On this week’s Crypto Corner, Loot builders Timshel, Threepwave and Loaf join your host Nico Vereecke to discuss the state of Lootverse - an infinitely expansive fantasy world that is creating an on-chain game and digital universe, where the items, maps, and more are built and owned by the community.

The Origins Of Loot [00:01:33]

[Tim]: 

1. The progress from the last year can be described as the evolution of Loot to the Lootverse.
   
   • Loot is an NFT project launched by Dom Hofmann that attracted a lot of builders =and creators, which became the Lootverse.
     
   • At its core, Lootverse is a community of thousands of people who saw something special, fun and important that brought a lot of people together.
     
   • The Lootverse is an infinitely expansive fantasy universe. It’s a gameworld, and media project that acts as a foundation for a bunch of different utilities (e.g. open-course code, lore, etc)
     
   • The first year of Loot was forming a “magnetic” foundation that  showed a glimpse of what collaborative work might look like in the future. Not that the foundation is there, things are starting to build on top of it.
     
   • This upcoming 2nd year of Loot will be about building a sustainable system on top of that foundation.
     
   • Long term, Lootverse will be about building an infinitely expansive ecosystem in a sustainable way that has a self-reinforcing value creation. Projects won’t just be in silos, but rather provide value to eachother.

[Threepwave]:

1. He has a background in VR and virtual worlds and came from Crypts and Caverns, which is a project that builds on-chain dungeon maps.
   
2. What loot did that was special:
   
   • Gave constraints for creative people that allowed them to build.  It provided just enough of a boundary for creators to see where they could fit in.
     
   • The Loot ethos has its power in people coming together to decide what it’s gonna be about.  No leader telling them what to do. What if anyone could come together to build something bigger?  And now Loot is beginning to make real games, real experiences and creating lore in this fantasy world.
     
     

[Loaf]:

1. Loaf is a core dev at Biblioteca DAO, which has been building an onchain game for a year. He saw Loot as a creative canvas and has been fascinated with running complex applications on a shared system— i.e. the blockchain.
   
2. Loaf wanted to build a game that brings the loot items together while also doing it all on the blockchain. Starknet seemed to be the most expressive chain for on-chain games.  Spent lots of time figuring out how to build scalable on-chain immersive games. They’re getting very close to building this game

[Timshel]:

1. The DAO is open to everyone. Anyone intrigued by these ideas are welcome to join — the Lootverse & biblioteca is permissionless. Ask questions in discord & learn.
   
2. Although messy, it’s a new way for how teamwork can function.  The culture has a strong sense of belonging and a sense of collective dreams being built together.  

[Loaf]:

1. All the code is open source. The core developers of Biblioteca contributed to opensource code before becoming core devs. 

[Tim]

1. Loot is a decentralized fantasy franchise. For example,  if LOTR was owned by everyone instead of one core company or organization that owns all the IP.
   
2. When it’s decentralized, everything is collectively owned. Biblioteca DAO is one of the main forces that attracts people.

Building To Move Lootverse Forward [00:16:53]

[Nico]:

Loot started as a primitive black background, white text as equipment for an adventure.

Other things have been built on top of that.  Can you give some examples of what’s been built that will help this whole space move forward?

[Loaf]:

1. Loot was the data layer… Every derivative spawned from Loot, some economical and some not.  They have chosen to treat the smart contract as law. But you can’t do much with it sitting on mainnet, so they’re creating the items on Starknet.  They’re also creating on-chain characters that can equip Loot items.
   
2. Composability is top of mind: They want it to preserve the freedom for it to be used in many places.  Now that these newer contracts are on Starknet, developers can more easily build on top of them.
   
3. Mostly focused on gaming oriented primitives. Their vision is building on-chain games for the Lootverse. Loot items have their own stats and features to be used anywhere.

[Nico]:

For those unfamiliar, Starknet is a layer 2 blockchain solution that makes transactions much cheaper and feasible.

Can you speak more about what you’re building in practical terms for web2 game developers?

[Loaf]:

1. Nobody has a clear idea for what that looks like yet. It’s similar to console games like SNES, where there was a fixed constraint of the hardware.  So you needed to do as much as you can despite the constraint.
   
