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Balthazar Research Report: Pspspsps come now Nekoverse
Contents
6/10 – Above average
Pre released game score
Nekoverse is, overall, a good project. They know who they are and where they want to go. We are just missing some pieces of the puzzle to give a higher vote of confidence. Team information is a big drawback.
Section scores
Background – 6.5
NFT Game Assets – 6.5
Website – 6.5
Artwork – 6
Team – 3.5
Whitepaper – 6.5
Socialnomics – 6
Read More on Explaining the Scoring.
Written by Nicholas Korsgård, Chief Gaming Officer, Kim Bjerkeli and Sigurd Thomassen, Game Strategists, Balthazar Alpha Team, and Heidi Anette Laugsand Johansen
Introduction
Let’s be real; anyone can enjoy a good mobile game from time to time, especially if there is money to be made. We’re at a point where that’s possible, but we’ve yet to find a game that blows our minds and wants us to continue playing for hours on end. So we are pretty excited to explore Nekoverse and see what they can deliver in the future.
Neko is the Japanese word for “cat,” In this research report about Nekoverse, we will be looking into the P2E world of cats. In a land far beyond the world that we know lies Nekoverse. This land is governed by the Ancient Triad, which set an act of destruction upon all Nekos’ ‘Only those who prevail shall retain their being.’ Will your Neko be one of those who resist the curse of destruction?
This article will introduce the game and what it is about, including battle modes (PvP and PvE), attributes, crafting, the world (Nekoverse), and tokenomics. We will also discuss the inflation and supply, the $NVS and $ASG token, blockchain, team composition, and their backers. Lastly, we will look at the roadmap, whitepaper, the Nekoverse website, and socialnomics and share our thoughts on this project.
Nekoverse is a Play-2-Earn Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game built for mobile devices. Some of the largest competitors within mobile gaming are Albion Online, Lineage 2 Revolution, Runescape, and Genshin Impact.
Nevertheless, let’s get into this research report.
Background
Nekoverse is a Play-2-Earn Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game built for mobile devices. It is also the name of the metaverse or in-game world of this game. Players can pick their path when discovering the world and interacting with other players. You can battle in both PvE and PvP or casually explore the metaverse while farming resources and crafting items along the way. The game features a decentralized in-game economy driven by players and guilds. Within the game, there is a DAO governance mechanic that ties in with the guild aspect, allowing players to truly own the narrative and development of the game.
Within the Nekoverse, the core gameplay revolves around battling, exploring, resource farming, and crafting.
Battle Mode
A battle can be either PvE or PvP. It offers modes like 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, tournaments, team combat, boss raid, etc. In action, the strength of your Neko is determined by the combination of the character’s elements, stats, items, and skills. All of this makes for an engaging combat system. A player is rewarded in-game currency, and a chance for item drops upon winning a battle.
This picture is sourced from https://docs.nekoverse.net/nekoverse/gameplay/core-gameplay/battle
This picture is sourced from https://docs.nekoverse.net/nekoverse/gameplay/core-gameplay/battle
This picture is sourced from https://docs.nekoverse.net/nekoverse/gameplay/core-gameplay/battle
The battle system is skill-based and in real-time. This means that the Nekos the player brings into combat can use learned and purchased skills to defeat its opponents. Although it is easy to get started with battling, mastering the art will require a deep understanding of the system’s core components. These core components are elements, skills, stats/levels/equipment.
- Elements determine the boosts and debuffs a Neko receives when facing a Neko of a different element.
- Skills come in different versions, and they can be for an attack, defense, or buffs. Nekos can learn skills from their element.
- Stats, levels, and equipment go hand in hand with the base features of a Neko. Stats themselves are the basis for a Neko’s battle strength. Upon birth, a Neko has a unique set of stats. While gaining levels, Neko improves the stats. Finally, a player can modify a Neko’s stats by equipping items. The base stats are health points, attack, defense, evasion, accuracy, and speed.
