CRE8R DAO AMA With BilliDrop
Primer: In this AMA session with CRE8R DAO, Murray and Pygmy from BilliDrop talked about how they are going to disrupt the gaming industry by introducing fairness, transparency and provable randomness in its lottery-style game. They also discussed the BilliDrop ecosystem, which includes P2P gaming, staking mechanism and how all these are tied to their tri-token system.
Team
Background of the founders
The founding team consists of 5 people
They had worked together on startups in the past
One of the startups was a telecom business set up 10 years ago. Managed to sell it out to larger telecom companies
Another one is an industrial project selling services and equipment in the oil and gas industry
Has an advisory board of 3 to 5 people who are industry experts, a team of staff and consultants
One of the first advisors was a prominent gaming attorney from KMT, David Klein
Is the founding team doxxed?
The team is anonymous to the public but they are doxxed
VCs backing them has strict due diligence
Skills sets of founders
“The superpowers of our team is making sure that none of the founders is the brightest person in the room so we’re able to find people who are world leaders in certain fields to make sure they are the people advising us.”
- Murray
Murray is the CEO with a background in software development - manages development teams
Pygmy’s background is in the marketing space
The third one is a hyper connector which helps the team finds contacts in different places
The fourth is in business development and the fifth one is a lawyer
Number 1 worry of the team
Pygmy: Worries that other people will be copying their ideas, so they had to execute quickly and had to manage the release of ideas strategically
Murray: Worries about the availability of solidity developers in order to grow. Might have to pay higher prices to pay for such services
BilliDrop
What is BilliDrop?
A tri-token ecosystem and a collection of products built around the idea that there’s something wrong with the way online gaming and how lotteries work
BilliDrop aims to solve some of these problems and offer people a fairer way to play
Includes incentives for them to play in the ecosystem
All of their startup businesses are founded on one principle
Finding a new technology to bring to an old industry
Or finding a technique used in one industry and moving it to another that hasn’t seen that before
Disrupting as a source of value comes very naturally to the founders
How did BilliDrop come about?
15 years ago, Murray is involved in building and selling network infrastructure for gambling companies
Realised how unfair and opaque the gaming industry is
One of the key problems is the idea of random numbers
Random numbers make the gaming fair but producing a random number on a computer is very difficult
They made do with pseudo-randomness, but this is not acceptable in gambling
One of the gaming companies that went bust in the past used a random number generator software that wasn’t very random and could be predicted
One of the childhood friends of the hyper connector founder is one of the founding team members at ChainLink
ChainLink is working on a verifiable random function (VRF) that is on-chain
“We were talking about how annoying lotteries are and they’re not very fair. If you did it on-chain, not only could you guarantee it was fair, you could be transparent about it and show people how you made the decisions about who won. They could go back through that log and repeat how the process was run so they could verify that too.”
- Murray
During a pool party at Thanksgiving, the founders invited their friends over and were just chatting when they started talking about this
Weren’t a serious conversation, just throwing ideas around
The next day, some of the people who were there called them and said they had the money so let’s do this
The team were in the middle of exiting a business and they were not ready for it, but they got their seed money without really looking for it
Doing the random numbers on-chain makes it fair, transparent and also verifiable
It has low overhead
Traditional lotteries spend a third of their money on marketing, a third on overheads and a third or less on the prize, hence doing it on-chain can disrupt the industry
Why the name BilliDrop?
Wanted to do a million-dollar lottery but it wasn’t impressive enough, hence raised it to a billion dollars
Billion —> Billy —> Billy Goat
GOAT - Greatest Of All Time
The project builds itself
Where does BilliDrop earn its revenue from?
Protocol earns the revenue from 2 places:
Liquidity pool management
The small amount generated from the interactions is enough to cover the overhead
Will be managed by Pangolin
The Drop (sweepstake)
An admin fee of 10% will be charged per ticket sold for the lottery
This fee will be lowered as the volume of tickets sold increases
Which blockchain will they be built on?
