Balthazar Research Report: Kitsumon, I Choose You

Update 29th July 2022
In response to our research report, Kitsumon has published an article outlining which changes they’re making based upon the feedback they received from our research report.

It’s great to see the team at Kitsumon taking action and being so committed to creating the best experience possible. After receiving a score og 5.5, they’ve made some key amendments, outlined below.

– Immediate issues, such as broken links and missing buttons, have been fixed
– Further improvements to their website are being improved
– More information will be available, especially information about their team members
– Several social media changes are being made, condensing some of their platforms

Read Kitsumons Response Here

Written by Nicholas Korsgård, Chief Gaming Officer, Kim Bjerkeli, Sigurd Thomassen, and Heidi Anette Laugsand Johansen, Game Strategists, Balthazar Alpha Team

Introduction

Do you ever get that nostalgic itch thinking back to a game you played when you were young? We definitely do, and it feels like Kitsumon wants to help you scratch that itch with the upcoming Play-To-Earn NFT game!

In this week’s research report, we will be discovering Kitsumon, an NFT game featuring breeding, collecting, and caring for your Kitsumon. We will be exploring the lore. What are Kitsumons, and where do they come from? Continuing, we will be discovering the different aspects of the game, such as genetics, professions, a battle arena, NFT game assets, which include the marketplace, and much more.

Follow us along to deep dive into the tokenomics, whitepaper, blockchain, the team and creators of this game, and discover for yourself what the world of Kitsumon can offer.

Will you choose Kitsumon?

Background

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Kitsune; a mythical and supernatural creature. This iconic Japanese folklore features a nine-tailed fox. In folklore, there are several types of Kitsune. Join in on the world of Kitsumon to find yours.

Kitsumon is a Pokèmon-Esque NFT game, including deep breeding and genetics mechanics. You will collect, breed, and care for your Kitsumons in the game. The intention is to breed strong Kitsus to battle with them in the MOBA PvP battle arena.

If a player is not too keen on the battle aspect, several professions, such as fishing, farming, and cooking, play a part in the play-to-earn economy. These professions provide resources for Kitsu’s to be used, for example, in a battle to supercharge their powers.

Lore

Kitsumon’s lore is within a galaxy created from a Big Bang in the Metaverse. It all happened as human technology evolved, causing a lot of traffic and the fusion of powerful technologies such as AI and blockchain in cyberspace. Then one day, it all clashed, causing the Big Bang of the Metaverse.

As the shockwave of energy spread across the world’s devices, causing power outages, a new galaxy was born—a world within a world.

The world of Kitsumon is a beautiful world where technology, fantasy, and nature all exist in harmony. In many ways, the Kitsumon world reflects what our world could be. However, the governing forces of the microcosm created the fox-like beings, Kitsus, to act as guardians of the world.

A team of skilled game developers managed to bridge the gap between our world and the world of Kitsumon. They created a portal in cyberspace, allowing people from our world to enter, becoming trainers for Kitsumon. This is where our story begins in the Kitsumon world. Will you become the next Kitsu trainer?

Overview

The ways you can play Kitsumon are many. It caters to several play styles as the game is about collecting, breeding, and caring for your Kitsu. This part sounds much like what DOGAMÍ is doing with their virtual pet companion. 

As with DOGAMÍ, in Kitsumon, you will be able to work a profession or more, such as farming, fishing, cooking, mining, and smithing. These professions provide the resources and consumables to empower your Kitsu in battle if you choose to go that route. Finally, the MOBA PvP mode sounds a bit like a League of Legends style game mode, where instead of selecting a pre-defined champion, you bring your own bred Kitsu to the table. 

How this will play out will be interesting to see, as, with bred Kitsus, players won’t have the same starting point, but there are strengths and weaknesses with each Kitsu, which we’ll come back to later.

Kitsu trainers will be able to breed their Kitsu to spawn hybrid offspring. Having 44 different genes per Kitsu makes for a world of combinations to explore.

Within the professions, a player can become a master of one or Jack of all trades. Having land for agriculture allows players to turn their harvest into cash. Cooking will be an essential profession for those that are into battling, as the dishes will temporarily empower the Kitsus in battle. Or one could just go fishing and relax by the sea.

There will be 3v3 and 5v5 game modes for the MOBA Battle Arena. Fight for victory to hone the Kitsus skills or level it up in the training grounds.

Let’s dive deeper into all these game mechanics!

Genetics

Among the most exciting features of Kitsumon are the vast combinations of attributes that make up a Kitsu. Every Kitsu hatched is unique. This is made possible through the Digital DNA system implemented in the game. As with real living things, Kitsus have genomes determining hidden and visible traits.

