BRAINDANCE AMA
12 FEB 22
A private note from Founder, Mr. Lucid: Holy moly this guy that wrote the AMA is dedicated to this project as he wrote and summarized 90 minutes of conversation. You guys should take note of his dedication lol
This session included more than just an AMA. We were introduced to BD | Dracula, Rayan. And Jay offered to rent Dracula a room in his house, so generous!
The beginning of the AMA was Arman, Jay, and Rayan covering various topics relating to crypto and crypto news. I suggest you listen to the recording for some funny back and forth and interesting events. I won’t be covering every topic they talked about but I want to highlight a few key pieces of information.
First: security is hugely important to Arman and his team. Guys, don’t click on random links from randos. And, if you think it’s safe, at least inspect the URL to make sure it’s the URL to which you’re actually going and want to be redirected. Stay safe.
Second: Jay and Arman advised essentially do your own research (DYOR). Don’t just look at the potential for immediately flipping a project, but to look at the future of the project. We make mistakes, but by making sure you do your due diligence, and learn about how NFTs, web3, and other crypto principles work you’ll avoid more rug-pulls than not. Even a promising-looking project can fail. Arman mentions that if a project wants to scam you, one of the ingredients is a perfectly smooth mint. He continues to say that a project that has a perfect minting process is not necessarily a scam, but it’s to reemphasize that it doesn’t mean a project is a scam just because the project has some hiccups here and there.
Third: The team (and I) believe NFTs are the future of replacing paper and hard copied tickets, etc. NFT’s will be the way we travel, get into events, attend events online/VR, and much more.
Last point, and if you don’t already do this, please start: double check the wallet that you copied/pasted is the same as the one to where you intend to send your crypto. This is related to scammers and sending money to the correct wallet from one chant/exchange to another for yourself.
Now, let’s get into the questions and answers. If you want some alpha, take a look at the entire article, cause there is really exciting alpha sprinkled through this AMA, just like the last one. So, Jay, I’m talking to you: don’t stop Arman from rambling, that’s where we get the best teases and alpha from!
As with the last AMA almost every question has a multipart answer, there is good information and sometimes its not always directly related to the question but gives good insight into the thought process behind how Arman and the team are developing the game and tokenomics. I’ve tried to break up the flow of information the best I can. I have also kept questions and answers in linear form instead of consolidating. I find it helps provide that insight I mentioned.
Enjoy!!
Q: What’s going to happen concretely for the first [phase] minters?
A:
OGs will receive the already laid-out perks
The $STEM airdrop. No price prediction but, the way its being developed it will be worth a lot. And, if you stake that same token we’ll receive, the way the metaverse is being set up with more and more collections, you’ll need $STEM tokens.
The token is deflationary, fixed supply at the beginning. As more $STEM is being used, the buying pressure will be increased.
OGs will also receive the most expensive penthouses (Arman confirmed will be minted off chain on their own server).
This means they can control who gets what.
OGs will also receive some of the most expensive city hubs.
OGs Cityhubs will start at Level 100 while non-OG minters will start at Level 0.
Cityhubs will be done similar to the xp system done on the discord server.
OGs will have a higher chance at breeding rare cyborg babies. Breeding starts in May or June.
The babies will have rare stats. There will be unique cyborg babies that will be available to purchase by everyone, not just OGs. They haven’t decided who will necessarily get those.
Q: Will there be a TGE for $STEM/$SRT? And if so, what will be the price?
A:
Arman goes on to address that he will not be speculating on price. However, since I am the one who asked the question, I will clarify here in this article what I meant by “what will be the price?” I was asking about what the price will be set at for the Token Generation Event (TGE). Traditionally, a launchpad hosting the TGE will publish the price at which the token will be sold on their platform. This price is what I was referring to. I assume this price will not only be addressed but revealed some time before the TGE.
To continue with the first part of the question’s answer: The TGE will happen for $STEM and for the first-phase minters.
10–15% will be released to purchase at this time.
15–20% will be released every month after that.
For $SRT, tokenomics developement hasn’t finished, but there will be a vesting schedule for everyone.
For founders, they will be locked for 12 months; even after that only 5–10% will be released every other month.
The way the tokenomics for $STEM/$SRT are being developed is to provide higher buying pressure than selling pressure.
Q: If your NFT dies of old age, and doesn’t have a child, will the penthouse and city hub go to public option the way it would if the player stopped playing?
A: He mentions a couple of things.
