushing to the Gold league in haste this time.
I think the game is still in an early phase and once the adoption goes mainstream it will again offer the regular players to make life changing gains. Fingers crossed!
I am adding a short video of the opening of 81 chests I earned last season as the reward payout I think is very decent and lets see how long it continues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNG_2yAnc4E
Cheers,
SamBTC
Building Crypto Portfolio with no Capital - Part II
In the previous part of this series of posts I mentioned how can you start collecting small amounts of crypto by writing articles about the crypto projects you are interested in.
In case you missed it you can read it here: https://read.cash/@SamBTC/building-crypto-portfolio-with-no-capital-part-i-88fbb8dd
Once you start writing regularly and consistently you will soon start earning $50-$100 every month, which will soon start growing into a decent portfolio.
In this continuation post I will share some methods how you further accelerate this process of collecting crypto assets.
As you keep writing about the upcoming projects and read about what other authors are posting on the crypto related blogs you will stay aware of which are the new projects being launched and also get informed reviews and perspectives if they are worth getting involved with.
**Participating in Promotional Giveaways**
Most of the new projects getting launched will be holding some sort of giveaways to promote their collection. This is a great opportunity to get some free giveaways and earn the whitelist positions. If you are able to support the project through activities like writing articles highlighting the main benefits of the project which raises awareness then you will definitely be rewarded well by the founding team. Even if you have still not reached a stage where you can write in a very articulate manner you can still participate by promoting them on twitter.
If you are able to identify and join a project that has solid fundamentals from their early days you will be able to collect some tokens or NFTs which might appreciate greatly in value once the project launches and gets popular.
This process will have a positive feedback loop. The more consistent you are with your writing the better rewards you will get during the promotional phase of the project. As you continue to write your reader/subscriber base will grow and projects value author who have a higher follower count.
**2. Takin Part in Free Airdrops**
Some projects give free tokens or NFTs to everyone who retweets about their project and some perform a raffle or lottery to select a few from those who participated. This will depend on how many followers the project gets during the initial phase.
In the lottery mode you will not win a lot as the probabilities are low but if you actively participate in a high number of these drops you are bound to win some. There are numerous successful projects that started as free airdrops but later gained significantly in the value. A great example is the Banana project which distributed a high number of free token to initial participants in their games and they even gave out many free NFTs. People who participated early have collected bags which are worth a lot now.
**3. Interacting with the AMAs**
All the new projects hold AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions which are like open questions & answers forum where they address what are the points related to the project that the public wants to understand better.
If you raise any valid points or questions during these AMA sessions you will be rewarded with some free goodies by the project which can be their native tokens, NFTs or even stable-coins.
To improve your chances you should do some research about the project and it’s main competitors before joining the session. The reason why these projects value good participation during AMA is that good questions help clarify the project objectives to the general public which has joined the session to understand it better.
Initially you will feel that this process takes a lot of time and many of the projects are never able to take off. As you gain more experience you will be able to judge to some extent which project has a solid use case to do well in the long run and you should focus your energies more in following and researching about them.
Once you have diligently spent some time in the process that I explained in the Part I and Part II of these series you are bound to have collected a decent amount of crypto assets in the form of coins and NFTs and will be in a good position to take your journey to the next level which I will explain shortly in the Part III of the series of these articles.
Cheers,
SamBTC
Building Crypto Portfolio with no Capital - Part I
When we think about building a diverse crypto portfolio spanning across multiple assets like crypto currencies, liquidity pools in DeFI projects, NFT collections, then we start imagining that it will need a huge amount of capital and is something only meant for the whales.
In this article I will be discussing how I built my crypto portfolio scratch with no starting capital at all.
My intention here is to motivate everyone to start on their crypto journey and not be discourage if they don’t have any spare capital to start investing. This is how the decentralised world of crypto was envisioned from the beginning. It was meant to be accessible to everyone in the world and not be controlled by a select few with means.
I would like to clarify that this is based on my personal experiences and there can be several other ways to start acquiring crypto assets and you can use it as a reference and see which options work better for you.
As this is such a vast topic I will split it into 3 parts and cover the blogging aspect in this post.
**I. Blogging about Crypto projects**
In my experience the best option to start in the crypto world is through blogging about the projects you find interesting. Hear me out before you say that it sounds absurd that how can someone start blogging when he or she is just getting started. Once you are obsessed with everything crypto you will start researching and reading more and more about blockchain based projects. If you start blogging in parallel it will help you structure your thoughts and also provide an avenue where you can share with others what your views are. The feedback you receive and the networks you develop will further strengthen your journey.
If you are not a natural writer then you might struggle initially but trust me that if you stick around and put in the efforts for a few months it will be a really rewarding experience.
I will mention some of the sites which I found useful to post my blogs and you might encounter more.
**1. Publish0x** (publish0x.com) http://publish0x.com
This was the first site where I started blogging about the crypto related projects I was researching about and the reason I have stuck around since 2019 is my experience was amazing here. Currently they are paying out the rewards in Ampleforth and Statera and previously they used to give ETH as well which was discontinued due to the gas issues.
I really like the democratic structure they have as the earnings your post generates is driven by the tips that registered readers give to your blog.
So the more engaging your post was to the people the more earnings you can expect. They regularly hold writing contests which provide a further option to enhance the crypto you earn here.
If you plan to write regularly about crypto then this site is highly recommended by me. If you write consistently you can expect to earn $25-$30 a month here which can vary depending on the user base you develop and what visibility the topics you have selected get.
2. **Medium** (medium.com) http://medium.com
This is another great platform to blog on and probably has a much bigger user base compared to any other blogging site. This will ensure you post gets viewed by users all over the world. The challenge however will be that it includes posts related to topics linked to all walks of life and as crypto is such niche you will have to struggle a bit initially to get visibility but if you write regularly you will soon be there.
I know people who make more than $500 a month on Medium but they write about topics like Personal Finance and Life Motivation which has a huge following which can’t be expected by a niche topic like blockchain but if you write constantly you can achieve a monthly earning of $15- $20.
You will need a validated Stripe account to receive the payments.
3. **ReadCash** (read.cash)
This is another popular blogging platform which does not have a very high user base like Medium but you can expect to earn much more if you write consistently.
This is a site that pays out in BCH and you can expect much higher earnings if you write posts focused around Bitcoin Cash as this portal is driven by BCH founders. The tips assigned to each post are governed by an automated bot which considers several factors to decide how good a post is. Additionally you can be tipped by other users as well and if you write something that catches the eyes of any of the BCH founders you might bag a $100 tip as well.
I personally don’t write specifically about BCH and stick to the projects I am currently researching about.
From my experience the payout generally is higher than Publish0x and Medium and you can expect to earn $50-$60 a month if you write regularly and even higher if you are interested to write about BCH.
There are several other blogging sites I experimented with but these 3 are the ones I have stuck to with in long term.
After reading this post you might wonder that why would you post on Medium and Publish0x if the payout is much higher on ReadCash. The reason is that you need to devise a short term and long term strategy. The short term is aimed at collecting as much crypto or $ through blogging so you have some working capital to invest in the projects you find interesting. The next step is to generate viewer base which will be crucial to grow in the industry.
Let me know in the comments if there are other blogging sites that you find rewarding.
Cheers,
SamBTC
3 Checks: Before Investing in NFTS
NFTs have been getting more and more popular since they hit the mainstream media thanks to the unimaginable popularity of Crypto Punks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collections.
Crypto Punks was a free mint and BAYC had a mint price of 0.08 ETH. People who had the good sense to hold on to these NFTs made life changing gains in a matter of months. This also led to explosion in new NFT collections and huge inflow of liquidity from investors looking to bag the next BAYC. There was so much hysteria that even outright copy paste projects with no planned roadmaps will be sold out in a matter of minutes. Any shill by a popular Twitter influencer would lead to a 10X pump in a matter of days.
With people blindly throwing their money at just about any project it attracted the scammers to take advantage of the situation. Soon the situation turned so bad that for every 1 genuine project there would be 2-3 outright scams. Also new projects were struggling to sustain as it was difficult to differentiate yourself when a new derivative project seemed to be propping up by the hour. Many projects fizzled out as founders could not think of a way to keep the project going and make it interesting for new investors.
Currently the scene is so grim that if you randomly picked 25 projects you will be lucky if even 1 of them is able to hold the 1 ETH floor and survive long term.
Due to these factors I have become really selective about the new NFT projects I invest in. While there are many factors which are important I will focus on the top 3 which are rules I never break in any circumstance as this has proved costly to me in many occasions.
**1.** **Always Invest in Projects with Doxed Teams**
This is a rule I wish I had used since the first NFT project I invested in. When the founders have doxed themselves (doxing means making your identity public) it significantly reduces the risk of the project being abandoned. If the team is public then they cant outright rug pull as they know they will be hunted down and with regulations catching up they will sooner or later pay a heavy price for scamming.
Going public also puts more pressure on the team to perform well as now their name is at stake and they want to prove to the world how capable they are. This further reduces the risk of founders losing interest midway and abandoning the project.
If you invest in a project which is not doxed you never know when you will get rugged. NFTs generate a huge amount of capital which is enough to corrupt even people who normally stay on the right side. If they have a secret identity they are tempted further as they know they have a good chance of getting away with it.
Fully or partially doxed teams is the main reason I am long term bullish on Voxle Ville, Property’s and Boonji
**2.** **What Utility is Planned in Near Future**
Utility is the next criteria that I look for in a project. This view has been reaffirmed during the current bearish trend in the market where this becomes even more relevant.
If you look at most of the projects which are constantly gaining values and holding their floors even in the worst bear markets you would notice that the majority offer valuable utilities to the holders to stake their NFTs.
This gives an incentive to investors to not flip the NFTs and hold them long term as they are happy earning the native tokens passively through staking.
A perfect example is Sappy Seals which I think will be one of the leading NFT projects in the near future as their utility program is one of the most consistent I have seen so far.
**3.** **Stay Away from Expensive Mints**
The third rule I have developed is to stay away from expensive mints as the majority have turned out to be pumped by marketing hype which soon fizzles out and crashes. If you spend more than 0.2 ETH for a mint your risk to reward ratio is very low. It is always better to find projects which have a solid team behind it and the mint is less than 0.1 ETH.
This was clear in the case of Mekaverse which was launched at a mint price of 0.2 ETH and the hype pushed the floor to 8 ETH and now it is sitting at 0.2 ETH. The worst hit were people who chased the pre-reveal pump and bought in at 6 to 8 ETH levels.
I would like to close with a disclaimer that always DYOR and never investor than you are willing to lose. Never put all your eggs in diversify across multiple projects.
I have been really cautious about which projects to invest but despite my best efforts I do end up with the rotten eggs once in a while.
This was evident when I invested in Loopy Donuts which had a doxed artist, soon launched utility token and even a companion mint of cups was launched. I was extremely shocked when this project rugged. Apparently the doxed artist had no idea who the founders were and was working on a single payment basis for the art she created. The project was taken over by the community and slowly rebuilding but it shows that even the safest looking projects can be rugged.
Stay vigilant and all the best to find the next 100X project.
Cheers,
SamBTC
ENS: The Next Big Thing in Crypto
If you have been around in the crypto space for a while you would have noticed that the biggest gains are made if you are able to enter projects build around a new concept early in the game. Whether it is that alt coin that does a 100X, that DeFI project that provides incredible APY or a the first set of NFT projects that rewards the holders with life changing returns.
It goes without saying that when you are early into something you run a much higher risk as well as the uncertainty whether the project will sustain long term or not is also higher.
Another factor which is critical for me when I am analysis whether a new project will be sustainable over long term is if this initiative is providing something new or not. Once a project gets successful it leads to hundreds of copycat projects which just try to piggyback on the success of the first project without providing any real value. Due to this over 99% of these copy cats eventually collapse to zero.
Today I will be talking about ENS, which I think has the potential to be complete game changer for people who are able to get in early and I personally think it has the lowest level of risk involved compared to other type of crypto projects like Altcoins, DeFI projects or NFTs.
Before you proceed further I want to clarify that this post should not be taken as financial advice and as aways you should DYOR before making any decision.
**What Exactly is ENS?**
ENS stands for Ethereum Name Service and it has been around for a while. It provides a convenient way to represent your wallet address with something easy to remember like SamBTC.ETH rather than the standard 42 digit standard code in the 0x….. format which is impossible to memorise.
In principle it is quite similar to the DNS system which mapped the IP addresses linked to a site to a .com or .net format.
**How much does it Cost to get an ENS?**
The cost structure for getting an ENS is quite similar to getting .com or .net domain. You need to pay a fee for ownership of the ID which can be as low as $5 per year and after including gas fee for the registration linked transaction it can be purchased for around $25.
It needs an annual renewal but you have the option of registration for any number of years when you purchase it.
**Is ENS a type of NFT?**
A lot of people think ENS is a kind of NFT as it can be purchased through a Metamask payment and it can be bought and sold over the secondary market of OpenSea.
That’s where the similarity ends as ENS offers a vast array of functionalities the most useful in my view is that I can link the ENS I have registered to my Metamask wallet address. So next time you urgently want to send over some ETH to me you don’t need to look up my wallet address and can just send it over to SamBTC.ETH, and ENS supports several other crypto wallets to be configured as well like Bitcoin.
**Where Can you buy an ENS?**
If you plan to buy an ENS, you can head over to https://app.ens.domains/ and search if the ID you are looking for is available or not. If it is available you can easily purchase it though a set of transactions by linking your Metamask to the site.
