Secret Dreamscape Bootstrap Funding Proposal

Secret Governance
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The team behind Secret Dreamscape is requesting $35,000 USD to finish the development of one of the first games built entirely on-chain. We believe gaming on Secret Network is the next critical vertical, after DeFi and NFTs. NFTs will soon enter mainstream gaming culture and the community would greatly benefit from having a game like Secret Dreamscape on mainnet using NFTs and thus cementing Secret Network’s position as a viable Layer-1 solution for play-to-earn gaming.

About Our MVP

We strongly believe a game like Secret Dreamscape is critical for network growth. Our MVP has already been released with the features essential for a fun game experience with play-to-earn mechanics:

  • Local wallet for a better user experience. This way players do not need to constantly sign transactions.
  • The foundation for building out smooth frontend animations.This game uses a powerful web game engine that helps achieve a rich player experience that goes well beyond today’s text-based NFT gaming.
  • Social Gaming: Thanks to real-time multiplayer support, the game will be the first social gaming hub for Secret Network.

January Release

For our January mainnet release, we will build these essential features:

  • Play-to-earn: We have novel features planned to help players add more value to their deck of NFT cards (NFTs). Features to be announced at launch.
  • Texas Holdem style Flop, Turn, River betting.
  • Add numerous frontend UX enhancements (such as player activity indicators, sound effects, deck inventory screens, notifications, and more) to give the game a professional level of polish
  • Capping tables so players can choose low stakes, family style games or higher stakes professional games
  • Playable NFTs - players will be able to buy and sell cards in order to build up their custom deck
  • Private NFT data will be utilized with in-game mechanics that will give players a chance to earn more secret outside of the main game (specifics to be announced at launch)

Roadmap

If we get enough traction then we have the following post-release features planned to enhance game experience and further drive network growth:

  • Currency conversion. We will allow players to send ETH and anything in Cosmos in order to fund their accounts, providing another on-ramp for new user adoption.
  • In-Game Chat: We have begun conversations with the Alter team to integrate in-game chat.

Our Team’s Contribution to the Secret Network

To-date the Secret Dreamscape team has participated in the community in several ways:

  • Delegating SCRT, helping secure the network
  • Gino is now leading the weekly dev-committee calls
  • We will open source all smart contract code so other teams can learn from our development patterns. That will be a total of 4 unique contracts. We expect this will be an on-ramp for new development teams seeking to develop on Secret Network.
  • We generated a community developer survey and presented the aggregated results of 26 community member’s (most with at least 6 or more years of general programming experience and half with at least 1 year of Secret Network development experience) responses which identified and validated development needs within the community.
  • We recognize a strong need to create more development tools (insights learned straight from community feedback and also through our own development efforts) for the community and have plans to create them.
  • Danny has been sharing solutions to development issues discussed in Discord channels
  • Built an MVP version of the game, hosted on our testnet here http://secretdreamscape.com/ and playtested with community members
  • Great early review has already been shared in a youtube live stream with a community member. Excerpts provided here: Scott Blown Away by This Crypto Card Game on Secret Network | Secret Dreamscape - YouTube
  • View our MVP trailer here: Secret Dreamscape Trailer - YouTube

Gaming is a critical vertical for the long term success of Layer 1 development chains like Secret Network. We hope the community recognizes our initial contributions and sees our team as one that can deliver. Funding this grant would show that the community believes a game like Secret Dreamscape can help drive network growth both through new user adoption and new development partners. Funding would help our team take the game from its current concept to a fun and playable game for a broad audience of gamers.

If you have not already heard about Secret Dreamscape, we will soon be added to the Secret Network roadmap to be announced in an upcoming Secret Network blog post.

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In regards to the “If we get enough traction then […]” For how long would you provide support post January release of the mentioned features?

Will check the testnet version as well, thank you for posting

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We’re planning to keep supporting the project for the foreseeable future

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Hi Gino,

Congratz on your progress on Dreamscape so far!

And thank you for posting this. It is great to see a proposal hit the forums that is seeking product funding from the community pool. Exiting to see more gaming on Secret Network!

I have two questions:

  1. Could you break down the $35k for us?
  2. Does the game have a monetization model for you to support it long-term, or will you potentially require continued support from the pool?
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We agree that NFT based games, especially with privacy NFTs will be a major vertical! As @Stefan_DomeriumLabs already suggested, would you elaborate on the use of the $35k, as well as plans for funding long term maintenance and development of the game? Cool concept overall, we’re happy to support gaming projects on Secret with long term sustainability plans!

