My NFT Platform will mint in 19 hours. Reserve before that for 50% off minting

Become part of something Timeless 

Have you ever thought about encountering once-in-a-lifetime opportunities? Those opportunities at your doorstep that you might regret 30 years later for not taking?

As an esteemed author that sold over 100K books and a handful of billionaire readers – as well as a designer that has empowered over 1 Billion user experiences – I certainly had no shortage of exciting opportunities in my life (a couple of them nation-changing).

But when my long-time friend from Google, Jun Loayza, reached out to me about this Metablox Concept, I felt this would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and immediately jumped on it.

So, is this the opportunity that will make you rich in 4 months? NO – if that’s what you want Metablox is not what you are looking for.

This is an opportunity to be part of an ecosystem to preserve humanity’s most important memories onto the blockchain, so they don’t live on a single server like Google Photos/Drive or Dropbox. 

It’s an opportunity to turn every location in the real world into a historical site or a museum so our important memories will carry on to generations to come.

Minting on May 23rd 6AM Pacific (less than 18 hours away)

After 6 months of extraordinarily-hard work, including building a full game mechanics platform and becoming officials partners with Polygon, we are finally ready to launch our Metablox Minting tomorrow for San Francisco and Miami – with Singapore and New York coming shortly after.

Minting can be done with Debit Card (recommended for those who don’t have Crypto/MetaMask experience) or MATIC/Polygon via MetaMask (for more advanced users)

If you feel that at some point in your life you might want to own Metablox NFT, here are a few reasons why reserving Blox on our platform before our minting begins would be a pretty smart thing to do:

1) Reserving a Blox ensures that the location you care about (meaning) or with high growth potential (value) cannot be taken by anyone else within 48 hours of minting. It would just be yours alone. 

2) Reserving a Blox ensures that the mint price will always be Phase 1 pricing. In our game mechanics, every 10% ownership of a city, the mint price will increase by 50%. But for the property you have reserved , it will always be the base lowest price ($100-$300 per Blox depending on Tier). Even if you missed your reservation, you might still want to mint on Day 1 because after a few days minting could become 150% ^ x higher.

3) Reserving a Blox actually will earn an additional 50% discount off the base lowest price. Due to the recent decrease of the crypto market, to show appreciation for our reservations holders that have been with us since January, we decided to cut all minting for reservation holders by half to factor in potential weaker buying power. This means the $100-$300 per Blox will decrease to $50-$150 ONLY for those who reserved a Blox before the minting 18 hours from now. 

The only catch here is that each person can only mint 3 Blox before the normal mint phase begins.


Influencers resonate with our mission

Metablox is all about preserving meaningful memories to a location (Blox NFT) forever on the blockchain. Some influencers who care about Metablox and have uploaded their Memories into Metablox (private beta) include:

Hofit Golan (3.1M Followers) | Check out her memory on Metablox
Natalia Amaya (100K Followers) | Check out her memory on Metablox
Katerina & Yinon Horwitz (560K Followers) | Check out their memory on Metablox

We think these meaningful memories will become more and more valuable as time goes by – which is proven by historical landmarks and museums in the real world.

You’ll also get to experience probably one of the top Game Loop / Tokenomics Designs in the world by me, while making history together as a Memory Creator and Memory Curator of our precious real world.

So what now?

If you have already made 1-3 reservations on Metablox, here are a few tutorials to prepare for minting.

Important: All reservation holders get a 50% discount during the Reservation Minting Phase (which lasts 48 hours after launch).

Here are the Minting tutorials

  1. Get ready to Mint: Bridge ETH to MATIC
  2. Get ready to Mint: Minting tutorials
  3. How to Mint your reserved Blox

I hope you join alongside me and thousands of others to become a neighbor in Metablox so we can make history together!

Thanks and God Bless,
Yu-kai Chou
Wikipedia Profile

3 Great Gamification Examples in Blockchain and NFTs

As most of you know, Blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs have been sweeping the world by storm.

While this is still the wild wild west where companies are innovating faster than what consumers can adopt to (be careful of what you invest in as many are hype over substance), when the dust settles there will be some clear winners that will define the future of technology, entertainment, and lifestyle.

Below we list 3 good examples of gamification being applied in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space.