2. With Loot, the blockchain has quirks such as being entirely open, transparent, latency, no central server containing the information.
   
3. We’re still very early with on-chain games but now that the technology is capable, a lot more on-chain games are coming.
   
4. The core game they’re building revolves around Loot Realms, which are 8000 game maps with specific traits.  You can generate resources and build armies, items, and invade other realms — all onchain.

[Threepwave]:

Can you walk us through more of where you started, how you learned what parts are fun, and where you are now?

[Loaf]:

1. Games are about agency and choice. How can we give players choice? That’s what drives fun in any game.  So, we’re trying to be sure to give players enough choice.  This game will always exist for the lifetime of ethereum.  It’s an iterative process to learn what’s fun for players.

Why Get Involved In Lootverse? [00:16:53]

[Nico]:

Why do people get involved in the Lootverse? People need to make a living, so how does that work in a very decentralized organization?

[Loaf]:

Yes, it does have challenges.  

1. The core contributors are paid directly in ether and we often don’t know people’s first names.  But it doesn’t matter as long as the work gets done. This is something not possible in the real world.
   
2. For new people coming in, do not quit your job to serve a DAO.  If you’re a developer, try tackling an issue within the open source code.  This often leads to actually getting hired and the best place to start in your free time.

[Threep]

1. A few archetypes that he’s noticed in the community:
   
   • Lurkers who are just observing what’s going on
     
   • Speculators who bought Loot and want to see what happens. Some want to make money, some just want to come along for the ride.
     
   • People curious about game dev or world-building: Some like writing lore about their dungeons.  Some interweave their dungeons with realms.
     
   • Artists who create icons and contribute different types of artwork.
     
2. The attractive part is a lot of people coming together where their ideas can be heard, which is not typical in traditional game development

[Tim]:

1. People in the DAO are being rewarded by:
   
   • Participating in a team and getting paid, 
   • Ecosystem grants to apply for
   • Building things themselves. Lots of value creation opportunities within Lootverse.
     

Not all succeed, but many have. 

1. The goal is a sustainable system that creates opportunities to become owners of the system.  Participants can become owners by:
   • By building parts of the system 
   • Owning parts of the system. 
   • Extracting value

How Will Lootverse Go Mainstream? [00:36:22]

[Nico]:

How are you getting this content into people's hands? How will you attract thousands or millions of people?

[Loaf]:

1. Less than a million wallets interact with games so there is room for growth.
   
2. His approach is to build the tech that will allow millions of people to play.
   

[Threep]:

1. The original idea was that the Realms game was for holders. But are realizing that many core things that exist in traditional game dev do not exist in their world (push notifications, acquisition channels, etc)
   
2. We have an identity system w/ wallets for now. Blockchain isn’t there yet but will get there eventually
   
3. The first step is getting 100 people to love this game. Then we can scale and solve the million-user challenge. The scale may not be needed due to the value-creation mechanisms.
   

[Tim]:

1. Game worlds benefit from stories and vice versa. 
   
2. The entry point will likely be different for Lootverse. The story, movie, or some other form of media might be the first point of entry for getting involved. Then the adventure becomes more interesting when the experience gets deep via the game, lore, community, and they discover a unified space with a shared language.
   
3. One example is an e-reader they recently release with on-chain stories that were sold as NFTs.  Funds were reinvesting in community growth by using funds for a community grant of 100 ETH to welcome new storytellers.

Objectives for Year 2 of Lootverse [00:45:05]

[Nico]:

What’s the main objective you hope to achieve by the end of this 2nd year?

[Tim]:

1. To give ownership to people already acting like owners in the Lootverse.  Very special when someone treats it as their home. A lot of people don’t have ownership of the items of the Lootverse.
   

[Threep]:

1. Figuring out what’s possible on the blockchain side.  Inevitable to distribute value, but unclear whether this shared computing platform can support an entire gaming world. Is it possible for contracts to be modular and interchangeable for games, and do it all on-chain seamlessly? 

[Loaf]:

1. In one year, he will have the core Eternum game live with people playing and governing it outside the core team. Also, free to play adventure modules that will scale to thousands of players.
   

[Tim]: The beautiful part is these three goals are unique but all reinforce each other.