As Q1 comes to a close, we’re excited to align the community around our Q2 priorities where we plan to establish several strong non-emissive token sinks to boost our burn-to-earn ratio, sustainably scale and improve gameplay of ICE Poker Metaverse, and launch ICE Poker Mobile.
In the immediate future:
- We will prioritize ICE mints for the foreseeable future, including our next ICE Poker Metaverse mint, The ICE Viking, in early April (following this community-submitted, passed proposal).
- Upon the launch of ICE Poker Mobile, we will conduct the new ICE Poker Mobile mints in $ICE at a much lower price point than Metaverse wearables to establish an accelerated path to player-ownership and solidify Metaverse Wearables as a premium product.
We believe prioritizing ICE mints will help stabilize the ICE Poker ecosystem and provide necessary runway to solidify strong, non-emissive long-term $ICE sinks. A healthy ICE ecosystem provides immense value throughout the entire DG ecosystem as Decentral Games further cements itself as the #1 destination of the open metaverse.
A Look Back at Q1 2022
Before diving into Q2, it’s important (and awesome) to reflect on how much progress we’ve made since the start of the year. The team has relentlessly shipped new features that benefit both our guild owners and players. It’s hard to imagine ICE Poker without the delegation dashboard, ICE earnings dashboard, and the many other features we shipped in Q1 – and it’ll be even harder to imagine where we are today when we look back from the start of Q3.
It’s also worth calling out that our ICE Poker venues have become the most visited venues across all of Decentraland, totaling an average of 200k+ monthly visitors. This alone demonstrates the progress we’re making.
Here’s a high-level overview of the ICE Poker’s growth in the past 3 months:
- Monthly Unique Visitors (all venues): 207,000 (150% QoQ growth)
- ICE Poker Daily Active Users: 12,000 (224% QoQ growth)
- Active Guilds: 3,900 (388% QoQ Growth)
- Wearable Sales (Mints): ~$18.5M (78% QoQ growth)
To reach the above milestones, the DG team has shipped:
- ICE Poker Delegation Dashboard V1
- 3 more venues following DEXT (Stronghold, Chateau, and Osiris)
- Improved ICE Poker Wearable Minting Experience
- xDG Airdrop (over $2M) to ICE Wearables Holders
- Premium ICE Poker Guild Features
- ICE Poker Player Lookup Tool
- ICE Poker Name Your Guild and Players
- Assign A Manager
- Integration with Decentraland native client for better performance
- ICE Dashboard with custom logic/experience by status within the ICE Poker player journey
- Assigned seating beta
- Non-ICE accessory wearables mintable with ICE
A Look Ahead to Q2 2022
Our priorities going into Q2 can be broken down into three core areas:
- Establishing several strong token sinks throughout the ICE Poker ecosystem.
- Sustainably scaling and improving gameplay of ICE Poker Metaverse.
- Launching ICE Poker Mobile.
1. Establishing several strong token sinks throughout the ICE Poker ecosystem
For ICE Poker to grow sustainably, we need to introduce greater utility for the $ICE token. This has always been a core focus for us, and as we approach new daily active player highs, we’re doubling down on implementing many of the solutions we have for this.
Native ICE Secondary Marketplace
Today, OpenSea is earning several hundreds of thousands in fees from the secondary market sales of our wearables. On top of this, all of these transactions are carried out in ETH. Our plan is to launch our own secondary NFT marketplace for ICE wearables, ICE accessories, and any future in-game items traded in $ICE. Not only will this create additional buy pressure for $ICE, but it will funnel all of those trading fees back into the ICE Poker ecosystem.
Guild League Uniforms
Alongside the marketplace, we’ll launch Guild Leagues to further gamify the ICE Poker guild owner and manager experience. Leagues will reward winners with wearables and xDG prizes, while offering guild uniforms purchasable in $ICE.
ICE Emotes
To add more unique elements to our gameplay experience, we will roll out custom NFT emotes. Players will be able to collect, trade, and set a win animation that other players will see in both ICE Poker Metaverse and Mobile.
ICE Advertisements
Finally, we’ll scale and launch ICE advertisements that will positively contribute to partners aligning through holding and paying in $ICE for placements.
2. Sustainably scaling ICE Poker Metaverse
We will establish ICE Poker Metaverse as a premium product within the DG ecosystem, prioritizing $ICE mints to ensure ecosystem stability. As Metaverse continues to grow linearly, mobile will grow exponentially, and our metaverse wearables will become more scarce (lower % of player-base with highest rewards).
Following community feedback we’ve been able to fix various chips and hand value discrepancies and will continue to do so in Q2 with a laser focus on perfecting the assigned seating experience. Progress on this is imperative as we onboard the next wave of ICE Poker players, and we feel very confident that our progress in this area to date puts us in great shape for the quarter ahead.
3. Launching ICE Poker Mobile
We’re extremely excited to announce that we will launch ICE Poker Mobile in Q2 as a more accessible entry point into the ICE Poker ecosystem, creating an accelerated path to player-ownership . While ICE Poker Mobile rewards will be lower than Metaverse rewards, mobile challenges can be completed in far less time (we’re targeting 30 minutes vs 1-3 hours in Metaverse) and the entry costs are substantially smaller. This increased accessibility combined with an improved gameplay experience will enable us to onboard the next 30,000 players into the DG ecosystem.
Final Thoughts
It’s been nothing short of amazing that since launching ICE Poker only five months ago, we’ve grown from 500 to 12,000 daily active players, and from 0 to 3,900 native guilds.
We’ve never been more excited for the future as we continue to grow our current metaverse product, launch an entirely new and more accessible product that will welcome millions of new players, and establish strong ICE sinks around in-app purchases that enhance each player’s experience and appearance in ICE Poker.
This is still just the beginning of the journey – and we’re happy you’re on it with us.
