Bounty Temple attempts to achieve sustainable development of blockchain games through various innovations such as stablecoin mechanism, scoring system, K rune, etc.
Moderator: Joe, Deputy Chief Editor of Foresight News
Guest: Alton Lim, CEO of Bounty Temple
Edited by: aididiaojp.eth, Foresight News
Host: Please let Alton introduce himself.
Alton Lim: Hello everyone, I am Alton, the CEO of Bounty Temple. I am also an entrepreneur and have made some achievements in the beauty and entertainment industries. I started to get involved in Bitcoin in 2014, when some customers would use Bitcoin to settle payments. At the most, I had more than 10,000 Bitcoins, but I sold them very quickly. A few years ago, our team members purchased a three-star hotel and converted the upstairs into a mining base. The hotel can enjoy preferential electricity prices in Malaysia. Then I love games very much, and often use krypton gold to understand the survival logic of the game. In 2017, I used Bitcoin to buy game props on Steam. While we were playing the chain game, we found quite a lot of problems, and then we thought about how to solve the problems. After a few years of stumbling, we created the new model of Bounty Temple.
Host: How did you learn about Web3 and when did you start to enter this industry?
Alton Lim: I had heard of blockchain games before the pandemic, but I was busy with some traditional business at that time. Then the pandemic happened and I started to study it when I had time. At the beginning, I invested from the perspective of a player, and then my friends also joined in the fun. I invested more and more, and the total investment was about $300,000. At that time, I could make about $50,000 a month. As I invested more and more, I found more and more problems. From the project to the industry itself, it was actually not mature. There were many problems. We started to write down all the problems and try to solve them one by one.
I still remember that the biggest challenge was that in order to make the entire project light and easy to manage, we had to design a solution that could solve multiple problems at the same time. We spent a whole year doing research, and then a new model was born. I started to form a team to raise funds, and it has developed to the present.
Host: What do you think is the reason for Axie Infinity's success?
Alton Lim: I have hundreds of teams in Axie Infinity. The main reason for the success of Axie Infinity is the P2E model. Before the beginning, it allows players or investors to have a certain way to enter the market, allowing players in some low-income countries to make a living through the game. There are two main ways to make money. The first is to synthesize monsters and then sell them to new players to earn the difference. The second is to earn SLP. But the problem is that the price of SLP goes up and down. It skyrocketed twice in 2021. As a result, every player has the mentality that if I earn SLP, I will save it, and if it skyrocketed, I will sell it, so the entire economy began to become unbalanced.
In the P2E model, as long as the token price does not fluctuate too much, the economy can still operate. But if the token price starts to fluctuate violently, 90% of the players will leave because it no longer meets the needs of this market audience. Everyone is in Web3 to make money, and as long as there is uncertainty, it will be a big problem.
We also found that P2E is more popular in Southeast Asian countries. In Europe and the United States, people may not have found a solution to make money continuously, so they gradually moved towards the angle of "more fun games", but in the Southeast Asian market, it may be able to support a group of local people.
Host: Can you analyze the Southeast Asian blockchain game market for us?
Alton Lim: In Southeast Asia, you will hear that blockchain games make more money, rather than that blockchain games are more fun. This is also an important feature of Web3. Everyone's primary goal in Web3 is to make money. Many traditional games are very fun. Why do we need blockchain? Blockchain represents the possibility of profit. So when we come to Web3, profit must come first, and fun games are a bonus.
This situation is very exaggerated in Southeast Asia. I myself have some friends from the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries. Their whole family comes to help me play, which can increase their monthly income by 30% and only requires two hours a day. This is very attractive to some countries with relatively low incomes.
Host: What are your current thoughts and improvements on the sustainability of blockchain games?
Alton Lim: If blockchain games want to get rid of the death spiral, they must make changes in these four pain points: assets and rewards, culture and ecology, game and token usage, and entry process.
The first problem is in terms of assets and rewards, because the player's reward is mainly to earn tokens, and the mentality of each player is that we don't need a bull market, as long as the token price does not continue to fall. The price of playable NFTs will also continue to fall, because there are too many, and the demand is small and the supply is small. Each player enters the market with a gambling mentality, and then hopes to make a profit from it. If they can't make a profit, they will leave. When players play blockchain games for a long time, it seems like they are doing a job without a stable income.
In our new model, we designed a stablecoin called GIA, and its price is 0.1U regardless of the market conditions. The stablecoin design means that we have the ability to resist bear market.