**Why am I Extremely Bullish on ENS over long term?**
If someone told me that I could only keep 3 asset classes in my crypto portfolio I would pick Bitcoin, Ethereum and ENS.
Bitcoin and Ethereum are quite obvious but some you might wonder why I am picking ENS in the same category. The reason is that as the popularity and use cases of crypto rises the demand for ENS will also shoot up. As more and more people start making transactions over Ethereum they would prefer a wallet ID that is easier to remember and use rather than looking up the 42 digit 0x format code.
In fact ENS is already so popular that if you go and search your name on ENS there is a high probability that it is already taken up, unless you have a very rare and unique name. Similar is the case of ENS linked to popular brands and companies. In fact all 3, 4 and 5 digit number sequences have already been taken up.
I would strongly recommend you to register your preferred social media ID on ENS as once more and more people start using ENS it will be very difficult to get a desirable ID and you will be left with 2 options that is either adding additional characters to the ID you are looking for or buying the ID you like on OpenSea for a premium decided by the current owner.
If you have any doubts related to ENS then do let me know in the comments section.
Cheers,
SamBTC
My Best & Worst NFT Moves
I have been really fascinated with NFTs since the first time I became aware of the concept few years back with the launch of Crypto Kitties. When I bought my first pair of kitty NFTs it was just to experiment with this new gaming model and I had no idea then that NFTs can be so financially rewarding or punishing as well.
Since then I tried out several NFT projects and with each one I learnt something new through the pleasant and disastrous experiences that accompanied these experiments.
I want to share through this post which projects turned out really rewarding and which projects turned disastrous and what were the main lessons I learnt so anyone who is starting out new on the NFT journey can learn from my experiences about what to look out for and what to avoid.
**Mobox- 1 Year of SteadyPassive Income and going strong**
Mobox was one of the first NFT gaming projects on Binance Smart Chain that I invested in. I started right when the project was launched in April 2021 when it was a really new project.
The concept seemed very promising to me and decided to try it out. That time I was not really sure how sustainable it will be and what kind of rewards will be generated.
I wrote the following article in April 2021 focusing on what were the features of this project that I found really exciting- https://sambtc.medium.com/mobox-this-nft-game-is-all-set-to-explode-51122ab802d
It has been over a year since I invested about $5,000 in Mobox to purchase 3 Rare Momos. Since then I have been earning steady passive income through their native MBOX token which can be traded on Pancake swap as well as Binance. When I was new in the project I was earning more than $150 a day as the payout rate was very high and it was being distributed among a small group of investors. As the number of users grew and token payout decreased to a steady rate I started earning around $50-$60 a day which is also not bad. Even after completing a year they are going strong as they regularly keep launching new games.
Overall this project has generated over $20K in passive income for during last year which makes it the most successful project in my portfolio so far.
**Lessons Learnt**
The main takeaways for me from my experience with Mobox was that if you enter a project at the very early phase then you have highest chances of maximising your gains. You reduce your entry cost as the NFTs are usually very cheap at mint time. Also by entering early you maximise the passive income as early users get higher proportion of payouts.
The other key lesson was that it’s always better to find projects which offer passive income. When you try flipping NFTs it is impossible to find the top price to sell and once you have sold you will need to wait to find the next big project. With passive income you are continuously rewarded for just holding the NFTs.
I would like to clarify one point here that you need to be very careful while selecting your projects as after the successful start of Mobox many other projects tried to copy and replicate its model but the majority failed miserably.
**Stacked Toadz- My Biggest Flip till Date**
Next I would like to talk about my experience with flipping NFTs. I was really impressed by the flipping strategies posted by NFT veterans on Twitter how through one successful flip they were consistently making millions.
Determined to try my hand I joined a so called Alpha group which soon gave a call for buying Stacked Toadz at 0.15 levels and soon I bought 3 NFTs at a total investment of 0.5 ETH. The very next day this project started to pump exponentially and crossed the 2 ETH mark which made my gains 20X already.
I was not sure if I should sell as this project was offering staking rewards as well but when day after I saw floor price at 3 ETH I just sold one NFT and started booking profit. As soon as I sold my first piece the market started to reverse and by the time I was able to sell the remaining two NFTs I had market was back at 2 ETH level.
After taking out my investment and gas fees I had made a profit of about $18K in 2 days. I could not believe my luck and thought flipping was the best strategy. I soon heard that the project got hacked and the floor price almost touched 0.
This was the luckiest I had ever been with trading NFTs and I refused to believe that this was just a fluke and I had not made any genius move. I soon joined many other Alpha groups and tried to flip other projects. I suffered losses in almost all of them.
I soon realised my folly after losing about 10K of the 18K profit I had made and bought some solid projects to hold for long term with the remaining funds.
**Lessons Learnt**
My biggest lesson learnt with flipping NFTs was that it was almost the same as gambling. Most of the influencers driving the Alpha channels were basically running pump and dump schemes with the hope of selling their bags before rest of the group gets wiser. I have now completely stopped flipping and only invest in projects that I am long term bullish on.
**Pawzees - My Biggest Blunder to Date**
I have been in the crypto space for over four years now so through my good and bad experiences I could figure our which were the red flags of an obvious scam and what to look out for in a genuine long term project. No strategy is fool proof and I had been rugged many times earlier whether by a fraudulent coin launch, DeFi project that rugged, Algortihmic stable coin abandoned by founders etc.
As I was always on the lookout for new projects happening I knew I cannot completely avoid scams but I ensured that my risk exposure to them was minimal.
This I think also made me a bit over confident as I was not prepared for what happened with Pawzees.
Pawzees NFT was being shilled strongly by an influencer I had been following for a long time and had made decent profits from his previous recommendations.
Pawzees also had a detailed roadmap and clear mechanism for generating rewards for its holders.
There were some small red flags that in the site they made a lot of huge claims about future plans but there were no details about how they will do it. Also the influencer I followed usually made very detailed analysis but this time he had skimmed over the roadmap details.
I blindly bought 6 NFTs and was horrified when soon the founders abandoned the project.
My only regret with this project is that I further shilled it and know for a fact that a couple of friends took a hit because of the rug pull.
Since then I have been extra cautious not to recommend anyone a project till I have done a detailed due diligence on my part personally.
**Lessons Learnt**
I think the biggest lesson learnt for me here was that the recommendation by influencers should only serve as a starting point after which you should do your own research and invest your money only after you are personally convinced.
Since then no matter how attractive a project looks if the team behind it is not doxxed or at least semi-doxxed I stay away from it.
It also made me realise that even the biggest NFT influencers make big mistakes however the majority try to brush it aside and don’t let it get public to protect their image.
I would like to close by saying that the biggest risk you can take in crypto is by not diversifying. You can never be 100% sure of the long term sustainability of any project due to several factors within and beyond the team behind it. I have seen many cases when the team was strongly motivated but they were faced with situations they could not overcome. So always split your investments across multiple projects you have validated. This will ensure that your long term play remains intact even if you encounter a few rotten eggs along the journey.
Cheers,
SamBTC
Pawzees Club: Why I think this NFT has the potential to 100X!
If you have read my previous posts then you would have a noticed a pattern that I am a huge fan of passive income. That’s the reason why I like crypto projects that offer opportunities to generate additional sources of income through Staking rewards, APY returns through Liquidity Pools and P2E (Play to Earn) NFTs.
This was also the reason why I stayed away from the 10,000 collectibles series of NFTs. There had been a huge deluge of copy cat projects after the unimaginable success of Crypto Punks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. There were dozens of 10,000 NFT projects coming out everyday with nothing new to offer which made it obvious for everyone that more than 90% of these projects are bound to fail sooner or later.
Another deterrent was that most projects were of ETH and I hate paying high gas fees for each transaction as it adds to the Entry barrier. I prefer low entry projects which are inclusive for everyone and not just whales. I was also not convinced by the idea of holding on to an image with the hopes that someday it will pump in price. I prefer holding on to crypto assets which keep generating benefits.
As always before going any further I want to clarify that I have been juggling with crypto for many years and am well aware of the risks and always play with money and I can afford to lose. Do not take this post as financial advise and DYOR before making a move.
**What exactly is Pawzees Club NFT Project?**
Pawzees is a project through which 8,888 unique NFTs will be minted at a fair price of 0.03 ETH which is about $ 90 at the time of posting this article. They have not done any massive shilling so you can mint the NFTs at a time when the gas price is lower. I just hate projects where people FOMO into buying and in turn make the gas prices crazy.
They plan to be a launchpad of NFT collections by helping artists release their collections and supporting them to reduce the development time and launch costs.
**What make Pawzees Club different from the other NFT Projects?**
I have been part of the Pawzees Club community for a while now and have been looking into their roadmap for a few weeks now and wanted to be sure that I am convinced about their long term sustainability before recommending this project to anyone.
I would like to summarize here what aspects of this project give me confidence to invest in them with a long term view and why this is one of the only NFT collectible series I am super bullish on.
**1. Long-Term Play, No Pump and Dump**
Most NFT projects spend most of their seed fund on marketing and publicity as their main goal is to shill their project hard and dump as soon as the price goes up.
Pawzees on the other hand is not making any efforts on publicity and I am quite sure most of you would not have heard about it. Their plan is that rather than mindless shilling they want their project to organically gain popularity by achieving their roadmap targets.
**2. Passive Income for HODLers**
This is probably my favorite part about this project as I don’t like assets where your end-game is to wait for a price appreciation and sell off your NFT. I prefer long term assets which continue to generate revenue for years. Pawzees will distribute a part of the commissions earned from NFT sales on their launchpad to the club members. Also the members will be eligible to receive airdrops from artists who launch their collections on Pawzees platform.
**3. NFT Game in the Roadmap**
In the future they plan to launch a NFT game which will allow you to breed more NFTs with the Generation 0 NFTs that you will mint now. They have not shared any details around it as of now but it seems it will be something similar to the concept of Axie Infinity.
If this project sounds like something you would be interested in then feel free to use my referral link to mint one - https://mint.pawzees.club/?referral=0x31140c451c98048ec82780ec6148cf69d45bc459
It is still very early in the project with about 1,500 NFTs minted of the total 8,888 so if you join now you have a chance at getting several airdrops as the project progresses to complete their minting milestones.
Let me know if there are any other NFT projects you think are worth checking out.
Cheers,
SamBTC
Project Nebula: Beginners Guide on Gameplay!
In this post I will be covering some basics about the gameplay about what factors you need to keep in mind once you start playing. I will also cover an explanation of the navigation panel and how you can claim your first planet.
Yesterday I noticed on discord a person who mentioned he did not know how to open a planetary system and claim the planet inside. Due to lack of this small piece of info he missed out on getting planets worth potentially thousands of dollars. I know very well how that feels so I wanted to make a small guide to cover the essential steps every player should know so as to not miss out on getting those wonderful planet based NFTs.
Another motivation for making this is guide is that Nebula has a bit of learning curve associated and in most parts the more you play the more you will learn and appreciate the game and then you can customize your own strategy to maximize your gains. This post is focused for those people who feel a bit overwhelmed when they see a large control panel with several options and indicators. Most of it is intuitive which you will able to figure out as you start playing but in case you are totally new to the project these pointers might be helpful.
Keep in mind that all information I present here is available on their official medium blog, their website and Discord channel, but if you are the type that prefers to start playing first and read instructions later then this post will help.
**STEP 1: GETTING STARTED!**
When you land on the Project Nebula website for the first time you will asked to create an account. It will ask for some basic info and an e-mail to link your account after that it will send an e-mail with a verification link to activate your account.
You will also see a link to setup a ICONex wallet, this will be required to make any purchases in the marketplace and also the ICX you earn by selling any planets will be sent to this account.
Once you have completed these steps of creating an account linked to your e-mail address and installing a ICONex wallet and linking it to your account, then you will see the PLAY button on top left side of screen getting activated. This means you are now all set to start playing.
**STEP 2: GET TO KNOW THE NAVIGATION PANEL!**
Before you dive deep into the universes of Nebula take a minute to familiarize yourself with the navigation panel to understand how the different functionalities of the game are structured.
· PLAY- This is the section where you explore Nebula to find amazing artifacts like Asteroids, Solar Systems with Planets, Space Stations, Wormholes and much much more.
· OVERVIEW- This section contains all the Planets, Spaceships and Special Inventory items you have stored in your wallet. Anything you buy in the market or find while exploring the universe will get saved here.
· MARKETPLACE- Secondary market to trade Planets and Spaceships with your fellow explorers on Nebula.
· RESEARCH- You can conduct special types of research here to capture some special categories of Planets and to make your spaceships and planets more effective.
· COLLECTIONS- You will receive some special pieces of Collectors edition of Images, Sound Tracks and Lores which will get stored here.
**STEP 3: GEAR UP FOR GAMEPLAY!**
Before you start your space adventure you will need to equip yourself with some gear to prepare yourself for the journey ahead.
**Minimum Requirements**- The bare essential equipment before beginning your exploration is a spaceship. You can explore the marketplace to find good deals on getting your first ship. You can select the auction method if you want to try your luck on getting a good opportunity. If you are in a rush to board the ship there is a fixed price instant buy options too.
You can also filter to select if you want a basic ship like the Roc or a fully powered up beast like a Behemoth. The more advanced the ship is the more expensive it will be. If you hover over the ship you will be able to see the specifications like fuel capacity, fuel consumption per block of exploration etc. A faster ship gives you a competitive edge over fellow explorers and that is the reason why they are currently selling at such a premium price.