Exploration and Resource Finders
Exploration is designed for the players with the spirit of wanderlust. It is for the explorers, the pathfinders, and the trailblazers. It allows players to explore hidden fortunes within the Nekoverse. It is a countermeasure to the fierce battles both in PvE and PvP. Exploration is a central part of the game, in which the economy thrives due to the adventure. Here players stumble upon resources they can harvest or mine, which can later be used in item crafting or sold on the market. The explorers keep the wheels turning.
Pictures Gathering
Pictures sourced from https://nekoverse.net/
Crafting
Every MMORPG worth speaking of has an aspect of crafting. Nekoverse introduces an exhaustive crafting system that ties in perfectly with the in-game economy. Some players prefer crafting over the other facets of a game, which gives them a role to play in the Nekoverse. Items come in great variety, which drives the game’s progression. Some items are necessary to unlock new features to the game, and others directly impact a Neko’s prowess in battle. All of this makes items a core to the game economy. Most of them are provided by players through crafting.
Nekoverse World
Within the world of Nekoverse, the governing entities are the three mythical gods called the Ancient Triad. The gods have cast a curse upon the land, and only those who prevail shall remain. The land itself comprises three types of realms. These are “Elemental Realms,” “City of Greed,” and “Chaos Land.” All of these realms have different levels of security, which, in turn, provides unique experiences for the player.
Elemental Realms are the starting point for all players. Depending on which element a player’s Neko is, it will have its origin in a tribe within the corresponding realm. For fire, the land is called Inferno Highlands. The nature element is Remedy Woods. Foothill of Honor belongs to the earth and the Neverest Peninsula for water.
There are unique quest lines within each of these four elemental realms. The quests dive into the lore of each tribe, and it intends to introduce new players to the Nekoverse and the game mechanics. Running through this questline will also bootstrap the player with items and currency, making them ready for the world.
Within the elemental realms, there will only be PvE. Losing a battle does not punish the players in any way. There are also areas within the realm where players can gather resources and contribute to the economy.
Elemental Realms
Remedy Woods – source: https://nekoverse.net/
Neverest Peninsula – source: https://nekoverse.net/
Inferno Highlands – source: https://nekoverse.net/
Foothills of Honor – source: https://nekoverse.net/
The City of Greed is the hotspot for economic activity. Within this part of the Nekoverse, the land is sold to players. Thus, allowing them to establish guilds and player-governed districts to enable economic activities. In addition, special buildings can be purchased and erected in these districts where financial transactions occur.
Within the City of Greed, there is only medium security. This means that PvP battles are allowed. Battling, either PvE or PvP, decreases the health of the Nekos. Whenever a Neko’s health goes to zero, it will faint and demand a healing potion before it can partake in any other activities.
Within the City of Greed, when a player has acquired some land there, they can establish a Guild. Guilds are for payers by players and are a core part of the economy and community in the Nekoverse. Guilds are set up as DAOs and can be set up with their own governance system.
Being part of a guild grants the members more efficient income generation than playing solo. In return for these boons, the guild has a tax system that can apply to all economic activities on guild land. This will generate some revenue for the guild to provide services to its members.
The buildings a guild can erect on its land come with special utility. These buildings are:
- The Auction House and Guild Marketplace: In these buildings, Guilds can host auctions, in which the guild can auction out items in their possession. Players will also be able to sell personal items on the Guild Marketplace.
- Arena: In this building, the citizens of the Nekoverse can host PvP battles, and the audience can bet on the outcome of the fight. Guilds can pitch in and sponsor highly prized items as rewards and earn a share of bet money. When fighting in the arena, Nekos’ health will be affected.
Forgery: The Forge allows players to craft items from gathered resources found throughout the Nekoverse.
City of Greed
Source: https://nekoverse.net/
Finally, the Chaos Land is the part of the Nekoverse that only the risk-seeking players visit. It is an uncharted region, offering rich rewards to those who prevail. In the Chaos Land, players risk losing the ownership of both items and their Neko when being bested in battle. Being defeated in the Chaos Land cause the death of a Neko and turns it into a fallen one. Fallen Nekos are sent to the graveyard, where they can be revived by players in possession of a special revival item. Revival items can be crafted using resources only found in the Chaos Land through battling.