We are going to vote using a newly announced third token, which is a DAO token. We will vote on the aging mechanic of the OG NFt characters. The original plan was to have NFTs die because, like the real world, beings die. Since this is a simulation of the real world, this aging process was supposed to be simulated as well.
For now, the NFTs do age and die (5–10 years down the road). No, they won’t be put up as a public option. They will still remain in the holder’s wallet. No matter what happens to the NFT character, the penthouses and city hubs will belong to the holder.
Q: Let’s say a character dies, and you still have the city hub or penthouse, can you get another NFT character?
A: Yes. This will be similar to non-NFT character holders that purchase a cityhub or penthouse. They still get to live as their character inside the game. However, there is no representation of the character inside the game. There will be no NFT for that character. There is no value outside the cityhub in which the non-NFT character was created (i.e. its not able to be sold on a secondary market).
On a related note, Arman says that if we decide to scrap the idea of aging, none of these issues will exist.
Q: Can you give us an idea of what it will be like for non-NFT BrainDancer holders when they log into the game? Since the game is Sims + Sim City + RPG, how do non-NFT holders take part in the gameplay?
A: It’s something like any other video games you play. You log in, create your character from the very beginning. You can play with it, upgrade it, spend money on it. However there is no representation of it in the metaverse. Meaning, you cannot trade your character. It will be just like Sims. You’ll create your character, have fun, play the game, earn money through the city hub, bringing value to the city hubs because you have to engage with the NFT holders to progress in the game.
You can earn crypto. However, since you don’t have an NFT character, you cannot earn $STEM tokens.
If you stop playing the game, because there is no NFT character, you can’t just sell it.There will be no use for the NFT anymore.
The same thing happens with the penthouses and cities you build as a non-NFT holder. Yes, you can make money off them, and participate in the game but it has no value outside of the Cube in which you created your character.
Relatedly, Arman notes that this makes more sense when you take into account that you can earn passive money with your NFTs by leasing them to other players. But, if you stop playing the game for whatever reason, you will stop earning money. Think of these NFTs as assets in the start-up that BrainDance is. Yes, lots of utility and the art is cool but, essentially you’re purchasing a share in the startup. The startup is called 01 Dimension. It’s a metaverse that is being built from scratch. There are a lot of collaborations and partnerships happening. If you purchase an NFT you will be able to make a lot more money than if you just decide to participate in the game. That’s the difference.
Q: Does the chat level affect your game starting point?
A: They will overhaul the roles on discord after the mint (prior to Sim launch) to make an accurate representation of your status within the game. OGs will hold their roles. Everyone else will be different. [We] have to understand something: the DAO token will also represent a value, and we will be able to validate the amount of DAO token we hold in Discord. This will be available closer to the time when the game will launch. It’s all tied together perfectly. [We] just have to wait for the game to launch to see all this happening.
Q: Will penthouses come furnished? Can we sell items or trade them with other people? Can we continue to buy some furniture?
A: Yes, yes, and yes. Penthouses will come premade. If you are the NFT holder you can decorate them any way you want. You can also change the layout a little bit in the beginning, with more customization options in the future. We can decorate ite, flip it, rent it to people in the game. Think of it as AirBNB. Penthouses will be playable in first person or VR. He strongly recommends that if you have a VR headset, to experience it in VR.
Arman goes on to switch the topic to minigames. They will launch minigames that can be played on tvs, projectors, or arcade machines in the penthouses. Each of these minigames will progress and evolve into a minigame within the simulation. So in the beginning, think of the transition from 2D games in the 80’s-90’s and how they evolved into more complex games in the 2000’s and 2010’s. Every single one of these minigames will come with a limited edition NFT set. “Limited edition” means less than 1,000. The first people to play the game and unlock the achievements in the minigames will be able to mint these games for free + gas, minted off chain (gas will be cheap). People who mint these NFTs in the minigames will be able to use them i nthe complex more evolved minigames within the main simulation. You can rent your apartment to people who want to mint the minigame NFTs. You can only mint a certain amount in your own penthouse.
An interesting point dropped here too: Arman says that there are digital real estate investors (people who invest in real estate in the real world), who take a look at the game and supply and demand. They’ll purchase land in the metaverse or apartments. He has the buyers lined up for public mint as well as private mint. They can rent out their real estate so that the players can mint those NFTs in the rented-out penthouses.
Q: Will there be competition between city hubs?