**Optional Add-ons**- Once you get hold of a Spaceship you are all set to start exploring the vast spaces in Nebula but before that you might consider buying some planets as well. Having planets is not a mandatory requirement but having some gives your in-game stats a boost which helps you research faster, earn more credits and you can build Rifts on your planets which act as teleporter device which can zap you between planets instantly saving you a lot of exploration time.
**STEP 4: START EXPLORING!**
After you have secured that Spaceship and perhaps a few Planets as well you can just go ahead and zap across the universe. As you select the PLAY option you will find 31 Space Sectors or Galaxies and you can chose one of them to deploy your spaceship.
After you have selected the Sector you want to start with, you need to click the DEPLOY SHIP button to enter that area.
Once you have deployed your SpaceShip you will find yourself at the SpaceDock which is the starting point in each sector and now you can start navigating around one Hex or block at a time and start encountering new objects like Asteroids, Planets, Abandoned Spaceships, Alien Objects, Re-fueling stations etc.
As you explore you will be able to design and improve your strategies and if you need help or guidance you can join the Nebula Discord group to discuss strategies and exchange ideas with your fellow explorers.
Hope you are good to start now and I will soon come up with another post to share details about some of the strategies I have come up with while exploring Nebula over the last couple of weeks.
In case there is anything else or specific you would like to know about Project Nebula do let me know in the comments.
Official Blog of Project Nebula- https://medium.com/project-nebula
Project Nebula Website – https://projectnebula.app/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XCOrxrHYgk
Cheers,
SamBTC
CryptoBlades: My Strategy During the Current Crash!
If you have been following the latest news regarding the NFT gaming space you would have definitely read a lot of mixed reviews about what exactly is happening with CryptoBlades. If you are already involved with the project this article might give you some insights about what is happening with the project and what could be the potential outcomes.
I would like to clarify this strategy is based on my personal experiences and analysis and DYOR before taking any action yourself.
**What Exactly is Happening to CryptoBlades?**
The best way to understand what is happening with CryptoBlades is to analyse the price action of it’s native SKILL token. For over 6 weeks it had been lazily swaying between the range of $1 to $2 at times even dipping under $1. This was the time when early adopters moved into the project and started playing around and figuring out what the game was like.
The earnings in terms of SKILL token was really good and you could make 1-2 SKILL tokens a day, however it did not make much news as there were not many people interested in trying something which just gives $1 a day.
However many early entrants like me noticed that the Dev team was not anonymous and seemed very enthusiastic and committed about developing the game. So we kept playing and stacking up the SKILL tokens. At that time you could buy 4 NFT characters and matching swords for under $20 and that was what my initial investment in the game was. Sometimes I would reinvest the SKILL earned to buy better swords and keep levelling up my characters regularly. Honestly speaking this game was not in my Top 3 favorites at the time and I would play like 2-3 times a week.
Things started getting exciting once Binance announced the MVB (Most Valuable Buiilder) list of Top 10 projects that it had shortlisted and CryptoBlades made it to the list. This coupled with the fact that the dev team announced new things planned in the roadmap like Shields and PVP there was a mad rush. Their telegram group which just had a thousand users earlier was now seeing thousands of new people joining everyday. Everyone wanted to try out the game and you needed SKILL to buy the characters and swords. This sky-rocketed the demand for SKILL token which within 10 days did more than 100X and even hitting $175 at a point. This price action made it the top most trending token on CoinGecko which gave it even more attention and new users in masses started to FOMO in the project as the 1 SKILL earned a day meant $1 but now that daily earning was $150.
This however created a problem for the devs, they had not expected the userbase to grow so quickly so fast and realized the pump in SKILL was not going to be sustainable. They took the most logical step at that time and reduced the rewards per fight and also changed the mechanism to link rewards to $ value rather than fixed SKILL amount. This caused a correction in the price as people who had just bought SKILL at $150 were not happy that their daily earnings were falling drastically.
The people who were panicking were mainly the recent FOMO joiners as they did not know how to react to the sudden loss. As they started panic selling their SKILL tokens, their NFTs and swords at dirt cheap prices it had a snowball effect on even some of old players. There was a wave of FUD on the group that this was going to be a rug pull, the devs have abandoned the roadmap, they are scamming new joiners. This caused further sell pressure and at a point SKILL dipped to $30 level.
People who had bought 5 star swords a few days back for $500 were now selling them for $50 thinking it would go to $5.
I must appreciate the dev team that they tried their best to remain calm and stick to their plan and launched the Shields in preparation of upcoming PVP gameplay. They tried several tactics to control panic selling of SKILL but they knew very well that after a 100X growth some level of correction is to be expected.
**What is My Strategy for CryptoBlades?**
As I joined the project very early I bought my 4 characters and matching swords really cheap and slowly kept stocking up on SKILL tokens. This helped me buy the Shields which were released recently without having to invest separately from my pocket. Keep this in mind as this reduces my capital loss risk to a minimum and do not use this strategy if it means you have to buy in from scratch now.
I am still very bullish long term on this project as the dev team is really engaged and keeps communicated about their plans regularly on Telegram and Discord. I am using the following approach to handle the current dump in their token price:
· **Create a Second account with 4 Characters and Matching Swords:** From the leftover SKILL tokens from my main account I created a second account for CryptoBlades and bought the full set of 4 characters and a matching 5 star swords. I am doing this in the anticipation that if after the launch of PVP there is a second wave of pump of SKILL token I should be able to take double advantage of it.
· **Keep Leveling up my Characters:** Now the reward rate for fights has drastically been reduced and that’s why the majority of users have stopped playing. I continue to use up the full 200 fight stamina of my characters everyday even if it means a net loss of $0.50 daily considering the higher gas fees due to rise in BNB price. I think this is a small expense and will be more than worth it as higher experience characters will be worth much more during the PVP gameplay.
· **Buying Shields for both Accounts:** I have minted both kind of shields- Templars as well as Defenders as It appears they will be useful to get an edge during PVP.
As you can see I am continuing to play the game despite the zero to negative returns currently as I am still positive that the game will recover soon and their token might hit a new all time high. However you must note that I never speculate in gaming tokens as they are high risk. I always try to improve my NFT stats so I am able to earn the max rewards through gameplay. This helps me minimize my risk due sudden fluctuations in native token of the game.
Considering the uncertain nature of crypto world I am aware that it is possible that the game might not recover soon but that is the risk I am willing to take consider how big the rewards will be if it soon recovers even stronger. How much time CryptoBlades will take to get on track is something we will just have to wait and watch.
Cheers,
SamBTC
Project Nebula: This NFT Game is Simply Mind Blowing!
We all know that over the last few months NFT based games have been popping up daily and it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all of them. It’s an even tougher task to select which ones will be sustainable and which ones will fizzle out in a few weeks.
This post is different as the game I am going to talk about today is really close to my heart and I have been following it’s progress closely for more than a year now.
Most of the NFT games that I am involved with, my primary intention is to make the highest possible returns from it and I don’t expect much entertainment value while playing them and I admit that the majority are outright boring and a waste of time. The only reason we spend time on them is to see if we can make a fast buck here and there.
Project Nebula is a totally different case for me, as even if they declare sometime later that they are going to stop giving any rewards to the players I will still keep playing it everyday as I find the game mechanism truly fascinating.
I somehow feel that this obsession is somehow driven by the fact that I have always been amazed by astronomy and was always curious to understand more about how the universe is structured and how do the various constellations, solar systems, planets and other heavenly bodies operate within this framework.
This was the main reason that when I heard about Project Nebula for the first time sometime around summers last year I was hooked from the start.
I immediately joined their telegram group which barley had 30 odd members at that time. In fact even as of today their telegram group has less than a 1,000 members. It feels like being part of a secret cult society and it adds to the enigma.
This is probably going to be a really long post as there is just so much that I want to share about Nebula that I will probably need to split into separate posts so it does not turn into a PhD thesis. I will try to cover as concisely possible what the game is about, what is so special about it that I am so deeply attached to it and why do I think it’s going to sustain itself for many many years to come.
**What Exactly is Project Nebula?**
Simply put Project Nebula is a Space-themed game built around NFT collectibles. The NFTs included in the game ecosystem consist of Planest you will encounter while exploring the space as you proceed through the game. Another set of NFTs is the spaceships you will use during this journey.
This game into existence last year when they received starter fund from the ICON group and laid down their roadmap about how they will launch the game in exactly one year. While most games are pushing to launch as early as possible even if it means cutting corners these guys made it clear from the start that user experience and game quality was of utmost importance to them. They kept sharing more details about how the game will unfold with their community members. They conducted a pre-sale of 1,000 Generation-0 planets during October – December 2020 and also conducted several giveaways and lucky draws for the community members. I feel really rewarded being part of this journey from the start as I received 2 planets through these giveaways and purchased 1 more during the auction process at a really discounted rate.
The artwork, design and color patterns of these planets is really mesmerizing you can see how much detail has gone into designing the planet specifications, categories and rarities.
During March this year they airdropped free spaceships to all users that held some planets in their accounts. The quantity and quality depended on the rarity and number of planets you held. I received 3 spaceships of which 2 were basic and 1 was advanced. At that time I had no idea that the planets and spaceships I have received as airdrops will be worth over $7,000 once the game launches as they had minted very limited number of NFTs.
The game finally launched on 27th July, which is about 2 weeks at the time of writing this post. I already had very high expectations from the game but was still amazed at the quality of design and sound effects. Normally a new game launch is full of bugs which devs fix on ad-hoc basis but I have so far not found a single issue in gameplay.
The gameplay involves selecting a constellation to deploy your spaceship and then you move it around to encounter different objects like asteroids, abandoned ships, space-stations and of course planetary systems. Once you encounter a new planet you have the option to claim it and receive it as a NFT collectible.
**What Do You Need to Get Started in the Game?**
If you have already been part to this project then consider yourself really fortunate, if not it is still not too late and you can purchase a spaceship from the marketplace on their portal to start their journey.
The minimum requirement to start playing this game is a spaceship and in case you were not part of the community that got a free ship airdropped you can still buy it from the marketplace. A basic spachip would cost about 400 – 500 ICX tokens which is worth about $500. Advanced spaceships will cost more ranging from $1,000 to $1,500. The bigger spaceships have higher fuel capacity which means you can travel farther with them.
The price of this for a new entrant might seem a bit on the higher side and my recommendation here would be to invest only if you think this is the gameplay and theme that interests you to keep playing long term. If you are only looking to make a fast profit then it might not be the best project for you.
Once you get your first spaceships you might also want to get hold of a few planets as they can be really useful to support you with the space exploration. To explore the Nebula universe more effectively you need to boost up your in-game credits, research and industry ratings which can only be achieved by holding these planets. Additionally to get hold of special planets of Lava, Exotic or Rogue categories you need to have specific elements like Zeta Particles or X-13 element which can only be obtained by collecting the planets.
My personal favorite is the Exotic category of planets as they have the best color patterns and are visually the most appealing.
**What Rewards do you Receive by playing Project Nebula?**
When you traverse through the vast universe of Nebula you will come across multiple constellations and galaxies and encounter several wormholes which can suddenly zap you across to an entirely new galaxy.
While the thrill of playing such an enthralling game in itself is rewarding you will receive several in-game rewards when you encounter quad-stations to boost your fuel or asteroids to replenish your industry ratings. The biggest rewards are within the shiny solar systems you will discover. Upon entering them you will find the planets which are part of that system. You will have the right to claim planets which have not already been discovered by other players. These planets in turn can be sold on the market for ICX (ICON) tokens.
Going by the current demand you can expect to get around the following range depending on the rarity of the planet you find:
· **Common:** 400-500 ICX
· **Uncommon:** 700-900 ICX
· **Rare:** 1,000-2,000 ICX
· **Legendary:** 4,000-10,000 ICX
· **Mythic:** Retirement Fund
**Long Story Short**
In case you are not the types who like reading long posts let me drill down a summary for you. I have tried all the popular and even not so popular NFT games and I have not come across such an engaging game that stimulates you at so many levels. If someone to ask me of all the NFT games I know of which is my favorite it will hands down be Project Nebula. While the game offers great monetary rewards as the planets you find can be sold for humongous profits my main motivation is the entertainment I get by exploring the unknown expanses of Nebula and discovering new things everyday. I would personally keep playing this even if the rewards stop someday just for the sheer joy I feel while playing it. While I am aware that the starting price of getting a spaceship might be a deterrent of those of you who are running a bit low on money but this is the game I strongly recommend everyone to try out once.
If this sounds like your kind of game the following links will offer more details and I will surely be posting follow up posts with more details on the gameplay.
Medium Blog- https://projectnebula.medium.com/
Homepage- https://play.projectnebula.app/
PS- This is not financial advice and I have not been paid by Nebula to write this stuff and I am not going to get any referral bonus if you decide to join. I wrote what I genuinely feel about this game.
Cheers,
SamBTC
ZOO Crypto World: Highest Returns by NFT Gaming!
In this post I will be covering a new NFT Game called ZOO Crypto World and how it is offering the highest returns compared to all the other NFT games out there. I will be talking about what I see as strong points about this project which might help it grow much bigger in coming weeks and also look at it’s weak areas which can create challenges for it.
**What Exactly is ZOO Crypto World?**
ZOO Crypto is a new NFT gaming platform which is includes a set of animal based NFTs of varying rarity levels. The basic rarity levels are Junk, Normal and rare and these NFTs can not be upgraded and their mining powers are fixed. The higher rarity class is called Epic and these NFTs can be upgraded by burning a set of basic cards. The highest level is called Legendary and they have the highest mining power.