Items equipped by fallen Nekos are turned into Lost items. These will enter the pool of things that are rewarded in Lost Chests to the winners of a battle.
Having looked at all the risks a player takes by entering the Chaos Land, we need to peek at the rewards one can gain. When winning a battle, players have a chance of getting exclusive drops, like materials only found in the Chaos Land, lost chests that contain equipment from other players, spirit gems used to summon special class Nekos, and finally, tickets to special events. All of these rare items will have special roles within the game.
For the players that still like the PvE aspect, there are chances of finding rare mines with higher yields and rarer materials than elsewhere in the Nekoverse. The Chaos Land continuously drains energy from the rest of the Nekoverse. Therefore a portion of all economic activities will end up in the Chaos Vault. The riches in the vault are distributed to the resource nodes and battles in the Chaos Land to provide a higher reward for those daring to partake in the chaos in this region.
Chaos Land
Source: https://nekoverse.net/
Tokenomics
Play To Earn
In the Nekoverse, there are a few ways one could play to earn. First, players can sell their acquired resources on the marketplace for $ASG, the currency token of the game. Through PvE and PvP battles, players can also earn $ASG, and players can also sell dropped items for extra cash.
Crafting items and selling them is a third way to make extra bucks. Another way to earn is through breeding and summoning, which is basically creating new Nekos and selling them on the market. Finally, you can collect taxes if you run a guild and stake tokens in the Neko Temple.
The team behind Nekoverse claims that the game mechanics and economy are designed to be sustainable and avoid a declining reward curve.
Staking
The Neko Temple is where you go to stake and farm tokens in the Nekoverse. By staking the in-game currency $ASG, players will receive the governance token $NVS. This mechanism works the other way around as well, where you stake $NVS to receive $ASG.
The Temple will work as an equalizer for the currency supply and governance power in the Nekoverse. Active players that have gained some $ASG can increase their voting powers in their guild by staking their $ASG to gain $NVS.
Likewise, holders of $NVS that want some more cash in-game can stake their $NVS to increase their $ASG. By assigning Nekos to the Temple, a player can boost the APY of their stake corresponding with the Neko’s level. This mechanic will reward active players in the community, and the more dedication goes into the Neko by raising its level, the more APY can be earned.
Pillars of Sustainability
Nekoverse’s sustainable in-game economy is built upon four pillars. These are:
- Comprehensive Assets’ Utility: Each resource or item in the Nekoverse has a purpose and will be extensively used by players during their progression to the game. This creates a continuous demand for the in-game assets.
- Recycling Value: Value created from in-game activities is continuously invested back into the game to maintain the reward curve for players.
- Community-Driven: The economy is built for the players by the players. Nekoverse is just the tool and platform to facilitate these interactions.
- Expanding User Base: Through breeding and summoning new Nekos.
The flowchart below illustrates the flow of the Nekoverse economy.
Picture sourced from https://docs.nekoverse.net/nekoverse/tokenomics/sustainable-game-economy/sustainable-economy-architecture
Inflation and Supply
User base inflation or player growth is achieved by attracting new players to the Nekoverse. The entry ticket is purchasing a Neko NFT character. These are supplied through breeding and summoning or the Nekoverse’s season NFT offering.
In-game economy inflation is something people often worry about in MMOs, especially in games incorporating cryptocurrencies. However, as more players join the game, the demand for in-game assets will rise. So, naturally, this leads to higher asset prices.
If this is left unchecked, the economy will be inaccessible for many players due to expensive in-game assets. Because of this, Nekoverse will issue new $ASG tokens to circulations to help balance the supply and demand and, in so doing, maintain accessibility for all players.
Balancing the in-game assets is also something Nekoverse will do through mechanisms listed below:
- Chaos Land mechanic – Asset removal in which Neko’s are sent to the graveyard and items become lost. In practice, this removes the assets from circulation, and to bring them back, players need to spend other resources.
- In-Game Economic Activities – Resources and currency are spent within the game and removed from circulation.