Blockchain Gamification Example 1: Axie Infinity

You probably have already heard of Axie Infinity – which almost makes this a must-include on our list.

Traditional NFTs focus on just owning unique pieces of digital artwork or characters/cards which could go up in value and be traded later. However, without fun utilizations of these NFTs, the value of these NFTs are purely speculative and barely based on need or utility.

To increase the value of these NFTs, Axie Infinity (inspired by another NFT project CryptoKitties), Axie Infinity allowed people to “play” with these NFT creatures, including breeding more, buying land, upgrading the Axies, and battling each other.

The results of gamifying these NFTs made Axie Infinity the largest “Play-To-Earn” platform in the world, with their AXS market cap to exceed $3 Billion USD, and a daily trade volume of over $150 Million USD. Active players of Axie Infinity can earn from a few hundred dollars a month to over $4,000 a month, which becomes a nice living for many people in countries like the Philippines (warning: due to competitiveness of the platform, playing Axie Infinity may not guarantee actually earning money, and it is possible to invest into the game and lose money instead).

Blockchain Gamification Example 2: Fulldive Social Web3 Browser

Fulldive is a mobile browser (much like Chrome or Safari) that is supercharged by Blockchain, Gamification, and VR.

Not only does Fulldive allow the consumption of millions of VR content from a mobile phone, you can also gain gamified rewards such as XP points, increase levels, NFT badges, and quests. The in-browser coins that can be traded for gift cards, charity, or cryptocurrencies too.

Because of their unique combination of gamification, blockchain/crypto/NFT, VR, and ad blocking, FullDive mobile browsers has obtain over 15 Million Downloads. With their Gamified Social Browser alone, they achieved over 2.7 Million Downloads and a 4.73 rating from 111,000 ratings in their last update alone.

Fun fact: Yu-kai Chou and The Octalysis Group actually had the blessing and pleasure to provide some help to the Fulldive Social Browser to make it more engaging. Octalysis Group guidance helped(partially – we don’t claim full credit as their team worked incredibly hard to make everything happen) Fulldive’s Social Browser rating increase from 4.1 to 4.7, downloads from 600K to 2.7M, and the weekly retention rate from 12% to 29%.

Blockchain Gamification Example 3: Upland NFT

Buying virtual land has been a big topic in the Web3 world. Over $75 million USD worth of virtual land alone was sold in The Sandbox and Decentraland alone.

However, a very interesting project we have been eyeing on is Upland, which combines owning virtual land, real world real-estate, and monopoly into one NFT game platform.

A user basically purchases pieces of NFT property that represent a real world location (such as a building in New York). They can then earn a variety of currencies, rewards, and collections to increase their asset values.

There are a variety of strategies and optimizations in this monopoly game, making it quite engaging and enabling a valuation of $300 Million USD in just a couple years.

Metablox NFT Logo

Honorable Mention: Metablox NFT (my own Blockchain Gamification Project)

Similar to Upland, my own gamified blockchain project harnesses the power of owning NFTs based on real life locations (a block instead of an address or building). However, we double down on the real world by allowing users to upload meaningful memories connected to that location and allow the Blox NFT to level up.

Metablox NFT

Leveled up Blox can generate an in-platform currency called MetaRent, which can then be used to bid for Landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge or Statue of Liberty.

The true purpose of Metablox is to motivate people to upload meaningful memories onto the Blockchain forever, so they will not live on a single server but can be immortalized like historical sites, museums, and landmarks.

I designed an intricate Game Loop to ensure longterm engagement as well as a steady rising in NFT utility, resulting in lasting value for owners.

Metablox Game Loop

Metablox is a new project that just launched in February 2022, and minting will start in April 2022. Eventually it will incorporate Augmented Reality (AR) experiences when exploring various cities, as well as social check-in/loyalty program implementations for real world locations.

If you want to join the early community and see how it’s done…

Join the Metablox Discord Community

My gamified NFT Project Metablox just launched! Reservations Open.

My gamified NFT Project Metablox just launched. As you may know, I’ve been working on an NFT project Metablox with my long term college friend from Google Jun Loayza. It’s a project to help preserve our most precious memories in the real world onto the blockchain (so it lives on forever for our grandchildren), while allowing people to own NFTs of the real world places that the memories comes from.

