With k million raised and more than 1.3 million registered users, can Nyan Heroes, a Solana ecological 3A chain game, ignite GameFi?

Original | Odaily

Author | Asher

With Bitcoin hitting an all-time high this year, the entire encryption market continues to be hot, and the expected Bull Market is coming, and in this craze, GameFi has become one of the focus of community discussion for a while. So, in the current fierce competition among longest chain game projects, what kind of chain game can really stimulate the frenzy of the encryption market and even break the circle?

During the two-week pre-alpha campaign, more than 1.3 million users registered, more than 45,000 daily active users, and more than 700,000 unique active Wallets. Such data results made Odaily Planet Daily pay attention to Nyan Heroes, the head GameFi project of the Solnan ecosystem.

Nyan Heroes is a third-person shooter built on Solana Blockchain that combines fast-paced competitive gameplay with real-world influences, powered by Unreal Engine 5 and Blockchain, and offers a triple-A long player gaming experience with unique mechanical characters and gameplay abilities, Nyan Heroes is reportedly the flagship chain game project supported by the Solana Foundation. **Below, Odaily Planet Daily comprehensively explores Solana’s ecological 3A chain game masterpiece Nyan Heroes from the perspectives of team information, project playability, Token economic model, and internal testing data. **

Reasons why GameFi can’t be adopted on a large scale right now

In the eyes of Web 2 users, Web 3 is seen as a new and uncharted territory with long potential and possibilities, but also challenges and obstacles. And how to promote its mass adoption has always been the goal of practitioners. If Web 3 will eventually replace Web 2, then there is no doubt that GameFi will become the sharpest weapon in the Web 3 camp.

Therefore, GameFi zone is favored by practitioners. They have learned the lessons learned from the previous wave of chain games and continued to polish, resulting in a large number of new GameFi projects emerging in this round of market. However, it seems that there has yet to be a case where the Play to Earn concept has been as successful as Axie Infinity, or the combination of sports and gaming like StepN, and with excellent marketing and operations, has brought more long Web 2 users into GameFi. According to the feedback of a large number of members of the chain game community, Odaily Planet Daily concluded that there are the following problems in the chain game:

• Token activity incentives are insufficient, and there are few participating users.
• The server is unstable and goes down frequently.
• The game is not replayable and does not attract the Depth of Player Engagement.
• Web 2 user base is weak, and Token has a death spiral.

These problems are common in the current chain game, which can be said to be a common problem, and the weak user base of Web 2 is one of the fatal problems. However, when we look at Nyan Heroes’ pre-alpha activity data, one of them stands out in particular: “20% of players are from Web 2 games”. This may mean that we have really found the next GameFi project that could become a hit - Nyan Heroes.

Nyan Heroes: Game Playability + Token Incentives

Basic Overview

Nyan Heroes is a third-person shooter based on the Solana ecosystem, where the player takes on the role of a kitten piloting a giant mech, using unique abilities and advanced feline moves to track down targets and defeat opponents.

The Nyan Heroes team has extensive experience in game development, with members working on high-profile titles such as Destiny, Halo, Mass Effect, and Assassin Creed for longing years. At the same time, Nyan Heroes has a strong ecosystem partner. The chain game is supported by giant companies such as Razer, Xterio, Immutable, Superverse, NeoTokyo, Elixir, Hyperplay, Saga, etc., and has reached Depth cooperation with esports giants such as G2 Esports, Fnatic, and Evil Geniuses, and will hold large-scale esports events with mainstream live streaming platform Twitch in the future.

Regarding the financing, according to CRYPTO fundraising data and official information, Nyan Heroes has conducted longest rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of up to $13 million, and the specific information is:

On November 3, 2021, it announced the closing of a $2.5 million seed round led by Three Arrows Capital and others.

On May 10, 2022, it announced the completion of a $7.5 million strategic financing at a valuation of $100 million, with participation from Kosmos Ventures and others.

On March 14, 2024, the closing of $3 million was announced, and this round of investment was led by Mechanism Capital, with participation from Sfermion and others.

Nyan Heroes Financing

Playability of Nyan Heroes

Currently, Nyan Heroes’ Season 2 is in full swing, and in order to attract more long users to join it, Nyan Heroes has launched a lucrative Token Airdrop campaign to incentivize. Whether you’re a veteran player who has played Season 1 or a new player who is just getting to know Nyan Heroes, there’s a chance to earn great rewards.

On the one hand, for all users, they only need to visit the official website of the event and register via Twitter to participate. Then, complete a series of simple social tasks, such as following, liking, retweeting, etc., to earn Catnip rewards, which can be directly exchanged for NYAN Tokens in the future. In addition, by inviting friends to participate in the event, users will also receive more long Catnip rewards, contributing to the expansion of the community, so that more long people can enjoy the fun and rewards brought by Nyan Heroes.

Register to participate in interactive activities

Activity-related tasks

On the other hand, Nyan Heroes will launch a two-week free in-game experience for all users on May 8th, giving users the opportunity to experience joy in the game while earning more long Catnip rewards. It’s worth mentioning that in previous playtests, Nyan Heroes was one of the few triple-A games that long received positive feedback from traditional players, and its engaging gaming experience not only attracted a large number of Web 2 content creators and their audiences, but also won widespread acclaim, and those who experienced the game even forgot that it was a Web 3 game for a while.