• Genes – Genes determine every Kitsu’s appearance. There are genes for every body part, such as the eyes, ears, and legs. The genes will also determine special abilities and color. To get a hybrid offspring, one can breed two Kitsu’s using an Infinity Potion.
• Stats – If the genes are for looks, the stats are for performance. Each Kitsu has stats determining how well they can perform in combat. These stats directly impact their skills and abilities: HP, Strenght, Mind, and Agility.
• Abilities – A Kitsu can have up to ten battle abilities. Abilities are the moves a Kitsu can do in the battle arena and includes feats such as an attack, healing, escape, stun, strap, shield, passive, etc.
• Elemental Affinities – A Kitsu can hold up to 12 element types in its DNA. Element types are tied to the individual DNA components like the body, ears, etc. Getting enough of one or more elemental components of the same type, the Kitsu gains properties affecting its attack and defense.

Genes

Kitsumon’s genes can either be visible or hidden depending on their place in the genome sequence. When breeding, Kitsus pass on two of their genes for every attribute. In the offspring, there will be four genes per attribute, but only one of them will be visible and is the one deciding the appearance of that body part. 

Hidden genes can only be passed on to offspring, making it so that the breeding aspect will be complex and diverse, and genes can skip a few generations. All in all, a Kitsu is a result of eleven sets of four genes where one is visible, deciding the appearance, and the three others are dormant and may be passed on to its children.

Stats and Abilities

Even if a Kitsu comes from its bloodline, everything such as elements and abilities passed down through its family tree is made possible through the game’s unique DNA contract system. So how will the team prevent inbred super-elites from becoming the meta? When a Kitsu is hatched, its stats are determined based on randomness. 

So first, a primary stat is randomly selected, resulting in the highest bracket of possible stats, where the other stats being rolled get lower brackets. Hence, a Kitsu will have stats in several categories and strengths and weaknesses in different types.

Because of the different stat types, the game has a built-in rock/paper/scissors system where each stat has its strengths and weaknesses against the other types. In the Kitsu itself, there is a minimum and maximum threshold for the stats, which ensures a certain balance and prevents a Kitsu from being too strong.

Abilities are an aspect that adds an extra layer of customizability. Specific components can enable this, allowing for more refinement in setting up a Kitsu for combat. Balancing a Kitsu like this will enable players to create Kitsus that can fill different roles in battle, such as tanks, glass cannons, ranged, assassins, healers, etc.

Elemental Affinities

Elements are an essential part of Kitsus. A Kitsu can have up to 12 elemental slots to take any associated elements, and each visible DNA feature has a space with two elements. Elements work a lot like stats because they have strengths and weaknesses against other elements. Depending on how much of an element a Kitsu has, it will get various bonuses.

Breeding

Breeding in Kitsumon allows you to breed any two Kitsus in your possession. Breeding would create a unique hybrid Kitsu, where all of its features such as genes, elements, stats, and color are part of its DNA and stems from its parents. When breeding, the mechanism will randomly generate the offspring through a subtractive number generation algorithm. Each hybrid will have a range of 17 trillion possible outcomes. And the system will seamlessly combine the body parts through Kitsumon’s state-of-the-art 3D rendering pipeline.

Bloodline

Kitsumon bloodline royalties will ensure that a breeder creating a good Kitsu will keep profiting from its good genes. Furthermore, this mechanism will only step back two generations and provide a lifelong royalty share on the specific Kitsu. So when a breeder sells a Kitsu, every subsequent sale of that Kitsu will give the creator a 1.25% royalty as a reward for creating such a remarkable creature. During a Kitsu sale, 2.5% of the sale price will also go to the Kitsumon platform, and a final 1.25% will be split among the parents of the Kitsu, closing the two generations reward loop.

Professions

As alluded to earlier, Kitsus will have the opportunity to get a profession or two. There are no limits to the learning so that players can participate in all of the jobs if they want to. Thus, allowing the player to explore larger parts of the game. Each discipline has unique benefits with great synergies with the other professions.

The “Jack of all trades” is easy, but mastering a profession requires effort. In order to reach the top of a profession, players must discover secret recipes, which will need you to invest time.

Items gained or made from your profession could be great for your Kitsu to grow, but they can also be sold on the market for some profit and is a great way to increase your capital to get something else on your wishlist.

Professions are, at the core, designed to allow players a way to create products that will benefit their Kitsu and make the game enjoyable by adding more elements. For example, it could allow for more battles, breeding, or even hatching eggs faster. There’s a profession for every player out there.

Farming

Farming is one of the primary professions and would require a land plot to get some crops to grow. However, farmers can get their hands on multiple land plots and start producing in greater quantities. The produce coming out of the farm has varying effects depending on the care and effort the farmer makes. There’s also a bit of luck involved.