The second issue is culture and ecology. We designed the Barrier Effect mechanism, which is a 75-day coinage speed protection mechanism. No matter when you play our game, you have a 75-day protection mechanism. During these 75 days, players have a certain chance to get their money back. Through the Barrier Effect, we can well guarantee the interests of latecomers, and players can join at any time. We designed a rental system to achieve automatic profit sharing. The playable NFT owner can set the profit sharing ratio. For example, if you want a 50-50 split, then when the player rents it and starts playing, each earned GIA will be automatically divided into their respective wallets in proportion. In addition, we have also set up a rating system SSS to ensure the performance of scholars through a 5-star rating system, and before becoming a scholar, players must verify their accounts through KYC, which can prevent multiple accounts from brushing orders and eliminate players with poor performance.
Why improve your score? We have a system called House of Pluto (HOP) that provides scholars with a clear path to advancement and the possibility of worldwide sponsorship. You can go from being a proxy player to someone with money and a role, so that you can rent out.
The third point is the game and its use. Our game is very simple. It only takes 15 minutes a day to earn 66 GIA, and basically the investment will be paid back in 75 days. The game is very simple, interesting, and dramatic. It is basically a decompression mobile game. In addition, you can imagine that in the second game, I may need some materials from the first game to build weapons. We virtually create needs in different spaces so that it can be traded, exchanged for funds, and enrich the use of props.
The fourth question is the entry process and player growth rate. In order to reduce the burden on players who do not understand Web3, you only need to connect through a subscription account or a media account such as Twitter. Even if you do not have a wallet, the game will automatically create a cloud wallet for you. The highlight of this cloud wallet is that there is no data pool. It is directly bound to your social media account. Then we also have a variety of fission systems that will be slowly launched.
We are actually suitable for all kinds of people. For example, if you want to play for free, you can be a proxy player; if you want to become an NFT holder, you can spend money to buy our BTM (playable NFT); if you just want to invest, you can invest in good players in the HOP system.
Moderator: Why was a 75-day cycle protection mechanism established? Can you explain the GIA stabilization mechanism in more detail?
Alton Lim: Because when we played blockchain games before, we could accept a payback period of two to three months, so the 75 days we designed was just the right balance. We just talked about the GIA stablecoin, which actually has a complete system. First, we stabilize the GIA price at 0.1USDT. You can imagine there are two pools, Pool A and Pool B.
Pool A is always 1 GIA: 0.10 USDT. On the one hand, a certain percentage of the money earned by the company is deposited in Pool A as a reserve. On the other hand, we designed a deposit mechanism. In the initial stage, due to limited supply and increased demand, the price of GIA will rise. In order to stabilize the price, we implemented a pre-allocation strategy, allowing users to deposit USDT to exchange for GIA, and all deposits will be redeemed dynamically. In addition, we have micro-transactions, the so-called hematopoietic function, which players can consume. 40% of all GIA obtained from sales will be automatically converted into TYT and deposited in Pool A, and GIA will be destroyed.
In terms of supply, the total issuance of GIA is unlimited in principle, but it will be filtered through a filter pool and controlled by formulas and logic. Its logic is that burning is equal to twice the casting. For example, if 1,000 have been burned worldwide, there will be 2,000 in this pool for players. Then the 2,000 in the pool will be given priority to players with a 75-day protection mechanism, and the rest will be distributed to those players who have already recovered their investment.
When the total amount of the filter pool drops to 55% within 24 hours, the weather effect will take effect, controlling the minting speed of players who have already recovered their investment. For example, if it is raining today, today's GIA income will be reduced by 20%. Everyone can understand that if I have already recovered my investment, as long as there is profit, it doesn't matter how much, the most important thing is the health of the entire system.
There will be a guild war every week in the game, with 24 guilds fighting each other on a server. One-third of the winning guilds will have the right to earn NFT items for 7 days. During these seven days, the winning guild can automatically earn NFTs of a certain rarity in the castle. NFT materials are based on the drop rate, so they are very valuable. NFT materials have functionality both inside and outside the game, and support cross-game transactions, thereby enhancing demand and tradability in the game.
This allows players to shift their focus to the game content. I earn GIA and then spend it. Why should I spend it? Because I want to win this guild war, and after winning, I can get rare NFTs to make more money. So you can imagine that in traditional games, I didn’t make any money today, but I spent 10 dollars and I’m happy. Here, you make 5 dollars today, I spend 5 dollars today, and then I make another 60 dollars. The purpose of everyone coming here is to make money, but making money and spending are actually contradictory, so we give everyone a reason here, why should you spend? Because you can make more money, and it comes from other players. So the whole set is a magic needle to stabilize the sea.
Pool B is what we open to external institutions to do staking. In a bear market, players see that the fund pool here has sufficient funds, which adds an additional safety net for users to encounter different foreseen challenges, and is also regarded as similar protection.
