SECTION 1: APPLICANT INFORMATION
Provide personal or organizational details, including applicant name, contact information, and any associated organization. This information ensures proper identification and communication throughout the grant process.
Applicant Name: Adam (Flook)
Project Name: Knights of the Ether
Project Description: Knights of the Ether is a web3 gaming ecosystem currently developing three games in partnership with Treasure. Squires has been live on Arbitrum since April 18, 2022 and Blightfell single player has been live on Arbitrum since January 31, 2023, with Blightfell Multiplayer soon to follow.
Home to more than 6,000 unique holders and boasting consistent engagement in-game for the past year of pre-alpha in Blightfell, Knights of the Ether is a mainstay of gaming on Arbitrum poised to quickly expand in Alpha with the assistance of incentives. Our funnel for bringing new users to Arbitrum has been highly successful during our past events and we aim to supercharge this process through LTIPP.
Team Members and Roles:
Adam: CEO and Co-Founder - https://x.com/flook_eth
Ethan: CMO and Co-Founder - https://x.com/edubbbbbb
Gareth: Lead Blockchain Developer - https://x.com/_0xG__
Cruz: Project Manager - https://x.com/JoseEPMCruz
Juan: Senior Game Developer
Everton: Senior Game Developer
Kevin: Junior Game Developer
Hugo: Junior Game Developer - https://x.com/hd_olivares
Connor: Junior Front End Developer - https://x.com/cmoorelabs
Shaun: Technical Art Director
Jeffrey: Character Artist
Cray: Character Artist
Rei: Character Artist
Diego: Environment Artist
Ed: Concept Artist
Yeshy: Key Artist - https://x.com/mattclauer
Nelson: Senior UI Artist
Szerro: Senior Game Designer - https://x.com/Szerr0
Miguel: Senior Game Designer
Fran: Junior Game Designer
Project Links:
Website: https://knightsoftheether.com
Live Game: https://play.knightsoftheether.com
X: https://x.com/knightsoftheeth
Discord: Knights Of The Ether
Marketplace: Knights of the Ether | Treasure
Contact Information:
Point of Contact: Adam (Flook) (Forum handle = Flook)
Point of Contact’s TG handle: @Flook3
Twitter: @Flook_Eth
Email: adam@knightsoftheether.com
Do you acknowledge that your team will be subject to a KYC requirement?: Yes
SECTION 2a: Team and Product Information
Provide details on your team’s past and current experience. Any details relating to past projects, recent achievements and any past experience utilizing incentives. Additionally, please provide further details on the state of your product, audience segments, and how you expect incentives to impact the product’s long-term growth and sustainability.
Team experience (Any relevant experience that may be useful in evaluating ability to ship, or execution with grant incentives. Please provide references knowledgeable about past work, where relevant. If you wish to do so privately, indicate that. [Optional, but recommended]):
Knights of the Ether’s umbrella studio, Merlyn Labs, is home to many experienced game development professionals. Our engineers have worked in core roles on titles such as Remnant 1 and 2, Nightingale, Off the Grid, Fallout Shelter, and a combined 12+ shipped mobile games under various publishers.
Our 2D artists have worked on titles such as Hearthstone, Legends of Runeterra, Gwent, Magic the Gathering: Arena and other popular games in the TcG genre.
Our Art Director and 3D artists have created characters, props and environments for games such as Assassins Creed 3, Apex Legends, The Witcher 2, Need for Speed, Skull and Bones, Halo, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and many more.
Finally, our management team comes with a strong web2 software architecture and marketing background, in addition to being web3 native, having been active in the Ethereum space since 2017. They’ve proven themselves to be capable by scaling the Merlyn Labs games and community in concert with Treasure to one of the largest and most engaged ecosystems on Arbitrum over the past 2 and a half years.
Finally, Flook has served as the Gaming Domain Allocator for the Questbook grant program funded by the Arbitrum DAO for the past 5 months, working closely with 16 accepted grantees from 51 total applicants in the indie games industry to help facilitate their growth on Arbitrum.
What novelty or innovation does your product bring to Arbitrum?
Knights of the Ether brings highly replayable and strategically deep gameplay built in concert with extensive onchain economic loops. Fully composable and dynamic onchain RPG characters mix and match their gear, delve into newly generated dungeon maps every 24 hours, earn onchain loot drops from boss battles, and compete in live tournaments hosted on the Treasure platform.