Mining

Mining is another primary profession where players must own a plot of land to partake. Mining produces different precious metals like gold and silver. The efficiency and outputs can be increased with better tools and levels.

Crafting

Crafters cut gems, refine metal, and build fishing poles and tools. This profession is at the heart of the Kitsumon economy, where nothing would be made without the crafters.

Cooking

Cooking is probably the most useful skill to have, as players can turn raw ingredients into tasty meals offering different benefits to their Kitsu. By rising in the levels of a cook, you’ll discover new recipes and reduce cooking time.

Fishing

Fish is one of the favorite foods of Kitsus, and there are a lot of different species of fish in the Kitsumon world. Fish the waters for a chance of catching one. By upgrading the tackle, players will also have a higher chance of catching “the big kahuna.” However, the waters are deep, and something else might lurk under the surface.

Alchemy

Like cooking, alchemy lends itself to turning ingredients into useful consumables offering several special benefits to Kitsus. For example, where cooking benefits energy and health, alchemy reduces process timers.

Battle Arena

The Battle Arena is the “end game” and the core of the Kitsumon world. Players will train their Kitsus to compete against each other in the Battle Arena in either ranked or unranked matches.

There are facilities where players can train their Kitsus by fighting against PvE targets either single-handedly or in a group with other players bringing in the multiplayer aspect.

When ready to compete, players can bring their Kitsu into the 5v5 MOBA battle arena to see who is victorious. This is much like mainstream MOBA’s we know today, like League of Legends.

Elemental Affinity

The picture below shows how the different elements affect each other. The plus sign means that the Kitsu’s element will deal extra damage to a Kitsu of the opposing element. Likewise, the minus sign show’s where a Kitsu will take increased damage.

Ecosystem

The Kitsumon ecosystem can be easily summed up in one picture shown below. Players’ participation in activities will grant them some rewards, either for winning or through professions, etc. These items will, in turn, allow for a monetary gain that enables new purchases, boosting Kitsus for the Battle Arena.

Players must interact with other players and the store to acquire items, boosts, etc. This system is designed to generate funds for further development of the game but also fund the play-to-earn system.

Infinity Potions is the key to breeding two Kitsus. Players can directly purchase it through the store, where it’s priced in a batch-based system. It can also be bought directly from other players on the open marketplace.

Subscriptions can be purchased from the store to gain various benefits like bags of Kandy, potion boosts, land, and more.

NFT Game Assets

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Eggs

In Kitsumon, 20 different types of Gen-0 (purebred) eggs have been distributed in the Initial NFT Offering (INO). Gen-0 Kitsus’ four genes are the same type, making them great breeders for passing on specific genes.

Each of the eggs has its own rarity level, ranging from 1 in 250 to 1 in 3000 eggs shown in the pictures below. These numbers can’t increase as there are only 30,000 GEN-0 eggs.

The initial NFTs were distributed through different sales, which occurred in January and February 2022.

• 23,400 were sold in a private sale to launchpads and private groups.
• 3,220 were sold in a public auction.
• 1,680 were set aside for promotions, marketing efforts, and giveaways.
• 1,200 sold via seed sale to guild partners.
• 480 kept for the founders and team.
• 20 retained by the platform.

Every box has been sold across all these sales, raising $650,000 for the project.

Marketplace

Kitsumon has also built its own marketplace for NFTs, granting players the opportunity to sell or buy everything Kitsumon-related. These items include but are not limited to eggs, Kitsus, ingredients, and recipes.

Tokenomics

Kitsumon operates with a dual token economy where $KMC is the exclusive currency token. $KMC is used in all game parts, from egg sales, shop purchases, trading NFTs, and more. It’s hosted on the Polygon Layer-2 blockchain solution for Ethereum, and transaction fees are kept to a minimum. 

$KMC is also used to purchase KANDY, the in-game currency of Kitsumon.

KANDY is purely in-game and will act as a buffer to market volatility traded tokens bring. KANDY can be spent on daily power-ups, subscriptions, items, etc.

The $KMC token is limited to 100 billion tokens (100,000,000,000) distributed as in the table below.

