VersaGames IGO AMA Recap

We are thrilled to be partnering with VersaGames on our second Initial Gem Offering (IGO) happening on April 12, 12 pm UTC!

VersaGames team members caught up with our VVS community, with an overwhelming number of questions and interest in VersaGames, from its underlying mechanics and purpose to the upcoming IGO.

Learn more below about VersaGames and the answers to all the great questions from our VVS community.

VersaGames team, could you guys give us a brief introduction and background about the team behind VersaGames!

VersaGames Team:

Both our founders come from TradFi. We both worked as macro investors in hedge funds, and what that really means really is investing in economies across the world. So we’re used to looking at currencies and policies in regard to monetary supply and looking at the assets of a country and investing holistically in the world’s economies. This is very similar to how we see NFT gaming, in which each game is effectively its own economy.

More important than the finance overlap, though, is that both of us are absolutely into games. We spent way too much time in MMORPGs and love talking about games and coming up with new ideas in this space. Noah’s actually been an angel investor in game studios since his first paycheck. So for us, entering the NFT game space was really an exciting opportunity to combine our passion and skillsets.

We have an amazing team who came together around this project. Our CTO has about 13 years of experience in tech, built multiple platforms in the B-to-C space, and has an amazing dev supporting him. And, of course, you’ve seen the amazing designs created by our UX designer. So our tech team is super strong, and we have confidence they will take us forward to realize our ambitious vision. Our marketing and BD team is also amazing and has past crypto project experience on top of senior marketing roles in some very well-known companies. And around this core, we have some very motivated content creators and mods. Overall, we’ve been incredibly lucky with our team, and it’s an awesome environment.

Tell us about VersaGames in detail and what you have to offer!

VersaGames Team:

We see VersaGames as a true partner to gamers and studios. Our goals are ambitious, but, so far, we’ve made great strides, and the community has been super supportive on all fronts. We are building a three-way marketplace.

For gamers, we offer two things: a storefront where they can find info on what games are out there and seamless access to the game tokens; and we offer a community where gamers can create content, participate in contests, and share ideas. We want the community to help build the storefront, and we are rewarding builders by sharing the benefits of our growth with them.

For developers, we also have a strong offering. We begin with access to the gamer community we are building. We’ve featured games on our storefront and held events together with studios to promote their products. Once our token is trading, we can also start offering liquidity for game studio tokens. Basically, instead of the studio putting its game token and a stablecoin into the DEX, they instead lend us their tokens, and we pair them with treasury Versa tokens to create an LP. So our Versa token acts as a liquidity bridge, and the studio doesn’t need to commit its capital to have liquidity.

Finally, for investors, which is maybe most of you listening, Versa tokens will give you proportional exposure to the VersaGames treasury, so you’ll get to benefit from all the rewards from all the incentives collected by offering liquidity as a service for game tokens. And, on top of that, the treasury will accumulate diverse game tokens that we believe have promising tokenomics, so the value of the treasury will increase from that too. Basically, the treasury will be like a really nice, diversified game index and will also collect high interest. And the way we see the Versa holder participating in this is by both staking the Versa token and collecting a yield paid by the treasury out of its profits and by VersaGames keeping the value of the token close to the treasury by initiating buybacks if the price drops too much. So the Versa token will mirror the success of the DAO treasury and grow in value with the business.

What will VersaGames be doing to attract other game studios for partnerships?

VersaGames Team:

Well, to start, we will continue to build our storefront and community to offer a really compelling platform for games. We’ll continue to hold contests and events jointly to promote great games. And after this raise, we’ll have the token and treasury assets required to offer liquidity as a service for games ready to launch their tokens. It’s really a unique value proposition, and the early feedback from studios has been overwhelmingly positive.

How will VersaGames benefit not only the gamer but investors and developers as well?

