Polychain Monsters is a cross-chain gaming and digital collectibles ecosystem coming to the Neo N3 platform via the Early Adoption Program. The project team endeavors to offer mainstream appeal through play-to-earn gaming, collect-to-earn NFT staking, and DeFi.

The Early Adoption Program is Neo Global Development’s US $10 million initiative to encourage development and collaboration on Neo N3. The Polychain Monsters team will receive grant funds, incubation opportunities, and technical support intended to enable their growth and success within the Neo ecosystem.

Background

In March of 2021, the Polychain Monsters team shared with the public what it had been working on over the past year. It’s a universe of high definition animated NFTs, complete with layer-two use cases in the way of games, art, and other collectibles.

The public launch began with an initial DEX offering on Polkastarter and an NFT airdrop to early supporters. At the time, it was one of the most popular NFT airdrops ever with 126,000 unique participants.

Although the project was launched on Ethereum, integration with other blockchain platforms has since been added. Binance Smart Chain was the first platform to be integrated, followed by Polygon. The team intends to launch on Neo N3 in the second quarter of 2022, with more integrations planned for the future.

Polychain Monsters has a history of success, with over 1.8 million booster packs sold to date, each containing three animated Polymon NFTs. NFT marketplace OpenSea reports a trading volume in excess of $13 million for the digital items. On tofuNFT, another NFT marketplace, one Polychain Monster set a record for the highest ever sale on that system with a price of 250 BNB (~US $100,000 at the time).

Three randomly generated NFT monsters: the result of opening one booster pack

The Polychain Monsters Ecosystem

Booster Packs

Through buying Booster Packs, users can mint new NFTs known as Polymon Monsters to be utilized in multiple on-chain and off-chain games. Each booster pack contains three Polymon with randomly selected features, such as type, color, horn, and glitter effect.

A breakdown of attributes and their rarity from one booster pack opening

Certain Polymon may be more desirable than others due to the rarity associated with the combination of attributes. There are also special edition NFTs available through the team’s collaboration with other projects. An exclusive Neo edition Polymon is in the works.

Each booster pack costs one PMON token, which is a cross-chain token available on all integrated platforms. Currently, these include Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. Neo users can look forward to PMON token contract deployment on the N3 network as part of Polychain Monsters’ participation in the Early Adoption Program. A portion of the PMON utilized for each booster pack opening is permanently burnt, making the token supply deflationary.

Polychain Games

Multiple on- and off-chain games are in the works, which will allow players to use their NFTs in a variety of ways and take part in a gamified economy. At the time of writing, these include Polymon World and Polychain Islands.

Polymon World is described as a 3D multiplayer RPG that includes quests, battles, person-to-person skirmishes, social activities, and NFT trading. Under development by NFTy Games, the game was released in the alpha state on Dec 9, 2021.

Two monsters battling in Polymon World. (Source)

A core gameplay feature, battling other monsters can improve your Polymon and teach them new attacks. As a player’s Polymon team improves, access to new zones in Polymon World is granted. Players can also win tokens through battles and tournaments, which can be used to buy in-game NFTs or to alter the appearance of Polymon. Polymon World reportedly hosted 15,000 battles within the first day of alpha release.

The Polychain Monsters team is also slated to release the MVP version of Polychain Islands in the near future. In this on-chain game, players can team up with allies to protect the islands from powerful threats, collect and train new monsters, take part in a local economy by farming resources, and make use of those resources in many ways to boost their position within the game. Each asset within Polychain Islands is backed by an NFT, providing secure ownership.

Monetization Methods and Functionality

The collect- and play-to-earn functionality within the Polyworld are intended to create new monetization methods and revenue models for participants and developers of the games. By owning and staking Polychain Monster NFTs, for example, users receive a portion of the fees used in new booster pack purchases. Known as Collector Staking, a method the Polychain team declares to have pioneered, NFT collectors can thus take part in the success of the project by earning a weekly yield based on the project’s booster pack opening rates.

According to the Polychain team, top collectors have earned up to $10,000 in a single week. The team also plans to release the Collector DAO, which aims to enable the community to play a larger collect-to-earn role.

Play-to-earn functionality is also a key component of the games built in the Polyworld. By gaming in Polychain Islands for example, owners of Polymon can farm resources on other players’ land, or on purchased land of their own.

These resources can be used to level up a Polymon, utilized in the production of goods in factories, and sold in a player’s very own marketplace. Through battles, users can also earn Essence, a resource that gains a player access to Polymon Park. Here they can catch new monsters, craft valuable items and buildings, and secure a spot in IDOs.

Polychain Monsters on N3

Neo is a founding member of PolyNetwork, an interoperability protocol alliance. As such, the Polychain Monsters team has described working with the protocol as a natural fit for them, mentioning that Neo makes cross-chain interaction just as easy as native transactions. “We were immediately drawn to apply to the Early Adoption Program when we learned about Neo’s commitment to cross-chain interoperability. We’re both committed to exploring and pushing the boundaries of today’s blockchain technology,” says Lennart Brandt, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Polychain Monsters.

Brandt expressed that through the partnership, the team hopes to use a blend of DeFi and collect- and play-to-earn to spark business innovation in the Neo ecosystem, furthering the growth of the smart economy. Leif Leiser, Polychain Monsters co-founder and CEO, hopes that the partnership will onboard the next 100,000 users to the Polyverse. Leiser also stated:

Neo N3 is the most compelling and feature-rich version of the Neo blockchain. The native multi-language support of Neo N3 allows our versatile development team to utilize one of the programming languages they’re already familiar with and love, massively reducing onboarding time for our team and new hires alike.

As part of the partnership, the team will design a Neo-exclusive background to be introduced in the newly minted Polymon on N3. Two new iconic Polymon will also be released, one of which will be exclusive to Neo.

From Neo’s end, the NGD leadership team sees great potential for Polychain Monsters and welcomes the opportunity to offer them support. John Wang, head of Neo Eco-Growth states:

The Polychain Monsters team speaks to a future for crypto blockchains where multiple layer one solutions will co-exist based on their various strengths and weaknesses. That’s exactly why we value working with this team. Polychain Monsters brings the Neo ecosystem not only a unique collect-to-earn and play-to-earn system, but also endless possibilities that can be built out around DeFi, NFTs, and other areas. Neo welcomes the opportunity to comprehensively support the Polychain Monsters team as we work together to contribute to the future of the smart economy.

Readers can learn more about Polychain Monsters on its website, and follow developments on its Twitter page.

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