Marketplace

[wdmason]

one-click app. marketplace. think about these things from the beginning. let your mockups be the forcing function for community building before trying to sell the first set.

┆Issue is synchronized with this Trello card by Unito

[wdmason]

The marketplace needs to have several functions built in. Buy booster packs, gems, sleeves, skins, avatars, etc. Auction cards you don't need. Trade for cards you want. Show your library, or at least cards you want to sell in an interactive gallery where the potential buyer can pick on the card to interact and make an offer. Sell from the gallery if the offer is agreed on. Say if the hidden reserve is met by the offer at the end of the auction.

[wdmason]

The marketplace needs to have several functions built in. Buy booster packs, gems, sleeves, skins, avatars, etc. Auction cards you don't need. Trade for cards you want. Show your library, or at least cards you want to sell in an interactive gallery where the potential buyer can pick on the card to interact and make an offer. Sell from the gallery if the offer is agreed on. Say if the hidden reserve is met by the offer at the end of the auction.

[wdmason]

The gems could be tokens and they could be used internally for all transactions, but minting tokens on a side chain and buy/selling to ADA can get complicated in ways you may not want to deal with. They could, for example, be used to arbitrage the changing price of ADA. There could end up being some regulatory impact to using them. Need to research further into this function.

[wdmason]

Also, look into Xsolla for onboarding cash. This adds another element. Buying gems for cash and then buying ADA with the gems. Life is complicated.

[wdmason]

Port over some comments now living in the core section and continue the discussion here. Xsolla has all the earmarks of a complete solution to the revenue generation mechanic that we need. They have even partnered with Bitpay and thus have the ability to handle Bitcoin transactions. Not ADA. Not yet. Inevitable? Yes.

This still doesn't address the issues around selling gems or trading items between players. However, the player inventory system appears to have the foundation for this feature when integrated with Cardano smart contracts. Also, it appears the inventory system tracking all the cards a player would have in their inventory appears also to be handled within tools Xsolla offers. How well could it be to integrate remains to be seen, however.

[wdmason]

When you are ready to discuss whether ADA will be supported in their marketplace application suite, email integration@xsolla.com to begin that conversation.

[wdmason]

You can't give Xsolla 5% of the auctions and trades between players. At most, you would be taking 1% for processing those in a safe and secure manner. This suggests building out the framework of the marketplace system with another application and plugging in Xsolla only where it is applicable to buy gems and spend them on booster packs. Fungible Tokens (booster pack cards) cosmetic card skins, sleeves, etc. would be candidates for being handled with Xsolla, but if you rarely pop an NFT in there as well, you are asking for trouble trying to integrate those things since you need a wallet address to accept the NFT.

[wdmason]

There would also have to be a way to pass a token for an NFT if you are going to use it in the same forging system that produces copies of other cards.

[wdmason]

There's a big problem with having thousands of cards in your library if you are going to be storing that information on the blockchain. If on a side chain, who takes care of the absolute security of that information? Customer inventory and virtual currency balance cannot ever be put at risk. It must retain the utmost security with very frequent backups. (Such as every time there is a change in the account?)

[wdmason]

Game modes and revenue generation. In addition to selling packs, there has to be a way to generate revenue in an ongoing basis. Entry fees for tiers and game modes might be one way to do this. Win or lose, you gain experience? Maybe just gain it when you win? Gain more when you win? Experience would just be a way to measure how much you've played. The leaderboard would be more about how many games you've won.

If you divide by seasons, you can charge an entry fee for each season that brings in fresh $ADA into the system. You then offer unlocks for something that is really hard to earn, but could be reached faster if you bought some of that unit (such as crystals, gems, prismatic gems, etc.).

You would also be able to unlock these items by winning (harder, but you eventually get there). Reference the MTG: Arena store. The key is that you can buy or earn gems, but you can only ever spend them. You can't extract them from your inventory and use them elsewhere (this saves some very complicated issues).

The gold and gems you earn remain captured in the system (I'm not sure how, but I'm fairly certain this avoids certain regulatory issues with handling market tradeable tokens of value) and are used for the microtransactions within. (yes, including vanity items and skins).

[wdmason]

There is a serious financial matter that has to be considered with regard to the functionality of the marketplace. What problems do we bear in creating an environment where people can buy gems in cash and sell them into ADA? Where do we get the ADA to fill those trades? What regulatory issues are we tripping over when the application goes parabolic? Taxes? If we use XSolla, what would we be setting ourselves up for? Would we ever consider selling gems back into cash?

[wdmason]

When it comes to creating incentives for people to keep playing and keep spending into the system, certainly rewarding success in the different elements is a natural way to accomplish this. The addition of being able to make money reselling cards and NFTs has to also be a part of the story.

[wdmason]

Consider a subscription option that would ensure consistent and continued support. This would open the door for giving out keys for that subscription as well. One month, three months. Some interval of time to get used to the benefits of the subscription vs Free play options. All of this can tie into the Xsolla platform offering as well.

[wdmason]

One way to solve the problem of winning or buying or trading into NFTs might be to preload your Receive address, but they change whenever they get used.

[wdmason]

Until there are safe APIs that can interface with wallets, I don't think there's a solution other than copy/paste receive address. Probably, you should use Buffy Bot, or at least the application, even if it gets reskinned for the game. You'll have to talk to Marco and Adam Dean about that.