Original | Odaily

Author | 0xAyA

Although the entire market is still in a deep bear state, there are still "mini-games" on the chain that have impressive data performance. For example, the chain game 8192 on Sui recently caused a surge in daily trading volume on the Sui chain, exceeding 20 million transactions and even surpassing Solana's average daily transactions. A3S Protocol, which conducted incentive token issuance activities in the form of mini-games on Arbitrum, also had good data performance. In May of this year, its Mint Queue Earn social experimental activity and AA incentive token distribution attracted participation from over 4,000 addresses, minting over 15,000 NFT addresses in total.

Recently, A3S Protocol launched the second round of incentive token issuance activities on zkSync, using mini-games as the carrier. How did these two rounds of games attract user participation? What are the differences between this activity and the previous one? Does the promotion logic using mini-games as the carrier represent a new direction for the GameFi track? Odaily will introduce them one by one in the following text.

2.0 Gameplay Upgrade, Improving Playability and Strategic Nature

Both rounds of games adopt the "Mint Queue Earn" mechanism, where users have an address and queue for rewards based on factors such as queue time.

The first round of the game used a traditional queuing model, where users mint addresses to join the queue and the person at the front of the queue is rewarded after being pushed out. Looking back at the data performance of that round of games: a total of 15,000 addresses were minted, with 4,600 unique addresses, an average daily active users (DAU) of 500+, and a peak of up to 1,500.

The second round of the game retains the queuing mechanism of the first round, and adjusts and optimizes the game mode based on community feedback. The team has moved the activity to zkSync and changed the original queuing gameplay to snowball rolling, with the addition of position swapping gameplay.

The specific gameplay is as follows: Users need to forge a "snowball" on zkSync, which is essentially an NFT gate control of the A3S address (Kernel). Once users have a snowball, they can start rolling it on the snow path and let it grow into a large snowball. It is more efficient to increase the weight of the snowball by forging it earlier (encouraging users to grab the top mine).

All snowballs that start rolling will be added to the queue on the snow path in order. The initial snow path has 1000 positions, and each new snowball joins the queue by filling the empty positions until all positions are occupied. When the queue is full, each newly added snowball will push all snowballs forward by 1 position. The longer a snowball queues on the snow path, the heavier and larger it becomes. The snowball at the front of the queue will eventually fall into the abyss, where mysterious power will transform the snowball into AA token rewards for users.

In the abyss, players can convert snowballs into AA tokens. There are two factors that affect the rewards: the weight of the snowball and the heat of the abyss.

There are various mechanisms that can affect the weight of the snowball, such as adjusting its position in the queue, extending or shortening the rolling time, attracting more participants through referral links to gain an additional 15% of AA token rewards (5% for the referrer), pledging AA tokens to increase the snowball weight, and winning rewards from the forging pool and the lucky pool.

The heat of the abyss is a number that reflects the environmental conditions. If fewer snowballs fall into the abyss, the heat will rise. As the heat of the abyss increases, snowballs will melt, resulting in less AA tokens being redeemed. Conversely, if more snowballs fall into the abyss, the heat decreases. When the heat of the abyss is maintained at 0, each gram of snowball can be converted into 1 AA token.

It is not difficult to see that in order to increase the final rewards, apart from inviting more people to participate, the most important thing is to find ways to keep your snowball on the snow path for as long as possible, making the order of falling into the abyss crucial. A3S has also introduced items such as the "Gate Exchange" and the "Snow Angel", allowing users to engage in strategic gameplay based on their positions.

The introduction of the heat of the abyss adds more experimental elements to the gameplay and makes the entire process of the game more decentralized. Therefore, the competitiveness of this round of the game is stronger, and users can form different strategies based on their own styles to maximize their interests.

More than just a mini-game, but also a ladder for AA tokens

Compared to the "3A" level chain games that often cost tens of millions to produce, the snowball game of A3S has significantly reduced development and maintenance costs. However, its low cost and simple design showcase a strategic and playable game format.

What is surprising is that A3S is not specifically a GameFi project. The launch of the game is aimed at encouraging users to experience abstract accounts through gamification and token distribution incentive mechanisms, thereby further promoting the project itself and the concept of abstract accounts.

For example, the "snowball" is actually an NFT-based contract account that can store assets and be transferred in batches. It serves more as a "safe deposit box" rather than just a game item. The transferability of addresses brings about the "custodial" feature, which is a unique user scenario of A3S. Users can easily perceive this level of demand within the constructed game scene and thereby appreciate the experience that the product aims to convey.

In its official Medium, A3S states, "We hope to solve the pain points of on-chain interaction, create an efficient, flexible, modular interaction paradigm, and lead users towards a future of intent abstraction."

In addition, A3S also attempts to explore another possibility in the GameFi track, which is a new Ponzi narrative with high playability, low entry barriers, and low production costs. Compared to the traditional GameFi model, the new logic is based on mini-games and has a lighter model, simpler and easier-to-understand rules, and more direct gaming. The emergence of this new logic signifies a new market consensus between project parties and users, and it can also demonstrate remarkable performance.

The GameFi track is still in its early stage of exploration. The possibility of using mini-games for promotion or even as complete products still exists. Will the next explosive success or game changer fall into the former category? Or will it be a highly anticipated "3A" masterpiece or a return to traditional GameFi 1.0? We patiently await further feedback from the market.