- Onchain Economics
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Each day hundreds of users drop into Blightfell as an onchain character, composed of onchain gear, and defeat bosses that drop onchain items such as potions, trinkets or gear. These NFTs are bought, sold and traded peer to peer on the Treasure platform, adding a highly engaging and social aspect to the Blightfell ecosystem. Onchain economies provide an extra layer of metagame on top of the core gaming loop that attracts a new type of player and community member that has real ‘skin in the game.’
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Potions and trinkets from these in-game drops can also be used in other ways beyond buying/selling. Burn potions and trinkets to clear corruption in the Bridgeworld Harvester, or add gear to your Knight character to change its in-game appearance and its onchain metadata. Combine rings with fief to upgrade them from level 1 up to level 5, then equip those rings to enhance the Royal Tier of your character, to increase the amount of Experience gained when defeating bosses.
- Composable and dynamic onchain RPG characters
- Like ERC-6551 but before ERC-6551… Our Knight and Villager characters are made up of 12 individual layers, ranging from helmets, to weapons, to boots and everything in between. Each individual piece is its own NFT that can be leveled up and swapped on and off, creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The Character NFT is a container for these individual pieces, extending the thrill of RPG character creation onchain.
- Live Tournaments
- One of the main features of Blightfell are our Tournament events. These bring new and old users alike to participate in Leaderboard competitions among different verticals such as Top Score, Speed Run and Max Health. As the main competitive and social layer of this single player game, these events bring a huge amount of engagement from both players and content creators. By compressing the events into 1-3 weeks we are able to break through the usual noise on web3 gaming socials with a condensed blast of content. We find that the higher the rewards, the higher the engagement and wider the top of the funnel is for onboarding new users to Blightfell.
Is your project composable with other projects on Arbitrum? If so, please explain:
Yes, composability and interoperability is at the heart of our studio and games.
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During our Mydsummer Madness campaign we dropped unique gear pieces based on other games’ lore to players who defeated our dungeons while holding characters from our partners’ collections in their wallets. 18 separate projects participated in this event including well-known brands such as Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult, Outerverse and Degenheim.
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More recently we featured two whitelisted leaderboard tournaments specifically tailored to the Waypoint gaming community and the Smolverse nft project, allowing only their holders to compete in Blightfell for unique, exclusive prizes tailored to their communities and lore, such as a Smol Brain 1/1 modeled after one of our Knights.
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We have also had ongoing interoperability with Treasure’s Bridgeworld for the past 7 months through the novel use of our in-game items in the Thundermane Harvester. Additionally, Imbued Souls from the Lifeverse game can be used to boost drop rates in our Squires game.
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Finally, deeper interoperability is in process for Realm, The Beacon, Mighty Action Heroes, Kuroro Beasts, Zeeverse and Smol Brains to have playable characters in Knights of the Ether.
But that’s not all. Future interoperability revolves around User Generated Content, partner collection integrations and collaborative tournament events with shared leaderboards and achievements.
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Users and partner projects will be able to create their own dungeon maps with billions of possible combinations across enemies, rewards, paths, and more. This creates a cambrian explosion of content both within the game and the community.
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Partners will be able to permisionlessly plugin to our onchain economy to use our items within their game. We are currently working on the first iteration of this in partnership with another game on Arbitrum yet to be released.
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Lastly, group events based around competitive leaderboards and cross-game achievements powered by the Treasure ecosystem will usher in a new social layer of competition and cross-project interoperability.
Do you have any comparable protocols within the Arbitrum ecosystem or other blockchains?
Comparable projects within the Arbitrum ecosystem would be other web3 games building on Treasure such as Kaiju Cards, Kuroro Beasts and Zeeverse.
How do you measure and think about retention internally? (metrics, target KPIs)
As our game is still in pre-alpha, we focus on driving engagement and retention around what we call ‘event-based gameplay.’ These are 2-3 week events that showcase the latest developments in-game, boasting leaderboards, exclusive loot drops, and partner collaborations. Retaining during these events is extremely important and is centered around both WAU and MAU. Drop-off after these events is expected as we return as a studio to building towards feature complete and Alpha Launch.