Token Distribution	KMC Tokens	KMC Tokens %	Vesting Terms	Price $USD	Total Raise
Seed Round	3 Billion	3%	5% at TGE, followed by a two-month cliff, remainder vested over 12 months.	$0.00009	$270,000
Private Round	16 Billion	16%	7.5% at TGE, followed by a two-month cliff, remainder vested over 8 months.	$0.00012	$1,920,000
Public Round	2 Billion	2%	15% at TGE, followed by a two-month cliff, remainder vested over 4 months.	$0.00018	$360,000
Play to Earn	30 Billion	30%	0% at TGE, released over 48 months.	–	–
Rewards and Staking	10 Billion	10%	0% at TGE, released over 36 months.	–	–
Marketing and Dev	10 Billion	10%	0% at TGE, released over 36 months.	–	–
Treasury	10 Billion	10%	0% at TGE, used as needed.	–	–
Team	10 Billion	10%	Locked for 18 months, followed by an 18-month vesting schedule.	–	–
Floating Liquidity	5 Billion	5%	Will be used as per liquidity needed on DEX and CEX	–	–
Advisors	4 Billion	4%	Locked for six months followed by a 12-month vesting schedule.	–	–

Alpha Team’s Thoughts on the Tokenomics

Kitsumon’s dual token economy is a lot like many other p2e projects. However, with their KANDY token, they differentiate a little bit. KANDY is not a “crypto token” but just an in-game currency that can be bought through the game with $KMC. Because of this, KANDY can have a reasonably stable value despite volatile markets. 

We would like more details about how they intend to do this. Will the in-game prices be stable in KANDY or in relation to the U.S Dollar? What are the mechanisms in which prices will be recalculated in-game because of changes in value to the $KMC token? Will it be as easy to buy back $KMC with KANDY and extract value from the game as it is to inject value?

Regarding tokenomics, it’s good to see that the team has such a long lock-time and vesting schedule. There’s a relatively short vesting period of a maximum of 12 months on seed, private, and public investing rounds. So most of the 21 billion tokens from those rounds will be available only after eight months. We’ve come to accept that this is the way raising capital is done and that early investors can take their profit reasonably quickly. However, it does put a lot of sell pressure on the token every time the next batch of tokens is vested, often causing a big “dump” in price.

Still, the tokenomics looks a lot like its peers in p2e gaming, but we’d love to see more details regarding how they intend to manage the KANDY supply.

Kitsumon Website

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We compared Kitsumon’s desktop version of its website to its mobile site to see how it measures up and if there were any changes that Kitsumon could make to the site to improve it. Follow along to see our verdict. In this testing, we used a Samsung Galaxy S10+.

Screenshot borrowed from the official website: https://kitsumon.com/

Desktop

Our first impression when looking at the website is that it was thorough and went straight to the point. In the heading menu, the user could explore the marketplace, token-and -NFT-aspect, allowing the user to enter the whitepaper and ‘contact us’ especially aimed at those who might like to partner up. 

The user is welcomed with the call to action, “Enter the world of Kitsumon – The start of your own adventure,” to set the mood. When scrolling down, the webpage started by explaining what Kitsumon is and presenting different aspects of the game that players could explore, such as professions, breeding, earning with royalties, staking, farming, a leaderboard, and a battle arena. The website then goes more in-depth, giving a deeper understanding of the generation-0, digital DNA and breeding, and the Kitsumons’ strengths while giving a little history of how it came to be. 

Following this, the webpage showcased the KMC token economics with a visual representation and an option to buy KMC and enter the whitepaper. The roadmap was also attached to the website as you scroll down, giving a very plain and understandable idea of where the creators are in their game development journey.

In the end, users could see partnerships that the team had made alongside a section called “as seen in,” which are websites that had mentioned Kitsumon. When we clicked on the different logos, the webpage sent us straight to the relevant article, which was nice and added to the website’s user-friendliness.

The website was well informed, with detailed explanations regarding breeding, stats/genes, and KMC token economy with visual representation. No grand special effects were added apart from the gif of the “Digital DNA & Breeding” part of the website and the spinning token next to the visual representation of the economic distribution. However, both of these effects turned out really nice on the desktop. 

The whitepaper was readily available, and the roadmap was obvious with checkmarks as to where they were at. Usually, there would be a part of the website presenting the creators, but for this website, they seem to have decided not to share the information. However, the partners and integrations part of the website turned out somewhat odd. While most of the logos were of a decent size, there was one (Cyberfi Samurai) that we would consider too small, resulting in this strange overall view.

Screenshot borrowed from the official website: https://kitsumon.com/

If there were any advice we would give, it would be to enlarge the logo of “Cyberfi Samurai” to match the others. Still, we were delighted by this website, and we felt like it told the story of Kitsumon, showcasing art, in-game aspects, and information about how the economy is distributed. 

In the end, the user would have a choice to click on some of their social media and browse more. Unfortunately, upon testing, a few of the links didn’t work, but this is something we believe the team is already working on.

Screenshot borrowed from the official website: https://kitsumon.com/

Mobile

Like many mobile sites we’ve seen so far, Kitsumon had also created their menu with a symbol that the user would have to click to see more. Upon clicking, the user would see the same options as on the PC website.

