To make money in 2022, you don't have to go to the office. There are many alternatives, and one of them is NFT games. We have already written about Walken and Cryptobots, and today we will talk about the SolChicks project: how to make money, what income you can expect and why following the way of the Axie Infinity team can turn into a failure for SolChicks developers.
What is SolChicks
SolChicks is a Play–to-Earn (P2E) NFT MMORPG game made on the Solana blockchain for mobile phones and PC. The project is being developed by Catheon Gaming. Developers presented the project in the autumn of 2021.
The CEO of Catheon Gaming and SolChicks’ financial expert is William Wu. He used to work for many famous companies, such as Oaktree Capital Management, McKinsey & Company, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Information about other team members is available on the website.
In P2E games, as in any other game, users receive bonus points, but unlike regular games, in P2E these points are equivalent to real money: they can be withdrawn to a crypto wallet, and then to a regular bank card. P2P projects belong to the Gamefy category. In 2021, P2E-market volume reached $776.9 million. According to the Absolute Reports forecast, it will reach $2845.1 million by 2028.
In October 2022, users can get access to the mini-game and to a NFT birds incubation process. The developers have not set a date when the full game will come out. On October 2022 the team is collecting a white list of participants who want to be a part of the closed beta testing.
More than 400 well-known investors pooled their money in SolChicks, according to the project's info. Here are some of them: Sfermion, Fundamental Labs, Blocore, AirAngels, GoldenTree, GD10, MetaVest Capital, Gate.io Labs, KuCoin Labs, Spartan Group, AU21, Master Ventures, Yield Guild Games SEA, Crypto Banter, and Genblock.
In October 2021, one of the biggest Axie Infinity guilds, Axie Infinity Singapore, became the project's partner. Another SolChicks supporter is oracle supplier Chainlink.
The official website says that the project's audience reached 700 000. In general, all this at first glance inspires confidence in the project, as well as the presence of white paper and developed social networks (Discord, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube, Facebook). Developing company also has Twitter. But is everything really as great with the project as it seems at first look? Let's analyze all the facts. Let's start with the plot.
📖 The plot
Developers allow players to immerse themselves in an alternate reality. Inhabited by chickens, Mellow Planet is the center of the action. The main heroes are supposed to fight with the evil awakened after many years of its hibernation.
Mellow and its creatures' lives changed in a moment when locals found the moon crystals. It was the sign of the upcoming darkness that threatened the chicken's home. To beat the enemy, Mellow's inhabitants should become stronger and unite their powers. Here you can watch SolChicks beta-version trailer.
Solchicks metaverse inside gamers can go through a mini-game. The win could bring them additional profit. Watch the SolChicks' Dungeon Escape mini-game gameplay.
Every chicken should be upgraded. For instance, to reach the goal, gamers can purchase special weapons. The stronger the fighter, the more chances there are to achieve the victory that brings income to the player.
SolChicks largely rely on Axie Infinity ideas, which used to be one of the trendy NFT-games.
Brief information about Axie Infinity: it is one of the most popular NFT games. The highest demand for the game came in 2021. In 2022, amid technical problems and a general downtrend, Axie Infinity began to actively lose its audience.
SolChicks presentation takes Axie Infinity as an example of a successful P2E-game. Both projects have much in common. For instance, SolChicks and Axie Infinity gamers can create digital armies out of their creatures and crossbreed them to get newborns.
⚙️ Technical side
To fill the virtual world of SolChicks with characters and game attributes, the developers used non-interchangeable tokens (NFT). Players can buy and create unique digital assets. All information about non-interchangeable tokens (owners, purchases, transfers) is stored on the Solana blockchain. The openness of the registry and the absence of the possibility of falsification of data guarantee the honesty of gaming processes.
A little bit about Solana. Solana is a blockchain of the Solana crypto project. The developers wanted to solve the problem of scalability (transaction speed) of the two most capitalized cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin and Ethereum. Solana is positioned as the first programmable blockchain. According to the developers, their blockchain can scale according to the needs of the network (that is, depending on the number of people willing to make a transaction, the transfer rate increases or decreases), and this approach allows them to maintain a minimum level of commissions.