The game involves two native tokens- KEY and ZOO. KEY tokens can be earned by providing liquidity to their farms or they can be purchased directly from Pancakeswap as well. These KEY tokens can be used to unlock a NFT of random rarity level.
The other native token is called ZOO and you earn this by mining through the NFTs you hold. This token as well can be traded on Pancakeswap.
**Is it a Better Version of Mobox?**
If you are familiar with Mobox you would have noticed that ZOO is heavily inspired by Mobox and in many aspects has copied the Mobox model as it is.
It is quite common for crypto platforms to copy and build upon a base form other existing platforms but what is remarkable is that the creators of ZOO seem to have closely followed which were the main challenges that Mobox faced after it’s launched and tried to improve upon it which might help them be much more sustainable than Mobox.
Some of the main improvements I can see are:
· **Early Launch of Gaming Features-** Mobox delayed the launch of it’s first game for a long time after the mining rewards for NFT holders started to drop. This caused a sudden drop in price of their native token MBOX. ZOO seems to have learnt from it and they launched their first PVP (player vs player) game within a couple of days of their launch
· **Rewards for Everyone-** The biggest criticism that Mobox faced was that the rewards from their game was enjoyed only by the Top30 whales and rest of the users hardly got anything. In this regards ZOO has created a model that rewards everyone in their game even if their final rank is more than 1,000. This really encourages even small players to feel involved
**How Much Can you Earn from ZOO?**
Now let’s come to the most important aspect about what kind of earnings can you expect from ZOO. You also need to keep in mind what investments you will need to make to get started.
One option is to add a large amount to their liquidity pools and earn Keys to mint their NFTs. This will need a lot of time unless you are a whale. Better strategy will be to buy some NFTs from market or purchase few Keys from Pancakeswap.
The cheapest NFT can be bought for under $20 on the market but to receive a decent earning it would be better to hold at least one Epic or Legendary NFT as it gives you the option to form a set which gives you a bonus mining power of 50. Add to this 50 the individual mining power of you NFTs and you can achieve a mining power of 100 by investing $2,000 to $2,500.
This might seem like a considerable amount but now let’s look at the return. The mining hash depends on total users staking theor NFTs and it ranges from 40-60 ZOO tokens rewarded per 100 mining power per day. This means with 100 mining power you will get average of 50 ZOO tokens daily which is currently trading at over $3 which makes it $150. This means you can recover your investment in 14-15 days.
I was able to recover my investment in less than 10 days but that was because I joined from the first day when the ZOO token price was much higher.
I have been trying out all popular NFT games and from my experience so far ZOO is offering the highest rate of return.
If this seems interesting to you then check it out at - https://zoogame.finance/
As always this is based on my personal experience and risk tolerance you should DYOR and understand your risk appetite before taking any decision.
If you think there are any other NFT games out there giving great returns then do let me know in the comments.
Cheers,
SamBTC
Crypto Prophecies: Claim your $5 bTCP Tokens!
One common recurring pattern that you will see again and again in the crypto space is deluge of copycats. Whenever someone comes up with a winning formula it will soon be followed by an endless array of duplicate projects. We saw this when the Uniswap model was successfully copied by SushiSwap and PancakeSwap. What followed was hundreds of blind copies everyweek from which 90% did not survive more than a few weeks.
The same phenomenon is now occurring in the NFT Gaming area. The success of CryptoKitties inspired the developers of Axie Infinity to come up with a project with enhanced gaming features and more streamlined earning potential for the users. The popularity of the game spread like wildfire. This popularity has also led to the creation of 100 copycat games that are blindly copying the Axie model hoping to grow a similar userbase. In my opinion the majority of these projects are destined to fail as if you are not adding any real value to what Axie is already providing there is no way you will be able to sustain long term. You might get an initial burst due to FOMO by people who missed out on Axie but if you plan to survive you will have to offer something new.
**What is Special about Crypto Prophecies?**
What separates Crypto Prophecies from the other NFT based games is that they have a unique gameplay planned. They are not copying Axie by creating a gameplay where you compete your 3 NFTs against a set of opponents.
They are designing a set of NFTs called Satoshian Crypto Prophets who will compete with other prophets in predicting the price movements through candle stick pattern analysis.
The project is in really early stages so they have not shared too much details yet but it is clear that to succeed in this game you would need some knowledge of basic technical analysis (TA).
I see this as a Win-Win situation as the users who are good at TA will naturally earn more and those who are not very familiar with TA will eventually improve their TA skills by regularly playing this game which will in turn help them in real life trading as well.
**Who is Backing this Project?**
When you look at the list of their partners and you see Metamask, Polygon/Matic, Chainlink you immediately realize that they plan to make this game interoperable across multiple chains. They are also partnering with OpenSea which measn their NFTs will be easily tradeable with other players.
They are also partnering with several fund managers so they are prepared for the long term and have put efforts in thinking through their long term strategy.
**What is their Roadmap?**
They are at the earliest stage on their roadmap and have just designed a beta environment for their project and are currently working on NFT pre-sales which includes airdrops and giveaways to early adopters.
The next steps would be to deploy Play to Earn models through PVP and PVE options. They also have plan to introduce staking features for their NFTs and native tokens.
Further down the road in 2022 they will introduce team based battles as well.
**What’s the Tokenomics?**
There will be a maximum supply of 250 million of their native TCP tokens of which 33% will be given out through private sales and 30% will be locked for liquidity rewards through staking.
They are giving out a fair share through their marketing campaign and their Telegram group already has more than 100,000 subscribers which shows that they are already getting very popular despite being so early in their plan
**Want to Try Out and Collect $5 Bonus tokens?**
If this game sounds interesting to you and you want to try it out for yourself then feel free to use my referral link below which will get you $5 of their TCP tokens once the game launches.
Referral link - https://www.thecryptoprophecies.com/?mwr=ba5da3f1
Referral code - ba5da3f1
Let me know if there are any other NFT games you have been playing which you think have the potential to grow substantially over the coming years.
Cheers,
SamBTC
CryptoBlades: How to Earn $100 Daily with this NFT Game!
The crypto markets in general have been really stagnant over the last couple of months. The FUD related to upcoming bans expected in China are adding more pressure on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. There is however one sector in the crypto space which has been booming at an incredible pace recently. This is the NFT area and more specifically the NFT Gaming projects.
**Why are NFT Games pumping so Hard?**
Despite the overall sideways movement in crypto markets the majority of NFT Games have witnessed incredible growth during last few weeks. A major contributing factor to this has been the rising popularity of Axie Infinity. This game is rapidly expanding it’s userbase all over the world. This is driven primarily due to the attractive Play to Earn feature which is significantly high and in many developing countries people have left their day jobs as they are earning more by playing 6-8 hours daily of Axie.
This has also generated a lot of interest all new NFT games as entering Axie now will cost about $900 - $1,200 as you need a minimum of 3 Axies to play. People are now looking for the next NFT game which can prove to be as successful as Axie. There has been so much speculation that many people are blindly pushing money into projects that don’t even have a whitepaper yet, let alone a working Play to Earn model established.
**Why CryptoBlades has Grown 3,000% in 1 Week?**
At the time of writing this article on 18th July the price of SKILL token which is the native currency of CryptoBlades is hovering over $40 which is over 30X in a span of 1 week.
This is much higher than other competing NFT games which have pumped mostly in the range of 5X to 10X. The main reason for that is that the rate of rewards currently being offered by CryptoBlades is probably the best in the market, even better than Axie Infinity.
**How Much Can I Earn Daily by Playing CryptoBlades?**
To start playing CryptoBlades you will need to buy a NFT warrior which will cost close to 5 Skill tokens which is currently $200 and you will need to buy a Sword to fight the opponents which costs a little under 1 Skill token so about $40.
You need a minimum of 1 Warrior + 1 Sword to play and the maximum you can store is 4 Warriors and there is no limit on the number of Swords as you can forge multiple swords together to create a stronger sword.
T**his means you need to invest $240 to $960 to start** **playing,** depending on how many Warriors you decide to start with which can be between 1 to 4.
Now let’s come to the interesting part about how much can you expect to earn daily.
There is an energy timer of each warrior which slowly keeps getting regenerated every 5 mins. The maximum limit of energy bar is 200 and each fight consumes 40 points, which means you can fight a maximum of 5 times at one go with each warrior. What you earn from each fight will depend on the current level of a Warrior. I currently have a level 27 Warrior that is about an average level and he earns about 0.2 Skill tokens per fight which is roughly $8, considering 5 fights it will be $40. Assuming you decide to stock up on 4 warriors then your daily earning would be $160.
You need to keep in consideration that you might lose some of these fights depending on the level of your warrior and strength of your sword and some amount of luck as well.
**On an average you can expect to earn $40 (1Skill token) per day per warrior.**
**Is It too Late to Join CryptoBlades?**
You must be wondering that it might be too late to start CryptoBlades if you have not yet joined as this has already done 30X in a week. Of course you need to DYOR before making any decision but my recommendation based on my experience so far is that this game still has a huge potential to grow. If you are thinking long term then you can still get started with this game. That said it might be wise to wait for a correction to make an entry as any coin that pumps so much so fast is bound to have some correction in near term.
Let me know if there are any other NFT games you have been playing which give worthwhile rewards.
Cheers,
SamBTC
MyDefiPet: Why is this NFT Game Trending?
You would have noticed that during the last couple of days DPET which is the native token of MyDefiPet project is trending on Coingecko. In this article I will be covering why this game is suddenly getting so much attention, why is the price of it’s token pumping so hard and why I am so bullish on this project.
**What Exactly is MyDefiPet?**
It is a NFT based game where you can level up your pets by feeding them food that you grow on your farms. Currently they don’t have the gaming options enabled and it is expected to be launched sometime in August ’21. Right now you can only collect the NFT based pets by purchasing Eggs which can be hatched to generate a random monster character.
Each egg costs 3 DPET tokens and each token is currently trading for about $2, so that makes it about $6 per NFT.
Complete details about the gameplay have not yet been shared. It is expected that the marketplace where you can trade your NFTs will be active in a few weeks and soon after that the gameplay would be launched through which you can expect to earn rewards depending on the strength of your NFTs.
So far the only detail they have shared about the games is that there will be regular seasons with prizes worth over $100,000 to be given out each season.
It currently looks like a cross between Axie and Farmville.
**Why is it’s DPET token pumping so Hard?**
DPET token gained over 250% during the last couple of days and looking at the discussions in their Telegram group it appears that they already have a huge fan-base in south-east Asia specially in Philippines and Vietnam.
The main reason for is that Axie has a cult following in Philippines and many people feel they were too late to the party with Axie and they want to be an early adopter with MyDefiPet.
This of course is quite a risky situation as due to the mad rush by people to buy early the price of token has appreciated too much without even a marketplace being ready for the NFTs and there is no clarity at this stage about what kind of earning scan be expected from this game.
**Why am I so Bullish on MyDefiPet?**
If you would have read my last set of articles you would have noticed that these days I am focusing mainly on NFT based games. My reasoning for this is that I expect this niche to outperform all other areas in crypto. This is due to the fact that if the game is engaging it provides an additional incentive to the users to keep Hodling their tokens and NFTs. If its just a coin then investors start getting restless after a point if the project is not performing as per their expectations.
During last few months there has been an explosion in new NFT games popping up every other day as people know the huge potential in this area and this got even more rampant after the popularity of Axie.
What attracts me the most to MyDefiPet compared to other competing NFT games is that they have given a lot of attention to the graphics and visuals. When you look at the 3D Monsters they have created they are much more visually appealing compared to the static NFTs created by majority of the projects. Also the gameplay designed is very engaging and addictive. You get used to the cycle of growing crops then feeding your Monsters then watching them grow as they evolve and if the gameplay is even half decent I am sure this is going to get wildly popular.
Let me know in the comments if you have tried this and want to share your experience so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo8enaSSPiY
Cheers,
SamBTC
NFT Gaming Updates: Mobox, Strainz and Doctor Who!
In this post I will be covering which have been the main updates for the new NFT based games I wrote about recently- Mobox, Strainz and Doctor Who.
Overall I am still really bullish on all three of them as they keep progressing well on their roadmap but I have started to diversify more across them as earlier I was investing much more heavily in Mobox. I will explain now what are the reasons why I am moving some of my funds out of Mobox into Strainz and Doctor Who.
**MOBOX- Launch of Alpha version of their First Game**
Mobox has launched alpha version of it’s first game called Token Master, which has in fact come a bit earlier than their planned timeline of end of May or early June. In terms of gameplay it is not so bad but there are several aspects which could have been handled better in my opinion. Let me deep dive into what were the features I find good about this game and which are the ones that are a bit disappointing.
**The Good**-
The best part is that their development team has proven they can deliver on tight schedule. The game includes 3 sub-games, the first is basically earning native gold tokens by simply holding more Momo NFTs. The more Momos you hold the more gold you keep collecting. The second sub-game is called Momopoly which is a roulette combined with a spin-off of monopoly. It is purely luck based so I did not find it much interesting but there must be some people who might find this game enjoyable. The last sub-game is the main game where you fight your top 3 momos against 3 momos of a randomly selected opponent and if you win you are rewarded a part of opponents game. You have the option to enhance the skills of your momos so they have special fighting abilities like deflecting an attack or recovering their health. Somehow similar to Splinterlands and AxieInfinity.
Considering this is a first of more than 10 planned games in pipeline this is quite a decent start by Mobox gaming team.