As we move into Alpha and Beta this year we will shift to a focus on retention through target KPIs and focused UA spending. This incentives program times well with our roadmap.
Some specific metrics we aim to track during Alpha and Beta are as follows:
- DAU, WAU, MAU
- D1, D7, and D30 Retention Rates
- Average CCU’s
- Onchain Transaction Volume
- Secondary Marketplace Volume
- Conversion Rates from F2P to Paid
These analytics will be powered by our partner, Helika.
Relevant usage metrics - Please refer to the OBL relevant metrics chart 1. For your category (DEX, lending, gaming, etc) please provide a list of all respective metrics as well as all metrics in the general section:
For a complete list of metrics ranging from DAU to MAU, daily expeditions and marketplace volume up until the month of February please refer to this google sheet: Blightfell Metrics Public
We are currently in the process of overhauling our analytics systems and aim to go live with new metric-tracking software powered by Helika at the beginning of April, with our Alpha Launch.
Do you agree to remove team-controlled wallets from all milestone metrics AND exclude team-controlled wallets from any incentives included in your plan: Yes
Did you utilize a grants consultant or other third party not named as a grantee to draft this proposal? If so, please disclose the details of that arrangement here, including conflicts of interest (Note: this does NOT disqualify an applicant): Yes, Pta and Noisewar from Treasure.
SECTION 2b: PROTOCOL DETAILS
Provide details about the Arbitrum protocol requirements relevant to the grant. This information ensures that the applicant is aligned with the technical specifications and commitments of the grant.
Is the protocol native to Arbitrum?: Yes
On what other networks is the protocol deployed?: None
What date did you deploy on Arbitrum mainnet?: April 18, 2022: Arbitrum Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Arbiscan
Do you have a native token?: Planned for late this year, yet the tokenomics are not finalized. The token launch is not expected to overlap with the dispersal of ARB incentives during the LTIPP window.
Past Incentivization: What liquidity mining/incentive programs, if any, have you previously run? Please share results and dashboards, as applicable?
The only token incentive program we’ve run has been small-scale $magic rewards for leaderboard tournaments during our previous events. The LTIPP would be the first true incentive program to run through our game ecosystem.
Below are some examples of metrics during previous incentive periods. As you can see, we receive an immediate spike in participation and retain well through the 4-week periods.
Event WAU and MAU examples:
July 2023: (Incentives = 900 Ancient Permits for Bridgeworld and a 1,000 $magic grand prize)
Mydsummer Madness WAU - 1,317
Mydsummer Madness MAU - 1,682
November 2023: (Incentives = $8,000)
All Hallows Eve WAU - 1,538
All Hallows Eve MAU - 2,362
Current Incentivization: How are you currently incentivizing your protocol?
The only current incentivization are small collectible NFT drops in the form of Potions and Trinkets. These go for .2 - .8 $magic on the marketplace. Each character can earn up to 2 to 4 of these per completed expedition per 24 hours.
Have you received a grant from the DAO, Foundation, or any Arbitrum ecosystem related program? [yes/no, please provide any details around how the funds were allocated and any relevant results/learnings(Note: this does NOT disqualify an applicant)]
Yes, we received a 6-figure grant from the Arbitrum Foundation in the first cohort which has gone solely to development funds for engineering, art and UI.
Protocol Performance: [Detail the past performance of the protocol and relevance, including any key metrics or achievements, dashboards, etc.]
During our last major release event, ‘Mydsummer Madness’ (an early vertical slice of our game) we attracted over 6,000 unique users to Blightfell. The event culminated in 9,873 unique mints. For many of these users, this was their first time using Arbitrum:
- Of the 7,354 wallets that minted a Villager during Mydsummer Madness, 1,647 of them only had one single transaction on Arbitrum before interacting with the KOTE ecosystem… bridging funds over to Arbitrum! These are brand new wallets (and ostensibly users) joining the Arbitrum ecosystem because they wanted to play Blightfell.
- For these 1,647 wallets, the median number of transactions during the month of Mydsummer Madness was 42 transactions, and this was beforeo\ our onchain in-game metric tracking was live, which would have more than 100x’d this number.
- Between Day 1 and Day 28 of Mydsummer Madness, we more than tripled our daily active users to > 900! Quite an achievement for a web3 game at an early stage of development.