Due to the low cost of transactions, many members of the crypto community consider Solana to be the «Ethereum killer». At the same time, Solana is inferior to competitors in technical aspects. This is the conclusion the DeFi Safety team made after research in June 2022. In their rating of the worst blockchains ever due to technical aspects, Solana took second place. The main reason is frequent network outages. According to DeFi Safety, the only thing worse than the Solana blockchain is the Ronin Network. Noticeable that the Ronin Network is used by Axie Infinity. In March 2022, developers found a security breach on the Ronin Network. South Korean hackers pocketed more than $600 million out of it. Axie Infinity users became the main victims of the exploit.
Ethereum, despite criticism due to high fees, is safer than analogues because of its high decentralization. Let us remind you that on the 15th of September it switched from the PoW to PoS algorithm with the Merge upgrade. Some crypto community members believe that changes may lead to higher centralization, which means less security. If prediction works, such alternatives as Solana can expect new users to flow in. Anyway, Ethereum developers disagree with the point that The Merge made it less decentralized.
📊 SolChicks in numbers
The highest SolChicks network activity, according to DappRadar, was fixed in February 2022 – after the launch of the project’s token trade, and at the same time it got the highest number of users. The highest transaction volume comes in December 2021. According to the low activity, we can assume that the metric grew because of the developers’ activity.
All SolChicks metrics have been decreasing since February 2022. Look at the SolChicks network activity due to DappRadar.
🖼 SolChicks NFT
There are 10k NFT in SolChicks’ collection. Every chicken is unique. Developers defined five categories of non-fungible tokens. Here are they and the chance to get a certain NFT:
At the moment (October, 2022), developers have released only 5k of their NFTs. And it is unknown when the rest will come. Here is the SolChicks NFT minting schedule.
There are several NFT-marketplaces to buy NFT SolChicks, including Magic Eden, Solanart, DigitalEyes, SolShop, and Solsea. Prices start at 3,9 Sol (approximately $117). The most expensive NFT SolChicks at the time of writing (October 2022, 18) were 700 Sol or nearly $22,5k. Here are the middle prices for SolChicks at Magic Eden.
🪙 SolChicks cryptocurrency
The project has a native token – the SolChicks Token (CHICKS). Emissions are limited. The maximum supply is 10 billion.
CHICKS is the main tool for settlements in the SolChicks ecosystem. There are only a few crypto exchanges where you can buy them, including Gate.io and MEXC.
Here is what the CHICKS tokenomic looks like:
The price of CHICKS has been falling since the opening of trading. Its maximum ($0.6605), according to CoinMarketCap, was fixed on December 13, 2021. In October, 2022 it is trading 99.50% off.
Unfortunately, the opening of trading for SolChicks cryptocurrency came in the bear market. Available data is enough to conclude that CHICKS is highly correlated with the most capitalized coins. SolChicks cryptocurrency repeats after the main digital asset market movement, which assumes that after a new bull run comes, CHICKS can show growth.
SolChicks has a dual tokenomic system which also includes SolChicks Shards (SHARDS) tokens. Users can earn coins in the mini-game.
SHARDS, just like CHICKS, have been falling since the launch of trading.
💰How much can you earn with SolChicks
Income depends on many factors, including the market phase. During the bear market, payouts were reduced. According to the gamers, in early 2022, it was possible to earn 100x. As game tokens are getting cheaper by more than 90%, we can assume that SolChicks profitability is reduced too.
NFT holders have more opportunities to earn money with the project. For instance, breeding chicks brings additional income.
How to start playing
And yet P2E games are primarily games, not a tool for earning money. So let's see what the SolChicks project looks like from a gaming, not a financial point of view.
For those who want to start playing SolChicks, but do not know how to do it, an educational platform is being built as part of the project. We will not delve so deeply, but we will try to bring you up to date.
So, first you need to choose which format of interaction with the SolChicks ecosystem you are interested in: a mini-game or incubation of chicks. Let's have a look at the first option, and then move on to the second.
🪨 Dungeon Escape mini-game
Developers offer gamers the chance to earn SHARD for escape from the Dungeon underground. The mini-game is running on Google Chrome. You should push «Play P2E Mini-Game Now!» to pick next actions.
