The Cyberpunk Future of COIN: You Might Want to Sit Down For This

Marguerite deCourcelle
13 min readSep 30, 2020

Greetings from the $COIN Cyber Command!!

This Massive Update Includes

The Community Charter
The Announcement of our first Community Managers
Building Experiences with COIN
The Puzzle Development Strategy Guide
The Forked Gitcoin System for Game Developers
A COIN and CRED FAQ
The Road Ahead
Neon District Releases Character Crafting today
A Secret Hidden in Plain Sight

Coin’s E-Den Community Charter

Coin’s E-Den is a social experiment in tokenizing the personal brand of Marguerite deCourcelle (aka coin_artist). Holders of the $COIN token form a unique Syndicate of cyberpunk enthusiasts within the fictional universe of Neon District. This Syndicate is a closed social network of individuals who collectively share the coin_artist brand identity. Syndicate members, therefore, represent the interests of coin_artist’s projects and influence the direction of these projects via shared governance and strategic planning.

The Syndicate, as a community, values social inclusion and experimentation within the scope of co-operative gaming, decentralized finance, token gamification, and NFT reward distribution mechanisms. The Syndicate’s primary goal is to establish a community where creativity is encouraged to produce a rich and vibrant atmosphere within a gamified social network.

For consistent messaging and to guide future decisions within the community, the Syndicate has adopted the following mission, vision, and core values.

Why does Coin’s E-Den exist?

Mission Statement: To promote creativity and experimentation with the coin_artist brand

The coin_artist brand is cyberpunk, creating virtual experiences, encouraging play and education with blockchain technology, collaboration, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

What does the E-Den aim to accomplish or establish?

Vision Statement: A community of inclusion and experimentation scaffolded by a gamified social network

How should future decision-making be guided?

Core Values:

1. We put our mission first.

2. We honor other Syndicate members as our most valuable resource.

3. We pursue innovation and intrepid experimentation.

4. We embrace diversity and strive for social inclusion.

5. We act with respect and integrity.

Announcing Community Managers JTobcat and Miezekatze!

You can contact these two members in the Neon District discord for any community related questions. These Community Managers have been given the autonomy to contract work, reward, and tip for individuals and projects aimed at cultivating community development and organization. Onboarding these two managers as the Head of Community for COIN was the natural choice in consideration of their current contributions, engagement, and reputations within the community.

JTobcat has been a long-standing coin_artist supporter and community advocate.

Neon District was one of the first blockchain communities JTobcat joined when it launched due to his love of puzzles and the allure of the initial launch puzzle that led to the Core. Since then he has become fascinated with the concept of blockchain gaming and what it could mean for the future of video games and why he has continued to stick around and help out with the community. He looks forward to being a CM and helping keep the community a fun place to be and expand the reach of Blockchain gaming.

Miezekatze has been a valuable contributor to the vision and mission for COIN.

Miezekatze has been involved in the crypto community since 2012. He has been an avid supporter of blockchain gaming since its inception beginning with one of the very first blockchain games, Spells of Genesis. One of his major interests as of late is the gamification of experiences within the DeFi/NFT space. As a community manager for Coin’s E-Den, he will serve as a bridge between the founding members and the community at-large acting as a voice for syndicate members and a channel for top-down communication. He is extremely pleased to be on board with the project and is excited to help other syndicate members learn about the intricacies of DeFi.

What sort of experiences can people expect to see with COIN?

COIN prides itself on creating engaging community experiences. Because of this, a portion of the COIN supply is reserved for development, rewards, and incentives from both Blockade Games as well as the Community. These experiences can include a mix of blending fungible ERC20 tokens, Non-fungible ERC721 NFTs through DeFi, gaming, and crypto puzzles.

The Puzzle Development Strategy Guide

Blockade provides two core types of crypto-puzzles: Those designed by community members for each other, and those designed by Blockade themselves for special events or promotions.

Puzzle completion methods will vary over time, but for the time being we will be continuing to utilize the CERES-IV bot in Discord as a medium for submitting puzzle answers.

Blockade Built

  • Prizes can hold rewards in any cryptocurrency
  • Prize amounts can be in $COIN
  • $COIN puzzles require at least $streetscum Discord rank to participate in and claim a prize for
  • May incorporate other requirements for prize claim eligibility such as higher than street scum discord rank or NFT ownership, depending on the puzzle. If there are special eligibility rules for an upcoming puzzle, they will be announced 1 week in advance of puzzle launch.
  • Some Blockade puzzles might be secretly launched. Keep an eye out for ‘1347’ tag around content in the future.
https://ibb.co/J2JkPKN

Community Built

Blockade encourages community members to build puzzles for each other, and can petition $COIN holders for funds to place towards their rewards. Top puzzle builders can eventually receive kickbacks on their contributions.

  • Require at least $streetscum Discord rank to participate in and claim a prize for
  • Prize amount and launch date is announced 1 week in advance.
  • Prize amounts have 4 tiers based on difficulty and value is determined at the time of puzzle announcement:

EASY — $100 USD worth of $COIN
MEDIUM — $200 USD worth of $COIN
HARD — $400 USD worth of $COIN
INSANE — $600 USD worth of $COIN

Puzzle difficulty is initially selected by the creator, but may be adjusted by BG while play-testing and development is underway.

