Game Economy Loop
After completing the tutorial and creating their player account, players can use Moani in many different ways to enhance their gaming experience. For example, they can use it for...
Player-to-Play trading. Purchase items (non-NFT & NFT) directly from other Players at Auction House (includes 5 % trading fee)
In-App Purchases. Both one-offs and recurring sinks including tools, customization, seeds and consumables purchased from NPC vendors
NFT Purchases such as larger islands (rare, epic & lege) which also grants tier in ParadisePass
Minting Fees. Mint the rare craftable item by spending a small amount of token for the minting fee.
Nano Purchases. Giftable items, boosters or ability activations with as low as few cents.
Participation Fees. Join user generated event by paying a fee set by the player who created the event.
In-App Purchases and NanoPurchases will be described in more detail in the chapter In-App Purchases & Sinks.
Acquiring Moani Token
Players can also acquire Moani tokens in various ways:
By selling resources or items (non-NFT & NFT) at the Auction House
By completing one-off quests or tasks in ParadisePass feature (NFT holders)
By participating in events and competitions, either provided by the game or generated by other players.
While some events may require higher ranked NFT islands and Crew members to score high, others are more skill-based and offer guaranteed prizes for all participants (although with participation limits).
Fixed costs for a Ponzi-free economy
As mentioned in Moani Token Designmost IAPs are fixed in USD except for islands and possible other one-off NFTs with limited supply. This means that players will pay the same USD price for items they buy from NPC vendors, regardless of the token value. This separation of game experience from market sentiment provides a consistent experience for all players, especially those coming from traditional gaming.
All spent tokens will flow into the game economy pool. From there, the tokens will be distributed as in-game rewards. The game economy pool has a fixed supply of 1.8 billion tokens (30% of supply). In the long term, the rewards will be balanced to match the inflow in order to keep the token reserve at this amount of tokens, maintaining a spend-to-earn (STE) ratio for players at 1 or above, as described in the previous chapter.
Dynamic returns for long lifetime
A great way to create demand to the token in addition to the entertainment value is to ensure players will have incentives to participate in competitive events, and to play & spend token to gain an advantage (most succesful games includes a small amount of pay-to-win!). To do so, the returns must be dynamic and related on user amount. As an example, suppose we maintain a monthly Event reward pool of $50,000 worth of tokens for 500,000 monthly active users. In this case, each player should contribute an average of $0.10 worth of tokens to the game economy pool per month for a zero-sum scenario.
In other words, for the economy to be sustainable a combination of sufficient Average Spend per User (ASPU) and Token Value is required, however, both relatively low. The ASPU for fully sustainable economy is significantly below the average revenue per user of team's previously published free-to-play games. It's also worth noting, that trading fees, a total 5% of the trading volume of non-NFTs and NFTs. alone can become a major contributor in the token inflow. 1 Million USD worth of trading alone would suffice for a sustainable economy, excluding all in-app purchase sales, NFT sales and nanopurchases
Below is an example of the prizes available from a smaller monthly reward pool worth $30,000. The prizes in the pool are USD, but the actual amount rewarded will be in Moani token and is therefore subject to its market value. The size of the reward pool will scale with MAU. In this example, the reward pool is equivalent to 0.1% of the tokens allocated to the game economy, which has a market price of $0.005.
| Rank | Prize ($USD) | Prize ($MOANI) | Allocation (% of prize pool) |
|---|---|---|---|
Top 1 | $2000 | 400000 | 7% |
Top 3 | $1200 | 240000 | 8% |
Top 5 | $560 | 112000 | 4% |
Top 10 | $400 | 80000 | 7% |
Top 20 | $200 | 40000 | 7% |
Top 50 | $80 | 16000 | 8% |
Top 100 | $48 | 9600 | 8% |
Top 200 | $24 | 4800 | 8% |
Top 500 | $8 | 1600 | 8% |
Top 1000 | $6 | 1200 | 10% |
Top 10000 | $0.32 | 64 | 10% |
Top 50000 | $0.10 | 20 | 17% |
Top 100000 | $0.06 | 12 | 17% |
Example of an event prize pool
With these measures the game's economy pool is designed to ensure that enough time is reserved to balance the economy and guarantee its survival during anomalies such as huge bursts of new concurrent players (in the scale of millions) or drops in player count which may temporarily cause rewards to surpass the inflow.
The token inflow increases as long as the player remains active and keeps playing, due to the value input into the game ecosystem. For example, if a player buys an item from an NPC vendor or crafts one and later decides to sell it at the auction house, the inflow begins accumulating from transaction fees each time the items are traded.
Economy simulation
To balance in-app prices and rewards, an in-game economy simulation will be launched during the beta. During this phase, the economy model will be adjusted with player data in order to balance costs and returns. Additionally, the IAPs will be A/B tested and optimized throughout the beta.
It should be noted that the data collected during the beta may not accurately predict player behavior because the Moani token will be off-chain. Once the game is launched, the estimations will be readjusted with player data, creating a more reliable projection of the economy.
Gradually Implementing the Token Economy
The token economy and gameplay will be developed in steps to mitigate risks. This approach ensures that enough data is used to validate the economy model, and provides time to fix any issues in the model without risking the loss of many tokens from the in-game economy pool.
To mitigate the aforementioned risk, at first, we will only include events with reward pools that scale with MAU, and ParadisePass tasks rewards for NFT island and Passport holders with limited Moani rewards.
Players will be able to participate in different types of events, including recurring tournaments like the Harvest Festival and one-off events where every participant will receive a prize. In tournaments like the Harvest Festival, players compete against each other to see who can deliver the most crops and other resources within a certain period of time. The reward pool is set beforehand, and rewards are given based on the final standing.
In one-off events with rewards for all, but participation is limited to a certain number of players. For example, only the first 10,000 players who join the event will be eligible to receive a reward.
After the model is validated with enough data and the economy is running issue free, we will add more options to earn a small amount of Moani tokens.
Minting Fee
Rare, epic and legendary islands, NFT crew members and possible transportation NFTs will have a fixed supply and will not be generated by players. However, players can create new NFTs from items they have crafted using rare resources. These resources have controlled total drop and spawn rates for each server, gating the supply.
Items that are crafted using special resources are “mintables”. These mintable items can be sold on auction houses and used in-game like any other items, but with the option to be minted. This doesn't force mainstream players to mint items into NFTs, allowing them to simply enjoy the in-game benefits of these items. However, we do offer incentives and a gentle introduction to the NFT ecosystem for those who choose to explore this exciting aspect of the game. In doing so, we strive to strike a balance between engagement and accessibility. At the same time, it helps to control the item economy by avoiding an excess supply of minted items.
Minting requires a small number of tokens, from which a percentage is sent back to the game economy pool while the rest is staked along with the NFT. The minted item can still be sold in auction houses, as well as on secondary marketplaces. NFTs can be destroyed at any time to return the mint fee.
The purpose of the mint fee is to restrict the supply of the NFTs, and to set a minimum floor price for the NFTs, i.e. the mint fee. Furthermore, the minting fee will add another recurring use case for the token increasing its value and resistance against the market sentiment.
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