**The Bad-**
There are several bugs in the gameplay but I will not hold it against dev team as Alpha launch is meant to identify and iron out any defects but what really disappointed me was the reward rate. They have assigned 50,000 Mobox which are currently worth less than $50,000 for a week long event which in my view is peanuts. Considering many people have invested thousands of dollars in buying momos they are not going to be too excited about earning less than $5 in a week long running gaming campaign. The team mentioned that once the final release of the game happens they will raise the pool amount but it is not clear yet how much will be the increase and it better be a significant increase else I can foresee a major dumping of the momo NFTs by most of the users.
**The Ugly-**
Now I will come to the point which really turned me off. This was the way they have divided the rewards across the leaderboard. Normally when you see more than 10,000 users participating in a game you will expect that 500-1,000 will receive some rewards even if they decrease through a curve from the top 10 or top 30 but what is really annoying is that they have kept bulk of the rewards for Top10 and if you are not in Top 30 you will basically get nothing. This is going to promote a Whale centric game where only Top 10 manage to capture the majority of rewards. If they are not able to fix the reward system to even out the rate among more users this game can not dream to expand active user base and will die out once the whales decide to dump.
Overall I am still going to wait for the final game launch but if it is as disappointing as the Alpha I will move my funds to other projects with much better rewarding systems.
**STRAINZ- V3 Plan modified and Generation 50 Cap ruled out**
I had posted recently that a competing NFT based game called Strainz had communicated that they will stop the breeding feature for Gen50 and more NFT plants which caused a lot of users to complain that they did not know about this while buying older Generation plants. The team considered this feedback and has decided to put this change on hold. I think this is a good gesture on part of Strainz and shows they are receptive to feedback of their community.
**Bullish on Strainz-**
For now I am more bullish on Strainz than Mobox as Strainz offers a fixed passive income payout through which you can recover the amount you invested in buying a plant NFT in less than 30 days.
This is much better than the passive income of Mobox which has been declining steadily since last month and I think will be really negligible by next month.
**DOCTOR WHO- NFT packs selling out like Hot Cakes!**
In my last post I had mentioned why I was buying the special edition NFTs of Doctor Who and not the standard NFTs which had infinite supply.
In a really short span of time the limited edition packs are getting sold out. Just 2 days after I bought the Sontaran & Zygon pack it got sold out.
I had mentioned earlier why Doctor Who can be the Bitcoin of NFTs as it has the backing of BBC so we can almost be sure there will not be a rugpull or scam and even if there is a bearish trend in coming times the team will have good funding to continue.
Another good thing about Doctor Who is that you get daily rewards which you can use to buy their NFTs. I think this reward will be stopped once they get a high number of users so if you have still not joined I would really recommend you to try out their platform.
Feel free to use my referral link - https://doctorwho-worldsapart.com/r/10879/
There are some other NFT based games that I am checking out like MIST and RUNE and I will soon be making a detailed post about them.
In case there is any other promising NFT based game you are aware of then do let me know.
Cheers,
SamBTC
MOBOX Vs STRAINZ: Which Gives Better Crypto Rewards?
Since the launch of CryptoKitties during the end of 2017 I had always been really fascinated by NFT based games. What was really appealing about them was that they provided a entertainment value rather than being just about technological advances or monetary gains. I would stay hooked to some of them for really long like Splinterlands which I make it a point to play at least a couple of times every week and then there are ones like Upland which I got bored of really soon and stopped playing completely after the first couple of weeks.
One limitation with most of the NFT based games was that to get any significant rewards you had to play them regularly and spend some time on daily basis if you wanted any decent earnings. This is the issue I am facing with AlienWorlds now as I really like the game concept but I feel really frustrated with the constant pop ups and the need to sign up agan and again. It is also disappointing when sometimes the mining cycle would get into a endless loop and you would need to close and restart the browser.
I always wondered if there would be any games which would reward you passively even if you did not play regularly and this is what got me all excited about MOBOX
**What was Different about MOBOX?**
I was really fascinated by MOBOX when I discovered it a month back and found that you could earn significant passive income by just holding your NFTs as they had not yet launched their game. The income from the games are expected to be even higher than the passive income but currently it is not clear how complex the games would be and how much time or skills would be required to earn from the games.
I did a detailed post earlier on MOBOX so I would not go too much into details. In case you missed that post you can access it here - https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/mobox-this-nft-game-is-all-set-to-explode-xykryey
**What is the limitation of MOBOX?**
MOBOX had decided to split a fixed set of token to all it’s users so initially this was a huge amount but as more and more users are joining the project this payout is getting smaller and smaller each day. Hopefully this would be countered by launch of their first game end of this month but it is still not clear how entertaining this game would be and what would be needed to earn rewards through it.
**This is When I Came Across STRAINZ!**
STRAINZ is quite similar to MOBOX regarding the fact that it pays you daily passive income for just holding your NFT based plants. You also have the option to breed new NFTs from the NFTs you are holding which would involve a breeding cost which will depend on how valuable your NFTs are.
This is basically built upon the model of CryptoKitties but you get passive income for just holding your NFTs. They recently saw an inflation when some whales started flooding their marketplace with newly minted NFT plants so they have introduced several new measures to counter this inflation. First they have introduced a halvening mechanism similar to Bitcoin which will cause their native token to have deflation to control it’s price. They have also put a limit on which NFTs can be used to breed new NFTs and how many times.
These changes will be implemented by 20th May and I expect this to cause a pump in demand and price of STRAINZ tokens.
If you want to have a look at how to navigate their site you can check the video below, and if you know any other similar NFT games where you can earn passively do let me know in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCqtq82krg0
Cheers,
SamBTC
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Doctor Who: Will it be the Biggest NFT Game in 2021?
If you have been following the crypto market for a while now you would have definitely noticed a sudden surge in the number of NFT based games that have recently been launched or are planning to launch over the coming months. This clearly shows that there is huge demand of games that are centered around blockchain based NFTs and this genre of games has a lot of potential to introduce a big number of gamers who are currently not on-boarded to the blockchain world.
As the number of NFT games is growing so is the number of scam projects and sub-standard games. Another challenge faced by people interested in NFT games is that it very difficult to come at a proper valuation for the NFTs. You can’t be sure if you are paying a fair price and would be able to sell this NFT in future for a profit. This gets even more complicated as there is no guaranteed liquidity for NFTs. You can buy or sell crypto whenever you want over a DEX or CEX you just need to track the price movements but the liquidity is available for all major pairs. The problem with NFTs is that they are unique and what price you can expect is totally subjective. If a collector is looking for a rare NFT you hold you might even get a million dollar for it but if there are currently no buyers you might not be able to sell off your NFT for a long time.
**What is so Special about Doctor Who?**
Let me start by the main reasons why I am super bullish on the long term for Doctor Who. I have been tracking this project closely for a long time now since it started working on the game around October 2020. I had been apprehensive of investing any money for a long time but recently I decided to take the plunge and it was driven by several factors which I am listing below:
· **Reputation of BBC**
This NFT game is backed by BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) which in case you were not aware is the biggest media house in UK which has been running for close to 100 years now. It generates over $5 Billion in revenues a year through it’s news channels, TV shows and other media initiatives. It holds the rights for hugely popular TV Show Doctor Who and is the main owner of this NFT game as well. BBC is doing a great initiative by offering ease of play on the platform so anyone who is not familiar with blockchain can also play. You can pay by crypto or if it seems complex you can pay by credit card. To standardize transactions they have introduced their own currency called vUSD pegged to USD. The biggest advantage of having backing of BBC is that this game will have nearly zero possibility of being scam. We can’t be sure how entertaining or appealing the game will be but we can be sure that it will not turn out to be rugpull and our investments here will be safe.
· **Popularity of Doctor Who TV Show**
The TV show on which theme this game is built around was wildly popular in UK and even countries outside of UK. There is a huge fan base all over the world which means once the game launches there is a high possibility that the demand for NFTs will keep growing. It is evident from the fact that many variety of special edition cards are already sold out as standard packs and can now only be purchased through their marketplace for trading NFTs with other users. This despite the fact that the game is far from ready yet and is expected to be launched towards end of 2021.
I am trying to collect a few cards of each special edition variety as they are limited and there will be no more of these minted in the future. This is something I plan to hold for a long term at least a year or more.
· **Efforts being Put into Graphics and Sounds**
If you look at the video they have posted on their site to give a glimpse of how the gameplay would be like you can clearly notice that the visuals and sounds are of much higher quality than any NFT game you would have played till now. BBC is known to take the visual appeal of all it’s products very seriously.
· **Accessible Game for Everyone**
Despite having such a huge launchpad they have decided to keep the game open for everyone and not follow a Pay-to-Win model. Even if you decide not to invest a single dollar you can still get hold of their basic sets by earning the daily bonus they give out to all registered users. You get $0.10 just for logging into their site everyday so in 50 days you will have $5 which is sufficient to buy a basic pack. The special edition packs would cost $30-$50 but in my opinion it is a worth investment as the standard cards will have infinite supply but special edition cards are limited and most are already sold out.
If you decide to try out this game feel free to use my referral link - https://doctorwho-worldsapart.com/r/10879/
Let me know in the comments anything more you want to know about this project and if you want to have a look at how to interface with their site then check out the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsoZNhGpwhQ
Cheers,
SamBTC
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My NFT Journey: Part #2- Made My First NFT!!
If you missed the previous post on my NFT Journey you can find it here - https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/my-journey-down-the-nft-rabbit-hole-xgpedep
In this article I focused about why I think NFT based projects are going to be the next big thing in crypto. Specially the NFT based games and also it will provide a great opportunity to artists looking to promote their work through NFTs.
**Why Did I make a NFT?**
Since last week I have been closely following the work of many amateur and established artists making NFTs who share their new work on Twitter. I had been using my Wax wallet for a long time but mainly to store my Banano NFTs which were airdropped and to play AlienWorlds. I started appreciating the wide variety of artists making some really awesome NFTs very recently. It also made me realize how easy AtomicHub has made the process of selling your NFTs to a vast network of collectors at minimal processing fees.
How BNB is providing relief for small investors looking for yield farms out of ETH, AtomicHub is doing the same for small NFT artists who don’t want to pay the exorbitant ETH fees every time they put up a new NFT.
This woke up the sleeping artist inside me who had been hibernating for ages inside me. I quickly took out my sketchbook, pencil and eraser and got to work. In less than 15 minutes I had my draft sketch ready. I have always been fascinated by mythical characters and decided to pick the Greek god Zeus as the subject of my first NFT.
**Is Making NFTs Really That Easy?**
For anyone who has done any sketching ever than making the draft sketch on paper will not be a big ask. The real challenge begins when you start converting it into digital form and here is when I realized why professional animators are so sought after. It was way more complex than I ever imagined and I soon figured out that the pros use digital sketchbooks and Wacom tablet is the most popular variety and it can cost over $3,000 for a good model. Most serious artists use Photoshop and that also has a expensive license fee required.
As I did not want to invest so much upfront so I started to look for cheaper alternatives and figured out how to import a photo of the sketch I drew on paper. After looking for free alternates to Photoshop I saw Krita was the most recommended freeware. I had used Photoshop and Illustrator tools earlier so I was not completely clueless but it took a while to get adjusted to the commands in Krita. Basically the sketch I made in 15 mins on paper took me more than an hour to reproduce and touch up digitally. A big challenge in digital art is the limitation of creating depth. In sketch you can adjust pressure on the pencil to create effects of depth, shadow, light etc but on your laptop it gets very tricky. So despite spending so much time the digital piece was not as good as I had expected it to be. My Zeus ended up looking a bit confused rather than wrathful as I had originally intended.
For my next NFT I will do more research about how to add shadow and light effects to the figures. Anyway this is how my first NFT finally looked like.
**Is Using AtomicHub to sell NFTs Straightforward?**
This is a yes and a now. Yes, the process has clear instructions to follow and the costs are negligible. You should however keep in mind that it will take you some time specially the first couple of time. Also to be considered a serious artist you will need to get whitelisted by AtomicHub which has a set of conditions to be followed.
You need to specify details about your art type and have a consistent theme. AtomicHub will review your work quality and then decide if they will whitelist you.
As I did not create a complete template set this time I could not apply for whitelisting but for next time I will keep all these conditions in mind.
Looking at my first NFT I am really doubtful I will be able to sell any of it but I will probably do some giveaways on Twitter and probably hold some as they might gain some value if in future I somehow become a great artist.
Any comments about how to improve my work are more than welcome specially any tips related to the shadow and light aspects.
Cheers,
SamBTC
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My Journey Down the NFT Rabbit Hole!!
Most people in the crypto space never took NFTs seriously as they always thought it did not have potential value comparable to main currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and other altcoins gaining momentum during this bull run.
The exponential rise in NFT based projects during the past months has witnessed artists, investors and corporates getting involved actively with NFTs which is further fueling the boom.
Like the majority I had also ignored NFTs for a long period and through this post I will be sharing what made me change my mind and why I strongly feel that NFTs are going to be the next big thing in crypto.
**Is NFT a New Phenomenon?**
Most people think that NFTs came into existence just a few months back during the end of 2020. This is because a vast majority got aware about NFTs in that period when there a huge spike in NFT valuations and mainstream artists, musicians, sport stars and celebrities started backing and launching NFTs. When people saw NFTs selling for millions then it was flashing on all forms of mainstream media and nobody could ignore it.