Puzzle Creators may petition the community to allow for 85% of the funds to build their puzzle to be applied to the prize wallet from the $COIN supply, but must pay 15% of the prize fund when their DAO is submitted for the right to do so. In addition, there are also role requirements that determine the level of puzzle that may be petitioned for:

Details:

We have separate puzzle builder ranks on top of coin ranks to make the biggest puzzles. Puzzle rank would be tied to how much you could request from BG to fund a prize then. Puzzle builder rank would be determined by the BG team and based on the users history with the community and puzzle making history and as players build up rep with the community and puzzle building, they can request to move up a rank (this may eventually be automated, see further below). There will also be a cap on the amount of puzzles an individual can make per month based on level, TBD later.

Upon approval of a puzzle creation DAO, funds from the creator and the $COIN fund are deposited in a prize wallet and development can begin.

Development of community based puzzles is subject to periodic testing and audit by Blockade’s puzzle test team. Blockade is committed to quality over quantity and will not release broken puzzles.

Voting on puzzle Quality, and puzzle building incentive

When a community built puzzle is completed (solved), the smart contract also creates a vote to gauge a team of pre-nominated community puzzle raters on its quality. Members of this curated team of 15–20 people can vote on a number of categories to express their satisfaction with the quality of the puzzle. Being a member of the puzzle rating board does not preclude eligibility in solving community puzzles.

Puzzle creators who receive an average of a X (TBD) rating from the puzzle ratings board after having released 3 puzzles will have 100% of their Upfront costs paid up to that point returned to them (in $COIN).

Each subsequent puzzle launched by the creator from then on that results in their average puzzle rating remaining over a X (TBD) will receive a bonus of an additional 10% of their upfront cost for that puzzle paid to them (in $COIN).

There are additional policies to address, and we’ll work to resolve identifiable fringe cases as they arise.

Gitcoin Platform for COIN

One of the longer-term goals of the community is to set up a gitcoin incubator to fund creative and engaging projects. While many of the details are currently under construction, the gitcoin will resemble an ongoing hackathon model where developers will receive rankings depending on their ability to meet milestones and produce successful deliverables. Project proposals will be subject to community review and projects will be initially limited to 2–3 weeks from start to finish. The importance of starting small cannot be understated as one of the major reasons for delayed projects is feature creep — when the requirements for a project increase during development beyond those originally foreseen.

Gitcoin participants who demonstrate merit, will unlock the ability to work on projects that are larger in scope and carry greater bounties. In this way, the gitcoin platform will be self-reinforcing, rewarding those participants who have managed to produce the most valuable output and further loosening their reins thereby freeing them to complete more engaging and interactive experiences for the community.

The major components of the proposed Gitcoin platform for Coin’s E-Den. Project proposals, drafted by community members, are taken to the community for a vote. Upon approval, project development can begin. Each project will be segmented into 2–3 weeks sprints. A selected panel of individuals will review the progress and award milestone achievements from the $COIN Development Fund. Upon completion, a community-approved panel will conduct a post-mortem analysis review with input from the community. This final review will assess the impact of the project relative to creativity, quality of work, timeliness of objectives, and overall contribution to the community. The composite of these scores will determine the developer ranks and may increase, decrease or remain unchanged. Initially, much of this process will be centrally conducted. However, wherever possible, components will be gradually automated and decentralized with the end goal of establishing a robust project incubator for creative, engaging community works within the E-Den.

More details about the gitcoin platform will solidify in the coming weeks. In the meantime, however, a community Trello will be launched to collect and catalog proposals. There are many exciting and creative activities that can happen in this space. Feel free to join up with others to brainstorm or simply drop your thoughts in the chat channels. All ideas are welcome and it will be up to the community to decide which projects to pursue.

COIN and CRED FAQ

What is CRED?

CRED, “Street Cred”, is a token that grants exclusive privileges in the Coin Artist (COIN) ecosystem. Street Cred can only be earned through providing liquidity in the COIN-ETH pool or through providing other valuable services and actions on behalf of $COIN and the Coin Artist community.

You can farm CRED at coinartist.io
This is the CRED contract

How can I use CRED?

Street Cred can be used to stake for NFTs and redeemed for exclusive perks that are otherwise entirely inaccessible through the COIN ecosystem or any other avenue. CRED perks are the most exclusive of the ecosystem, because earning CRED requires high-value actions from the community members to strengthen and support COIN, and redeeming or using CRED produces the rarest rewards.

What is the supply of CRED? (none, infinite)

CRED is an uncapped token, and is only distributed through activities and actions that provide value to the Coin Artist ecosystem. CRED can also be redeemed for other incentives, such as buying Neon District loot boxes, and in the process of redeeming CRED, it will be burned from supply entirely.

What’s the difference between COIN and CRED?