- Neko Temple – Staking tokens and Nekos temporarily removes them from circulation, slowing the supply velocity.
- Token burning – A portion of the revenue stream in $NVS and $ASG will periodically be burned to maintain the desired inflation rate.
From our perspective, we’ve seen many projects inflate into nothingness, and we’re curious about how Nekoverse will solve this. They say that they will implement features to avoid a declining reward curve. On the other hand, they have measures to increase inflation to accommodate new players and continuous growth. These might go hand in hand but could prove a challenge to balance well.
For example, the TCG Parallel has a system where oracles monitor demand and triggers measures to deal with supply when needed, but not overdoing it, to keep scarcity and asset value for the early adopters.
The team behind Nekoverse has brought a challenge upon themselves when it comes to balancing this and not shafting their early investors or players by devaluing their assets and tokens while still providing new players a reasonable entry.
One concern is that some players will do anything to milk the game for profits, as we’ve seen in several P2E games. If the game turns into a yield farm where players only play to extract value, the game will suffer. As with all games, we believe someone would have to spend on the game for others to extract from it. In our eyes, Nekoverse needs to position themselves as such a game to succeed.
$NVS Utility and distribution
The $NVS token is the governance token of Nekoverse. It has some utilities mentioned below:
- Voting for in-game Guild decisions through the DAO structure.
- Participating in the game development process through voting.
- Passive income through staking.
- Acquire important assets in-game.
Token Overview
| Token Supply | 300,000,000 |
| Initial Supply | 12,000,000 |
| Token Standard | SPL |
Allocation and Distribution schedule
| Allocation | Token | % | Schedule |
| Team and Advisors | 69,000,000 | 23 | One-year cliff, linear weekly vesting over next 30 months. |
| Pre-Seed | 15,000,000 | 5 | Six months cliff, vesting block by block. Block 1: 20% of total investment vest weekly from the 7th to the 12th month. Block 2: 55% of total investment vest weekly from the 13th to the 19th month. Block 3: 25% of total investment vest weekly from the 20th to the 24th month. |
| Private | 30,000,000 | 10 | Three months cliff, vesting block by block. Block 1: 20% of total investment vest weekly from the 4th to the 9th month. Block 2: 55% of total investment vest weekly from the 10th to the 19th month. Block 3: 25% of total investment vest weekly from the 23rd to the 24th month. |
| Public | 6,000,000 | 2 | 100% TGE. |
| Staking and Farming | 75,000,000 | 25 | Linear weekly vesting for 48 months. |
| P2E | 30,000,000 | 10 | Linear weekly vesting for 48 months. |
| Liquidity Reserve | 24,000,000 | 8 | |
| Marketing and Ecosystem Reserve | 51,000,000 | 17 | 3,000,000 NVS unlocked at TGE, the rest is vested linearly weekly over 48 months. |
| Total | 300,000,000 | 100 |
$ASG Utility and distribution
$ASG or Anima Spirit Gem is the in-game currency of Nekoverse. Its utilities are listed below:
- Currency for most in-game economic activities.
- Passive income generation through Neko Temple staking pool.
- Used to incentivize economic growth in-game through discretionary issuing of new $ASG.
Token Overview
| Total Supply | 3,000,000,000 (No hard cap) |
| Initial Supply | 30,000,000 |
| Token Standard | SPL |
Allocation and Distribution schedule
| Public Sale | 30,000,000 | 1 | 100% TGE. |
| Initial Community Contribution Offering | 30,000,000 | 1 | Unlocks linearly monthly over three months. |
| Staking and Farming | 1,050,000,000 | 35 | Linear weekly vesting over 48 months. |
| P2E | 1,500,000,000 | 50 | Linear weekly vesting over 48 months. |
| Liquidity Reserves | 180,000,000 | 6 | |
| Ecosystem Reserve | 210,000,000 | 7 | Linear weekly vesting over 48 months. |
| Total | 3,000,000,000 | 100 |
NFT Game Assets
The main assets of Nekoverse are the Nekos themselves. Each Neko represents one playable character in the game. As with most MMOs, players can have several characters. The same goes for Nekoverse. So, a player can have several Neko NFTs within the game.