While NFTs gained popularity very recently they have been in existence since 2017. The most popular NFT project back then was Crypto Kitties launched by Dapper Labs which saw adoption by a large number of people due to the visual appeal of those cute kitties. This rush to grab NFTs clogged the whole Ethereum blockchain and was the first time people realized there were going to be serious scalability issues in Ethereum but that is probably a topic for another discussion.
Over the next years several NFT based games were launched but they received mixed response as the game play was very limited and the focus was around collecting as many cards possible preferably of higher rarity.
**What Caused this Resurgence in NFTs?**
The majority of NFT projects in 2018-2019 were basically simple card based games and to put it mildly they were quite dull and boring. After all how many times can you look at your kitties NFTs. The gameplay was just a bsic card comparison of who held a higher rating card won and this was intended to drive people to buy more higher rating cards which will in-turn create more revenue for the projects.
These initial games like Crypto Kitties were very limited in functionality but they laid the path for future games to come which realized the potential NFT games had. This was realized well by Axie Infinity which introduced the Play to Earn concept where active players earned decent rewards. It was growing great until rising ETH prices put a spanner in their engine. This ETH villainy will be a regular occurrence in this story I feel.
However during the second half of 2020 NFT expanded it’s horizon beyond the gaming scope and people from different industries like art, music, movies started joining the wagon.
This endorsement by celebrities helped NFTs to grow from a hobby of a niche group of nerds to receive adoption by millions who were following the influencers on twitter, Instagram etc.
Now NFTs can mean GIFs, short videos, animations, vector images, just photos, twitter posts, basically anything. This has created huge potential for NFT market which was earlier restricted to card based games.
People lost their mind when this NFT collage was sold by Beeple for $ 69 million.
**Who Stands to Gain the Maximum from this NFT Boom?**
The NFT scene is going to totally revolutionize the art industry. I think art has always been a field where the majority struggle to make ends meet and a very limited lucky minority makes the millions. You need to have right connections with the art galleries to get the right visibility for your art else it would be lost in oblivion.
NFT markets have taken out this limitation as now even the smallest and budding artists have access to open markets to showcase their masterpieces to potential buyers across the world.
Earlier an artists’ work was highly valuated by the time he was long dead, but now thanks to NFTs artists can enjoy the rewards from their art very quickly without having to die first.
**Am I Bullish for NFT Games?**
The next generation NFT games in the pipeline are something I am really bullish about. If you look at the design being planned for Project Nebula, Doctor Who, MIST to name a few you can see how they are taking the gameplay to a totally different league from what was started by Crypto Kitties.
I think by June-July this year NFT based games would have moved to a level close to mass adoption, and the revenues generated by these games have a chance of competing with the top crypto projects.
**How to Start your NFT Journey?**
If you are into gaming then you should start exploring about all the new NFT based games which are expected to be launched soon. Most of them have a small entry deposit or minimum purchase to start in the range of $10 or so. You can also check out the existing NFT games that are running like Splinterlands and Upland. They are very basic and not in the league of the games in the pipeline but they will help you get a feel of how to navigate through NFT games.
Another key aspect is to follow small and big NFT artists/ projects on Twitter. They regularly hold giveaways to promote new project or to celebrate a milestone like a big sale or subscriber base growth. This is a nice way to learn how to handle and store your NFTs and track how their value rises or dips in the market. Creating an account on AtomicHub running on WAX is a pre-requisite for that.
Here I would like to give a big shout-out to my friend Paul (@PVMihalache) who opened my eyes to the beautiful world of NFT artists. I would have never believed that you can earn NFTs worth over $250 within a few days through the regular giveaways.
**What is the Next Step in my NFT Journey?**
I have got really inspired by all the amazing pieces of creativity I have seen over the last couple of days and it has motivated to create my own NFT.
It is not going to be an easy task as it involves a lot of hard work to come up with ideas and design the drafts and also technical know how about transferring them to a computer and do the digital editing.
While having my morning coffee today I made my first draft and am now going to edit it digitally on my laptop.
I will probably do a separate post when this baby is ready on AtomicHub.
Cheers,
SamBTC
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MOBOX: This NFT Game is All Set to Explode!!
Last week I came across a new NFT based game platform that really caught my attention. Now before you say that there are 100 new NFT projects popping up every day let me clarify that I personally am very cautious of the NFT mania that has gripped the market so I am very selective about the NFT projects I get involved with. If I see that a certain project is just pumping the prices of their NFTs based on mass speculation I stay away from it.
The reason I am so excited about MOBOX is that they have a clear roadmap about how they plan to grow their platform and their different categories have clear value points on which their price is based upon.
Through this article I will be detailing what are the specific differentiating factors in this project that sets it apart from other NFT projects out there. This should only be taken as a guide to understand the project better and not as blind financial advise. As always DYOR before making any decision for yourself and if you have any doubts feel free to let me know in the comments.
**How Exactly is their Platform Structured?**
You can access the platform at https://mobox.io/, and the landing page will show link to mint their native NFTs called Momos under the section “MOMO Farmer” and a set of basic games under the section “Trade Action”.
They also have games planned where you can use your MOMOs to play and they are called “Token Master” and “Block Brawler”. These are currently under development and will be launched soon.
You can see that their TVL is already more than $250 M, which is incredible for a project launched just a few weeks back.
**How Do I Purchase the MOMO NFTs?**
Currently there are 2 options available to purchase the NFTs, the first is by adding to their liquidity pools and harvesting KEY tokens which can be used to unlock a random NFT and the other option is purchasing the NFTs directly through the Market section.
If you decide to participate in the liquidity pools you will notice that the pool with their native MBOX token with BNB has the highet reward rate of close to 600% but it also has higher Impermanent Loss risk associated. There are several other pools available with BTC, ETH, BNB, USDT, BUSD to stake and they offer in the range of 100%-120%.
If you go to the market you can purchase the NFTs directly without having to wait for the KEYs to generate through the liquidity pools. In the LP option you might have to wait longer but the risk is less as you are generating free KEYs through the tokens you pool, in the Market you are buying the NFTs directly but exposing your funds to the risk of fluctuations in price of NFTs. I am planning to hold long term so I purchase directly from the market as it gives me flexibility of what kind of MOMOs I want to purchase. You can decide which option to choose depending on your risk appetite.
**What are the Different Types of MOMOs Available?**
The MOMOs are available in different categories like Common, Uncommon, Unique, Rare, Epic and Legendary. While all categories except Legendary are already available for trade in Market, it has been communicated that Legendary MOMOs will only be given out through special events.
The table below specifies the characteristics of each MOMO type. As you can see that the generation rate of Rare and Epic (Extraordinary) is much lower than Common, Uncommon and Unique they are much more harder to get so much more expensive in the market.
Currently you can get Common, Uncommon and Unique for about $100 a piece while Rare starting price is around $2,000 and can go up to even $10,000 if it has been upgraded to a higher level.
Epic starts around $10,000 and I have some even being sold for $66,000. As they are so hard to get I think they would get even more expensive as the game develops further.
I expect a significant pump in Rare and Epic MOMOs in the coming months as they have a big advantage over other categories that they can be upgraded to higher Mining Has Rates while Common, Uncommon and Unique can not be upgraded and their hash rate remains fixed.
You can have different strategies to buy MOMOs but I feel that Rare and Epic have the highest potential to grow so couple of days back I picked up a Rare MOMO for $2,000. It is already worth $4,000 in the market now but I plan to hold it long term.
**What do I do with the MOMOs I Bought?**
There have not been any games launched yet where you can use your MOMOs to gain rewards. It is expected to be launched during summers this year but while you are waiting for the game launch you can use your MOMOs to mine the native MBOX tokens.
The Rare MOMO which I have is earning me about $50 a day of MBOX. This rate will drop as more and more people buy MOMOs and put their NFTs for staking but I think as the games will get launched the MOMOs can be used to generate more rewards through gameply and the mining I feel is a great way to earn rewards even when you are not using your MOMOs or playing regularly.
One great functionality of Rare and Epic MOMOs is that they can be upgraded to higher Mining Hash power by combining with other common/uncommon MOMOs. This is the reason why I am bullish on holding Rare MOMOs as their value can regularly be enhanced, and more you upgrade the higher passive income you get by staking.
The chart below shows how the hash power of my MOMO increase with each level upgrade.
**Why I am Long Term Bullish on MOBOX?**
The platform is still in very early stages and I think how far it grows will depend a lot on how entertaining their games are so people enjoy playing them regularly and see the benefit of holding MOMOs. Why I am really bullish already is that they are so far progressing well on their roadmap and the passive income generated through mining is a big bonus. It gives a strong incentive to hold the MOMOs and wait for the games to develop.
Once the game launches and if people find them enjoyable I think their userbase will just explode and the base rates for the MOMOs will quickly pump to 10-20X values.
I hope this post gives you an overview about how the platform is structured. I will be doing more detailed posts about what strategies I am using to purchase and upgrade my MOMOs.
I am including a video below if you want to see how navigating through the portal looks like at the moment and how I upgraded my Rare MOMO today.
Let me know what you feel about this game and if you are aware of any similar NFT games which are worth checking out.
If you decide to try out MOBOX then feel free to use my referral link - https://www.mobox.io?source=10243372
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePWo7_HHvko
Cheers,
SamBTC
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Why BSC Farms on Harvest.Finance is a Game Changer!!
This post will be focused around why I think the creation of BSC yield farms on HarvestFinance is going to be a game changer in the crypto world.
Before digging deeper into what are the farms being offered by Harvest on BSC and how and why you should use them, you need to first familiarize yourself with what Harvest is as how it has been instrumental in re-shaping the crypto adoption since it’s launch in September last year.
This article will cover why was HarvestFinance created, how it has been helping retail investors since it’s inception and how it continuously keeps evolving keeping the interests of small investors a priority.
**Chapter 1: The Origins of Harvest Finance**
HarvestFinance was started in September 2020, when the ETH transaction fees had already started to creep up. This meant that every transaction related to yield farming like creating a pool, staking a pool, unstaking a pool and claiming rewards earned involved a transaction fee about $5 to $10 depending on how congested the network was at that time. If you wanted to move from one farm to another farm it meant repeating all these costly transactions all over again.
This was impacting small investors even more severely as they could not move from one farm to another farm for a better yield rate as the fees would eat up all the potential gains they would get.
HarvestFinance came to the rescue of these retail investors specially the ones who were new to crypto and did not have much knowledge about yield farming. They were not sure which was the best farming option and what parameters to look while selecting a liquidity pool. There were many DeFI platforms already running like Compound, AAVE, Uniswap, Curve, SushiSwap and there were new ones coming up regularly. For newbies it was a difficult task to gain an understanding of how these platforms worked and research which was the best one. On top of this it was nearly impossible for them to keep up with the new platforms coming up every other day.
This dilemma of small investors was solved by HarvestFinance by letting people stake their coins and liquidity pairs and HarvestFinance would search the best platform at any given time for the coins or liquidity pairs. If in future another platform offered a better yield rate then HarvestFinance would automatically move the funds to the better platform without the investors having to pay any transaction fees for the move. This way the investors got the best rate available at all times for the coin they staked. To add icing to the cake Harvest also offered FARM token payout to investors staking in their pools. They could further stake the FARM they earned which was earning more than 100% APR. This was a golden opportunity for both crypto newbies as well as the old veterans and investments being staked in Harvest started to grow exponentially over the coming months.
This was a golden opportunity to get the best returns aggregated over all the popular DeFI platforms and in less than 2 months the TVL (Total Vale Locked) in HarvestFinance crossed the $1 Billion mark. In a short span of time Harvest had firmly established itself as the most attractive DeFI platform for ERC 20 tokens.
**Chapter 2: The $24 M Hack and Betrayal of Crypto Principles by Ethereum**
Things were running perfectly smooth for HarvestFinance until an incident late in October put a damper in their tractor’s engine.
On 26th October 2020 an unidentified hacker (or group of hackers) exploited a weakness in their Curve pool and hacked $24 million worth of funds. Soon the news spread and created panic among the investors. People started moving their funds out and the TVL of Harvest sharply fell from $1 Billion to less than $400 Million. Their native token FARM also took quite a hit from it’s value close to $300 it tanked to less than $100.
HarvestFinance took the most practical steps to bring operations back to normal. They apologized to their investors for the vulnerability that led to the hack and confirmed that now they were ensuring more secure checks to avoid any future hacks.
Slowly the investors started coming back to Harvest and it started it’s journey back to a stronger recovery. However it was soon clear that the difficulties that Harvest would face were far from over. The next challenge that arose was not something specific to Harvest but something which was threatening to cripple the entire ETH DeFI space. Due to the spiraling ETH fees it became common to encounter $100 to $200 ETH fee for a basic transaction and at certain peak times it got even higher.
This made all the ETH based platforms practically useless for retail investors and they stopped yield farming completely, waiting patiently on the sidelines on the ever delayed dreams of ETH 2.0 coming to their rescue.
This was a severe betrayal of core blockchain principles, as crypto was created to salvage the common investors from greed and corruption of big banks. However looking at the current scenario it was clear that the DeFI space was being clearly manipulated to the whims of big whales pushing the small investors out of the game.
**Chapter 3: The Emergence of Binance Smart Chain (BSC)**
The stalemate for retail investors in DeFI continued until January 2021 but then a new phenomenon came into existence called the Binance Smart Chain which had basically replicated the DeFI show being run on Ethereum.
PancakeSwap came up with the same interface as SushiSwap and similarly the main functionalities of AAVE, Uniswap were replicated on BMX, BunnySwap etc.