In essence, it’s merging the concepts of being a museum curator and the Monopoly board game of the real world.
We just released our public reservation phase an hour ago, and as of this writing, 11% of our first city San Francisco has been reserved by people in this first hour.
More importantly, 80 of the 91 “Tier 5” Blox NFTs have already been reserved.

In total there are 4534 Blox NFTs available, representing 4534 real world blocks in San Francisco, with landmarks such as Alcatraz or the Golden Gate Bridge coming as MetaRent Auctions later.

Of course, reservations just means that one has the right to purchase that particular Blox in SF when our minting phase starts in April. It doesn’t mean Metablox Neighbors are committed to purchase, so we’ll still have to see how things play out later.


The epitome of Octalysis Gamification & NFT Game Loops

For Metablox, I’ve designed a whole series of Game Loop experience flowsCore Drive 1: Epic Meaning mechanics, and Tokenomics. Things from collecting MetaRentleveling up the NFT by uploading memories, and Group Quest Proximity Bonuses.

Basically applying everything I have learned since 2003 and the stuff I have taught at Stanford, Yale, Oxford, and a handful of governments.

If you are ever curious about how the Octalysis Framework can be implemented into NFTs, Web3, and the non-FB Metaverse, Metablox is the project to try out.


Why Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning is important for designing NFT Platforms

Like any NFT project, Metablox is about owning scarce virtual assets (Core Drive 4: Ownership and Core Drive 6: Scarcity). However, without a central purpose or meaning (besides “This looks so rad!!” or “it’s a fun game!”) it doesn’t have lasting value. Games could get old and styles could go out of fashion.

However, our best Memories are forever, and in fact, become more valuable as time goes by. This is shown in actual landmarks, historical sites, museums, and even year books.
Think about how some families spend thousands each year taking family photos – they want to capture a meaningful moment for generations to come.

This is why when we surveyed our Metablox Community on Discord, we can see that only 21.8% of Metablox Neighbors joined because they are fans of my work. 5.5% joined because of Podcasts such as Raoul Pal’s interview with me (with a generous title of “Godfather of Gamification”).

A whopping 52.7% came in due to referrals from others in the community.


 

So why do people refer their friends? It’s because they resonate with the concept. Interestingly, instead of young hipsters craving new tech, our age group demographic are largely 30 and above – those that have families and care about preserving important memories (as well as valuable assets) to their children.



Impressively, income brackets of our community is also quite high, with over 5% of our Metablox Neighbors making $300K or more. Potentially we are also attracting people who understand the value of investing into assets that have high potential early.
 
Reserve your Blox Today

Anyway, not sure how many days will it take for Metablox to be fully reserved, but if you are interested in potentially being part of the journey in our April minting, you can consider minting on Metablox.co.

If you are just curious about the community and how things evolve, feel free to join the Metablox Neighbors Discord Channel or read the Metablox Story Whitepaper.

Don’t worry – none of these are purchase commitments but good opportunities to learn. I’ll be giving it my all so let’s see how things develop.

Thanks and God Bless!

Economy dynamics with the Metablox NFT launch (March 2022)

As we approach the launch of our Metablox NFT Reservation period (starting with the Whitelist neighbors from our Discord with a 48 hours head start), it’s useful to explore the economical dynamics that could happen when we enter our NFT minting phase in March.

As described in the Metablox NFT White Paper, mint prices for Metablox NFT scales by 50% every 10% a city is being owned/minted.

Example: If a city has 5,000 Blox:

  • Phase 1 = the initial phase.
  • Phase 2 = triggered when 500 homes are purchased in total.
  • Phase 3 = triggered when 1,000 homes are purchased in total.
  • Phase 4 = triggered when 1,500 homes are purchased in total.
  • And so on…

Upon reaching the next phase, the base price of unclaimed properties will increase by 1.5x compared to the previous phase, with a non-stacked 24 hour grace period for the each new phase.

A Tier 1 Blox in San Francisco would cost $100 to mint in Phase 1, but in Phase 10 where over 90% of San Francisco is minted, mint prices become $3844.