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Cheers. I am also curious about potential in-game monetization, like Defi Kingdoms’ LP pools for example.

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The funds will be used to accelerate development by giving the team what they need to shift other obligations and focus full-time on Dreamscape. The current team is:

Gino
Danny
Dan

We will not need further community funding. Our business model is similar to other companies who support betting games. We’ll take a commission (rake) from every pot collected by players.

We also plan to release 10,044 unique NFT cards that can be minted in a first edition public mint. In addition to the in-game features already mentioned, the community funds will help us build the contract code and art assets required for the public NFT mint. After a successful public mint (pricing tbd) then we’ll have seeded Dreamscape with a passionate community and received the funding needed to continue developing Dreamscape to the needs of its community for several post release dev cycles.

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Thanks for answering. If possible it would be nice to have a more concrete timeframe that you´d be willing to provide support in case you don´t have the immediate success you expect.

In any case I support the proposal.

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Hey All,

One of the validators got in touch with us and showed us the previously funded game project Secret Heroes and the way they broke down their hours allotment and we wanted to share a similar level of fidelity in our hours estimations.

Gino - 40 hrs/week, 4 weeks @ $65/hr
Danny 40 hrs/week, 4 weeks @ $65/hr
Dan - 40 hrs/week, 4 weeks @ $65/hr

Total ​​$31,200 for our team, leaving $3,800 for any other necessary expenses including the deployments to the mainnet, server costs, and marketing.

As for the ongoing success of the project—we’re optimistic based on the early enthusiasm we’ve seen from the crypto community and we think the project will be able to sustain itself financially very soon. There are always things that don’t go as you’d expect, but we’ve got a very creative team capable of solving the problems that come with taking this game to market.

And Happy New Year to everyone! Upward and Onward!

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Hi Gino!

This is really cool. We definitely need to explore the next big thing for the Secret Network – Secret Gaming. I totally agree on that.

I support your proposal, but I’m a bit concerned that 4 weeks of funding isn’t enough. The work for the January release looks like it could take double that amount of time, there’s kind of a lot in those essential features! Is all of that spec’d out so that you guys can hit the ground running after the proposal is funded?

Also, to give your project the best chance of success post-launch and before you’re able to start capturing value with the pot commissions, you might want to incorporate marketing/promotion into your timeline.

But you guys are the experts so if you feel it’s plenty of time I accept that!

I absolutely love the artwork and the idea that it’s a dreamscape, somewhere between waking and sleeping :joy:. Do you think you guys will do something with that idea a bit more in the game? I felt like it was a mystical, magical place that I wanted to explore but after I started a game I kind of lost that feeling. That being said I have always been terrible at games :stuck_out_tongue:. Every time someone tries to explains the instructions, or I have to read the rules my mind goes to another plane of existence. I just can’t seem to focus on that stuff lol. So you should definitely take my comments in that context!

But let me try to articulate what I’m envisioning … if I as a player could enter a secret dreamscape when I join the game and the cards, coiins, dictionary, etc. would somehow be in that space without completely hiding the dreamscape that would be really cool for me. I’m not sure if that’s possible because you have to be able to see the cards properly and stuff.

I liked that the dictionary can help the players with their words so they can focus on the game play. I actually didn’t realize the “dictionary” could help me that way. I started trying to make notes and come up with words, and had to do it for both of my players :joy: . Maybe your UI/UX changes could incorporate making that more intuitive? But again, maybe it’s already intuitive to gamers :star_struck: .

I couldn’t figure out how to get that flop round to “complete” :rofl: . I had both of my players bet and choose cards and create the words, but then nothing happened. I clicked on everything I could, but no luck.

It was great that I didn’t have to deal with signing transactions during the game, I really like that you implemented it that way.

Last thing … the NFT card collection ooh nice but you mentioned a custom deck and I couldn’t quite figure that out, where that would come into play?

Great work and when it’s on mainnet I will tell my stepson gamer about it and bring him into the Secretverse :heart: .

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I support your proposal, but I’m a bit concerned that 4 weeks of funding isn’t enough. The work for the January release looks like it could take double that amount of time, there’s kind of a lot in those essential features! Is all of that spec’d out so that you guys can hit the ground running after the proposal is funded?

I can shed some light into that. The entire game as it is now was built in 2 weeks; some additional work has been done since to improve the experience, but the core mechanics have been built in a short amount of time and we are confident that we can keep the current pace and develop the remaining features and bug fixes in about a month. If however, for whatever reason the stars don’t line up and we have to move the deadline we will keep working on the project until it’s been released. We have spec’d some internal estimates for everything that needs to be done and we’re very confident we can follow that timeline.

