If one analyzes the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market, he/she will quickly grasp that many people who have taken an interest in cryptocurrency offerings are looking for a new source of revenue with little appreciation for what they are investing in.
“Many projects have raised significant funds during their ICO, but haven’t shown viable products, i.e., did nothing to assure the token price,” explains Oskana Vasylytsa, a co-founder of a new project called Prospectors that is in the process of raising money through an ICO. “If such trend doesn’t change, this bubble will burst.”
It is rare to hear an ICO operator speak with such honesty. Commonly, those behind ICOs believe that all they need is to create a fancy 20+ page “white paper” to lure in investment with arbitrary values attached to “tokens” that are offered to investors. But Vasylytsa appears to be interested in taking a very different approach with his offering.
“Unlike others, our project is the game in the first place, the goal of which is to bring pleasure to people through the game process,” explains Vasylytsa.
The concept of Prospectors is that it is a game that people can play and enjoy while receiving rewards through cryptocurrency. It is a type of geographical map-based game where users are afforded a lot and can do what they wish with it, with the goal of finding gold under the soil. But again, it is merely a concept in development at the moment, despite having already raised 530 ETH (an open-source, public blockchain-based distribution), which is around $150,000.
“I was an initiator of the game . . . after two years of discussions with Andriy [Masilievich], we’ve come to the present model,” explains Nazar Chervinskiy, co-founder and initial creator of the “Prospectors” idea. “Today, there are only a few blockchain games, but neither of them offers to monetize the game time.”
Basically, the concept is that people who want to get cryptocurrency can play a game (Prospectors) and generate additional cryptocurrency through succeeding at the challenges contained therein. Masilievich says that there is a working prototype of the game and that alpha and beta versions “will be worked out in detail after the ICO.” And that is interesting in itself. The projected release of a consumer-ready game is Q3/Q4 2018, yet roughly $150,000 has been raised in an ICO occurring right now, according to the co-founders.
It almost seems as though the whole concept of participating in some ICOs is like playing a game. With Prospectors, it could be the game within a game. Hopefully for the co-founders the ICO bubble doesn’t burst before the game is completed.