COIN is a capped token that is intended to bring lasting value to the Coin Artist ecosystem and the NFT and blockchain gaming space at-large. COIN is distributed through grants, bounties, and rewards for providing liquidity, building games, and adding new features and elements to the community. COIN can also be easily purchased in large quantities through Uniswap, where the liquidity of COIN-ETH is a critical element to the stability of COIN as a whole.

CRED is a social “street” cred that is earned through specific high-value actions that bring greater resilience and value to COIN, such as putting up COIN and ETH in a liquidity pool. Earning CRED means you’re providing an essential service to the health of the COIN ecosystem, and it can be redeemed for special and exclusive perks, and used in staking and voting for the most exclusive assets in the ecosystem.

What can I use CRED for that I can not use COIN for?

Unlike COIN, CRED is only distributed secondarily through high-value supportive actions for the COIN ecosystem. CRED voting and actions to redeem CRED yield rewards, such as NFTs, in-game assets and experiences, and exclusive access, that are unavailable elsewhere.

Neon District Concept Art

The Road Ahead

The most immediate objective is to structure and organize the growing COIN community into an efficient development force to contribute to the COIN ecosystem. Once the ground-work is laid for this flow, the priority will be to streamline NFT and DeFi experiences for the Ethereum ecosystem at large. Coin_artist is actively exploring cross-brand collaborations and partnerships as well as laying out the development priorities for the next farms, specifically NFT farming.

NFT farming will be released during October, as Blockade is currently in the works of rolling out an industry first — dynamic, customizable, and multi-composable cyberpunk NFT game characters. The beta of this release rolls out today and will see ongoing updates across the month of October while Blockade prepares for the public beta Neon District game release on web Dec 15th for PvP combat.

What can you expect with the release today?
To go live shortly after this announcement

Today marks the beginning of the Neon District Portal release roadmap for web and mobile. We’ve deployed an entirely new website for the Neon District Portal, laying the groundwork for a full web and mobile game experience that will roll out quickly through the next several months.

As of today:

  • Neon District is fully live on Matic’s Ethereum layer two blockchain
  • Neon District requires zero blockchain knowledge, and no cryptocurrency, to create an account and prepare for a full free-to-play, play-to-earn experience
  • For the first time, fully animated character equipment is live: you can take your loot and equip any of your characters, see their stats change, and start preparing your characters for combat coming shortly
  • Characters, Armor, and Weapons can be transferred directly to and from Ethereum mainnet through our custom Transfer Gateway, allowing you to take your rarest assets to Ethereum, hold them in your own wallet, or put them up on third-party markets like OpenSea
  • You can buy loot boxes and start collecting rare assets, equipping them to characters, and leveling them up
  • The full leveling experience is now live on the Portal, so players can level up their characters, armor, and weapons up to level 5 in advance of combat

What are upcoming features and expected delivery dates?

Now that Neon District Portal is completely upgraded and live, we’re starting off our multi-stage project release roadmap. At least once a week, we’ll be updating the Neon District Portal with all of the newest complete features and fixes, leading up to the official Player V Player Combat release.

Because we’re going to be reacting to player feedback, we’ll also be shifting around priorities accordingly — some planned features may come sooner or be pushed back, some new features might be added as we find we want them. The more feedback you provide us, the better our roadmap reflects the community and our overall goals to make a great gaming experience.

If you’d like to suggest features, comment or vote on the priority of existing features, or report bugs, visit our Nolt: https://neon-district.nolt.io/

Between September 30th and October 31st:

  • Cleanup, bug fixes, and final touches from the initial release of Character Equipment
  • Adding COIN as a payment method for NEON
  • Trade a character and all equipment as a single blockchain token, allowing for transferring characters + armor + weapon to Ethereum and putting on OpenSea as a full set
  • Viewing other player profiles and inventories
  • Trading characters, weapons, and armor with other players
  • Show Season Zero and earlier assets in Inventory: Shells, Trophies, and Keys
  • Filter game items on the inventory and equipment screens by level, rarity, and type
  • Add Pagination to the inventory and equipment screens

Between November 1st and November 30th:

  • Earliest builds of PvP combat for Trophy and Key holders to experience
  • Earliest builds of the leaderboard, competitions, and full combat layout
  • Early look into direct PvP play — challenge your friends and enemies to combat

Between December 1st and December 15th:

  • Final builds of PvP combat for public release
  • Major milestone release: PvP combat and leaderboards, first PvP competitions begin
  • The 1st Neon District Tournament begins over the holidays!

Beyond December 15th

  • Realizing the full Free-to-Play and Play-to-Earn ethos: Missions
  • PvE, Single-Player Missions with Loot, NEON, Juice, and Parts drops are the next major feature, bringing adventure mode and story to Neon District
  • Earliest builds to arrive between January and February

YOU MADE IT TO THE END!!!
JOIN COIN’s E-Den HERE On-boarding Instructions HERE
BUY COIN HERE
FARM COIN & CRED HERE
MORE ON THE COIN ECOSYSTEM HERE

FOLLOW coin_artist on Twitter for on-going COIN Updates

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Marguerite deCourcelle

Marguerite deCourcelle (aka coin_artist) is a technologist, game designer, and blockchain enthusiast. She is the CEO of Blockade Games