A: Oh yes. Think of the simulation as your real life that you’re living every day. Work, school, love, etc. Then, after hours, after work, you have the ability to go play games or sports or whatever. The minigames are the fun part. The main simulation is the work you have to do. When it comes to the main simulation, you need to create factions and alliances with six other people. There are seven roles (check BrainDance twitter or Instagram to understand them better). Your NFT character gets one role that is tied to one type of city hub. Solder = Military compound. Engineer = research lab. Vanguard = financial institution. All these NFT characters are needed for the main missions of the game. You need to make alliances with other players in order to play these multiplayer events and missions. That’s the main game.
When it comes to the minigames, there are multiplayer games and single player games. The multiplayer games are the ones that you need to team up with other players in order to participate and win NFT sets and collections as a team, then you decide who gets what.
Teaser: Next week the first gameplay trailer will be dropped with teases of the minigames (sports). Two-three weeks another gameplay trailer. This will highlight multiplayer missions and each of these multiplayer missions are another minigame, but the minigame type is different.
Q: Is there a way to monitor the performance of the hub? Are there better rewards for highest performing hubs?
A: Yes.
Think of the city like SimCity where you get to monitor the performance of the city. And the performance of the city is health, love, wealth, happiness. When it comes to wealth, it’s the amount of $SRT that you’re generating. The way it’s set up, the more you have the higher production of each category the more $SRT you generate. In order to generate the most, you need to create strong factions/allies.
The way inter-reality raids and competition is set up, you need to cooperate with other city hubs to generate the highest production for each measured value in order to secure your city hub, in terms of the raids that will happen. For example, if you are soldier and you get a military compound, you have to work with other realities. You have to provide security, military forces, and provide defense for your allies. They will pay you in $SRT to receive that service. If you’re a banker, you can finance the buildings, factories, and even wars against other realities.
Yes, you will monitor your city hub performance. This is a main feature of the city hubs: to monitor your city to make sure it’s in its most optimized condition. In return you will receive $SRT. You need to spend some $SRT for your alliances, but you’ll get $SRT in return if you’re playing properly.
Arman briefly explained that non-NFT holders will pay tax to NFT holders. Why? Because the number of realities is locked to 5,050 and every other non-NFT holder will have to choose one of these realities in which to build their city. The NFT-holder will have the city hub and the other players (non-NFT holders) will help build and expand the city. In return they will pay the NFT-holder taxes. The way and percentage of taxes are carried out will be up to the NFT-holder. You can even compensate players to invite more players to join your reality.
Q: So how many babies will be produced?
A: Two maximum per pair, total. One per year. First collection is 2,025 cyborg babies in 2022 and another 2,025 cyborg babies in 2023.
Q: The babies will grow up?
A: Yes. The aging system is set up in 6-month terms. One human year = 2 BrainDance years. But, aging for babies will be faster. There are three stages of development for babies. Infant, adolescent, and adult. Each stage will be three or six months (real world time).
The idea behind the babies is to replace the NFTs that are, at this point (before the vote), going to age and die.
Q: Can we free roam around penthouses and cities with our characters?
A: Yes. In the beginning penthouses will be romable in first-person view (the characters aren’t completed in 3D yet). But, when the game is launched, our characters will be able to roam around the penthouses, even see ourselves in the mirror. The cities will be roamable as well.
There are three different cameras to roam the city.
Isometric used to build and monitor the city. You’ll be able to move quickly around the map.
Third-person view is used for controlling your character and in minigames.
First-person view is also used inside the penthouses and some of the minigames.
Q: What are the dates of the public mint?
A:
Early march. Latest will be the middle of March. The purpose of pushing the mint dates back even further is to battletest the smart contract. He recapped the issues plaguing the original mint. These issues are going to be fully fixed before a date is announced. Arman acknowledged that he learned that he won’t be giving dates until he has a perfect working product in his hand. Right now, the mint website is being redone and some of the smart contract to make sure there are no issues with it when minting goes live.
Two security aspects that they are focusing on in addition to the previous issues are preventing bots and DDoS attacks.
The hope is to have all this completed sometime this week.
The date for the private mint will be announced shortly after that. The private mint needs to go smoothly before the public mint is announced. Also, there needs to be enough interest in the public mint for it to be successful. This is where he recaps his marketing strategy and working with someone, Eli, who used to work with Kanye and Virgil. He has helped get a bunch of projects sold out. A proper strategy is in place.
A discord member asked: Will bots be allowed to be used to mint?
A: No.
