WeSeeGhosts: Litepaper
Introduction
WeSeeGhosts is a community driven OmniChain GameFi (GAME FINANCE) NFT project. The collection itself will consist of 1,111 unique genesis NFTs. The goal of WeSeeGhosts is to create a true gaming experience in the GameFi space. Current iterations of GameFi NFT projects focus more on the ‘Finance’ aspect of GameFi, sidelining the ‘Game’ possibilities.
As such, WeSeeGhosts will strictly adhere to three core values: Narrative, Community, and Gameplay. The goal of this LitePaper is to address the Minting process, Phase 1 P2E mechanics, and Omnichain integration (LayerZero Protocol).
The focus on gameplay and narrative begins before the minting process can even begin thanks to our innovative Play-2-Mint game. In addition, implementing the LayerZero protocol allows us to explore innovative gameplay mechanics not yet translated into the GameFi space.
We believe in people over products. Our ecosystem is designed to be inclusive and community-centric, giving the power to active participants. We are VC-free in order to keep our community’s benefit at the forefront.
1. Minting
The minting process for WeSeeGhosts consists of a wholly unique, Play-2-Mint game. In line with our gameplay/narrative initiative, we’ve foregone the dashboard-based ‘games’ that other P2E NFT projects have since popularized in the GameFi space.
The Play-2-Mint game is a bonafide game with tangible player benefits. In particular, the P2M game gives potential holders free or reduced prices for a WSG NFT. It is the first step in innovating on the GameFi formula to bring to the medium a true gaming experience.
The minting structure is split into three tiers:
- The first 111 players to complete the P2M game will mint for free
2. Everyone else who completes the P2M game afterwards will receive a reduced mint at 0.066 ETH
3. And anyone who elects not to play the P2M game can mint at the full price of 0.08 ETH.
To participate in the P2M game, one would have to log in, sign the transaction for credibility and security purposes, then pick from one of several available blockchains to mint their NFT on. We will not be diving into the specifics of the P2M game in this Litepaper in order to preserve some mystique around the game for launch.
2. Play To Earn Game, Phase:1
Phase 1 of the WeSeeGhosts P2E game will largely revolve around staking and haunting using the WeSeeGhosts token, $ECTO.
Staking is a way to get your NFTs to generate passive income for you. The way Ethereum holds transactions accountable is via a consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Stake. As is written on the Ethereum dev doc:
“When it comes to blockchains like Ethereum, which are, in essence, distributed databases, the network’s nodes must reach an agreement on the network’s current state. This agreement is achieved using consensus mechanisms.” (Ethereum)
The Proof-of-stake mechanic requires users to ‘stake’ their ETH in order to become a validator on the Ethereum network. 51% of the network’s nodes must agree on the next network-state for changes to be kept.
Staking your NFT locks up your tokenized asset on the blockchain, allowing it to take part in the validating process. In the context of WeSeeGhosts, staking your NFT nets you $ECTO, an ERC-20 token that can be used within the WeSeeGhosts ecosystem– whether that’s purchasing traits and items or trading $ECTO in the user economy.
The biggest advantage this mechanic brings is the ability to grant function and value to an otherwise functionless NFT. Rather than letting your NFT just sit in your collection, you can lock it up on the blockchain to generate passive income.
If Staking is the safe way to slowly generate passive income, then Haunting is the risky way to more quickly generate income. The amount of money generated by staking is dependent on two main factors:
- The Annual Percentage Yield (APY)
- The number of NFTs staked
Of those two factors, only the second can be influenced by the user. Haunting, however, adds a third, pareto option. Players who elect to ‘Haunt’(the Haunter) are thrust into a Haunt-only mini ecosystem and are at risk of being Haunted as well (the Spook). Players who choose to stake their NFTs do not enter the Haunt-only mini ecosystem.
When a Haunter successfully Haunts the Spook, they temporarily ‘convert’ the Spook’s NFT. By doing so, the Haunter usurps the Spook’s $ECTO earnings and also reaps any future earnings for as long as the Spook is Haunted.
However, as mentioned before, electing to Haunt places you into the Haunt-only ecosystem, and the Haunter incurs a percentage chance of being Haunted themselves.