The main game experience interface of a live broadcast

The economic model of Nyan Heroes

According to the official announcement of Nyan Heroes, its native Token is NYAN, and the total supply of Tokens is 1 billion and will not be issued. The team said that NYAN will exist as a deflationary Token, which will be repurchased and burned in the future through market fee income, minting income and studio income to achieve deflation of the Token. The rate of deflation will depend on actual network activity and market transactions.

NYAN Token Mechanism

For the initial 1 billion NYAN, the distribution ratio is as follows:

• Community Rewards: 335,000,000 NYAN, 33.5% of the total supply. This part of the Token will be used for Airdrop Season, in-game rewards, competition prize pool activities, etc.;
• Ecosystem: 165,000,000 NYAN, 16.5% of the total supply. This portion of Token will be used indirectly to the community through IP expansion, partnerships, and strategic rise opportunities;
• Early Investors: 220,000,000 NYAN, 22% of total supply;
• Team & Advisors: 180,000,000 NYAN, 18% of total supply;
• Strategic Investors: 70,000,000 NYAN, 7% of total supply;
• Liquidity & Market Making: 30,000,000 NYAN, 3% of total supply.
  

NYAN Token Economic Model

Nyan Heroes’s Pre-alpha data and recent updates

Pre-alpha period data review

On March 26th, Nyan Heroes was officially launched on the Epic Games Store, where all players can download and participate in the Epic Games Points Earning Program.

During the two-week pre-alpha campaign, Nyan Heroes achieved impressive results, according to official data: more than 1.3 million user registrations, more than 700,000 unique active wallets, and more than 45,000 daily active users. At the same time, Nyan Heroes has been downloaded more than 200,000 times on the Epic Games Store and managed to enter the top five most popular games on the Epic Games Store and one of the 30 most popular games in the world.

Statistics during pre-alpha events (some data are updated)

These data show that Nyan Heroes not only attracted a large number of Web 3 players during the beta phase, but also organically integrated with Web 2, and was supported and loved by a group of Web 2 players and live streamers. This provides favorable conditions for Nyan Heroes to successfully “break the circle” after the official open beta, bringing an opportunity for it to enter the Web 2 game industry.

Season 2 is now officially underway

On May 1st, the team announced the end of the Season 1 Token Airdrop event and kicked off the Season 2 Token Airdrop event with the theme: Hunt For Catnip.

Season 2 Token Airdrop Event: Hunt For Catnip

Compared to Season 1 MEOW Points, Catnip will be more valuable and harder to earn in Season 2 events. Due to the high barrier to entry, those who work tirelessly will have access to a more generous reward pool.

Meanwhile, the highlight of this season’s event is the launch of a new Matchmaking Ranking System (MMR) on May 8, designed to improve competitive skills and distribute rewards to high-quality players. Whether you’re a seasoned Crypto Veterans in Season 1 or a newcomer just getting ready to take part in Season 2, MMR will match players with other players of similar skill level to improve their strategic skills.

Depending on the player’s rank at the end of the season, they will receive additional Catnip rewards, with the higher the rank, the greater the rewards. At the end of Season 2, Catnip will be exchanged directly for NYAN Tokens. Finally, the team also said that the Token Airdrop campaign will not only be limited to two quarters, but will also introduce more long and fun events in the future to motivate real players.

Nyan Heroes will lead the next generation of GameFi new paradigms

In the gaming world, whether it’s Web 2 or Web 3, there is a certain game longevity for any game. Specifically, League of Legends is a prime example. Developed by Riot Games, this longest online battle arena game was released in 2009 and quickly won the hearts of a large number of players due to its rich gameplay content and competitive atmosphere. However, as time went on, the popularity of League of Legends waned, and despite Riot Games’ constant updates to content and events, the game’s longevity suffered.

Web 3 games present unique challenges relative to Web 2 games. On the one hand, Web 3 games struggle to attract Web 2 users due to lack of playability, which leads to a severe shortage of user bases. On the other hand, the flawed Token economic model of Web 3 games attracted a large number of “digging and selling” users, and these two factors superimposed on each other, causing the Token price to continue to fall, thereby reducing the life of the game and eventually leading to the end of the game.

Take Axie Infinity and StepN, for example, although they innovated on the Token economy model, they faced serious problems when the game progressed to the later stages. Due to the serious shortage of Web 2 user base and the high threshold for new Web 3 users, there were not enough new users to pay for old users, and the Token Big Dump all the way until finally the game was no longer mentioned, ending its short-lived glory.

First of all, Nyan Heroes provides players with a rich game experience by constantly polishing the game, increasing the playability of the game, and enriching and longing game content and gameplay design. This allows the game to satisfy users who really love the game, giving it a good Web 2 user base during the beta phase. This foundation not only maintains the popularity of the game, but also hopes to latency the life of the game and become the core of the game’s development.

Secondly, Nyan Heroes chose the most discussed ecology in this round of Bull Market - Solana ecology. In the Solana ecosystem, there are a large number of active Web 3 users, which provides the possibility for Nyan Heroes to continue to attract Web 3 users. By combining with the Solana ecosystem, Nyan Heroes has been able to gain wider attention and support, providing a strong impetus for the continued development of the game.

Finally, Nyan Heroes adopted longest batches of continuously optimized token incentives, which further increased the stickiness of users. In this way, games are better able to motivate user engagement and retention, laying a solid foundation for the game’s long-term development.

In summary, Nyan Heroes not only makes precise decisions in game design and ecological selection, but also continues to innovate in Token Economic Model and User Incentives. Therefore, Nyan Heroes is expected to be a pioneer in leading the next generation of GameFi new paradigms, bringing new vitality and development opportunities to Web 3 and opening a new chapter in the gaming world.