Why ICP Squad Is A Game Changer For NFT Collectors

ICP Squad NFT is a non-fungible token project that pushes the boundaries of what has been done before. This project is the perfect combination of the excellent pieces of art created by Arun Nair and the meticulous and innovative concept elaborated by Isaac Valadez and Dukakis Tejada (founder of Dfinity Community).

Collectors of these NFTs can earn passive income by using their wallets and Internet Identities to engage with Internet Computer dApps as they usually would, using a new reward model called Engage-to-Earn. This article will focus on the features that make ICP Squad NFT a game-changer for NFT collectors.

NFT Features and Supply

This project consists of a dual NFT game with characters and accessories. Characters are composable NFTs, meaning when they put accessories on and off, it changes their visual appearance aside from just boosting specific character properties.

The game is planned to have a new season every 3-5 months. In "season 0", NFTs will be human avatars that you could create and mint yourself ("reverse model"). You could choose from pre-selected visual traits to create a character that suits your style, such as:

Color range
Hairstyles
Facial features
Other elements

Subsequent seasons are really just artwork changes that will not be limited to human avatars. Therefore, collections created by other artists that include other creative ideas, such as aliens or animals, may be added. In addition, accessories from previous seasons can be used on characters from any season.

Furthermore, character properties are independent of their visual traits. Properties determine the quantity, quality, and frequency of which players can earn rewards.

Productivity: The probability that actions on Internet Computer dApps will win a new accessory NFT for the character’s owner.
Skill: boost the character gives the owner for winning rarer accessories.
Efficiency: how quickly the character wears out accessories.
Stamina: a cooldown time is triggered whenever a player wins a reward and the player can’t earn rewards during this period.
Personality Traits: tags that would determine the effects of different types of accessories (friendly, artistic, nerdy, entrepreneurial, etc.).

The properties of the characters we have just seen are very balanced between four different levels of quality.

Level 1 (minted for 1 ICP)
Level 2 (minted for 3 ICP)
Level 3 (minted for 5 ICP)
Legendary (not mintable)

For the same level, although the values of each of the properties are different, the sum of the values of all properties is the same. The higher the level of the character, the higher the sum of the values of each property. Additionally, legendary characters can't be minted. They are distributed via special events, giveaways, hackathons, and community contributors.

ICP Squad's original plans were to limit the whitelist to 20,000 people, but we would have to turn people away simply for being too late when the limit was reached. This directly conflicted with our shared goals and principles for this project, so the solution to this proposal was simple: keep the whitelist pre-order form open without limit.

New reward model: “Engage-to-Earn.”

ICP Squad NFT is the first-ever "Engage-to-Earn" game. In comparison, the "Play to Earn" concept used by other NFT games requires constant activity on specific apps, typically created by the original developers. The "Engage to Earn" model aims to promote the use of dApps for the entire Internet Computer ecosystem and collaborate with other ICP Communities (including ICP League, Dfinity Club, etc.).

Therefore, owners of ICP Squad characters can earn rewards (typically accessories in the form of NFTs) simply by having their wallets interact with Internet Computer dApps using their Internet Identity.

ICP Squad is planning to introduce a dashboard to keep track of rewards and "where the player will connect their accounts to the wallets they use and the characters they own".

Metascore could be an example of the design of its dashboard and scoring/rewards system.

Accessories

Each character can wear up to 4 accessories in one of 4 different types of accessory slots:

Eyewear: different types of glasses.
Headwear: Hats, helmets, headphones, crowns, etc.
Clothing: shirts, jackets, necklaces, ties, etc.
Misc: This could be a little hand in the bottom left or right corner holding a small item, a small thought bubble that says “$#*!”, some object in the background behind the character, or any other unique oddball thing our creativity might want to include which otherwise wouldn’t have a designated place to go.

Users will need to strategically customize their Avatars depending on the types of accessories they want to earn. There will be different accessories earned on other dApps, such as posting on DSCVR or Distrikt, using Openchat, swapping on DEXes, staking neurons, or perhaps there could be accessories for a particular type of activity on a specific dApp.