So though the earnings potential may be higher when Haunting, the risks are higher as well.
In addition, the release of the full P2E game will be accompanied by a Free-To-Play (F2P) route for non-holders to play as well. The details of the full P2E game and the F2P route will be released at a later date.
3. LayerZero Omnichain Integration
Integrating omnichain capability gives holders more flexibility for minting, allows WeSeeGhosts to reach a wider audience, and enables WeSeeGhosts to implement novel game mechanics not yet seen in the GameFi space.
LayerZero functions as a trustless, low level primitive interoperability protocol that allows for direct cross-chain transactions. (LayerZero Whitepaper 1) Being trustless means no intermediate transactions or trusted custodians. LayerZero deals exclusively in native assets without the need for wrapped tokens or intermediary sidechains, as is the case with existing DEX designs.
LayerZero describes the cross-chain traversal quite well with an example:
“Today, users have no easy way to take advantage of opportunities on chains where they do not hold assets. For example, suppose that a user with assets consolidated in ETH wants to take advantage of an opportunity on Polygon [17]. Their choices are to either (1) move their entire asset base to another chain and convert it to the desired currency, or (2) lend their assets on Ethereum, borrow the desired asset, and then bridge that asset to the destination chain. LayerZero enables a lending protocol that would allow the user to keep their entire asset base in-place on Ethereum, lend it out, then borrow directly in MATIC on Polygon. This eliminates intermediary costs such as bridge and swap fees.” (LayerZero Whitepaper 9)
Many NFT collectors host their pieces across different blockchains, siloing their liquidity across disparate islands of self-contained ecosystems. Selling an NFT on one chain in order to procure funds to purchase an NFT on another chain results in excess fees via mediators and intermediate transactions. In addition, siloed NFTs naturally mean limited interaction between the NFTs themselves.
WeSeeGhosts’ LayerZero protocol supports Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Users will be able to transfer their WeSeeGhosts NFTs to any blockchain at any time.
To integrate the omnichain operability into the lore, each blockchain will be considered its own realm with blockchain-specific traits, items, and other variable additions. They’ll also possess different gas fees, liquidity values, and more. This is to allow users to choose the blockchain that best fits their needs. This will mostly affect the minting process, but ultimately, the goal is to incentivize players to travel from blockchain to blockchain in order to collect native blockchain items and customize their Ghosts.
A key problem that arises, however, is the player pool. Each blockchain will have different environments, and some environments will naturally be more attractive to the general playerbase. Therefore, we will also be dynamically changing the $ECTO pool per realm, encouraging players to disperse across the available blockchains.
4. Conclusion
At its core, WeSeeGhosts is a community driven game with emphasis on narrative and innovation. We hope to bring the LayerZero protocol to the forefront of not only NFT P2E projects, but major cryptocurrency applications as well. We’ve explained the use case for not just our project, but for the crypto field at large, and we hope that our successful implementation of this technology can provide proof of its efficacy at complex levels of integration and integration.
Further, as our first step in building a true gaming experience in the P2E space, the P2M game will remain a core component of the WeSeeGhosts project even after the minting period has concluded. We plan to build on that foundation and implement complex mechanics we see in modern video games.
Omnichain integration allows us to dress up the separate blockchains as wholly unique realms that players can call home– a foundation upon which we will release the Astral Games, a competitive battle between Ghosts.
The implementation of separate realms and realm-unique items also allows us to create an adventure game-like experience that incentivizes players to explore and travel.
We will be exploring these ideas via another paper some time in the future. For now, thank you for your support.
Works Cited
Ethereum. “Consensus mechanisms | ethereum.org.” Ethereum.org, https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/. Accessed 22 April 2022.
Ethereum. “Proof-of-stake (PoS) | ethereum.org.” Ethereum.org, https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/. Accessed 22 April 2022.
LayerZero Whitepaper. Ryan Zarick, Bryan Pellegrino, Caleb Banister, May 26, 2021. LayerZero, https://layerzero.network/pdf/LayerZero_Whitepaper_Release.pdf. Accessed 22 4 2022.