Nekos come in different elements, and these elements are divided into three classes.
- Origin Quad – Fire, Nature, Earth, and Water elements.
- Pancha Triad – Electric, Ice, and Psychic.
- Void Dyad – Darkness and Light.
NEKOs Profession Pictures
Pictures sourced from https://nekoverse.net/
Nekos can be used for different professions. There are generally these four:
- Farmer – Harvest resources throughout the Nekoverse.
- Crafter – Create items to enhance Neko stats.
- Breeder – Breed different element Nekos to form rare and new Nekos.
- Necromancer – Revive fallen Nekos after dying in the Chaos Land.
Profession Pictures
Pictures sourced from https://nekoverse.net/
To get a hold of a Neko NFT, one can go to the Solanart marketplace and buy a Neko for $SOL.
Blockchain
What Chain Does The Game Run On?
Nekoverse builds its token economy and NFTs on the blockchain Solana.
Solana is open-source, and the project implements a new, high-performance, permissionless blockchain. The entity that maintains the project is “The Solana Foundation,” based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Solana claims to be the fastest blockchain globally and the fastest-growing ecosystem in crypto. It has projects spanning DeFi, NFTs, Web3, and more. Solana focuses on scaling for global adoption. The motto is “Integrate once and never worry about scaling again.” Due to this scaling, Solana can ensure transaction costs remain less than $0.01 for developers and users. The blockchain is also fast, with 400 millisecond block times. With improvements in hardware as time goes on, block times will also get faster. Finally, Solana claims to be censorship-resistant, where the network will be open for applications to run freely, and transactions will never be stopped.
Solana manages to be this fast due to leveraging 40 years of distributed systems development, as we can see with centralized databases. Solana can leverage this because they found a way to share time without nodes relying upon one another.
Solana’s blockchain protocol uses the concepts of a centralized database where it verifies the passing of time while keeping several decentralized attributes without conferring with a central clock. The consensus method is called Proof of History (PoH) and is what adds the element of time to the blockchain. PoH is designed to verify the time passing between transactions on the chain. When time is a factor, the blocks will be in chronological order, and none of this is dependent on centralized clocks or timestamps.
Solana accomplishes time verification by selecting a network node to be the leader. Being a leader node means that it adds entries to the ledger, also called a transaction validator. The leader is also the one who generates the sequence for Proof of History. Having this leader do all the sequencing of messages results in maximum efficiency and throughput. When the leader has made its sequence, it is sent to replicator nodes called validators. Validators are in charge of verification for the consensus algorithm.To ensure decentralization and some sort of equilibrium, leaders have to be rotated. New leader nodes are chosen according to a leader schedule, which decides which validator gets to lead next, as there can only be one leader at any given time. The Proof of Stake elections chooses the leader schedule, encompassing the validator nodes. Proof of Stake (PoS) is a consensus algorithm that comes in several flavors. We’ve talked about them in our reports on Tezos and Algorand. The PoS mechanism uses a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) mechanism called Tower Consensus in Solana. Tower Consensus uses the PoH mechanism as a global source of time before consensus is achieved.
Our Thoughts On The Chain?
We understand Nekoverse’s decision to choose Solana as their in-game and NFT economy blockchain. Solana is undoubtedly fast and low-cost when it comes to transactions. These pros are necessities in the in-game economy. Solana is also perceived as -THE- blockchain for gaming in the general crypto community because of said pros, alongside the sheer size of the blockchain regarding market cap.
However, in the Alpha Team, we don’t necessarily believe it is a given that Solana is the go-to gaming chain in its current shape, as there are a few others out there with a lot of promise. Furthermore, Solana has had its share of drama regarding decentralization and general uptime.
The case for Solana not being sufficiently decentralized can easily be seen in the picture below, comparing the initial token distribution of several blockchains.