Similarly, a Tier 5 Blox in San Francisco would cost $500 to mint in Phase 1, but in Phase 10, the minting price would be $19,222.

Of course, we fully expect some Blox to be sold for much higher than the minting prices in the second market after they are minted due to higher reputation and meaning surrounding that Blox.

It is important to note that, if a Blox is purchased from a Reservation during the Reservation period (mid Feb – early March), it will remain Phase 1 prices.

If the reservations are very popular and immediately 80% of the Metablox NFTs are reserved and purchased (there is a 48 hour window where reservations can be converted before it gets released back to the public), all 80% of the Blox will be minted at the base Phase 1 price such as $100 for Tier 1 Blox.

However, the rest of the unminted Blox would immediately move to the next phase (Phase 2) prices with a 24 hour grace period, before it moves to Phase 3, and then 24 hours to Phase 4.

If you reserved Blox, it would be important to make sure you purchase the Blox during the 48 hours exclusive period for the Blox you picked, or else you might end up paying multiple times higher for the same Blox.

Since the founding principle of Metablox is solid growth and lasting value – instead of exuberant speculation and hype – the goal is not to quickly sell out all properties within a city.

Rather, the Phase of that city will reflect the organic demand, which could reach full saturation over an extended period of time. 

We want to make buying an NFT owned by someone else more appealing than a newly minted one – until the market demand is high enough to open a new phase with a new set of unminted properties that is much higher than the previous phase.

This ensures that Metablox owners will have steady rising values for their NFTs as floor prices increase while community interest in Metablox remains healthy. 

If an early Metablox owner buys an NFT for $100 – besides being a more sought after Blox to begin with – the Metablox owner will likely level the Blox up with memories, which allows the Blox to generate more MetaRent

After a certain time if the base price of other unclaimed NFTs becomes $225 (Phase 3), the Metablox owner should at least be able to sell their NFT for $225, considering any random unclaimed and Level 1 Blox is at $225. 

If the Metablox owner wants to sell quickly and lowers the price to $200, not only is the Blox higher level than unclaimed Blox, it would also be cheaper. It would be a reasonable assumption to believe that people who care about the Metablox ecosystem would want to purchase it rather quickly.

If everyone wants to trade at below the current phase mint price, then the mint price will not move to the next phase. But if everyone is starting to trade at above the current mint price, then it makes more sense to mint new ones, which would eventually raise the mint price to a new phase.

We are very dedicated to making sure people not only have growing value in their NFT assets, but they have liquidity that corresponds to market demand.

So what would happen to the Minting Phase in March?

There are three scenarios that could happen once the Metablox Minting Phase starts.

Here we analyze them from highest demand to lowest demand.

Scenario 1: Metablox NFTs in San Francisco sell out during the reservation phase

The scenario with the most demand is that during the one month period where reservations are possible, all ~5000 Blox in San Francisco are all reserved and minted.

That means, that all Blox would have been minted in the Phase 1 pricing ($100-$500), and there would be no unclaimed Blox in San Francisco.

This means that if anyone else wants to buy more Blox, they need to buy it from someone who already owns a minted Blox, at whatever the price the owner deems desirable.

Needless to say, this is a great situation for the Metablox community as a whole. People who reserved got the best possible deal, and the entire ecosystem has a great deal of social proof.

The Metablox company would collect less revenue due to no City Scaling Mechanics activating (which is fine), and it would bring great confidence to new and existing owners for future cities. Everyone wins in this situation.

Scenario 2: San Francisco Metablox NFTs sold between 10%-90% during reservation phase

This scenario indicates the situation where the Metablox NFTs are in strong demand during the reservations periods, but have not yet completely sold out during that period.

In this scenario, a tangible amount of Blox are owned by people, who can set their selling price to whatever they want. The good news for them is that others who wish to buy new Metablox NFTs wouldn’t be able to just buy an unminted Blox for a lower price.

Due to the City Scaling Mechanics, unminted Blox would be significantly more expensive, up to $12,814.

This would control the available supply pool of NFT inventory to just the ones that are minted – until everyone wants to buy above the new mint prices.

Blox owners in this situation can either set their sell prices at below the new mint prices, which should maximize their liquidity.