- Additionally, we ended up trending #1 on Opensea for 24 hour volume at the peak of our event.
Some additional statistics that suggest our game is highly responsible for bringing new and extremely engaged users to Arbitrum:
- 2,941 wallets interacted with a KOTE contract within their first 10 transactions on Arbitrum, meaning they most likely joined the Arbitrum ecosystem through Knights of the Ether
- These wallets are responsible for 114,472 transactions on Arbitrum so far as of March 1st.
This is our value proposition for the DAO.
We will bring highly active users from other chains and projects to Arbitrum through our game. These users will stick in the ecosystem and go on to transact across multiple games and protocols. We’ve done this before with minimal incentives and a grassroots approach. With LTIPP incentives we can supercharge this process for extensive growth of net new users on Arbitrum.
Protocol Roadmap: [Describe relevant roadmap details for your protocol or relevant products to your grant application. Include tangible milestones over the next 12 months.]
March 25: Blightfell Single Player Alpha Launch
- Overhauled User Interface
- Server Upgrades
- Map Generation Rework
- Gear Upgrading in the Blacksmith
- Leaderboards
May 1 - August 1: Play to Rip Campaign
- Battle Pass
- Blacksmith
- XP System
- Loot Boxes
August 1: REDACTED Pre-Alpha, Treasure Chain Integration and PvP Pre-Alpha
- Airdrops for Play to Rip winners
- Playtesting and Events for PvP
- REDACTED Launch
October 1: PvP Open Alpha, Blightfell Global Launch
- Fantasy Chain
- Alpha Features Completed
- Leaderboard Tournaments
November 1: REDACTED Alpha
January 1: PvP Alpha
Audit History & Security Vendors: [Provide historic audits and audit results. Do you have a bug bounty program? Please provide details around your security implementation including any advisors and vendors.]
We’ve received an informal security audit from a friend who is a red-team professional employed at a major CEX. No major attack vectors were located. We do not currently have a bug bounty program but we take security very seriously amongst our internal team.
Security Incidents: [Has your protocol ever been exploited? If so, please describe what, when and how for ALL incidents as well as the remedies to solve and mitigate for future incidents]
No
SECTION 3: GRANT INFORMATION
Detail the requested grant size, provide an overview of the budget breakdown, specify the funding and contract addresses, and describe any matching funds if relevant.
Requested Grant Size: 240,000 ARB
Justification for the size of the grant 6: [Enter explanation. More details are better, including how you arrived at the required funding for individual categories of expenses covered by your grant plan]
Each of the following three expense streams are carefully crafted to form a tripod supporting the growth of Knights of the Ether and gaming on Arbitrum. Battle Pass & Loot Boxes, Leaderboard Events, and Targeted Community Onboarding.
- As a main driver of daily engagement and retention, our Battle Pass and Loot Box program will greatly benefit from the added value of ARB incentives from the DAO. Most Live Operations games focus heavily on these verticals in order to retain users because of the stickiness associated with forward-progress and unlockables. This is the main incentive stream and the reason users will stick around once funneled in.
Half of our expected grant, 120,000 ARB, will go directly to this stream as it is the core of our player progression loop. With both free and premium tracks, new and existing users alike will both benefit greatly from these incentives and we expect this relatively high $ amount in the web3 gaming space to attract a huge cohort of new users who will flock from other gaming ecosystems, bringing their engagement and liquidity with them. Standing out from the crowd is key for gaining the necessary attention to onboard gamers from competing web3 gaming ecosystems on other chains.
- Skill-based gameplay is at the core of the Knights of the Ether community. We’ve run multiple successful Leaderboard Events in the past which bring a very strong cohort of committed and engaged players back to our game day after day. A balance of rewards for the top players and the average player is extremely important here and this stream focuses on incentivizing the former, whereas the average player is incentivized through the Battle Pass and Loot Box program. Top players are also whales in the Knights of the Ether community, and their willingness to spend and grease the wheels of our onchain economy is driven by their desire to achieve rewards from topping the leaderboards.
These leaderboards will reward both holders of our Battle Pass and free-to-play users. These Leaderboards will run for the first and third weeks of each month, with a rest period during the in-between weeks of each month to prevent competitive burnout.