Solana had nearly 50% of the native SOL tokens used for governance held by Venture Capital investors, developers, and other insiders. However, when comparing this to blockchains like Tezos or Ethereum, significantly fewer insiders had tokens initially. Although Solana is an open-source project and a public blockchain, critics argue it is still privately owned due to the large portion of ownership allocated across insiders.
Why does this matter, though? Why is this a problem? With the PoS consensus algorithm Solana applies, token holders running a “full node” is what validates the blockchain. In short, the blockchain’s security is in the hands of those who hold the nodes and how many nodes participate in the network.
In Ethereum’s case, there are, at the time of writing, 2477 full nodes, whereas Solana has 1698. With insiders initially owning almost half of all SOL tokens used by full nodes to validate the blockchain, it doesn’t look the best for decentralization. Put into perspective, the top 10 Solana wallets hold about 15% of the circulating supply.
Sourced from https://twitter.com/RyanWatkins_/status/1394283802009145348/photo/1
Due to Solana’s low transaction cost, attackers managed to barrage the blockchain with transactions, overloading its memory capacity. An attack like this has happened more than once and led to a 48-hour downtime at one point. The core team had to restart the network to get it back up and running, which, in our eyes, is not something a centralized group of developers should have access to in a decentralized blockchain, and this breaks the illusion of decentralization.
There are also some worries around Solana’s PoH mechanism. Due to its deterministic block creation, it is possible to predict the next producer (leader) in line, providing an attack vector. For example, a malicious actor could attack the subsequent 100 block validators in line and avoid attempting an attack on the whole network. There is also the possibility of combining such an attack with a 51% attack to gain control over the network. However, attackers would not need a 51% stake to carry out such an attack due to PoH, as an attacker could DDoS the next stakeholder in line due to the deterministic block creation.
If you’re interested in reading more about some of Solana’s vulnerabilities, Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Cyber Capital, have an interesting Tweet thread about it here.
Even with Solana’s apparent risks and worries, it is still the blockchain that has processed the most transactions, more than all other major networks combined. And it has a plethora of financially strong backers to help iron out these wrinkles. Among them is the CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried.
A strong point of these financial muscles can be seen in the recent Wormhole hack, which is a bridge linking Ethereum to Solana. About $320 million was stolen in this hack, and the Solana side of the bridge was the one suffering. After a short time, Wormhole announced that funds had been restored, and the one who covered was the trading company, Jump Trading. This shows how deep pockets the Solana backers and community have and is willing to put up to keep moving forward.
Having said all this, Solana could still prove to be a good choice for games, but time will tell if the Solana community manages to deal with the apparent flaws in the blockchain. There should at least be enough money to fund such problem-solving.
Team
Who Is On The Team?
- Leo Nguyen – Tribal Chief & Founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/leo-nguyen-neko/
- Trinh Anh Duc – The Megamind & Co-founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/duc-anh-trinh/
- Nguyen Viet Hung – Product Geek https://twitter.com/hungnguyen7495
- Nguyen Quang Thai – Marketing Guru https://www.linkedin.com/in/nqthai/
- Hoang Duc Long – Game Master Wizard
- Doung Nhat Anh – Visual Magician
- Cong An Khang – Design Master
- Anh Thu – Game Design Master
- Phan Minh Doung – Blockchain Prophet
- Ha Trung Hieu – Blockchain Prophet
Team Assessment
We have to start by prefacing this part with the fact that finding information on the members of Nekoverse was hard.
Their website lists ten employees, and their roles are vague. On LinkedIn, they state that the team consists of 11-50 employees. However, only two of them are listed. We’ve also checked their whitepaper for a more comprehensive list of their team and its experience.
We haven’t found any job announcements listed anywhere
Given how little information there was for us to find, we cannot really go into detail on their team and will just have to see what they can achieve going forward.
Do They Have Relevant Experience?
The founder, Leo Nguyen, and co-founder Trinh Anh Duc are the two listed on LinkedIn. They seem to have shared experience working in the same venture capital company.
From what we can tell, the team seems to be young, and we cannot find much relevant experience. However, looking at the product itself, at least the visuals stand out as being vivid, fun, and well thought out.
Who Are Their Backers?