Then you put Pool A (1:0.1) + Pool B (outside) = Over-pegged
In this way, the more bearish the market is, the stronger we will be, because we will have more new players, and other projects and even other parts of the market will come to a standstill, truly realizing the ability to resist bear markets and become a safe haven for Web3.
Host: In addition to the above four points, what other innovations have helped you fill the gaps in the P2E mechanism?
Alton Lim: We are also players. In other words, we know what players like and what they need. In addition to the NFT rental system and HOP just mentioned, another innovation is the K-Rune. The K-Rune is not an inscription on the market. We have used this name very early on.
In general NFT projects, the purpose of players' transactions is the same, buy low and sell high. And I have to be the early stage person, and everyone's motivation and everyone's actions are the same, so he needs the secondary market to achieve his goals. In addition, these NFTs are actually not functional, so these projects are problematic projects for me.
What is our K-Rune? You no longer need to rely on the secondary market, and you don’t need to want to sell it every day. Because the benefits you can get from holding K-Runes exceed the value you can get from selling them. In our synthesis activities, you can turn it into the first generation of playable NFTs, which we call BTMs. It can give birth to 7 children each time, and then the children can each give birth 7 times to continue the family line. Then the players in the market must have playable NFTs to enter the game. Players can choose to buy or rent. Then as long as the NFT has been traded once in the market, the holder of the K-Rune can earn 1% of the selling price.
The minimum selling price of our BTM playable NFT is $500, and 1% is $5. You can imagine that if there is a $100,000 BTM in the market that is related to you, and then it is traded once in the market, then it will be $500,000 saved there. So you will be motivated to hold it, instead of selling it, so it is an innovation that completely subverts the culture of blockchain games.
Host: What problems did these innovations encounter during the entire development process? Have you done any testing to see whether the current innovations can run well?
Alton Lim: When we were researching the whole set of things in the early stage, we also invited some economic actuaries to test the whole economic model together. How to maintain the stability of the economic system, how much consumer market is needed, etc., the whole set of things are pre-tested. For example, at a certain stage now, we need a certain amount of consumption to avoid the imbalance problem, and then we will operate some in-game products. We solved everything and considered various possibilities before coming out.
In these three years, we have laid a solid foundation and are preparing to be listed on the exchange in March.
Host: We noticed that you have a strategic partnership with Aeonsparx, a very famous developer in Malaysia. Can you tell us how you carried out the cooperation?
Alton Lim: Our cooperation is like this. At the beginning, we set the number of people at 9. Among the 9 people, 3 are fixed, and the other 6 will be mobile and adjusted periodically. I have in-depth communication with the boss of Aeonsparx for 5 to 8 hours every time, and everyone is very dedicated. Traditional game developers are very strong when you tell them to create a fun game because they have been in this field for a long time. But if you tell them about Web3, it may be a complete blank sheet of paper. They have a dream, which is to create a game that players will not leave, but this dream is difficult in the traditional game field. Although there are hundreds of new games every year, you will find that players come and go to play the same few games.
But through Web3, they can actually achieve their desired goal. Because every player will not leave as long as there is money to be made, so this can achieve their goal at the same time. In fact, they also have several games on hand. We are currently launching Bounty Temple, and then we will launch more and more rich chain games one after another. Our goal is to launch 100 games and then realize cross-game transactions.
Host: Apart from Malaysia, which markets will you pay more attention to?
Alton Lim: We not only value the Chinese market, we also have quite a few communities and guilds in Southeast Asia, and we have very good relationships with them. For example, we actually have more than 1,000 blockchain game guilds, and everyone is waiting for our game. It is no problem to have 100,000 players in the early stage. Then we will launch our fission system and let players bring in players. We are optimistic about the Philippines, mainly in the Southeast Asian market, because they have been accustomed to making money through blockchain games for several years, and we also hope to drive another wave of blockchain game craze.
Host: Do you observe the differences between each sub-country in Southeast Asia?
Alton Lim: Yes, because the users or players in each country are different. As we just mentioned, some users prefer the gaming experience, while others focus on the ability to make money. But basically, we will go wherever there are games. At the beginning, the main market was still in Southeast Asia and the Chinese market. In fact, there are also many Western players who come to get the whitelist, such as players from Turkey, Brazil, the United States, Europe and other countries.
Host: Do you play any games yourself? And are you following the latest blockchain games?
Alton Lim: If it is a traditional game, I will continue to play it, because we need to find new games that can relieve stress and can be played for a long time. So I will continue to try new games among traditional games. As for blockchain games, it is very simple. I will directly check whether the white paper solves the four points mentioned above. If it does not solve them, I will not invest.
Host: What do you think of xPET?
Alton Lim: They are actually the ones who make money from the later ones, so my evaluation of this blockchain game will stop here.