VersaGames Team:

We’re really committed to helping more developers choose Cronos, and helping with liquidity will be a big incentive. As mentioned before, our providing Versa as a liquidity bridge will really help studios with their capital efficiency, and the community we described will be a huge support base for the studios. Because of our commitment to community building, our member base has primarily come from game events, meaning they are the gamers with whom studios will want to share their projects. We will also occasionally incentivize promising projects to join us on Cronos with a direct early investment as the start of the partnership. And, of course, that will go to the treasury.

Tell us more about the liquidity provisioning service for gaming projects. What are the problems you are trying to solve, and what are the value propositions for gaming projects?

VersaGames Team:

The concept of a DEX is truly amazing with its decentralization and democratization of financial access. At the core of the DEX is the AMM, which replaces the central order book of a CEX. So right now, to launch the AMM, you basically have to provide it with both tokens and let it manage the inventory based on supply and demand. This is great, but it means that if no one is trading, then the tokens just sit there. And if you are a game studio working on a limited budget, then what that means is that you have put your game token and a decent amount of USDC or some L1 into what is, effectively, storage. A lot of game studios don’t just have spare cash to set aside like that. So by using Versa instead of the USDC or L1, what we are doing is wiring liquidity through our treasury. And what this means for the game developer is that they just need to provide their game token and the incentives, and we will take care of the other side of the AMM equation. So they keep their cash, and, instead of packing it away, they can use it to create a better game.

VersaGames will also be investing in new games built on Cronos. Can you share with us your investment criteria? How does profit from investments feed into VERSA tokens?

VersaGames Team:

This is a great question, and maybe it’s best to preface this by saying that liquidity provisioning is the primary use of treasury funds. With that said, we will occasionally make direct investments into very promising projects with excellent tokenomics. We have actually done one such investment with the aim of incentivizing a very promising game to choose Cronos so we can continue to develop the partnership on this chain. But, back to your question, the criteria are:

1. Excellent tokenomics with clear burn mechanics and sustainable inflation

2. A strong “fun” factor and community retention mechanisms

3. A credible team with clear timelines and a history of success

These criteria should be easily met by good games, and, actually, these are the same criteria used for evaluating liquidity provisioning partnerships.

How does the VERSA token play a part in all of this? Please share more about how value is accrued to VERSA tokens.

VersaGames Team:

The Versa token is quite central to the VersaGames business model. Of course, it acts as a liquidity bridge via the liquidity as a service mechanism described. But it also is the mirror of the treasury for Versa token holders. Value is accrued to token holders in three ways: first, via the upcoming staking mechanism where the treasury will pay a yield on staked Versa tokens, and stakers will also be able to participate in extra rewards determined by the DAO; second, the token will track the treasury value. If the outstanding value of treasury tokens falls too far below the value of treasury assets, the DAO will initiate a buyback to align the two; and finally, buyers of Versa tokens will also be able to participate in LP yield farming in which the Versa token is a component, supporting game projects as well.

Please share with us the upcoming road map for VersaGames.

VersaGames Team:

As we mentioned, we have very ambitious plans and are very excited to continue our already fast-paced journey. We will continue to build studio partnerships, and the token launch will greatly accelerate that by allowing us to offer the services described around liquidity and investment. We will also continue to build the community and populate the storefront through contests and events held in conjunction with game studios. On the dev side, we will quickly implement the Versa staking contract once our Paladin audit comes through. The next step is to implement game token trading integration into our platform so users don’t need to leave it to trade. Then we will implement the LP staking for Versa token pairs. After that, we will be ready to move to the second phase and develop the NFT borrow and lending framework we envision to help gamers migrate between games.

How do you think crypto gaming will evolve in the next 1–3 years? What are you most excited about in that space?