Also, to give your project the best chance of success post-launch and before you’re able to start capturing value with the pot commissions, you might want to incorporate marketing/promotion into your timeline.

Absolutely, there has been some discussions about that internally already and we will use a part of the remaining $3800 on marketing to make sure that enough people (both those familiar to the secret network and those not) know about the game!

I absolutely love the artwork and the idea that it’s a dreamscape, somewhere between waking and sleeping :joy:.

Thank you! Our designer Dan has worked really hard on the art and we’re very glad that so many people enjoy it.

Do you think you guys will do something with that idea a bit more in the game?

Yes, we have some ideas but we want them to be a surprise!

I liked that the dictionary can help the players with their words so they can focus on the game play. I actually didn’t realize the “dictionary” could help me that way. I started trying to make notes and come up with words, and had to do it for both of my players :joy: . Maybe your UI/UX changes could incorporate making that more intuitive?

UX improvements are definitely coming, so stay tuned for that

I couldn’t figure out how to get that flop round to “complete” :rofl: . I had both of my players bet and choose cards and create the words, but then nothing happened. I clicked on everything I could, but no luck.

This is definitely another area where we need UX improvements, after you see cards in the flop you’re supposed to make another bet, and THEN you can select a word

Last thing … the NFT card collection ooh nice but you mentioned a custom deck and I couldn’t quite figure that out, where that would come into play?

We have 10,044 NFTs with alternative art already done; and you will be able to buy an NFT and use that as a replacement for a letter, say if you bought an E you would be able to choose to always display that NFT as the E when you make a word. Other players will then be able to see that. There are also other features planned with the NFTs, but we’ll keep those a secret for now :wink:

Great work and when it’s on mainnet I will tell my stepson gamer about it and bring him into the Secretverse

Sounds great!

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Hey guys,

Thank you for the breakdown of the funding!

Although i see how the funding is mostly important to get the game running i think the real value of this game to the ecosystem/community would be the longevity. Could you elaborate a bit more on the roadmap for the game and which parts of this will be developed/supported no matter what. It is important to avoid a situation where the community funds development of a project which cant sustain itself over the long haul. Maybe you can break down how much play hours or spending is required for the team to get a significant commission and whether this number is obtainable within this ecosystem?

I would also be interested if there is a way you guys can give back to the community outside of releasing the game. Maybe you can share POAP badges with voters on the proposal or provide an intial balance to play with for certain community members?

Would love to see you guys succeed but i think the proposal should cover more than just the initial development hours of the team.

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Yes, the playability and longevity of the game would add value to the network. Another value add of course will be the smart contracts we open source with an MIT license.

We really appreciate the concerns that our funding request might be too low :slight_smile: Our aggressive timeline does risk going over budget, just as any other project would. We considered adding a contingency plan to the proposal, but we expect the mint will give us what we need for long term support. The first edition mint is planned for the end month and our mainnet release to follow shortly thereafter.

The idea of a POAP is interesting. Perhaps what we’ll do instead is whitelist all YES voting wallets and offer a 25% discount on the mint. This would actually be less effort on our end and I think the community would appreciate a discount on NFT mints more?

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Thank you for your responses, Danny! Everything you’ve added sounds fantastic. I might actually play this game when it’s out :rocket: .

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I would like to know if you have taken into account that this gets eerily close to bribing votes? Would like to know if this is an idea you expect to push forward with before I cast a vote.

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Not really a bribe when you still have to spend money on minting.

Prioritizing people who delegate to your node by size though : )

(and for the record I support both actions!)

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Right, we don’t want to stir any controversies and so we landed on the idea of offering a public early bird discount. As long as you’re following our announcements on our channels (Twitter/Discord) then you’ll have access to the discount.

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I like this games is super cool to play with my family even uhmmmmm well all else uhmmmm and what I want to say is that I uhmmmm.

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I agree, it is an experiment that can backfire. The difference here is that a delegator can still vote independently in a governance vote from the validator they choose. The monetary incentive that was suggested here was on the voting level of a single proposal. I believe that takes it one step further.

I think this is a great alternative, thank you for the clarification!

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Domerium Labs will be voting in favor, and again I would like to iterate that we are really happy to see a funding proposal for a product hit the chain. I hope we will see many more!

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The game itself is interesting. The combination of poker and scrabble has a really good chance of hitting a mainstream vein.

I myself am looking forward to playing this regularly.

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