The Ethlas 2022 roadmap is termed “The Convergence” as it brings together the strong foundations that we have forged together with the community over the last 9 months (7 months of stealth development, 2+ months of Public Beta), and will attempt to lay out our True North for the next 12 months.
Using games as a medium to democratize crypto finance and to be a bridge for the next billion users (The Ethlas Mission), the next 10 minutes of this post lays out our ambition and the sequence of events that will bring the Ethlas Metaverse into maturity. LFG!
Ethlas Metaverse — Our 2022 Roadmap
“Nowadays, people don’t believe in these kinds of things. Except in the Metaverse, that is, where magic is possible.“
– NEAL STEPHENSON, SNOW CRASH (1992)
Ethlas was launched in an unorthodox manner. The common approach was to start an NFT sale or a IDO, raising money on the promise that a product will be available some time in the future.
Instead, we decided that Ethlas should be built on a solid foundation, putting our own capital into seeding the initial engineering development and growth of organic gaming communities, before folding in the aspects of NFT, token sale, and social metaverse. We did this because we believe that all lasting companies have to grow from first principles, and that product market fit is more important than selling hype.
Since coming out of stealth in early November, 2021, we have experienced:
The strong initial traction has validated our hypothesis that casual games has a strong product market fit for bringing the next billion users into the Play-To-Earn Game-Fi ecosystem, with Ethlas being the bridge that connects the Fiat world with the Crypto world. And we are excited about what we can do with this validation in 2022 and beyond!
“Being human totally sucks most of the time. Videogames are the only thing that make life bearable.”
― ERNEST CLINE, READY PLAYER ONE
One of the most exciting stat we anchored on very early, was that we found that 60% of Ethlas players has NEVER owned a crypto wallet before, and that Ethlas was their very FIRST exposure to crypto or blockchain of any form. By bringing together a mix of new-to-crypto users as well as crypto natives, it enables us to drive value creation for both sets of stakeholders, which in turn creates a flywheel between crypto natives investing in the tokenomics of Ethlas, whilst Play-to-earn users contribute time and skill to the mix.
“It was the dawn of a new era, one where most of the human race now spent all of their free time inside a videogame.”
― ERNEST CLINE, READY PLAYER ONE
In short, the way we think about the Ethlas Game-Fi Metaverse is that Play-to-earn players will primarily invest in the ‘game’ part of Game-Fi, and crypto natives will primarily invest in the ‘Fi’ part of Game-Fi.
Ethlas is at its core a game metaverse: a reality of worlds upon worlds, where the imagination is the limit. Starting with in-house games, we’re now approaching critical scale with game studio partnerships, with 2 already live and a dozen more in various stages of discussions. Ethlas started with casual games and Komo NFTs but we by no means want to stop there. In fact we were heavily influenced by the metaverse described in Ready Player One, which we quote:
“Other virtual worlds soon followed suit, from the Metaverse to the Matrix. The Firefly universe was anchored in a sector adjacent to the Star Wars galaxy, with a detailed re-creation of the Star Trek universe in the sector adjacent to that. Users could now teleport back and forth between their favorite fictional worlds. Middle Earth. Vulcan. Pern. Arrakis. Magrathea. Discworld, Mid-World, Riverworld, Ringworld. Worlds upon worlds.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
Following on the success of our casual game world, we are working with other game studios to introduce new genres and more games into our play-to-earn metaverse, with the glue being the interoperability of NFTs and that GEMs are the single underlying currency that is universally accepted within the Ethlas Metaverse.
The current marketplace already allows for the purchase of numerous in-game utility like energy or gamer tag. In the future, players will be able to engage in P2P trading so that players can level up their profiles, skill their Komos and sell various types of in game assets and NFTs on the player trading marketplace. We envision P2P trading to be a major source of economic activity in the future of Ethlas, as players grind and farm valuable assets that can in turn be sold to investors, collectors and whales.
One way that Ethlas builds ecosystem stickiness is to provide various levers to engage in meta games that provide outsized chances of winning even bigger. From weekly events like the ‘Ethlas Gem Fountain’, to mini games like ‘Komo Alchemy Lab’ or ‘Golden Wheel of Fortune’, our aim is to create fun ways to play meta games beyond the ecosystem of individual games, so we layer the game mechanics to be more refined and engaging.
We aim to work with a couple of engagement platforms to import more mini games and meta game mechanics so that players can play normal games, but also can engage in meta games that form a layer-2 on top of the basic gameplay.
The upcoming Gem Initial Public Sale (IPS) for XGEM (ERC 20 in-game currency) is slated for a launch on 28th December, 2021, with a bigger launchpad launch event some time in 2022. Already, we’re on the brink of a Public Sale event, coupled with an exciting token staking event with APYs as high as 702%! This is of course our way of thanking our communities, and to make sure early HODL’ers share in the upside of the Ethlas rocket ship.
In mid H1 2022, we aim to ride the momentum and launch the ELS token (ERC 20 governance token) which will enable crypto natives and long term investors to share in the upsides of the entire ecosystem, beyond just the in game currencies. More details of what our governance token does, and the tokenomics can be found here.
One key product feature we’re anchoring a lot on in 2022 is the concept of self: the ability for players to represent themselves in unique ways inside the game, and to express their opinions, fashion and uniqueness in various ways:
2022 is going to be a big year for us, but by no means is it the end state. There is still so much more we want and could build, with the support of our loyal Ethernals and investor community.
As we build towards a truly interoperable world with a seamless set of currencies and NFTs working across games, we aim to take it one step further into the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) world, by partnering with some of the top AR/VR players in the metaverse.
As we always say in the Ethlas HQ — this is just Day 1. So let’s f***ing go!
P.S: Want more details about Ethlas and what we do? Check out our detailed whitepaper here!
Come onboard the rocket ship? Join us on Discord, Twitter or Telegram.