NFTs and the Liquidity pool are on Ethereum
The Drop is on Polygon due to gas fees
The tickets to enter The Drop can be on different networks using different tokens but can be bridged over
Ethical Concerns
Aware that usually lottery winners will go into bankruptcy within 3 years of winning
Already having discussions with financial and tax planning outfits who can give advice to winners so that it will be life-changing for the better
“Marketing is a superpower and you are convincing people to change their behaviour and to take action to do something. Throughout my career, I’ve had to ask myself, am I using the power for good or am I using the power for evil?”
- Pygmy
Vetted some of them to make sure they are not crooks
Ultimately how others use their money is none of their business and they are putting up mechanisms to make sure good decisions are made
Launching during the bear market
The bear market only affects those with volatile coins, and they are not dealing with them
They are so far on track with what they planned to do and are not affected so much by the bearish sentiment
Gambling is not that harmed by bad economic times
Some aspects of it might even be improved
NFT
The Herd NFT
These are ERC-721 and the main function is the utility
There are 40,000 NFTs in 3 different tranches, some with baked-in multipliers
The first tranche of 10,000 NFTs are the nanny (female) goats
The artwork is female 3D sculptured bodies with ram heads with curved horns
This comes with a baked-in multiplier
The cheapest price point for the NFT was 0.333 ETH if one is in the whitelist
The second tranche of 20,000 NFTs will be kid goats
These will be 2D flat art
This will be at a cheaper price point but does not have a baked-in multiplier
They have the ability to earn, so they will emit $CHEESE and earn multipliers
The last 10,000 NFTs are buck (male) goats
Planned for early 2023 so that the other NFTs have the early advantage to build up
What are Multipliers?
Having multipliers increases your odds of winning in a draw
Multipliers are relevant to those who are interested in the lottery aspect
E.g. buying 10 tickets with a multiplier of 2.5x will get you 25 entries to the draw
For those who have no interest in the gambling aspect of the lottery, they can buy The Herd NFT and play to earn income
The highest multiplier is 5x, but it will have to be earned by playing a staking game, called the Goat Farm
If you own two NFTs with 2 different multipliers, the higher one will be used
That is the plan currently but is subject to changes
Breeding
With a nanny and a buck goat, you’ll be able to breed them to make kid goats
Since there won’t be any more mints, owning a kid goat is the only way for new entrants to play the competitive and wagering game
One does not need to own both the nanny and buck goat to breed. The breeding mechanic allows for collaboration between two parties (one holding nanny and the other buck goat) to do the breeding
Ranking of the NFTs matter
The higher the ranking of the nanny goat, the shorter the period to breed so more kids per month you can make
The higher the ranking of the male, the better the quality of the kid goats
This means that holders will have to form relationships with high-ranking NFT holders in the community
Gaming
Peer-to-peer (P2P) Gaming
Two games will be released by the end of the year: Goat Arena and Goat Karting
Goat Arena is like a skill-based competitive fighting game and spectators can wager on who will win
Goat Karting is a skill-based racing game similar to Mario kart
Goat Arena is overseen by one of the founders of the Call of Duty team
Will be using the NFTs to fight with each other
3D, in the style of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, rendered in a browser
Will have a leaderboard with statistics showing all the data
The team will market the games which will bring new players into the ecosystem
To play the game, one will need a kid goat which can only be bred with a nanny and a buck goat NFT
Staking
The Goat Farm
Staking (or milking) your goat produces $CHEESE, an ERC-20 token
The $CHEESE can be cashed out to buy more tickets or staked in a liquidity pair with Ethereum to produce $GRASS, another token
$GRASS can be fed to your goat, which will increase its size. The size will affect the multiplier
Will progressively need more $GRASS to upgrade
This is all part of the peer-to-peer (P2P) gaming that is planned around the NFTs
One can also bet on the games with $GRASS or $CHEESE and the winner takes all
There are other ways to burn the $GRASS to earn or upgrade or change the features
Tri-token system
This refers to the NFT, $CHEESE and $GRASS
You burn the $GRASS, upgrade the NFT and produce more $CHEESE to stake to earn more grass
Positive feedback cycle
All these are managed by Pangolin
The Drop
What is The Drop?
