CoinMarketCap takes a deep dive into Genopets, a Solana-based play-to-earn game that rewards players for staying fit, both physically and mentally.
Genopets was co-founded by Albert Chen and Benjamin Tse. Chen is a serial entrepreneur that has expertise in engineering, economics, and marketing. Tse, on the other hand, has been working in the blockchain space since 2016 and has over 16 years of experience in product design, UI/UX, and SaaS. He briefly held a stint as an advisor for the multi-chain NFT marketplace in early 2021.
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How Does Genopets Work?
Genopets is centered around unique digital critters that are designed to grow and evolve based on the real-world decisions of its owner. By sharing personal data and completing challenges, the potential of each Genopet can be developed, increasing its stats and better preparing it for battle.
Genopets introduces the concept of 'Move to Earn', which is an evolution of the Play to Earn paradigm that sees players earn rewards for exercising their mind and body. The game will eventually take in several kinds of biometric data, such as heart rate, sleep, and activity from several popular data capture devices, including Google Fit, Fitbit, Oura, and more. These will be worked into the gameplay, allowing participants to earn KI by being active.
Each Genopet is encoded with the player’s personality and fitness data, and is shaped through nurture and battle. The nurture mechanics are designed to challenge users physically, whereas the battle mechanics are designed to challenge them mentally.
In addition to the overarching Move to Earn concept rewarding players with $KI tokens for their real-world activity, the game allows users to stratify their earning potential in three additional ways:
- Trainer — Trainers may play Genopets with a focus on upgrading and evolving their Genopets to sell them in an open marketplace to earn.
- Merchant — Merchants may purchase, create and terraform habitats to farm and refine rare and valuable crystals to regularly trade on the open marketplace.
- Landlord — Landlords may purchase habitats for the purpose of leasing them to other players to get a steady flow of resources.
Genopets' battle system allows players to participate in multiple battles asynchronously and also features a decentralized prediction market that allows spectators to earn $KI for predicting the winners of battles. Battles are turn-based and the success is largely dependent on the user's performance in a variety of challenging mini-games.
Users will be able to use the KI they earn to purchase a variety of items for their Genopet, such as food, clothing, and accessories, and will also be able to further customize their Genopet's moveset and skill tree to best align with their personality and style.
Some of the most important NFT types include:
- Refined Crystals: These are used to alter the evolution of a Genopet or augment its appearance and moves.
- Habitats: These are where Genopets live, evolve, and unlock daily Ki rewards. They can also be used to craft Gene Crystals and more.
What Makes Genopets Unique?
Some of its key distinguishing features include:
Free to Play
Unlike many play-to-earn games, there is no upfront entry cost to begin playing Genopets. Users can summon their Genopet for free and begin earning $KI tokens right away. However, users may wish to purchase additional NFTs and items either from the marketplace or during a sale event to progress quicker.
Built on Solana
Genopets is one of the first high-quality games built in the Solana ecosystem. As a result, it benefits from the massive throughput and scalability of the Solana blockchain, as well as near-instant and low-cost transactions. This ensures it can support potentially hundreds and thousands of simultaneous users without seeing any congestion or the gas fee challenges that have plagued Ethereum-based blockchain games.
Wearable and Mobile Integration
Genopets looks to bring in step activity data from the real world by connecting with mobile devices running Google Fit or Apple Health. Through integrations with a range of popular wearables, additional activity and health data will be used supported with time. In order to appeal to the largest audience, this will primarily focus on the most popular devices and apps, while ensuring that this data cannot be falsified for the purposes of $KI farming.
Move to Earn
Genopets is the first game to introduce the concept of ‘move to earn’, allowing players to earn $KI for improving their health and fitness. Over time, Genopets looks to support more types of fitness data and support the most popular fitness apps, ensuring that only genuine, high-quality data is used to grow and develop a user’s Genopet.
Sustainable Vesting Schedule
More Play to Earn Pioneers
Despite being a relatively new industry, the blockchain gaming space already has its fair share of pioneering projects that are pushing the bar and providing exposure to new audiences.
If these are what you’re looking for, check out some of our other popular deep dives:
- My Neighbor Alice: Think Animal Crossing, but where you own everything you create.
- Star Atlas: Deep space exploration meets a complex player-owned economy
- Illuvium: AAA-quality graphics, carefully crafted battle gameplay, and no gas fees.