Aave’s Gaming Metaverse.

Blockchain gaming has ushered in the era of a crossover between decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs. Many blockchain games borrow heavily from DeFi principles such as staking and liquidity mining combined with NFTs to build a self-sustaining gaming economy.

The thriving new ecosystem also facilitates cross-platform utilization of existing DeFi tokens to bootstrap users to a game. Today, I will discuss one such gaming project backed and integrated with the most popular DeFi lending protocols on Ethereum, Aave.

Aavegotchi began with an Aave ecosystem grant in 2020, with permission to use the iconic Aave ghost to design NFTs and bind the interest-generating tokens from Aave to the Aavegotchi NFTs.

Aavegotchi is a blockchain gaming project inspired by one of the first digital pets in history: hand-held Tamagotchi devices from 1996. The blockchain edition comes with 10,000 Aavegotchi ghosts that live as NFTs on the Polygon blockchain.

Currently, the gameplay is quite simple; you need to do a few simple actions to earn the project’s native token GHST and make your NFT more valuable. These include buying wearables for your Aavegotchis, and playing the mini-games.

However, next year the team plans to add online battle modes and other RPG (role-playing games) components, along with metaverse experience.

The value of Aavegotchi NFT builds from several different components. The cheapest Aavegotchi, the Elf 19, is listed for 410 GHST tokens (worth $1,172 at current prices). At the same time, some of the rarer ones are listed for over $500,000.

All Aavegotchis are partly backed by Aave’s liquidity provider (LP) tokens. For instance, if you stake DAI in the Aave liquidity pool, you receive an equal number of LP tokens, aDAI. You can lock these LP tokens in your Aavegotchi NFTs.

The spirit force (SPRT) points signify the Aave LP tokens that are locked in the NFTs. For instance, the SPRT value of $25.04 amUSDT indicates that the particular Aavegotchi has $25.04 staked in it.

You can improve the SPRT points in the game by adding more LP tokens to it. The game doesn’t incentivize additional SPRT points right now, but the team has hinted that they may have more utility in the metaverse.

Nevertheless, the LP tokens only represent a small portion of Aavegotchi’s market value. There is also a Rarity Score which is a more important driver of its price.

The Rarity Score is the benchmark identifier of the combined attributes of the Aavegotchi NFT. Usually, scores above 500 are considered decent, and these Aavegotchis are more valuable than the rest.

As I mentioned before, to improve the Rarity Score, you can play games and purchase wearables. If you perform these actions during the Rarity Farming season, you can also win GHST tokens.

The current farming season will end on Dec. 07, with the distribution of $5.7 million in GHST rewards based on how rare your Aavegotchi is.

You can find the schedules and winning prizes of the new seasons here.

When playing mini-games, you earn XP points. They are used to improve the Rarity Score for your NFT. With XP points, you can level up and enhance the attributes of your NFT.

These include visible attributes like Aggressiveness (AGG), Energy (NRG), Spookiness (SPK), Brain Size (BRN), Eye Shape (EYS), Eye Color (EYC), and Kinship.

The attributes are analogous to RPG gaming ones like strength, charisma, intelligence, etc. They give your character the ability to act in the game and also help in making the NFTs more distinct than the others.

The last component of an Aavegotchi’s rarity is Kinship, which represents the loyalty of the Aavegotchi towards the owner. The base Kinship score is 50; it increases or decreases based on the time between the purchase and the owner’s engagement with the game. The minimum kinship value is 0 with no maximum limit.

With the next farming season about to start soon, it might be a good time to start playing the game.

Future plans: Aavegotchi’s Metaverse

In the future, the team plans to launch a RPG-style game with expansive online battle modes and other play-to-earn options in the metaverse. The expected launch date of the metaverse in Q3 2022.

The team is developing the Aavegotchi metaverse for a wide scale virtual experience for holders.

Gochiverse will include more complex gaming modes, NFT lending platforms, and possibly additional metaverse components like virtual stores and other events.

The release of the Gotchiverse will happen in the second half of 2022. Nevertheless, the team has started auctioning lands.

The Aavegotchi realms (lands) are selling for a minimum price of $300 and the highest reasonable sized is selling for around $3.4 million. The total supply will be capped at 420,069 realms.

Some Aavegotchi realms are still cheaper in comparison with lands on competing metaverse projects like, The Sandbox, Somnium Space, and Decentraland, which are selling for tens of thousands of dollars.

Similarly, if Aavegotchi’s team is successful in launching an interactive virtual world with a large community, these lands can be worth quite a lot.

The team recently launched the Gotchi lending platform, which allows interested players to rent the Aavegotchis from owners to participate in the ecosystem without giving up their ownership or their LP stake in Aave. Players looking to benefit from the play-to-earn model for a short period can lend the idle NFTs instead of buying them.

The next Gotchiverse land auction will start on Dec. 03.

How to Play Aavegotchi?

To start playing Aavegotchi, first you need to configure your Metamask wallet to Polygon network and add MATIC tokens to pay for fees on the network.

Now, you’re ready to interact with the Aavegotchi universe. When you enter the website, click on ‘Play Now’.

Then from the pop-window, select the Metamask option and approve the transaction from your wallet.

You’ll need GHST tokens to make purchases in the game. To buy GHST tokens, you can choose from the list of decentralized exchanges in the ‘Get GHST’ page.

As you’re on the polygon network, select Quickswap where you’ll be redirected to the DEX. Exchange your MATIC tokens for GHST using Quickswap.

When you’re done adding GHST token to your wallet, you can purchase the NFTs from the website. To acquire an Aavegotchi NFT, you can purchase an existing Aavegotchi from the marketplace (Gotchi Baazaar) in exchange for your GHST token.

You can also summon a new one using the Closed and Open portals on the website. Minting from the portal involves an additional step of adding the Aave LP tokens to execute the mint. You can purchase the Aave LP tokens directly from DEXes like Quickswap.

Once you’ve purchased your Aavegotchi, head back to the home page and select ‘Play.’

Here you can enter your Aavegotchis in mini-games, purchase wearables from the marketplace and enter other activities like the Ambassadar program for some GHST tokens and attribute points.

To enter future auctions from Avegotchi, participate in their auction house here.

Do keep an eye out on their Twitter and Discord channel for more updates regarding GHST distribution and metaverse launch.