We did notice here that the user would have to tap the screen to open, for instance, the token section and then have to either close it before tapping into a new section or double-tapping the next section. However, this is only a minor detail that we noticed. The main background art shows the most detailed part, but we noticed that the beam of light was just out of reach to be in the cropped mobile site. However, if the cropping would include this beam, we are afraid the girl displayed would be cut, so we agree upon the choice of leaving the beam out; perhaps having a more zoomed-out version of the picture would make a difference.

Following that, the mobile site had a nice layout that fits the mobile screen very well. The text had a good size, and it felt natural to scroll through. For example, in the “KitsuDex” part of the website, where the generation-0 Kitsus are explained, there was a small but noticeable text informing the user of 3 different slides to scroll through, revealing the different Kitsus. However, the information regarding the three different Kitsus was not visible on the mobile device, resulting in the user missing some information. In addition, when sliding, the sides of the Kitsus have apparent lines on both sides of the screen where it’s missing animation. However, this would also be just a detail.

When scrolling down to the “Digital DNA & Breeding” part of the mobile site, we could see the same animations as on the desktop present itself. However, we quickly noticed that several site elements were missing in this part. Examples of this are “Train your Kitsu,” “Attack,” “Ability,” and the visuals for the four genes where three are hidden, and one is visible. 

Apart from these seven missing pieces of the website, the animation for breeding on mobile turned out very well. However, we, in The Alpha team, find it questionable how the team could not have noticed that amount of information missing from their mobile site.

The KMC token gif has been replaced with a pie chart illustrating the distribution nicely. The user could click the “Buy KMC” link just as on the desktop version. However, we did notice that the whitepaper link was missing. 

Moving on to the roadmap, we see no errors, and it fits nicely for the mobile format. The “As seen in” and “Partners & integrations” part of the website also had a nice layout on mobile, but we do find the sizing a little off for the “Cyberfi Samurai” logo. At the end of the mobile site, the user has a chance to check out various links, including some of their social media platforms, and sign up for the newsletter.

The verdict

Although we are happy about the information presented to the user on this website, we did discover several issues. Amongst others, our most significant discoveries and problems with this website were how several parts of information became missing while using a mobile. 

Ten informational boxes were missing on mobile, which is quite a lot for a small website. One of the logos of the Partners was also an odd size, making it close to unnoticed. Therefore, we highly recommend the team look closely at the website. 

On a positive note, we were happy with the color theme and the “Breeding” animation using mobile, and we enjoyed the illustrated token distribution. The roadmap was also very clear, and the mobile layout felt natural. Even though the creators of this game aren’t displayed on the website, there were options for the visitor to follow the project on various social media platforms.

Screenshot borrowed from the official website: https://kitsumon.com/

Blockchain

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What Chain Does The Game Run On?

Kitsumon has its $KMC token currently on the Polygon blockchain. However, the team has stated that this might not be a permanent solution and that other chains are currently being explored.

Polygon

Polygon is a layer-2 solution to the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain globally and the number one blockchain development platform of choice. However, it has its limitation regarding throughput, poor user experience, and no sovereignty. For a consumer, this means high gas fees, delayed Proof of Work (PoW) finality, and shared throughput on the blockchain, which could risk clogging.

The limitations of Ethereum have led to several projects exploring alternatives compatible with the Ethereum main chain. By doing this, they can still take advantage of Ethereum’s ecosystem and leverage more throughput and lower gas fees on a scaling layer-2 solution.

Before Polygon came to be, there was no specialized framework to build such blockchains or protocols to connect them. Polygon sets out to be a protocol and framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. It takes the best of Ethereum and other sovereign blockchains into an attractive feature set. Such features are listed below:

• Ethereum Compatibility: Industry dominance, established tech stack, tools, languages, standards, enterprise adoption.
• Scalability: Dedicated blockchains, scalable consensus algorithms, custom WebAssembly execution environments.
• Security: Modular “security as a service,” provided either by Ethereum or by a pool of professional validators.
• Sovereignty: Dedicated throughput and resources, fully customizable tech stack, and sovereign governance.
• Interoperability: Native support for arbitrary message passing and bridges to external systems.
• User Experience: Comparable to “Web2”, “zero-gas” transactions, and instant transaction finality.
• Developer Experience: Equivalent to Ethereum, no protocol level knowledge required, no token deposits, fees, or permissions.
• Modularity: High customizability, extensibility, upgradeability, short time-to-market, community collaboration.

In short, Polygon is a decentralized Ethereum-scaling platform that enables developers to build scalable, user-friendly dApps with low transaction costs and without ever sacrificing security.

Over 7’000 dApps have taken advantage of Polygon’s scaling solution, and they are committed to fostering the growth of Web3 applications by providing the infrastructure needed for Web3.

Our Thoughts on the Chain?