To accomplish a balanced and stable accessory market, they’ve designed these inflation and deflation mechanics:

Inflation is controlled by sending daily accessory airdrops to characters who win a reward. The winners can then choose to either have their character wear the accessory or list it on the market.
Deflation is controlled by making accessories slowly “wear out” over weeks, months, or even years as characters wear them. Once worn out, the accessory NFT is burned. The one exception being legendary accessories that don’t wear out.

It will be interesting to see how avatars will eventually look like, given the randomness of how a user can design and accessorize their Avatar.

How are we going to make money if the price of avatars is going to be kept low?

The design of a dual NFT system allows the game to increase the number of participants at any time. To join the game, it is only necessary to purchase an NFT character, which will always maintain a low fixed price. In contrast, NFT accessories will have a low supply and a high value, with a target floor price of at least $700. These are the assets with high floor prices where players can enjoy speculative trading and collecting.

Therefore, while the number of NFT characters can only increase (which means higher demand), the number of NFT accessories will remain balanced and stable (through the inflation and deflation mechanism explained in the previous section). The supply of the latter will always be lower than the number of players.

Accessories will be very valuable and desired assets for all players. If you want to significantly increase your odds of making an exciting amount of profit, you can invest in the strategic purchase of multiple accessories which boost the types of actions you most commonly perform on the Internet Computer.

On the one hand, if I have a character with the "Artistic" personality trait, I will want to have the Nifty Headphones [Headwear Slot], because productivity increases by 300% (instead of 100% for the rest of the characters).

On the other hand, if I regularly use social media, I will not be interested in having the obnoxious cigar [misc slot], because the 5,000% increase in productivity of this accessory does only applies to non-social media-related actions since no one wants to be around you when you're smoking an obnoxious cigar.

The best strategy to maximize rewards

If your goal is to maximize rewards, the best strategy is to own only one high-level NFT per season.

The properties of multiple characters within the same season are averaged together, so it's as if you were playing with one character that has the average properties across all the other characters in your wallet. This averaging also includes properties boosted by accessories.

However, when merging properties between characters of different seasons, the highest value for each property (including accessory boosted properties) is applied, plus an additional bonus.

Additional bonus for owning NFTs from different seasons

In addition, hodlers who possess one or more neurons staked for eight years (#8YearGang), with Liz Yang as the leader, will receive some reward to positively value that the NFT holder is a real believer in the Internet Computer.

Community

Last but not least, this project is primarily driven by the community, where feedback is collected from the community starting from the launch process to gameplay mechanics while allowing community members to vote on proposals via Discord to adjust these plans before implementation.

Too many NFT projects are dominated by bots, large investors, and insiders who manipulate the market to benefit themselves unfairly. While ICP Squad wants to reward early adopters and contributors for making everything possible, the goal of this project is to build a fair platform owned by and designed to benefit everyone. In this game, skill and planning are rewarded over deep pockets and sneaky loopholes.

For more information, watch the Community Conversations webinar where Dukakis Tejada and Isaac Valadez discuss technical updates and current progress on the ICP Squad NFT project with Liz Wang.

CONCLUSION

The ICP Squad NFT project follows the philosophy of the Internet Computer. It introduces innovative ideas and concepts to improve a project that will benefit the entire community:

Engage to Earn instead of Play to Earn.
Community Involvement through Discord.
Dual NFT system to let the game stay popular with low barriers to entry.
Inflation and deflation mechanics.
Implementation of a dashboard.
Involves the use of the Internet Computer dApps.

These are unique features that make ICP Squad NFT a great project with an innovative and sophisticated approach. Moreover, custom characters can be minted on demand for flat rates, which keeps the minimum price for all new players so that the NFT game remains inclusive.

Connect with the ICP Squad:

Discord | Twitter | DSCVR | Distrikt

Connect With Dfinity Community:

Twitter | Telegram | Instagram | Facebook | Email

RESOURCES

Disclaimer: The community itself is not affiliated with the Dfinity Foundation but aims to become an indispensable ally to further the next generation of the internet, working cooperatively to ensure the success of the project.

#dSquad