Additionally, these Leaderboard Events will be hosted on the Treasure platform. In previous Tournaments hosted there, Knights of the Ether has seen up to 2,300 participants with incentives ranging between 2,000 to 8,000 magic per weekly leaderboard. With the added ARB incentives totaling 18,000 ARB per week, we expect to at least quadruple the amount of participants to approximately 10,000 in Season 1.
- Knights of the Ether has had great success with grassroots marketing partnerships for our previous events. For this Targeted Community Onboarding Program we have a large network of gaming guilds and web3 communities that we are deeply intertwined with including Gaming Chronicles, Waypoint, Wardens, Socials Rising, Paladins DAO, Wolves DAO, Infinigods, Kratos, IndiGG, BharatGG and many more. By allocating ARB token incentives for a handpicked group of whitelisted web3 gamers within these communities, we can see a much higher rate of User Acquisition and Retention.
We will also tailor exclusive in-game quests and leaderboard tournaments for these communities, even grouping them into teams or guilds to compete against one another. This is a great way to attract eyeballs in the public arena and drive more users to the Arbitrum chain to experience all of the games and DeFi protocols it has to offer.
Grant Matching: [Enter Amount of Matching Funds Provided - If Relevant]
During these Battle Pass seasons, our studio will match the grant funds with a few of our own incentives including:
- Limited Edition Card Packs for our upcoming PvP game
- Potions, Trinkets, Rings and Gear NFTs
- $magic Rewards
Grant Breakdown: [Please provide a high-level overview of the budget breakdown and planned use of funds]
The grant funds will be disbursed through three separate streams over the 12-week period.
- Battle Pass and Loot Box Incentives: 10,000 ARB per week = 120,000 ARB
- Leaderboard Incentives: 16,000 ARB per week across 6 weeks = 96,000 ARB
- Targeted Community Onboarding Incentives: 2,000 ARB per week = 24,000 ARB
Total = 240,000 ARB
Battle Pass and Loot Box Incentives
The 120,000 ARB tokens for this stream will be distributed as follows:
-
2,500 ARB placed randomly throughout loot box drops each week, with amounts varying based on 5 rarities:
- Common: 1
- Uncommon: 2
- Rare: 3
- Epic: 5
- Legendary: 10
- Not all Loot Boxes will contain ARB tokens.
- Loot Boxes will be seeded with ARB tokens on a random rolling basis to prevent supply from running out at the beginning of each week.
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30,000 ARB dispersed evenly to all users who reach level 50 on each month’s Premium Battle Pass Track
Leaderboard Incentives
The 96,000 ARB tokens for this stream will be distributed as follows:
- 1,600 ARB tokens a day for each of the 7 days in all 6 weeks of leaderboards, distributed as follows to holders of the Battle Pass:
- 1st: 100 ARB
- 2nd: 80 ARB
- 3rd: 50 ARB
- 4th: 33 ARB
- 5th: 16.5 ARB
- 6th - 10th: 10 ARB
- 11th - 25th: 8 ARB
- 26th - 50th: 7 ARB
- 51st - 100th: 5 ARB
- 101st - 350th: 2 ARB
- 351st - 500th: 1.5 ARB
- 685 ARB tokens a day for each of the 7 days in all 6 weeks of leaderboards, distributed as follows to free-to-play users:
- 1st: 23 ARB
- 2nd: 20 ARB
- 3rd: 15 ARB
- 4th: 14 ARB
- 5th: 13 ARB
- 6th - 10th: 10 ARB
- 11th - 50th: 5 ARB
- 51st - 100th: 3 ARB
- 101st - 200th: 2 ARB
Targeted Community Onboarding Incentives
There are three buckets for allocating the 24,000 ARB set aside for this stream:
- Bespoke leaderboard events for specific communities: 1,000 ARB per week across 3 weeks
- 4 game or gaming guild communities per leaderboard
- Onchain quests run through the BOOST platform and the Treasure Platform: 1,000 ARB per week across 6 weeks
- Example quests include Monsters Defeated, Speed Run Challenges, Daily Streaks, Etc.