Roadmap
Game Developers Roadmap
Screenshot borrowed from https://nekoverse.net/
Alpha Team’s Thoughts On The Roadmap
From the roadmap, we can see that the PvE Combat system is planned for sometime in Q3 or Q4 of 2022. We can expect a gradual release of new content throughout 2023, such as City of Greed, which introduces PvP and Guild aspects, and Chaos Land, which brings in the high risk, high reward aspect.
As we’ve been saying, and what we believe more projects are starting to understand is that, game development takes time. Seeing Nekoverse take their time and pace themselves is ensuring for us. We love to see projects build out quality games over an overpromised rush to market MVP, which only lives on hype from early investors eager to take profit. Fortunately, things are moving in this direction, and over the next year or two, we’ll see a lot of promising projects emerge.
Guild Facilitation
Nekoverse doesn’t necessarily accommodate guilds regarding the delegation of NFTs for the moment. However, it does facilitate guilds in-game through the built-in guild DAO system. Guilds could establish themselves in the game through this system and operate within the boundaries of the game. We’ve had a look at what guilds can do in-game when we explored the City of Greed.
Needless to say, Guilds will play a central role in this game, and they will be core entities to drive forward the narrative in the Nekoverse.
Whitepaper
Link to the whitepaper: https://docs.nekoverse.net/nekoverse/
Alpha Team’s General Thoughts On The Whitepaper
Nekoverse’s whitepaper gives us the information we need to get a grasp of the game and what they’re trying to achieve. It contains the elements we’ve come to expect from a Web3 game project, such as what the game is about and how it functions. Which role do NFTs play, and details on how their tokens are distributed. They also present a plan on how they intend to deal with the problem of balancing the economy for sustainable growth and longevity.
We also think the choice of a GitBook-style whitepaper is clever. For us, it makes reading and navigation more straightforward, and this seems to be a trend in the projects in the Web3 space.
The Alpha Team Reads Between The Lines – The Big Picture Talk
Since Nekoverse is a mobile game for Apple and Android, it is fair to say it won’t compete against games built for PC but rather the mobile segment of the industry. Nekoverse could be a competitor to several established titles in the mobile MMO genre, like Albion Online and Lineage 2 Revolution. With the hype of Web3 and P2E games we’ve seen over the past year, we believe Nekoverse could capture some of that market, especially if they manage to keep earnings at a decent level and don’t let the economy crash into obscurity.
To give a perspective on how big mobile gaming is, one of the most popular mobile RPGs, Genshin Impact, had an average of over 61 million monthly players last month, with a peak of over 10 million players in a day. So in the mobile gaming industry, there should be plenty of cake for everyone. Nekoverse just needs to carve out its slice.
Growth Implications
With the choice of Solana as its blockchain solution, the project shouldn’t have a problem with scaling tech-wise. And community-wise, Nekoverse has a strong one. So we can’t see any apparent blockers for Nekoverse to grow and scale into the MMO they aim to be.
Nekoverse Website
We compared Nekoverse’s desktop version of its website to its mobile site to see how it measured up and if there were any changes that Nekoverse 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 https://nekoverse.net/
Desktop
When we opened the website, we felt really excited. The background colors were vivid, and we noticed the cheerful look of the game. In addition, some special effects had been added, such as the floating planet, an automatic swipe effect to get an idea of the Neko attributes, four spinning professions for the Neko which the player can choose in-game, and much more.
Every time we scrolled, it was another surprise, in artwork, special effects, or how generous the creators had been with the information. Eventually, we reached the roadmap, team composition, partners, and FAQ, which are common traits in most websites we’ve tested.
All in all, our first impression was pretty good. However, we noticed a flaw when trying to click on the different menu options. When clicking on, for instance, “whitepaper” or “FAQ,” the user would expect to be either transferred to a new tab or automatically scrolled down to the part which the user clicked. Instead, the whitepaper opened and loaded after a few tries. The FAQ, on the other hand, reloaded the website but only sent us to the same page that we were already on.