Polygon seems to have become the ‘go-to’ layer-2 solution for Ethereum. We’ve seen it be used in several P2E games and believe it is so popular because of the average transaction time of just 2.3 seconds and overall network throughput of 10’000 TPS (Transactions Per Second). 

This performance is currently unbeaten on Ethereum-compatible solutions. Comparatively, Ethereum takes about 15 seconds to do the same type of transaction, consumes significantly more power, and has an overall higher cost for the transaction.

Another point in favor of Polygon is that the Ethereum ecosystem is a safe place to build because of its enormous ecosystem and widespread adoption. However, we’re now seeing some game projects look elsewhere for blockchain solutions, as solutions like Avalanche and Tezos might offer more support to a project than on Polygon. Bigger isn’t always better.

Building on Polygon is also not without risk. On March 11, 2022, Polygon suffered from an extended service outage after an upgrade. The network was down for over 11 hours which caused a lot of ripples in the crypto world, as the network couldn’t produce new blocks, costing the community and consumers a lot of money.

Some critics also claim that Polygon is still highly insecure and centralized. For example, in a Twitter post from Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Cyber Capital, he claims that it would only take five people to compromise over $4Billion. Four of these individuals are the founders of Polygon. His arguments are:

• The Polygon smart contract admin key is controlled by a 5 out of 8 multi-signature contract. Meaning Polygon can gain complete control over the network with only one of the four outside parties conspiring. The Polygon team selected the other four parties in the multi-sig. This means that the four other participants are not impartial. Control of the contract admin key is the same as having the power to change the rules. At this point, anything is possible (including emptying the entire Polygon contract currently worth over $4B).
• Regarding Polygon’s operational security and cryptographic ritual surrounding the creation of the multi-sig, he says that Polygon has not been transparent. The reason transparency is important is to establish trust in the multi-sig.
• On May 20, 2020, the Polygon team refused to respond to a formal request for disclosure regarding the multi-sig, which Bons considers a giant red flag. As a result, transparency was and is severely lacking.
• On May 15, 2021, Polygon did release a “transparency report,” which Bons claims is just a defense of the status quo, only further justifying the use of the multi-sig. The report did not cover any aspects of operational security. Neither did it address the need to mitigate the contract to reduce the admin key risk.
• On January 19, 2022, Polygon released its “state of governance: decentralization.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t discuss the multi-sig, but it lays the groundwork for Polygon DAO.
• Bons says that he respects the Polygon team and even with their best intentions, quoting the Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic: “An exit scam is not a realistic concern for Polygon.” Bons says Bjelic can trust himself, but other people can’t know what is in another’s mind. “Don’t trust, Verify!”
• With over $4B locked on the chain, it is a hack waiting to happen, and organized crime could target these individuals holding parts of the multi-sig. The four founders themselves meeting in person could lead to an accidental loss. His point is that a 5 out of 8 multi-sig is insufficient for $4B.
• He provides a clear alternative where Polygon has to decentralize its governance based on the $MATIC token holders. And once governance is decentralized, the team would have to hand the power of the smart contract admin key over to the token holders. effectively turning control over to a “Polygon DAO.” This operation would probably be both difficult and expensive to do, but it is the price to pay for not doing it right, to begin with. It is the price for decentralization and the security that comes with it. Pretending to be secure and decentralized is not good enough.
• He ends off by saying that Polygon has an opportunity to lead by example, and an acknowledgment of the problem and a commitment to fix it would go a long way.

Read the whole Twitter post to get all the details. Justin Bons has been in the crypto-space since 2014 and is running a successful investing fund. He is known for his lengthy Twitter threads critiquing popular blockchains where he sees issues.

Pros and cons aside, we, in the Balthazar Alpha Team, aim to provide as good information as possible to let readers decide for themselves. Polygon is likely the best solution in the Ethereum ecosystem, but solutions like Avalance, Tezos, and Algorand are starting to make more sense.

Team

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Who is on the team?