- Rebates for WL’d users within these communities (and for existing holders based on a snapshot before this event) for purchasing Knights, Initiated Knights, Squires or Initiated Villagers from the Treasure Marketplace: 1,250 ARB per week across 12 weeks
Funding Address: [Enter the specific address where funds will be sent for grant recipients]
0x3Cba613CE27ef3c52fF4c3d641fe248FCDDD0c06
Funding Address Characteristics: [Enter details on the status of the address; the eligible address must be a 2/3, 3/5 or similar setup multisig with unique signers and private keys securely stored (or an equivalent custody setup that is clearly stated). The multisig must be able to accept and interact with ERC-721s in order to accept the funding stream.
⅔ Safe Multisig
Treasury Address: N/A
Contract Address: 0xD152f549545093347A162Dce210e7293f1452150
We will use disperse.app to disperse incentive rewards. More info on this process in Section 4 below.
SECTION 4: GRANT OBJECTIVES, EXECUTION AND MILESTONES
Clearly outline the primary objectives of the program and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), execution strategy, and milestones used to measure success. This helps reviewers understand what the program aims to achieve and how progress will be assessed.
Objectives: [Clearly state the primary objectives of the grant and what you intend to achieve]
This grant will enable Knights of the Ether to onboard thousands of new, active users to Blightfell and therefore Arbitrum. Through cleverly crafted incentives, tried and true retention mechanisms, plus highly targeted WL’s and rebates to tight-knit gaming communities, our supercharged growth will directly result in more players and liquidity on Arbitrum. The ceiling for impact is extremely high, as pooling new users onto Arbitrum at the beginning of this cycle can have tremendous network effects.
Execution Strategy: [Describe the plan for executing including token distribution method (e.g. farming, staking, bonds, referral program, etc), what you are incentivizing, resources, products, use of funds, and risk management. This includes allocations for specific pools, eligible assets, products, etc.]
TLDR:
- Tokens distributed through Battle Passes, Loot Boxes, Leaderboard Rewards, Targeted Community Incentives and Marketplace Rebates
- Incentivizing User Acquisition, Monthly Retention, New Arbitrum Users/Liquidity, Onchain Transactions, and Marketplace Volume
- The main product is the Blightfell Single Player game
- Use of funds is distributed across three buckets as outlined in the Grant Breakdown
- Risk management includes multisig and hardware wallet signing as well as internal audits
A bit of info around how rewards will be tracked for loot boxes:
-
User finishes a game of Blightfell and receives a lootbox as a drop
1.1 The server mints a loot box nft on arbitrum nova to that users wallet. -
User decides to open this loot box which is done off-chain
2.1 The server burns the loot box nft and generates loot off-chain
2.2 The server stores which loot the user has received -
Every 7 days we will tally up all ARB rewards and airdrop them using the disperse app.
The reasoning for this process is so we can minimize risk by storing the ARB in a multisig and verify legitimate rewards before sending. We are an off-chain game so to completely remove the possibility of an exploit this is the best way to handle the funds.
See Section 3, Justification for the Grant, for further information.
What mechanisms within the incentive design will you implement to incentivize “stickiness” whether it be users, liquidity or some other targeted metric? [Provide relevant design and implementation details]
Incentives are spread across 3 1-month-long seasons and are allocated in chunks each week across multiple buckets. Users will be highly incentivized to start and complete the Battle Pass each of the 3 seasons, based on the increasing quality of rewards as a user moves from level 1 to level 50. This classic live ops mechanism leads to strong retention in games with refined core gameplay loops.
Additionally, Leaderboards will help to attract top quality gamers focused on earning through skill.
Finally, by meeting gamers where they are, spread out across various communities, and onboarding them with targeted incentives, we can attract the type of user that is more likely to be retained, as opposed to airdrop farmers who may take advantage of a protocol and then subsequently jump to the next thing.
Specify the KPIs that will be used to measure success in achieving the grant objectives and designate a source of truth for governance to use to verify accuracy. [Please also justify why these specific KPIs will indicate that the grant has met its objective. Distribution of the grant itself should not be one of the KPIs.]
See below
Grant Timeline and Milestones: [Describe the timeline for the grant, including ideal milestones with respective KPIs. Include at least one milestone that shows progress en route to a final outcome. Please justify the feasibility of these milestones.]
As all of the LTIPP incentives will be distributed through 3 separate seasons of gameplay, spread across 3 individual milestones, we can batch KPIs into three buckets.