Everyone had noticed the crazy popularity that Harvest enjoyed in the ETH DeFI space so soon a HarvestFinance replica came up in the form of AutoFarm. It used the same approach of Harvest by auto-compunding the gains the platform and offering their native noken AUTO as rewards across the farms. The site also had a strong resemblance to Harvest.
Despite not coming up with an original idea AUTO was able to replicate the wild success that Harvest had achieved during its initial months and soon the TVL of AutoFarm crossed the $1 Billion mark which was coming mainly from the small investors who had been disillusioned by the apathy of Ethereum.
Things were now starting to look really grim for the future outlook of all ETH DeFI platforms including Harvest.
**Chapter 4: The Dangers Surrounding Binance Smart Chain (BSC)**
While a vast majority of small investors jumped over the ever accelerating BSC bandwagon, lured by the low transaction fees and crazy APYs they soon realized this BSC space had it’s own dangers.
People were jumping into BSC by the hordes but this area was still the wild wild west of crypto. Majority of newbies got blinded by the incredibly high APYs offered but soon they learnt a hard lesson that most of these projects were scams and there seemed to be happening at least one case of rug-pulling everyday if not more.
Even some projects which were not outright scams will get into troubles, as the developers will be constantly pushing to lauch new features to beat competition they would compromise on security and the moment a hacker would even the slightest weakness in the code we would drain all funds. This happened to many well intended projects which did not devote the necessary time for security audits.
**Chapter 5: The Entrance of Harvest.Finance in BSC Space**
Considering the risks surrounding BSC, it was very evident that people needed a platform they were familiar with and could trust with their investments. This is where Harvest.Finance came into the game. It was the most popular yield farm aggregator of retail investors on Ethereum and it took the logical step to extend support to BSC farms so the farmers who had stopped farming due to ETH prices could come back to farm.
We must appreciate the agility with which Harvest made this integration with BSC farms. In no time it was able to aggregate most of the popular BSC projects like Venus, Pancake, bDollar and Goose under it’s umbrella. Within a few days of launch it already has over $18 Million invested in the pools. It is a small number compared to the $1 Billion it was holding at one point but I am sure if Harvest continues to maintain the high standards it will soon surpass the $1 Billion mark once again as the funds pouring into BSC are rising by the day.
**Chapter 6: The Future of Harvest.Finance in BSC**
The next months ahead are going to be quite challenging for HarvestFinacne but I am sure it is well prepared for them as it has seen so many ups and downs already and came out triumphant all the time.
It’s biggest challenge will be that it is a bit late to the BSC party with several existing incumbent platforms like PancakeSwap, BunnySwap, AutoFarm have already established themselves firmly with over $1 Billion each in TVL. They have already been around for a few months and know which are the signs of a scammy project to be avoided. They know which features like auto-compounding attract investors. What Harvest pioneered last year by offering native FARM to cross-platform pool rewards they have already replicated well with their native tokens like CAKE, BUNNY and AUTO.
Harvest will have to be really innovative to bring fresh investments and think of ways how it can offer benefits which are not being provided by Pancake or AutoFarm. The clear advantage it has is that it has faced tough time already and is prepared well to handle any threats and hacks. It actually came back stronger after the hack which has reinforced the trust people have in the project as they can see the team behind is really dedicated and will not give up no matter how tough the circumstances.
These are the key reasons why I am really bullish on HarvestFinance and I think it will create a space for itself in BSC and as always it will be really helpful for the people it cares the most about, that is the retail farmer Chads.
This was originally published on Publish0x - https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/why-bsc-farms-on-harvestfinance-is-a-game-changer-xomnxlo
Cheers,
SamBTC
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ETH Vs BNB: Who Are You Betting On?
With the broader crypto bull market gaining momentum everyone is wondering about which are the best picks to select to get the maximum gains. This article is not aimed at recommending any altcoin picks but to share my views about how I see the fierce battle between Ethereum and BNB unfolding over the coming months as it seems to be getting more intense with each passing day.
Last year I wrote several posts about how Polkadot and Cardano had strong potential to dethrone Ethereum from it’s position of number 1 Altcoin, I had clearly not expected at that time that the coin which would finally rise in 2021 to challenge ETH would be BNB.
As you would have sensed by the introduction that this post is not going to be very pleasant for Ethereum maximalist so if you are a big fan of the Vitalik camp it would be prudent to skip this post.
**What are the Problems ahead for Ethereum?**
Ethereum for a very long time had been the de-facto leader when it came to the DeFI space. It had proven it’s stability and security over the years and had become the default choice for any project which wanted to build upon blockchain technology.
It’s ecosystem had grown so huge that it’s competitor despite having better technologies were not able to make a dent in Ethereum’s stronghold on the market.
Scalability was always the Achilles Heel of Ethereum and it had become quite apparent during the peak demand during the Crypto Kitties craze which jammed the whole blockchain and drove up transaction costs. Since then people started to notice the rising transaction costs on ETH but were bearing it silently as Ethereum basically had a monopoly on the market and if you wanted to do anything on the DeFI space it meant being willing to burn some ETH.
This shortcoming became more painful during 2020 when people started seeing basic transactions costing upwards of $100. It was also uncommon to see $500 transaction fee during peak times. This was unacceptable if blockchain was going to be a global phenomenon as $100 transaction fee was equivalent to a weeks salary for many people in the developing countries. This basically meant that by end of 2020 only whales were playing in the ETH environment as $100 fee was only justified when you were moving around $100K or above.
For along time people had been waiting for the elusive ETH2.0 which was supposed to miraculously solve all their woes but with the passing time people realized it might be much longer wait and it also started becoming apparent that it might not do a significant reduction to the transaction costs.
**How Binance Took Advantage of this Opportunity?**
While Ethereum was busy fiddling with the Trilemma of Security, Decentralization and Scalability Binance brought in the fourth factor of Agility by overnight re-designing the ETH DeFI platforms on BSC (Binance Smart Chain). BSC had existed for quite sometime now but only in the shadows of Ethereum so it never got any visibility.
Now as Ethereum was in a complacent position BSC went for the jugular. It basically did a copy paste of all popular platforms like SushiSwap, Harvest Finance, Uniswap, AAVE on BSC and came up with Pancake Swap, AutoFinance, BMX, Bunny Swap etc.
Initially people thought these BSC platforms were just a gimmick and will not be sustainable, many even ridiculed them. Soon the traffic on BSC started to soar and it was not something to be ignored. The first people to move were the retail investors as ETH had become unusable for them and BSC offered them opportunities to continue with DeFI Farming, Staking, Pooling which they enjoyed earlier on ETH.
Ethereum price is still pumping but it is mainly due to the fact that the whales are still holding in the expectations of future appreciation with 2.0. If you want to see how the momentum on the ground is already shifting you need to check the TVL in ETH and BNB over the last 3 months.
****ETH TVL over last 3 Months****
****BSC TVL over last 3 Months****
When you look at the charts above it is clear that ETH DeFI is stagnating for over 2 months now and once some of the whales start moving out it will start to collapse.
BSC on the other hand has grown rapidly over the last 2 months and is already touching $30 B while ETH is struggling to hold on to the $50 B mark.
If this trend continues, which most probably will unless Ethereum comes out with a game changer I see this gap narrowing during April 2021 and during May 2021 BSC will beat ETH in terms of TVL. Once this tipping point arises it might deal a blow to ETH bull run and will move to momentum to BNB and CAKE as these tokens will gain the most from what ETH loses.
Let me know what are your thoughts on this heavyweight competition going on.
Cheers,
SamBTC
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Project Nebula: Why I am Really Bullish on this NFT based Game!
I know there is a lot of hype around NFT projects these days and most of them seem to be getting pumped at much higher valuations than what they are worth and the crazy prices at which NFTs are getting sold is adding fuel to the speculative fire. Let me clarify beforehand that this post is not aimed at shilling some new project riding this NFT craze bandwagon. Rather it is the story of my journey how I got involved with a NFT based game about 6 months ago when NFT was not a buzzword and there were not too many crypto projects betting on NFTs.
**How did I get to know about Project Nebula?**
During last week of October 2020, I cam across this post from Luke who is an admin on Uptrennd about a new crypto NFT based game called Nebula. My first reaction was to not take the post too seriously as I used to think NFT gaming is just a fad and it would not get any serious attention in the future. As it was about planets and I have always been an astronomy buff I decided to read the full post. The post had a link to their Medium page and soon I was binge reading all their blogs to understand as much as possible about this upcoming project.
**What exactly is Project Nebula?**
Project Nebula was just a concept in October last year and the details of the game would be structured were still being finalized. They had however shared the framework that it would involve exploring the simulated space and capturing NFT based games that you encounter. What got me hooked was they their focus was on creating a game that is entertaining enough to motivate you to play daily so you don’t get bored of it in a few days (something which happened to me with Upland). At the same time they wanted to avoid making it over-complicated that it may confuse the players.
They were going to mint 1100 unique planets which will be auctioned during the following weeks in batches of 100 made available each week. These included 644 rare planets, 444 uncommon planets, 11 Legendary and 1 mythic.
Planets were classified into different categories like Gas planet, Lava planet, Ice planet, Terrestrial planet etc. Each planet had a credit, industry, research rating which would be used once the game goes live.
**Why I decided to invest $100 on Nebula NFTs?**
What was unique about Nebula was that it was built upon Icon (ICX) blockchain which was much cheaper to transact on compared to Ethereum. The exorbitant ETH fees was the main reason I never tried Axie Infinity despite so many people recommending that game to me.
The base price for auction was supposed to be 25 ICX for Uncommon and 75 ICX for Rare planet. ICX was trading at $0.32 during 1st week of November 2020. This meant at that time the base price would have been about $8 for Uncommon and $23 for Rare. I was very skeptical on spending on NFTs during that time and had to think several times before I made the decision to spend $10 on Splinterlands starter pack. I was really interested in getting some planet NFTs as I really liked the user interface they had built for their site so far.
I soon really realized that I was not the only one interested in getting some of these cool planet NFTs as when the auction started there were people bidding 750 ICX for a rare planet with a base price of 75 ICX. I could not even imagine spending $70-$80 on a NFT.
I waited out for the first round and saw that slowly the crazy bidding spree started to subside and people were able to get a rare planet for 400-450 ICX. Meanwhile I decided to stock some ICX as I had never used icon tokens before, somehow it had never been on my radar. The more I learnt about Icon the more I was convinced about the long term potential of this project. I finally made a bold move and purchased $300 worth of Icon which got me about 940 ICX.
Soon the bidding rate reduced further and I was really excited when I could get my hands on a rare planet for just 300 ICX ($96). My luck seemed to improve next week when I won a raffle to get a Uncommon planet for 25 ICX ($8). Things got even more exciting when I won a free uncommon planet through the Uptrennd giveaway.
So now with an investment of $104 I had got hold of 1 Rare planet and 2 Uncommon planets. I was still holding more than 600 ICX waiting to buy more planets on the auction.
**What happened to that $100 investment on Nebula?**
As December came I decided to take an unplanned vacation of over a month and did a digital detox during this vacation by completely switching off from all online forums. When I came back during end of January I got busy with closing out some urgent things at my 9 to 6 job. During March I was suddenly reminded of Nebula and decided to check what was happening there.
I was shocked to see that now since the auctions were over people were selling their NFTs in the marketplace and the demand had gone up further as game is expected to launch soon this summers. Now there were people paying upto 2,000 to 3,000 ICX for the Rare planets and 500 to 1,000 for Uncommon planets. At the same time ICX price had pumped during the last few months. ICX token which was worth $0.32 in November was now worth over $3. This was a 10X jump in a short span of time. My $100 NFTs could be sold for over $10,000 in the marketplace which would be a 100X on my investment.
I have still decided to not sell and HODL the NFTs as I am really looking forward to the gameplay. If I find the game entertaining I will never sell these NFTs. On the other hand if the game is not so engaging I might sell them off in summers, lets see.
At the same time I was reminded of the 600 ICX lying idle in my wallet, I had not even staked them. These 600 ICX that I bought for $200 were now worth over $1,800. I sold half of them to book some profit and staked the remaining on Atomic wallet.
**Am I still Bullish on Nebula?**
Heck, yeah! I am now closely following the announcements being made and the project seems to be advancing right on track as per their roadmap. They are sharing more details about the gameplay and doing alpha testing now. They recently announced they will be airdropping cool spaceship NFTs to people holding the planets.
It just keeps getting better and better and I have a strong feeling this game is going to get wildly popular when it gets launched this summer.
I will surely do a follow up post once the game is live.
Let me know if there is any other NFT based game you are bullish on.
Disclaimer- I have not been paid by Project Nebula for this post, I am just genuinely supe excited about this project 😊
You can read more about this project here - https://projectnebula.medium.com/
Cheers,
SamBTC
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Top 5 Projects on Binance Smart Chain!
Before you start getting ideas that this post is aimed at shilling some obscure new projects on Binance Smart Chain, let me clarify that these picks are not selected by me.
These have been selected by Binance through their MVB (Most Valuable Builder) Accelerator Program to boost the most promising platforms running on BSC.
You can find the Binance release here - https://www.binance.org/en/blog/the-mvb-accelerator-program-enters-the-last-phase/
The 5 projects Binance has selected are AutoFarm, PancakeBunny, Sphinx, bDollar, and NFTBox.
Through this post I would be analyzing what is my opinion about these projects, what has been my experience using these platforms so far. What I think about the long term potential of these projects and whether I will recommend them to my friends (of course not as a financial advice).