This tells us that the website could still use some polish. Apart from this, we enjoyed this page’s colors, information, and artwork. After a few minutes on the website, we felt like this game was becoming clear to us, which was nice. User-friendliness always gets a +1 from The Alpha team.
Screenshot borrowed from https://nekoverse.net/
Phone Usability
When opening the Nekoverse website on a mobile device, we were surprised to see that many of the special effects mentioned above also were implemented nicely on the mobile device. As we expected, the layout was slightly different, but none of the information was outside the screen as we’ve previously experienced from, for instance, Encore’s website.
We were especially interested to see how the spinning feature of the “Nekoverse NFTs The Following Utilities” would work on our mobile device. Since a new Neko appear for every movement by scrolling. To our surprise, it did work well! The website layout, which shows Nekoverse’s team, was slightly different, where the user would have to tap to see the next member. We don’t mind this change in layout. It works really well and is easy and self-explanatory, which we love.
When exploring this website on the desktop, we noticed that they could promote their social media even more. When coming to the end of the website on a mobile device, the creators had announced the game’s social media. “Join our community” 3 simple words to encourage users to check out more of the Nekoverse.
The Verdict
We were pleased with the Nekoverse website. Even with all the special effects, the website worked like a charm! Both the desktop and the mobile versions of the website were well made, which surprised us, considering flaws we’ve seen in other projects attempting fancy features.
When we saw all the special effects, we were nervous about the website on the mobile device, but the website team did an excellent job with this one! We enjoyed the artwork, and we loved how much information about the game we could find on the website.
The only edits we would encourage would be to add navigation through the website in the menu. We would also recommend adding the “Join our community” on the desktop version, just like they did on the mobile device. So we will end on a good note. Well done, Nekoverse. Once you fix these menu buttons, you’ll have one of the best websites we’ve tested so far.
Socialnomics
Social Media Followers Count
| Platform | Follower Count |
| Discord | 60,000 |
| 54,621 | |
| 2,471 |
As with everything we research, we look into what we call the “Socialnomics” of a project. Nekoverse has a relatively high following on both Discord and Twitter. By the looks of it, Nekoverse joined Twitter in September 2021 and created their official discord server in late 2021.
Their first Instagram post dates back to the 3rd of November 2021, and from what we can see, they posted actively there to their followers. However, since December, their posts have stagnated, and their latest post, in this written moment, is the 25th of March 2022, when they posted three times on the same day.
The creators promote Discord on both Instagram and Twitter. So, Nekoverse has focused on growing its following on Discord, which makes sense by looking at the number of followers on each platform. The general chat in the Discord is seemingly active, where users talk about the game and other relevant topics. After browsing several chats, we could not find any spammers, which is good. The Nekoverse Discord also shares their Twitter posts, which is a common trait.
Their Twitter channel also links to their website, allowing new users to find information about the game. However, they do not share their Instagram in their Twitter bio, which is odd considering that it has a vast potential to grow their following there. Their Discord and Twitter platform seem to be the place to go for anyone wanting to be an active member and follow Nekoverse.
Screenshot borrowed from https://mobile.twitter.com/nekoverse_nft
Conclusion
Nekoverse is a hopeful newcomer to the space, and with the features planned over the next year, it will be interesting to see how this game develops. By launching on mobile for both Apple and Android, it has the potential to reach the masses in mobile gaming, where some of its competitors are attracting over 60 million players per month.
The team itself remains quite a mystery to us, but the proof is in the pudding. On the 18th of April, we got the first sneak peek of the alpha, which is impressive for a minimum viable product, which you can see in the video below. We’re cautiously optimistic about what Nekoverse brings but believe it’s too early to judge the game’s potential in the mobile gaming space before we get to playtest it properly ourselves.
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Balthazar Research Report: Bear with us: Bullieverse
Bullieverse is an Open Metaverse developed for the community of players and creators. It is built for Web 3.0 citizens to have an immersive environment. As a result, gamers enjoy an out-of-the-world experience combined with a transparent and fair monetization mechanism that underpins our open player-owned economy. The result is a high-quality gaming platform where users can both play and earn, but more importantly, experience it.
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