With projects that have a lot of potential and hype, there are white hackers that write code to mint NFT’s from the project. They don’t go to the minting website. The way the bot works, it is a smart contract itself and it execute in a way that creates sub-smart contracts with sub-smart wallets. The bot creates many bots that mint 2–3. So not 100, but 2000 total minted. They mint these and the NFTs are stored in soft wallets and then later on these sub-wallets will send the NFTs to the main wallet. This requires a lot of gas and a lot of money. He summarized the Adidas NFT user who used the bots, spent $250,000, but made a fortune after flipping. These bots can be prevented. Arman chose to prevent bots in the OG mint by including in the smart contract the need to mint from the mint website only. The mint website has a limitation of 2 NFT’s per certified wallet. This can be circumvented, but i’ts more difficult to implement. He will be implementing a bot-prevention method for the future mints.
Another discord member asked about the NFTs not showing in the Metamask wallet
A: Update the mobile metamask app, go to settings, security and privacy. Then enable auto-detect NFTs and Opensea-API!
Q: Will all the tokens be tradable with ETH?
A: Yes. $STEM and $SRT will be backed by stable coins to help prevent massive drops and gains. Some of the minigames are on other chains (FLO, Binance, Polygon, Matic, SOL, AVAX). THere will be a dedicated pool for each blockchain.
Q: As a future holder, should I wait for mint or get one from the floor?
A: ALPHA RELEASE: There will be another set of perks for people who mint at private mint. He hasn’t announced it. They will be lower than the OG perks, but more than public mint. If you want to sweep the floor you can.
Q: Where are we at with the development of the game?
A: For the first part of the answer I’m going to quote him directly.
“If you look at other P2E projects, they’ll show you bits and pieces of the animation process and people writing code and they show this in less than a second. Game development is a bunch of dudes sitting behind a computer for 12–14 hours a day staring at monitors. It’s not sexy, it’s not fun, unless there is human interaction. This human interaction is in the form of voice acting, motion capture, facial motion capture, etc. We will show you guys this stuff when the time comes. Right now we are working on designs and the coding part of it; which I mentioned is a bunch of dudes staring at a computer 12 hours a day. There is no point in showing this to you. But, when the time comes in May, we will go after doing the voice acting, motion capture, facial capture and we showcase these to you on IG and Twitter and make a big deal about it just like every other project.” -Arman
They are almost 40–50% done with penthouses.
Development continues for minigames. Each penthouse will come with 1 or 2 minigames in the beginning.
In terms of main simulation, the city hubs and 3d characters are being designed.
A huge question for the team is whether to keep the Chibi art or go after a more anatomically correct but cartoon version of real life. He said that this should be put to a vote.
Regarding coding done it two parts: smart contracts, and game developement.
The tokenomics of $STEM are almost done being designed. He will announce a game set up for $STEM. They’re setting up a game for $STEM to earn. You can burn it as well. How to invest in the NFT character even prior to launch of the full simulation. $SRT is on the way and is much more complicated because of how staking is going to be done; it’s entirely unique with no copy/paste of another platform and token. $SRT will be audited 3 times. In the process of writing the code with how they interact with one another and how they interact with the environment. Meaning how they enter a building and how the camera will shift from isometric to 3rd person, etc. And what you can see, etc. It’s getting done.
As the private mint gets closer, the gaming system for $STEM will be announced. A lot more utility will be added to $STEM. Add a lot more NFT sets to $SRT.
If you are a designer, you will be able to design your own NFTs and sell them through OMEGA. These NFT sets will be usable within the game. If you want to design shoes for characters, you can do it. We’ll see how the market within the game demands it. You can purchase vehicles, motorcycles, and decorations for penthouses.
These NFTs will be available through OMEGA with 0% fees. But there will be a royalty fee that can be assigned by the designer/creator of the NFT.
Some more alpha content before ending the AMA:
All realities are Cubes. Instead of expanding horizontally you have to expand vertically. If you have played Fallout Shelter, there is only vertical expansion and not horizontal. This is how the cities and realities are being designed. There is a limit on how much can be expanded horizontally. So you’ll have to arrange the important stuff, so if they are more valuable, they should be stored at the very bottom. When another reality attacks another reality, there will be portals. These portals will be on the first level. And then there will be security measures on each level in order to prevent the raids from happening or the attacks affecting other aspects of the realities.
Before ending the session, Arman and Jay gave us some final teases for the what is coming down the line with team interaction and contests/giveaways. When the game is launched game-night prizes will be in $SRT. Next AMA will be earlier with one of the artists from the team. Jeriel Bonacua will be drawing a unique character real time!
Finally, I’d like to say thank you to Arman for the shoutout and support!
Written and summarized by: @Mohdri#3571