Some of the platforms mentioned on the list I am quite familiar with and had been using for quite some time while there were some new ones which I had not heard of before and decided to do some research on after I got to know about them through this announcement by Binance.
The MVB program will provide a big boost to all projects on this list as Binance will provide the following support:
· Seed funding of up to $100,000 in BNB.
· Liquidity support of up to 2 million USD.
· Participation in the Community Vote for a direct listing on Binance
· Full security audit from CertiK
· Incubation workshop with industry experts
While the seed funding might not be huge amount considering $100K is nothing for the bigger projects as AUTO already has more than $1 Billion in TVL but it will be useful for smaller projects like NFTBox. The $2 Million will also provide a safety net in case they run into trouble if there is a bearish correction in the market.
Once these projects eventually get their Binance listing I will not be surprised if they jump into the top 100 projects by market cap.
**1. BDollar Finance**
This is the project I am most bullish about and if I had to pick one project from the list it will be this. I have been investing on this platform for about a month now and I plan to stick to it long term.
BDollar was the first project launched on BSC using the algorithmic stablecoin and has over $100 million in TVL. In fact the TVL was more than $300 million a few days back but the project saw a spurt of panic selling once it’s stablecoin dipped below the $1 peg. It is starting to recover now and I expect it to recover much faster after this formal vote of confidence given by Binance. This project can be accessed at http://bdollar.fi/
The stablecoin of this project is called BDO and the share token which generates rewards in BDO is called sBDO. I will not go into too much details as I already wrote a piece about this project which you can access at the following link - https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/bdollar-promising-gem-on-binance-smart-chain-xxwnkyn
**2. Auto Finance**
This is another project on this list which I have been using for close to a month now and I plan to stay invested here for the long term. I started using this platform once the rising ETH fees made Harvest Finance impossible to use. I was looking for a yield farming site similar to Farm and Auto seemed like a good fit. It has a very easy and simple user interface and provides options to provide liquidity to most of the popular token or token pairs on BSC. It has been gaining a lot of popularity among BSC users and already has more than $1 Billion as total value locked.
You can access the platform at https://autofarm.network/.
**3. Pancake Bunny**
I had come across Pancake Bunny some weeks back but I found it very similar to Auto and did not find any significant advantages in Bunny so I did not move any of my funds to this platform. It does seem that Bunny also has a big user base that it also has over $1 Billion in total value locked.
You can access the platform at https://pancakebunny.finance/farm
If I had to compare Bunny with Auto I see the main differences are the following:
· **Cross-Chains**- Auto supports pools in BSC and Heco networks and already has farms running on both the networks. Bunny on the other hand only supports BSC and has plans of including Ethereum pools as well but it is not ready as of now.
· **Funds Lock**- Auto does not have any lock in period and you can withdraw your funds anytime. Bunny on the other hand has a lock in period of 3 days and you are charged a 0.5% penalty if you withdraw within 3 days of deposit. This is the main reason why currently I prefer Auto over Bunny but I will be watching how the ETH chain develops on Bunny and if it will worthwhile to invest there.
**4. NFTBox**
I had not heard of this project before the Binance article came out. I tried to search for information about it but there was not much material available. It is a much smaller project when compared to BDollar, Auto and Bunny. I think Binance wanted to include at least one NFT based project in the list that it is going to promote so probably included this.
You can access the project at following link: https://nftbox.vip/
The site interface is not very straightforward and chances are you will be confused about how to use it when you land there the first time. I found the link to their Telegram group and joined there. I was a bit skeptical as there were only 2 groups available- one in Chinese with 150 users and another in Vietnamese with less than 50 users. However there are some guys in the Chinese group that speak English and he directed me to some tutorial videos he had uploaded in youtube which gave me an idea about how the site is structured.
The platform basically has 2 set of NFTs available- Onmyoji (don’t ask me what that means) and Kingdom. You can get these by purchasing Airdrop boxes which will generate a random NFT. You also have the option to place bids for these random NFT generator boxes through Auction section where you might get it at a cheaper rate.
Once you have received some NFTs you have 2 options to earn through them. You can stake them to earn mining rewards in native NB tokens or join BNB rewards pool by combining the NFTs you have.
I will not advise to go for NFT mining as when you claim the rewards there you NFT card will be burned.
I have still not received a large number of cards to combine them into logical groups to earn pool rewards. I will probably do a follow up post on this site later once I get a better idea on how it runs.
As it is a really small project I am not putting any serious money here as there is a high chance I will never see that money again.
**5. Sphinx**
This project is probably the smallest on the list and it is even tougher to get any information to on it on the net. Simply put it is a cross-chain oracle to ensure consistency in rates across different chains like Ethereum and BSC.
The site can be accessed on https://sphinx.finance/
The portal has a very beta look to it and it show a mining option of staking BUSD and BNB to earn their native SPX tokens, but it is so unclear that as of now I am not going to put any of money there.
They do have an active telegram with over 14K users but I think most of them are there to ask “wen airdrop ser?” as they recently did some airdrops to promote the site.
One thing to keep in mind is that these 5 projects are currently not in the same league as Auto, BDollar and Bunny are much bigger and audited projects with a large userbase. NFTBox and Sphinx are much smaller in comparison and not yet audited. Binance hs mentioned that it will get these projects audited and if it selected them there must be some potential so I would keep a watch on them in the coming months.
Let me know what are your views about these projects and if you know any site where I can get better info on NFTBox and Sphinx then do let me know.
If you want to have a look at how the interface of these sites actually looks like you can refer the video posted below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3xmo_rHWHw
Cheers,
SamBTC
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Which Algorithmic BSC Project to select? BDollar Vs Midas Vs Monster Vs Bolt!
After I posted an article about how BDollar platform functions through an algorithmic stablecoin a lot of people contacted me asking about how does it compare to the other platforms that have come up built upon the same mechanism.
Through this post I want to share an objective analysis of which platforms I personally am bullish on and which platforms I have decided to avoid for now. I will also present what rationale I have used based on the information available about these projects.
Before you go any further I would like to clarify that you should not take this as financial advice and do your own research before making any decision.
The parameters I use for making any long term picks are stability of the platform, payout rate of rewards and consistency in income, security of the projects against potential hacks and long term sustainability for being competitive against similar projects.
I found four projects which are currently running on algorithmic stablecoins over the Binance Smart Chain, these are BDollar, MidasDollar, MonsterSLayer and BoltDollar.
Through this article I will compare them over the criteria I mentioned to evaluate which of these I feel have more potential to perform during the coming months.
**1. BDollar Finance**
BDollar was the first project launched on BSC using the algorithmic stablecoin and has a much higher Total Value Locked compared to it’s peers. The TVL currently stands at over $320 million. This project can be accessed at http://bdollar.fi/
The stablecoin is called BDO and the share token which generates rewards in BDO is called sBDO. If you are interested to learn more details about how this platform operates you can refer my previous post at - https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-projects-sams-reviews/bdollar-promising-gem-on-binance-smart-chain-xxwnkyn
How this platform fares on the criteria I consider important is as summarized below:
a. **Stability**- What differentiates this project from it’s competitors is it’s stable growth since it’s launch at end of December 2020. The project has been growing at a steady pace and the sBDO price has been growing at good linear rate over the last 2 months. What makes it more reliable is the backing by BEarn Finance group which is already running several other large crypto projects like BVaults through it’s native token BFI. It has been minting BDOs at the pre-determined emission rate linked to total BDO supply circulating.
b. **Payout**- BDollar has been very consistent in it’s reward payout rate and people who have invested in this project for a few weeks now would have already recovered their initial capital through the gains. The BDO emission rate is currently 1% which gives you more than 100 BDO for each sBDO you hold. The APR currently stands at around 700% which is really high for a project which is already in it’s 3rd month of operation. Some people were expecting the sBDO price to fall after the emission rate reduced from 1.25% to 1.00% but on the contrary the price jumped from $6,000 range to $8,000 range. I think this is due to the growing credibility of the project across the investors. I am also using their BDO-BUSD liquidity pair which pays out at 350% which is really decent for a stablecoin pair and helps you accumulate more sBDO to invest.
c. **Security**- This is another aspect where BDollar scores above it’s competitors as currently it is the only algorithmic project which has been audited by Certik. I verified this by visiting the official site of Certik and checked their audit report on BDollar. This gives investors the confidence that there is minimal risk of the funds being held by BDollar getting stolen by a hacker.
d. **Sustainability**- I think BDollar has a clear roadmap about how they will progress over the coming year and so far they are performing without any hiccups. In this regard my only recommendation for them would be to think of some new innovative features like NFTs or games to include once their emission rate drops down to 0.25% as if they have a well performing competitor down the line it may cause a shift of investors to more lucrative options.
**2. Midas Finance**
This is the second biggest player in this area with close to $50 Million locked in the project. You can access the platform at https://midasdollar.fi/.
Their stablecoin is called MDO and you can use MDS to earn MDO rewards.
When I evaluate Midas on the same parameters this is how it fares:
a. **Stability**- This is one area where Midas seems to be really struggling as their stablecoin pegged to $1 has been fluctuating in a crazy manner between the range of $3 to $5. Recently it fell to $2.5 range but this put a lot of sell pressure on it’s MDS token which corrected sharply. I think this correction was anyways due as the MDS price had got really inflated during last week and had crossed the $20,000 which I feel made it extremely overpriced. This project is backed by Midas group which also run the MidasGold platform which is basically a copy of PancakeSwap and GooseFinance but it has been really struggling over the last week and it has made me doubt the long term stability of MDO and MDS as well.
b. **Payout**- MDS got a lot of investors initially as $4 MDO meant your APY was over 1,000% but due to the recent correction in MDO price a bit of panic has started among the investors and MDS is facing more selling pressure. What I do not like about the payout is that it is highly inconsistent due to the volatility in MDO and MDS price so you are never sure what payout you will receive in each period.
c. **Security**- This area is a Red Flag for me as Midas has put a section for Audit in their site but once you go there you see the Audit report of Basis which is now a defunct project. Also when I checked on Certik site it does not show anything for Midas or Basis. I think this is quite unethical by Midas as a newbie who does not realize this and assumes that Midas is audited will be taking up much more risk than he realizes.
d. **Sustainability**- Midas has a roadmap about what will be emission rate reduction chart but what is doubtful in my opinion is whether they will be able to sustain the payouts considering the serious drawbacks they have compared to the competitors.
**3. Monster Slayer**
This is the next project in this area with about $50 Million locked in the project. Last week it was much smaller than Midas but I am surprised that it is growing so fast that it’s value locked is now almost the same as Midas and I think will surpass it during the coming week. You can access the platform at https://monsterslayer.finance/.
When I evaluate Monster on the same parameters this is how it fares:
a. **Stability**- This is one area where Monster fares unexpectedly well. I was initially a bit cautious about this project but I am getting more confident about the more I learn about it. MSC is their stablecoin and you need to hold MSS to earn rewards. MDS price is growing at a good rate and MSC has been holding quite good to $1 peg by moving in the $1.1 to $1.2 range. Unlike BDollar and Midas this appears to be a stand-alone start up but so far they have been performing quite well.
b. **Payout**- If I compare the payout of MSS it is a bit less than Midas or BDollar but what is a good factor here is that their stablecoin pair of MSC and BUSD offers 700% which is a great way to generate more MSS to invest. Another feature which differentiates Monster is that they are very democratic and transparent and decide the emission rate based on voting on their portal.
c. **Security**- They are aware how important an audit is to inspire investor confidence so they have applied for Certik audit and I confirmed on Certik site that their audit is being processed. Their report is expected by April and I think it will create more confidence in investors.
d. **Sustainability**- This is a strong area for Monster. They have a really interesting roadmap with crypto based gaming app and NFTs planned in the near future. How good that game is I think will decide if Monster will be able to give a strong competition to BDollar for the market leader position.
**4. BoltDollar**
This is the last and smallest project in this area with about $23 Million locked in the project.. You can access the platform at https://boltdollar.finance/.
hen I assess BoltDollar on the same criteria this is how it fares:
a. **Stability**- This is a grey area for Bolt as it initially started as Bat Share Dollar and really struggled to get started for the first 4-5 weeks with it’s stablecoin slagging way lower than the $1 mark. It’s price has pumped recently but I am not sure if it’s organic or market manipulation.
b. **Payout**- This is again a problem area for Bolt as it’s competitor reflect actual APRs even when it falls or rises but Bolt does not even show the APR on it’s boardroom. I also noticed that the APR shown for the liquidity pair was very inconsistent with the actual rewards I was getting.
c. **Security**- This is also a red flag as they don’t mention any details about any plans of getting an audit done.
d. **Sustainability**- The price of BTC has been pumping recently but I have my doubts if it will be sustainable in the long term considering they have no plans for a audit, do not share any details with investors, do not have an official blog or telegram group and have no roadmap to share.
This is a snapshot of how this analysis looks as of now.
I am planning to slowly increase my stake in BDollar and Monster at the same time I will reduce my investments in Midas and Bolt. I want to make it clear to avoid any FUD that I am not saying there is something obviously scammy about Midas or Bolt but it is just a personal decision as based on my analysis I am not comfortable staying invested in them.
I would do a follow up post in April to see how these perform also if there is an impact linked to the Ethereum upgrade.
I hope this post gave you more clarity about these projects and let me know if you have any additional doubts or questions related to these platforms. Also if you think I missed any important consideration do let me know.
If you want to have a look at how the interface of these sites actually looks like you can refer the video posted below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faaBvJq8ccM
Cheers,
SamBTC
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