Genopets is a play-to-earn (P2E) game being built on the Solana blockchain. It aims to incentivize players to better take care of their minds and body through the clever use of blockchain technology and progressive gameplay mechanics.
The game is the first to leverage the unique properties of blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to reward players for staying active. It features two distinct tokens — $GENE, which is primarily used for governance and staking, and $KI, which is used as an in-game currency. Beyond this, most assets are represented as NFTs, which are fully player-owned and tradeable.
Genopets was co-founded by Albert Chen and Benjamin Tse. Chen is a serial entrepreneur that has expertise in engineering, economics, and marketing. Tse, on the other hand, has been working in the blockchain space since 2016 and has over 16 years of experience in product design, UI/UX, and SaaS. He briefly held a stint as an advisor for the multi-chain NFT marketplace in early 2021.
How Does Genopets Work?
Genopets is centered around unique digital critters that are designed to grow and evolve based on the real-world decisions of its owner. By sharing personal data and completing challenges, the potential of each Genopet can be developed, increasing its stats and better preparing it for battle.
Genopets introduces the concept of ‘Move to Earn’, which is an evolution of the Play to Earn paradigm that sees players earn rewards for exercising their mind and body. The game will eventually take in several kinds of biometric data, such as heart rate, sleep, and activity from several popular data capture devices, including Google Fit, Fitbit, Oura, and more. These will be worked into the gameplay, allowing participants to earn KI by being active.
Each Genopet is encoded with the player’s personality and fitness data, and is shaped through nurture and battle. The nurture mechanics are designed to challenge users physically, whereas the battle mechanics are designed to challenge them mentally.
In addition to the overarching Move to Earn concept rewarding players with $KI tokens for their real-world activity, the game allows users to stratify their earning potential in three additional ways:
- Trainer — Trainers may play Genopets with a focus on upgrading and evolving their Genopets to sell them in an open marketplace to earn.
- Merchant — Merchants may purchase, create and terraform habitats to farm and refine rare and valuable crystals to regularly trade on the open marketplace.
- Landlord — Landlords may purchase habitats for the purpose of leasing them to other players to get a steady flow of resources.
Genopets’ battle system allows players to participate in multiple battles asynchronously and also features a decentralized prediction market that allows spectators to earn $KI for predicting the winners of battles. Battles are turn-based and the success is largely dependent on the user’s performance in a variety of challenging mini-games.
Users will be able to use the KI they earn to purchase a variety of items for their Genopet, such as food, clothing, and accessories, and will also be able to further customize their Genopet’s moveset and skill tree to best align with their personality and style.
What Makes Genopets Unique?
In an increasingly crowded sector, few play-to-earn games offer the right mix of incentives, novelty, and features to really differentiate themselves from the masses. But Genopets is looking to position itself as a trailblazer of sorts, by rethinking several popular blockchain game mechanics and introducing more than a few new features of its own. Above all Genopets brings a fun and rewarding experience to users.
Some of its key distinguishing features include:
Free to Play
Unlike many play-to-earn games, there is no upfront entry cost to begin playing Genopets. Users can summon their Genopet for free and begin earning $KI tokens right away. However, users may wish to purchase additional NFTs and items either from the marketplace or during a sale event to progress quicker.
Built on Solana
Genopets is one of the first high-quality games built in the Solana ecosystem. As a result, it benefits from the massive throughput and scalability of the Solana blockchain, as well as near-instant and low-cost transactions. This ensures it can support potentially hundreds and thousands of simultaneous users without seeing any congestion or the gas fee challenges that have plagued Ethereum-based blockchain games.
Wearable and Mobile Integration
Genopets looks to bring in step activity data from the real world by connecting with mobile devices running Google Fit or Apple Health. Through integrations with a range of popular wearables, additional activity and health data will be used supported with time. In order to appeal to the largest audience, this will primarily focus on the most popular devices and apps, while ensuring that this data cannot be falsified for the purposes of $KI farming.
Move to Earn
Genopets is the first game to introduce the concept of ‘move to earn’, allowing players to earn $KI for improving their health and fitness. Over time, Genopets looks to support more types of fitness data and support the most popular fitness apps, ensuring that only genuine, high-quality data is used to grow and develop a user’s Genopet.
Sustainable Vesting Schedule
Unlike many play-to-earn games which are plagued by extreme inflation due to both the regular unlocks of early-stage investor tokens and the gradual release of in-game rewards, Genopets has extremely sustainable tokenomics. All private sale investors are subject to a 1-year lockup followed by a 1-year linear vest. Combine this with a sustainable approach to NFT generation and trading and you have a recipe for long-term success.