VersaGames Team:

This is a really fun question and one we often discuss internally. There are so many possibilities in this space because we are dealing with new technology, and no one can really predict how everything will look in a few years. But there are two things we really look forward to. The first is higher levels of a “fun factor” in NFT games. And this is where tools like Crypto.com SDK for NFT integration become so key. We see more seamless gameplay, akin to traditional gaming, with post-game chain synchronization as a promising avenue, and our investment in Path of Survival reflects that. But, of course, we are excited to see other solutions! The second big thing — and this applies to all of crypto — is better fiat-crypto integration. Easily bringing users onto DeFi wallets and then easily allowing them to spend their earnings or winnings in the real world is so key for mass adoption. That is why we are so excited to be part of the Crypto.com ecosystem. We are really impressed by their payment integration and see this as a huge step to bringing more non-crypto native gamers online.

Why is the IGO allocation such a small % of the supply?

VersaGames Team:

Today it’s still early days. Cronos has been only around for 5 months, and there are not yet that many games. Therefore, there is not really a need for a large treasury to provide games’ liquidity. That is why we are selling a smaller part of the token supply. The small amount sold will be the only circulating supply on day1. Raising capital this way, and providing deep liquidity relative to the raised amount, will make the price less volatile than that of many other launches you may have seen. We also feel this approach gives us a better base for our project. Stability is important since building good games takes time, and we are in this for the long run. Finally, we will have more flexibility to sell more tokens in the future when we find great partnership opportunities. Just like for the initial raise, we will work hard to ensure future raise rounds are community-centric. One possible approach might be via whitelisting for xVERSA stakers. We can whitelist our community base, and offer them a small discount to purchase more $VERSA. It was important for us to have a fair launch, and we will continue in this spirit.

Does the team have access to the tokens on launch day, should we expect a massive dump?

VersaGames Team:

The answer is “No!” We even encountered problems when people wanted to do partnerships or wanted to help us in exchange for $VERSA tokens. The problem was that we actually don’t have any $VERSA tokens we can give them: our own tokens are locked for 3months, and then linearly vested for 2 years. So, in fact, we are going to buying $VERSA in the IGO just to even reward winners of our community contest where $VERSA is the prize pool. This is a good time to share that both co-founders will be putting in 100kUSD each into the IGO, and that if it’s subject to overflow, we will use the remaining funds to support the market afterwards. We are excited to invest more into $VERSA at the same price as the general public, and are definitely not thinking of selling!

Will there be a versa mine? What Versa farms are planned (CRO, USDC, VVS)?

VersaGames Team:

There will definitely be a mine, you will be able to stake VVS and earn $VERSA. It’s a great way to decentralize a bit more and expose more users to VersaGames. Also, it’s a great way to give back to the VVS community. We are really excited for the partnership with VVS: we believe in the VVS team, and in the Cronos team. The primary farm will initially be VVS-VERSA. That is the farm to which we will be providing most of the liquidity from the treasury.

How many games does VersaGames currently have in development?

VersaGames Team:

To be clear on this, we are not a game studio, so we are not developing our own games. However, as we mentioned before we do invest in exceptional projects. So far, we invested in Path of Survival. We are currently working with several game studios on developing partnerships, and are in talks with traditional game studios to help them adopt blockchain technology. One potential partnership we are excited to explore is with DG Pals. We recently visited their office and had a chance to hear their vision for NFT gaming, and how they plan to utilize their NFT technology to scale game development. These novel approaches that studios are exploring are really cool, and we are excited to support visionaries in the NFT gaming space.

It’s also important to mention that our community building has been in conjunction with Gala Games, Splinterlands, Widilands, and DefiKingdom. We will continue cooperative community development with existing partners, and as a tool to bring on new partners. The next step is to get these exciting projects to come to Cronos

What are your final thoughts or comments you have to wrap this up? We are super excited to officially launch. The future is bright, it’s gonna be a lot of fun, and building VersaGames is a dream come true. We love exploring community and platform building in web3 and sharing the rewards with our community. We invite everyone to join us on this awesome journey!

To learn more about our upcoming IGO with VersaGames, click here.