Signs Along the Highway:

Blockstars Q2 and the Importance of Utility

What was a Blockstar on February 5th?

If a person minted on February 5th, they got a kickass avatar, some high-res renderings from different angles, a gif, a 3D file that could be animated, and a promise of things to come. Counting on a promise like that takes faith. Blockstars holders had to trust that we would deliver on the commitments we had laid out in our roadmap.

And do you know what? We have been, are now, and will continue to deliver on our targets, with each release creating features holders can use.

But what does that actually mean? In a word: Utility.

Utility — Why is it so important?

The world of NFTs is volatile. Hundreds of projects are minted every month, each with visions of DAOs, metaverses, and the like. The word “brand” is bandied about with a fervor that hypes a select few of these projects to the moon. But at the end of the day, what does the token do? There is some amazing art out there, for sure. There are great projects that have clear roadmaps and devoted followings. But in the scheme of things, there have been a lot of projects that have had all the buzz, and held no value beyond that of their sold-out mint.

Blockstars is taking a different strategy. We want holders to USE their tokens. We want them to PLAY with them, and in turn, play our game. We’re working hard to make something great; it would be a shame if Blockstars just stayed in wallets, never seeing the light of day. That noted, while we are proud to see a Blockstar being used as a profile pic, it isn’t the entire point of the project.

Look at it like this: you can keep a nice guitar in a case and lock it in a vault, and it may appreciate in value. But does it have a story to tell? Worn frets, belt-rash on the back, and dried specks of blood on the pickguard show that instrument was LOVED, and that it was used to make MUSIC. That’s where we want to be. A well-played Blockstar is more than it was the day it was minted. It lived to tell the tale.

$ROL & Control

Not long after mint day, we began “airdripping” $ROL tokens to every holder’s wallet. This was the second ‘THANK YOU’ to our holders, after we airdropped 5,000 Blockstars on a 1:1 basis to each of the purchasers in our sold-out mint. We thought it prudent to pre-seed the in-game economy, and we wanted to do it in a way that rewarded the community that believed in us. For each Blockstar out there, we “airdripped” 30 $ROL to its holder every 30 minutes. More than 750,000,000 $ROL tokens were distributed to holders from February to late April, when the airdrip ended.

When we began the airdrip, $ROL token had no real utility. A holder would see the number in their wallet increase each day, but couldn’t DO anything with it. Much like the Blockstars themselves, $ROL had a promise of future utility linked to a game that was yet to be seen. Coinciding with the end of the airdrip, “Practicing” was released as our first playable game component. It was then we first started to see some of the utility of the $ROL token.

Practicing allows the player to “burn” $ROL, but it could not yet be earned. In early June, we released “Busking”, which allows the “band manager” (the holder) to send their Blockstars out to make money ($ROL). When combined, “Practicing & Busking” completes the first of our “Earn and Burn” game loops.

Now, the dev team has begun the ambitious “NGMI” feature. NGMI (or “Not Gonna Make It”) is an addition to our roadmap that allows a holder to “burn” a Blockstar, removing them permanently from the blockchain. This will give our managers the final say as to the future of the NFTs in their wallet. Will this Blockstar go to the stratosphere, or will they go back to Mom’s basement? If the manager does send them packing, their talents can be applied to another Blockstar and the holder receives a voucher for a new one in a future mint! Again, utility. If you hold a Blockstar, you’re in control.

Utility beyond the game

We marched into Spring with our Raffle with $ROL giveaway, where we awarded 10 Blue-Chip NFTs to people who bought tickets using $ROL tokens. Anyone who had $ROL on hand, traded for it, or acquired it through other means, was able to buy a chance to win over 200 $SOL worth of prizes. A raffle is an example of non-game utility, and we were thrilled to be in the position to give away some really impressive prizes to members of our community.

The raffle was wildly popular: more than 6,600 tickets were sold at a price of 10,000 $ROL each! The interesting part is that it gave the Blockstars’ managers another choice. Did they spend their startup capital on a chance to win? Or hold back so they could be ahead when the game began in earnest? Or go for a healthy mix of the two?

Our second non-game utility is the Liquidity Pool (LP) setup by our friends at Merit Circle DAO. This is the first opportunity holders have had to swap $ROL for $SOL on Raydium. We are especially proud of this because a third-party liquidity pool is a sign of confidence in our product and in our project as a whole.

The Roadmap and the Future of Utility

With Practicing & Busking in the rearview mirror, and NGMI on the horizon, we are looking ahead to a future full of fun things for people to do with their Blockstars. We are proud of our iterative approach and are excited to see it through — in a time when other projects are shrinking, we are adding to our roadmap.

After NGMI, we look forward to introducing “Bands”. Following Bands will be “Singles” and “Charts”. These new features will bring competition into the mix, giving managers more opportunities to earn and be strategic with their Blockstars.

These are the goals we continue to push towards every day. We have heard and we acknowledge the questions and concerns from many within the community regarding the uncertainties in the broader crypto ecosystem. Our response, like so many of our fellow Solana friends: We continue to build.

$ROC & $ROL, baby!

Join Us:

Do you like what you see? Are you interested in our project? You have ample opportunities to catch up. You can read about our roadmap, whitepaper, and tokenomics at our website and you can join our community on Discord or Twitter.

Erik Callaway| @epcKazooMod| Community Specialist| Blockstars