• James Kirkby – Co-Founder / CEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/blockchain-engineer/
  • Backend Engineering Lead (Feb 2021 – Jun 2021) at XDEFI Wallet
  • Lead Solutions Architect (Mar 2020 – Feb 2021) at Mode.
  • Head of Engineering (Apr 2018 – Mar 2020) at Atlas City.
  • Blockchain Consultant (May 2017 – Apr 2018) at Kodak.
• Sanjay Patel – Co-Founder / CTO https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjay-patel-53a4a914b/
  • Senior Software Engineer and Lead Developer (Jun 2021 – Dec 2021) at Topiray LTD.
  • Software Engineer (Feb 2021 – Jun 2021) at InfoTrack UK.
  • Founder and Lead Developer (Jul 2019 – May 2020) at MODDS Sports Betting and Gaming
  • Founder and CTO (Jun 2018 – Feb 2020) at MasterGenesis LLC.
  • Blockchain Developer (Apr 2019 – Sep 2019) at Atlas City.
• Simon Buckingham – Head of Marketing https://www.linkedin.com/in/heysimon/
  • Senior Product Marketing Manager (Oct 2020 – Dec 2021) at EZVIZ UK.
  • Brand & Marketing Manager (Apr 2018 – Oct 2020) at EZVIZ UK.
  • Retail Marketing & Gaming/eSports Partnership Manager (Apr 2016 – Apr 2018) at TP-Link UK.
  • UK Marketing Manager (Jan 2015 – Mar 2016) at ASBIS.
  • UK Marketing Manager (Apr 2013 – Jan 2015) at Hama.
  • Marketing Specialist (May 2012 – Apr 2013) at Penguins Events.
• Vahid Ranadeh – Lead Game Designer https://www.linkedin.com/in/vahid-ranandeh-598896129/
• Aarón Meza Sánchez – Concept and creature designer
• Mathew Shenton – Graphic and motion designer
• Tobias Fuchs – Community manager
• Bjørn-Tore – Coder https://www.linkedin.com/in/btmediaa/
  • Software Engineer (Aug 2019 – Mar 2021) at Multicase Norge.
  • Full Stack Developer (Mar 2017 – Jul 2019) at CoreTrek.

Team assessment

The team at Kitsumon consists of people with experience in software development, coding, blockchain, and marketing. From their LinkedIn, we find information about 4 of their members. Correlatively, their whitepaper lists eight employees and their experiences. Their LinkedIn also states that the team consists of 11-50 employees. However, we couldn’t find any information about other members other than those listed above.

Finding information about Kitsumons team members proved challenging, as their LinkedIn profiles aren’t precise, and their whitepaper only lists very generalized experiences. We aren’t able to verify their expertise.

Do They Have Relevant Experience?

Taking the provided experience at face value, their team seems to have a lot of relevant experience in marketing, blockchain development, and coding. However, we aren’t able to see any experiences within the gaming space.

According to their LinkedIn, Kitsumons CEO and CTO have previous software and blockchain development experience. And their head of marketing show over ten years of experience in his field of work.

The scarce source of information about the Kitsumons team doesn’t provide us much confidence in itself. However, seeing the product they’ve made so far, the artwork and systems in place already, we see that this team is combined of people with experience and that know what they’re doing.

Who Are Their Backers?

Roadmap

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Game Developers Roadmap

Alpha Teams Thoughts On The Roadmap

Kitsumon has a roadmap much like what we’ve come to see in most p2e projects covering the four quarters of 2022. We can expect a land sale in Q3 and the first experience with gameplay in the professions fishing, mining, and farming. The Battle Arena alpha will, at the earliest, be in Q4 2022.

Guild Facilitation

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Delegation: Yes

Kitsumon is building guild management, NFT rental, and delegation system into the game platforms core. Therefore, guild managers can breathe easily as there will be tools available for delegations, making life easier for them.

Whitepaper

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Link to the whitepaper: https://kitsumon.com/Kitsumon_Whitepaper_v4.0.pdf

Alpha Teams General Thoughts on the Whitepaper

Kitsumon’s whitepaper is about 30 pages long and got more or less the information we seek when researching a project. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information about which blockchain they’re on in the whitepaper, but after digging a bit, we found their token on the Polygon blockchain. Reaching out to the Kitsumon team and asking, we found that there might be changes coming to this part, and we’re eagerly awaiting the outcome.

The Alpha Team Reads Between the Lines – Big Picture Talk

Kitsumon positions itself as a game for a large and global audience. To capture mainstream gamers, they are simplifying processes dealing with the blockchain, reducing the learning curve for players not native to crypto. While blockchain is the game’s backbone, the interface and features are most like mainstream games and designed to attract a broader community.

In other social simulation games, there’s a large market of players across all age groups, with about 50/50 male and female players. Kitsumon tries to take its place in a market where games like Pokèmon, Animal Crossing, Axie Infinity, and League of Legends are big inspirations. Still, Kitsumon tries to bring these genres together in a single game.

Kitsumon is committed to putting eSports on the table and will make a great effort to deliver a unique experience that combines traditional and blockchain gaming.

Growth implications

Kitsumon sets out to be a very ambitious project crossing different genres. It’s going to be interesting to see how they tackle scaling and if they’ll be able to handle 100,000+ players. With a MOBA aspect, many simultaneous battles will likely require resources on the server-side. The team hasn’t explained how they are building the tech stack, and we can’t tell if they’ve handled similar projects before from the team’s background. Their CTO has experience in sports betting and gaming, and the head of marketing has worked in eSports previously. However, web3 is a brave new world, and being able to scale will be key.