If the Blox owners set their prices at above the new mint prices, then unless the Blox has some special interest value (celebrity home etc.), it would encourage people to first buy the unminted prices until San Francisco is fully owned.

In this scenario, people who own Blox during the reservation phase would greatly benefit, and later comers might immediately see dramatically higher prices. In this case, indecisively watching how things go before committing could be an expensive endeavor.

Scenario 3: Less than 10% of San Francisco Metablox NFTs owned during the reservation period

This is the scenario where Metablox NFTs have less than 500 of the Blox purchased within the one month reservation period.

This of course is not ideal for the platform, but as the foundational strategy of Metablox is to build lasting value over time, it is also not detrimental.
Frenzies are volatile and sometimes distracts from the ultimate mission of preserving humanities most precious memories.

Since below 10% of San Francisco Metablox NFTs are owned, mint prices will remain at the base structure. This means that during the next few months, Blox owners would be able to concentrate on rooting memories, collecting MetaRent, and leveling up their Blox.

Overtime, the blox platform becomes more and more meaningful, which could garner increased interest from the general public. People may notice that Metablox NFTs are not about pump and dump but, like historical landmarks, the more time that is elapsed the more meaningful and valuable it becomes.

At that point, the early 10% owners would have the highest Level Blox with the best memories, significantly beating out other Blox.

Early owners will also have significantly more MetaRent, which would allow them to have a substantial advantage to bid for Landmarks.

Metablox NFTs – prepared for all outcomes

As you can see, even though there are a variety of possible ways the Metablox launch could play out (depending on how many of your friends you are inviting to this exciting project), we are prepared for every scenario and will make sure everything works out positively for our longterm vision, while making sure Blox owners that are part of our journey gets rewarded handsomely on the way.

Metablox NFT Game Loop and Tokenomics

Designing Metablox NFT Game Loop and Tokenomics

I’ve been helping companies design Game Loops for Years. It’s one of the most important practices within my work ever since I published my book. At the same time, due to the new Crypto/Blockchain/NFT craze and how they all utilize some form of gamification, I have been designing economies and especially tokenomies.

I’ve spent a lot of time creating the Metablox NFT Game Loop, which helped derive the Tokenomics of the Metablox Coin, its Governance and Dividend Token.

If you want to learn more about how I designed the Game Loop or in general how to create Tokenomics, you can either:

  1. Join the Metablox Discord and learn about it and more from other passionate Metablox Neighbors and initiates alike (You will gain the status of “First Founding Member” if you join before our February launch)
  2. Checkout the Metablox Whitepaper!

The NFT I believe in

As you most likely have noticed, there is a huge NFT craze going on right now.

Some of them seem exuberant with six, seven or even eight digit sales. Some are based on some fad where people know will eventually blow up, but are living with the “next fool” principle of joining the party while it lasts, while others are there for long term bragging rights and self expression.

Now, being a pioneer in the field of gamification since 2003 and having worked on virtual worlds since 2006, I definitely believe in the future of NFTs and how it powers the upcoming Metaverse.

The Metaverse is particularly interesting to me because it is the intersection of all my passions and expertise: Gamification, Virtual Worlds, VR/AR (I spent some time as Head of Creative Labs & Digital Commerce for HTC VIVE), Blockchain/Cryptocurrency (I was also Chief Experience Officer of Decentral, working with Ethereum Cofounder Anthony Di Iorio), and NFTs. Even my economics degree back in UCLA help me conceive and craft a flowing economy that is balanced and thriving.

Also, being an advisor to many blockchain-based companies, I was also informed that my book Actionable Gamification has been a must read in the NFT world.

Even renowned investors and crypto/NFT pundits Raul Paulo and Jeff Booth mention their familiarity with my work.

Raoul Pal NFT
Jeff Booth NFT


This led me to think deeply – what is the NFT that I could believe in? What would have lasting power, is meaningful in how it’s constructed, and can connect to the inevitable Metaverse of the future?

For that, we need to break down why NFTs are valuable in the first place.

NFTs retain their value because of three components: 1) Scarcity, 2) Meaning, and 3) Community.

If you apply my Octalysis Framework, these correspond to three distinctive Core Drives –

Gamification Framework Octalysis
The Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou
Continue reading The NFT I believe in