At the end of each season we should expect Knights of the Ether to hit at least 3 out of the 5 stated milestones to justify the continued dispersion of incentives in the next season.
Season 1 (Weeks 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the LTIPP incentive stream):
80,000 $ARB
- MAU: 10,000
- Peak WAU: 3,000
- Peak DAU: 2,000
- Marketplace Volume: $45,000 USD (denominated in $MAGIC)
- Onchain Transactions: 20,000
Season 2 (Weeks 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the LTIPP incentive stream):
80,000 $ARB
- MAU: 15,000
- Peak WAU: 4,000
- Peak DAU: 2,500
- Marketplace Volume: $50,000 USD (denominated in $MAGIC)
- Onchain Transactions: 30,000
Season 3 (Weeks 9, 10, 11 and 12 of the LTIPP incentive stream):
80,000 $ARB
- MAU: 20,000
- Peak WAU: 5,000
- Peak DAU: 3,000
- Marketplace Volume: $55,000 USD (denominated in $MAGIC)
- Onchain Transactions: 40,000
How will receiving a grant enable you to foster growth or innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem? [Clearly explain how the inputs of your program justify the expected benefits to the DAO. Be very clear and tangible, and you must back up your claims with data]
Knights of the Ether (and indie gaming in general) is a hyper-effective top of funnel user acquisition mechanism for Arbitrum. As shown with data above in Section 2b, users who try our game often stick around as users on Arbitrum, not only to play Blightfell but to explore other Arbitrum games and protocols as well. As shown previously in our application, our events with minimal incentives draw a large new cohort of gamers to Arbitrum. Our game is eye-catching and virtually frictionless to play for the first time in-browser serving as a targeted foot in the door to onboard new Arbitrum users.
Additionally, these new users log transactions onchain with each play through. Every time a user beats a boss in our game, 10 erc-1155 tokens of Blightfell XP are airdropped to their wallet on Arbitrum Nova. This simple onchain tracking and reward mechanism helps us to see a very clear relationship between new users playing Blightfell and elevated transaction volume on Arbitrum.
So far, Blightfell is responsible for 120,568 transactions on Arbitrum One and Nova. We expect to double these transactions between now and the end of the LTIPP incentives phase of 12-weeks as well as attract many users to transact on Arbitrum in the years to come.
Do you accept the funding of your grant streamed linearly for the duration of your grant proposal, and that the multisig holds the power to halt your stream? Yes
SECTION 5: Data and Reporting
OpenBlock Labs has developed a comprehensive data and reporting checklist for tracking essential metrics across participating protocols. Teams must adhere to the specifications outlined in the provided link here: Onboarding Checklist from OBL 3. Along with this list, please answer the following:
Is your team prepared to comply with OBL’s data requirements for the entire life of the program and three months following and then handoff to the Arbitrum DAO? Are there any special requests/considerations that should be considered?
Yes we are prepared to comply. As some of our onchain metrics are tracked on Nova, which is not yet supported by Dune, we will need to share pivot tables created in Sheets as part of our metric tracking. This is also how we report our KPIs to the Arbitrum Foundation for the grant we received from them.
Does your team agree to provide bi-weekly program updates on the Arbitrum Forum thread that reference your OBL dashboard? [Please describe your strategy and capabilities for data/reporting]
Yes, we are happy to collate data from our pivot tables and onchain metrics to give bi-weekly program updates in the forum.
*First Offense: In the event that a project does not provide a bi-weekly update, they will be reminded by an involved party (council, advisor, or program manager). Upon this reminder, the project is given 72 hours to complete the requirement or their funding will be halted.
Second Offense: Discussion with an involved party (advisor, pm, council member) that will lead to understanding if funds should keep flowing or not.
Third Offense: Funding is halted permanently
Does your team agree to provide a final closeout report not later than two weeks from the ending date of your program? This report should include summaries of work completed, final cost structure, whether any funds were returned, and any lessons the grantee feels came out of this grant. Where applicable, be sure to include final estimates of acquisition costs of any users, developers, or assets onboarded to Arbitrum chains. (NOTE: No future grants from this program can be given until a closeout report is provided.)
Yes
Does your team acknowledge that failure to comply with any of the above requests can result in the halting of the program’s funding stream?: [Y/N]
Yes