Socialnomics

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Social Media Followers Count

Platform	Follower Count
Discord	17,077
Twitter	54,571
Reddit	3,800
Facebook	6,800
Telegram	19,027
Youtube	388

People can find Kitsumons’ social media platforms on their homepage or through their Linktr.ee/Kitsumon. Thus far, Kitsumon is the first project we’ve looked at that focuses on many social media platforms. Usually, games are focused on 2 or 3, but in this instance, they are promoting their Discord, Twitter, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Medium, in addition to GitHub. In their Linktr.ee, we can also see that they have a YouTube channel. In other words, Kitsumon has a total of 7 different social media platforms they try to communicate to their followers, in addition to GitHub and a Reddit thread.

Their YouTube channel has close to 400 followers and was created in December 2021 with a total of 3,600 video views. Since then, they have added five videos, adding up to approximately one each month. The videos include news about partnerships, information about the game, and AMAs’ (Q&As’). Some of the videos have a nice comment section, especially considering the number of views and followers.

Their Facebook page consists of posts informing about future AMAs’, showcasing Kitsunes with information added, and news about partnerships and giveaways. It looks like their Facebook tries to add new posts ten times a week or so, sometimes doing several a day, other times skipping a few days since a post. The interaction between the followers and the posts is seemingly low; because of this, we could assume that their Facebook page might not be their focus for now. 

On the flip side, we find it refreshing how well the creators inform their followers about the AMAs’. In addition, we think their Facebook page is great for getting a quick overview and looking at pictures and their ideas. The Alpha Team always loves a creative team that showcases their artwork and progress.

The Instagram account is much similar to the Facebook account, so it’s pretty safe to assume that posts on Instagram are automatically added to their Facebook site. However, one could argue that the exact same information on two platforms could lead to fewer followers on one of them, as we see for the Facebook account. So, since their information is the same, what is the point in following both?

Screenshot borrowed from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KitsumonWorld/photos

However, their Twitter account seems to be the place to be for daily information. On Twitter, we could find information that the team posted on Facebook and Instagram. Still, we also find more retweets with information and fanart and giveaways in addition to AMAs’. Keeping in mind the almost 55,000 followers on Twitter, we would expect a somewhat higher interaction number. For some of the posts, there aren’t more than 10-25 interactions, including likes, comments, and retweets. On a positive note, the creators give daily updates, more or less, on the Twitter profile.

Lastly, we will have a look at the game’s Discord. With over 17 000 members, the chat seems to be somewhat dead. In addition, they also have two different servers addressing FAQ and AMA. In addition, we can find a server for official links, which is quite common, and we can also find announcements and reposts from Twitter and Instagram. Unfortunately, the last announcement post was over a month ago, making this server seem slightly spooky and abandoned.

However, we do feel like it’s worth mentioning the NFT sale, which we mentioned earlier, of 30 000, were all sold out, proving that there is a community for this game to be.All in all, despite having quite the amount of followers distributed throughout seven platforms, we aren’t able to find much insight into the community. In the various Discord chats’ it’s quite dead, and so is the Facebook and Instagram. Twitter seems to be the place to be when it comes to seeing some engagement from the followers. We are interested to see how Kitsumon will use its different platforms in the future, but we think it might be a good idea to centralize its focus on a few key platforms for community growth.

Conclusion

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Kitsumon presents choices to the player, whether they are in it for the battling, fishing, cooking, collecting, or the play-to-earn aspect in and of itself. This game reminds us of Pokèmon for obvious reasons and has many of the same characteristics as the game and series we’ve come to love and enjoy. 

The game appears to have colorful and likable artwork, which will please most players. In addition, the team has chosen not to limit the professions that the Kitsus could have, therefore creating a game with vast exploring opportunities. They also seem to be interested in creating an eSports arena for this game, which would be very interesting to follow in the future.

With Kitsumon being an online game, we wonder how the creators will solve the issue of being able to host thousands and thousands of players simultaneously on the server. There was no information about the tech stack or how they are to tackle this in the whitepaper, and for now, the list of team members is thin, making us wonder if they have this aspect figured out. 

In addition, we could wonder if the nostalgia is enough to keep the user playing or if the game is captivating enough to make them stay. All in all, the most important aspect for us to have a high conviction here in the future will be whether the MOBA part of the game is good and fun to play and whether it can actually support eSport level competitions.

Ending off, Kitsumon is still at quite an early stage, and we expect more information soon, which might answer many of our concerns and questions. From what we see, there is a lot to like and be hopeful about, so we are excited to see if the team will be able to deliver upon our expectations. We are eager to play and give the game a real go when the time comes!

Till next time, Gotta Catch’ Em All!

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