Only NFT owners can earn money in Dungeon Escape, so then the system will offer to buy NFT SolChicks. If you want to do this, then you will be shown a list of marketplaces.
If you already have NFT SolChicks or you just want to play not for earnings, press the get game access button. The system will offer you to familiarize with simple rules:
🎯 The main gamer’s goal is to move as far as possible, while collecting coins and avoiding obstacles. The prize is determined by the distance traveled and the number of coins collected.
⬆️ The player can use A, S, D, and W or arrow keys to control the character.
The user should be authorized before the game launches. Facebook and Twitter accounts are suitable for this. In addition, the system can ask you to enter your email.
After the procedure, the system will share the link to the game launch.
To begin the Dungeon Escape, you should press the «play» button. After that, the system will initiate the game loading process.
Now all you have to do is to connect to a cryptowallet, such as Phantom or Solflare, and turn the game into full-screen mode with the button at the bottom of the page.
When preparations are done, the gamer gets access to the game. Now your main goal is to keep going while collecting coins as long as it is possible!
SolChicks has an interesting feature: players can rent out their NFTs for a percentage of the income that the renter player will receive using the token. Rental conditions may vary significantly. For example, someone takes 30% from renters, others – 50% of the profit, and there are even those who grab more than a half.
Rent offers differ by timing and pricing conditions. The more profitable token – the higher rent price, as usual.
🥚Chickens breeding
NFT in the SolChicks universe can not only be bought and rented, but also created! To do this, select the option «Breeding/Egg Hatching» on the main page.
When choosing an incubation, the system will direct the user to a separate platform. First of all, you will need to log in through a crypto wallet. You can get access through Ledger or Phantom, for example.
It is possible to crossbreed chickens on the platform. This way is for those who already own gaming NFTs.
To start crossing, you need to select the tokens that will become the parents and confirm the operation.
The system takes fees in CHICKS and SHARDS. The fee depends on the uniqueness of the NFT. Prices are below:
The egg maturation finishes within 5 days. This is how newborn chickens appear. Breeding is another way (besides buying weapons) to make your team of chickens from the planet Mellow more powerful, because new individuals turn out to be stronger than their parents. Everything is according to the laws of nature!
Pros and cons
It is difficult to unambiguously evaluate the SolChicks project. It definitely inspires confidence and leaves a good impression, but not everything about it is perfect.
One of the main disadvantages of the project is the focus on Axie Infinity. At one time, this NFT game managed to make a lot of noise. The hype takeoff was replaced by a bitter fall, and that's why:
🥲 Betting on a less reliable than Ethereum, but cheaper Ronin Network blockchain turned into a loss of over $600 million in cryptocurrency for developers. According to the representatives of the project, it will take about two years to return the money. The exploit hit the rating of the game, which was already suffering from the pressure of competitors.
🥲 The mechanics of Axie Infinity turned out to be unstable to market fluctuations. Many players have accumulated credits to enter the project. Against the background of the Axie Infinity exploit and the general downtrend of the digital asset market, user incomes began to melt. At the same time, no one canceled the need to repay loans. The Times writes that Filipinos suffered the most from the hopes of earning on Asus Infinity: the average salary in the country is significantly less than the income that players could count on during the take-off of the project. Unfortunately, not everyone managed to recoup their investments.
SolChicks is similar to Axie Infinity in mechanics, plot and even technical side, including an emphasis on a cheap blockchain with unproven security. We definitely cannot recommend SolChicks as a tool for earning money. The unreliable blockchain and the purposeful development of the platform according to the Axie Infinity scenario suggest that the project can repeat the fate of its inspirer.
And although the idea of SolChicks is not new (the developers took the plot of Axie Infinity and simply replaced the local characters – axies – with chickens), it's worth trying to play for the sake of an interesting drawing of the main characters and nice graphics.
This article is not an investment recommendation. The financial transactions mentioned in the article are not a guide to action. Itez is not responsible for possible risks. The user should independently conduct an analysis on the basis of which it will be possible to draw conclusions and make decisions about making any operations with cryptocurrency.
