Dear Recruits,
We have a much-needed update after a rollercoaster month filled with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. If you follow crypto at all, you know exactly what we mean.
Buckle up.
Since our last update, we attended Solana Breakpoint in Lisbon, started a new gaming and metaverse initiative, assessed the FTX debacle, and paved a new path for Kaizen Corps to move towards as 2022 draws to a close.
Solana Breakpoint in Lisbon
Breakpoint, organized by the Solana Foundation, is the biggest Solana conference of the year (held in Lisbon for the first 2 years). The biggest names and teams in the Solana ecosystem, as well as curious individuals, show up to share what’s going on in the space. Our dev team attended the event and the Hacker House event right before.
Connecting with other Gaming / Metaverse Projects
During the week, we connected with a staggering number of gaming and metaverse builders. It gave us a ton of visibility into what other projects are working on. We also saw the problems they’re running into and the solutions they’re building.
One thing we noticed is that there’s very little cross-collaboration between builders. Every project seems to be siloed and many are working on the same problems and building similar solutions. Taking Kaizen Corps as an example, Star Atlas made an announcement on Games Day that they’re open-sourcing their version of Keychain (with a few more bells and whistles). In general, we found a lot of duplicated effort.
Validation for Kaizen Corps
As mentioned above, Star Atlas built a similar solution of linking wallets together to ours. This means our team is seeing the same problems that other projects are facing and we’re building the right solutions.
On one of the nights, we attended a side event and ended up chatting for a while with a fellow who turned out to be a Kai holder! He mentioned that he was giving a presentation the next day and we didn’t think much of it at the time, but it turned out that this fellow was Stephen Hess, CEO of Metaplex Studios.
The next day Stephen announced the release of Metaplex’s Fusion Protocol, which will bring composability to Solana NFTs, and you can bet Kaizen Corps will be one of the early adopters.
Fun Fact: Metaplex announced their Candy Machine v3 back in October. Our Doorman program, which we developed for our custom on-chain whitelisting + variable-priced mint, was built almost a full year beforehand (and has almost full feature parity)!
Stephen Hess wasn’t the only Kai holder we ran into. There were many others we met during the week. Another key highlight was meeting one of our community members IRL who played the 2nd Alpha game of Domination!
What we learned (and validated) this past week, is that Kaizen Corps is as legitimate a project as any out there, and we’ve got the skills and team to take us to the moon.
New Initiative: GMB — Gaming and Metaverse Builders
Having seen the duplicate eforts of many of the teams at Breakpoint, we realized that there was an opportunity for projects to move faster by gaining visibility into each other’s efforts and collaborating, thereby pushing the entire ecosystem forward.
To address this, we’ve started an initiative to connect builders together so we can help each other out. Enter G/M Buildoors — our forum for collaboration. We’ve created a Telegram group, a Discord channel, and a Github organization. We’ll host roundtables regularly with G/M projects so we can all share and bounce ideas off each other.
Our first Roundtable was on Monday, November 14. The discussion was productive and it’s an exciting way to stay connected. There’s already a lot of interest from projects to join, and some want to start their own forums for G/M projects.
If you’re part of a web3 gaming or metaverse project and would like to connect with other builders, drop us a line!
FTX Debacle
On the last day of Breakpoint, the news of FTX’s insolvency broke, and what started off as an amazing week quickly turned into one of the darkest.
Luckily, we believe in “not your keys, not your coins,” so our treasury wasn’t impacted as our funds are stored in non-custodial wallets, but what a rollercoaster. Not knowing what’s going to happen when you’ve poured so much of yourself into something is not fun to say the least.
Our Supportive Domination Community
After the shit hit the fan, we checked the Domination server to see what was going on and if our community was freaking out. What we found was all 3 factions just… playing Domination. There wasn’t a single word in the war rooms about FTX or the crash.
The market was imploding and our community members were just playing Domination. We felt uplifted by the show of support. This is why we show up every day and do what we do.
Our Opportunity
After the past few weeks, the project is stronger than it’s ever been and we’ve got big plans on deck. Solana might be going through a rough patch but the fundamentals remain: Solana is the premiere chain for web3 gaming (the only one in our opinion).
We recognize market conditions right now as an incredible opportunity. A lot of projects are going to get shaken out, but there are going to be some big winners that emerge from the ashes. We plan to become part of the corps of builders to create the games and infrastructure that will define and become the building blocks of the next wave of adoption.
Nothing changes and we’re doubling down on our efforts. You with us anon?
Next Steps?
So that was a lot that happened in the span of three weeks. We’ve sat down and brainstormed where we can sail the Kaizen Corps ship next.
Domination
To close out 2022, we’ll be introducing a free-to-play (F2P) model for Domination. We’ve realized that most web3 games (including Domination) will need a F2P version to achieve true adoption. Additionally, we’ve started to lay the groundwork for our marketing efforts moving forward. Once we’ve increased our player base with the F2P version, we’ll begin to ramp up our marketing.
In parallel, we’re building some exciting new features for Domination, such as being able to pilot multiple Kai per game. A feature we’re calling Squads. Additionally, we’ve added a new Battle Report with more comprehensive information and new maps.
Infrastructure (Kaizen Corps)
We’ve begun focusing on infrastructure and ecosystem development, starting with the productization of components that we’ve already developed for Domination. Additionally, starting with the connections we made at Breakpoint, we’re now actively engaging with other projects in the space to identify potential partnerships and opportunities, which will help develop our distribution strategy.
The opportunity is right in front of us and we’re gonna grab it by the horns. The future is bright for Kaizen Corps. Hoorah!
Are you part of a gaming project that would like to connect with us? Reach out via email or Twitter!
— Kaizen Corps Team
Smart Contract / Backend Developer: @silostack
Artist / Designer: @Hard_Surfaced
Community Manager: @kaizenguru_sol
Frontend Developer: @optic_mind
Twitter: @KaizenCorpsNFT
Discord: discord.gg/dominationgg