Essentially the sweepstake game that users can participate in
Different from a conventional lottery, where the lottery knows when the draw will be but not the prize amount
For BilliDrop, they know the prize amount but not when the draw will be
The draw will only occur when the prize is filled and the fill percentage can be seen e.g. the 1 million draw is 50% full so it might take a while to announce the winner
E.g. If in a particular draw the prize is 1 million dollars, as soon as there are a million dollars worth of tickets committed to that drop, the drop ends and the selection process through the VRF happens and there will be a winner winning all the prize money
How frequent is The Drop?
The frequency of The Drop depends on the ticket sales
As long as the ticket sales hit the prize pot amount, there’ll be a draw
Hopefully, it’ll take a shorter and shorter time to fill the prize pot until it hits 1 draw per day
If the ticket sales go faster than 1 day, the prize pot will increase until it takes 1 day to fill up the pot
In the future, there will also be multiple drops with varying amounts of prizes happening at the same time, so one can choose which one to participate in
How The Drop works
You buy a ticket at $1.10
$0.10 will be the fee charged to pay for overhead
Each ticket correlates to 1 USDC and that 1 USDC enters the prize pot
If you hold an NFT with a multiplier, this will multiply the tickets you have
E.g. Entering $1k worth of tickets in a draw with a 2x multiplier is equivalent to $2000 worth of tickets entered
There’s also a maximum threshold of the odds that one can win in a draw
Set around 15 to 20%
E.g. In a million-dollar draw, if you have a 5x multiplier, you can’t play more than 50k because that way, you’ll have more than a 25% chance of winning
If the prize pot is set at 1 million dollars, once a million ticket is sold, the draw begins
Using the VRF, a random wallet entering the draw will win the entire prize pot. There will definitely be a winner in each draw.
The prize can be claimed immediately and if the person does not want to claim it to the wallet that is used to enter the draw, it can be directed to another wallet
Community
Community members are called goats
If you just joined the Discord, you’ll be a little goat. There’s also VIG - very important goats
Little goat was chosen by the team, while VIG was chosen by the community
Very open community
Gels in with the idea of not being the smartest people in the room
Anyone can contribute and do work within the community
The more engagement you have in the community, the more opportunity to get whitelisted
No governance at this point in time, but they do value the feedback of their communities
Might be implemented in the future
30 people wanted to volunteer as community mods and 10 are selected for that role
Being in the community will also have the advantage of participating in smaller prize ($5k, $10k) test drops to prepare for the audit
Marketing & Business Strategies
Target Market
The initial core market is for the crypto people who are already buying NFTs
In order to grow, they have to cater to a mass audience eventually
They are working and partnering with on-ramp sites to make it easier for non-crypto natives to get into this
No reason to limit the target audience to just crypto-native people
Not sure how it’ll play out, but they will try different strategies and track it well to see what sticks
In the end, if they supply the tech to different gaming companies, their branding might not be very important
How to entice people to enter The Drop?
Will require a lot of marketing for awareness
Will tap into communities that already exist for cross-pollination and also do brute-force marketing
As more people win a million dollars in The Drop, it will generate the confidence and assurance that this is real, attracting even more people in
Regulations
The way they do business is not to compete with people if they do not have to
They now have a technology that can lower the overheads and has better transparency
They had been approached by different gaming companies to be a supplier of technology to them
“Why must we compete? We can disrupt an industry without having to kill all of the existing players. Just change them from the inside.”
- Murray
In a highly regulated market, it’s better to work with someone who already has the regulatory approval and sell your product to them, rather than do all the work to get the approval
Legal advisors told them not to register for a licence or register in the US, which can be very hostile in this industry
Rules are not clearly defined and might be retrospectively enforced
Hence better to work with people who already have licences and regulatory approval
If needed, they can do geographical restrictions so that people from certain countries are restricted from playing The Drop
They can still play the p2p gaming
Security
Security
Will be audited, details to be announced soon
Will also have test drops internally with smaller prize money within the community and have the stats sent for audits too
Haven’t thought of bug bounties but am open to them as it’s cheaper to reward people who report bugs
All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Summaries are prepared by The Reading Ape. While reasonable efforts are made to provide accurate content, any errors in interpreting and summarizing the source material are ours alone. We disclaim any liability associated with the use of our content.