Who makes the decision to release a new game? The marketing department? Quality control? A management committee?
What about everyone?
The decision to launch Wallet Wars, a Web3 version of the 1970s arcade game Space Invaders was acquired by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) after the Balthazar DAO voted 1,800 to 12 to approve the move. It went live on December 15 after more than a year of development. The voting took place on Snapshot, a DAO voting portal.
The release of the game, created by Australian John Stefanidis, is not the only aspect that is being delegated. A decision about if and when The launch of a crypto token, BZR, will also be subject to a DAO vote early next year.
“We are trying to gradually decentralize the whole thing,” Stefanidis said in an interview. “Some of that has been achieved with the vote to launch the game and the next one will be a vote on the symbolic launch. In a year or two, no one will care who the co-founders were. It will become completely decentralized and eventually we will be voted out and someone hungrier will come in and run it.”
DAOs are a model of collaborative governance where token holders vote on different ideas. The use of DAO voting in business decisions is far from ubiquitous. Previously, the Aavegotchi community voted for an upgrade. Although some proponents argue that the shared decision-making process can be beneficial, this is not always the case. In one case, the Aragon DAO was closed due to differing agendas between token holders, team members, and blockchain operators.
The Wallet Wars project has raised $6 million since its inception in September 2021. Animoca Brands and Kucoin Labs are among the backers, with the former’s $1.5 million funding valuing the project at $60 million.
Interest in the game has grown rapidly this year, especially since August when the @WalletWarsGame handle went live on X, formerly Twitter. That is the case now 71,400 followers. The @BalthazarDAO handle has 57,000 followers and Balthazar’s community on Discord has 45,600 members.
“The community has given us a ton of feedback and we’re going to implement a whole host of changes live based on their feedback through a DAO vote,” said Stefanidis, a technology entrepreneur. Fred Schebesta, famous for founding the financial comparison website Finder.com, offered advice.
How it works
The game is built on the Ethereum scaling platform zkSync, a layer 2 network that uses zero-knowledge rollups to speed transaction times while lowering costs. To play, users must purchase non-fungible tokens (NFTs), known as raw ships of ether. Each copy costs 0.01 ETH. Part of the purchase costs, approximately 60% to 70%, goes towards a prize pool.
Another NFT, the raw pass, unlocks other aspects of the product, including governance rights and access to rewards.
The ‘raw’ name and Wallet Wars battle cry, ‘Raw eht nioJ’, is a nod to the TV show The Simpsons, where the wording appeared earlier. The phrase is “Join the war,” spelled backwards.
Wallet Wars offers a number of games and different ways to win. Players can play with demo ship NFTs for free. But to have a chance of winning rewards, they have to buy in. The Raw Pass, of which 5,555 were issued in October, provides premium access to the Wallet Wars ecosystem.
“These multiple layers of rewards make this the game of games that serves the purpose of a financialized arcade game or a game with good sustainable reward systems,” Stefanidis said.
Balthazar’s operations are managed by JBPH Technologies, a Singapore registered company.
Read more: Decentralization on a Spectrum: How Completely On-Chain Games Are the Future of Web3 Gaming
