Original Placement:
Today’s Cardano NFT project was our very first guest on this column. They are building a play-to-earn layer that integrates with existing games like Fortnite: PlayerMint.
The previous guest was a project characterized by mesmerizingly detailed art narrating a story through an everlasting digital tapestry that evolves through time.
This initiative is a point of reference for NFTs on Cardano and I regularly invite someone to answer some questions and give an update directly from within the Cardano community.
Hey, glad to have you here again. Please introduce your team, where are you from, what are your backgrounds?
Hey! Thanks for having me back again.
My name is Aidan and I founded the company that built PlayerMint with my good buddy Grant in 2017. Back then it was a fun idea we would play around with, but over the past 2 years, it turned into a much more serious project that started gaining traction.
We have been growing slightly in regards to headcount over the past 6 months with a new CFO and CTO who have brought a ton of passion and quality leadership to the team.
Most of the team is based in California in the San Francisco Bay Area, but we have folks across the western hemisphere of the world.
Our previous interview was over a year ago. What has changed? How would you describe PlayerMint today, and how are you integrating NFT technology?
Wow, does the time go by.
The biggest change is that PlayerMint has officially launched! We are live on the Cardano mainnet and anyone with a wallet and an Epic Games account can sign up. After signing up all you need to do is go have some fun in regular matches of Fortnite and at the end of each Cardano epoch you’ll have some $PMX to claim.
PlayerMint is a Web3 layer for existing video games. It allows any game to have a crypto component that doesn’t interfere with the gameplay but rather extends the experience so once you have put the controller down there’s still more to enjoy.
As of now, we have done some pretty cool integrations with NFT technology. We have a non-custodial marketplace that facilitates NFT transactions with $PMX.
Beyond that, we have a mechanism that checks wallet balances for specific policy IDs. Based on the policy IDs in a wallet we can provide boosts to the potential amount of $PMX someone may earn through specific in-game actions.
You’ve recently launched the PMX token which can be earned by playing Fortnite. What is the token’s utility, and how can people get their hands on it?
Yeah! We launched $PMX very recently and the first time it entered circulation was through people earning it from playing.
I like to think of PMX like tickets you can earn from an arcade. You can earn them from playing video games (the first being Fortnite), and then spend it at a prize shop (NFT marketplace).
Beyond being able to spend $PMX on an NFT marketplace you can also use it to unlock PlayerMint Pro. This gives you a boost in $PMX earning potential if you hold at least 10k PMX in the wallet connected to your PlayerMint account.
For the non-gamer folks, you can pick up some PMX on Minswap.
What can you tell us about your roadmap? What are the next steps for PlayerMint and how are you preparing for the upcoming bull run?
Our immediate next steps are focused on these three things:
- Resolve and fix any bugs that players have encountered
- Create a more engaging experience in Fortnite by supporting more game modes
- Quality of life improvements across the platform, such as additional wallets and better UX
Once that is taken care of we get to have fun with feature exploration with our community. This means we can workshop out some ideas, get the community’s input on what sounds most intriguing, and go from there. Here are some of the feature ideas we have as of now:
Challenge Tokens | An NFT that you mint with ADA and $PMX that gives you a boost to specific in-game actions.
Marlowe Launcher | Deploy a launcher so we can initialize and enable users to interact with Marlowe smart contracts. This would enable PlayerMint to rapidly develop new on-chain interactions as Marlowe can be built in a no-code way.
Additional Game Support | Look to expand the support of PlayerMint to new game titles either in the Web2 or Web3 community. Rocket League and Call of Duty are currently on our radar.
$PMX Governance | Enable holders of $PMX to vote on protocol changes; such as what games should be added, what features implemented, and the $PMX distribution cadence.
Guild Mechanism | Create token-gated gaming guilds where you must own the NFT of a collection to be a part of their guild. This could be expanded to multiple chains and would enable friendly competition between projects.
We have quite a lot of fun ideas for the next steps of PlayerMint and will be looking to the community for input!
Great contribution. Any final thoughts? Where can people learn more?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity! I am super passionate about Web3 and am a gamer at heart so being able to combine the two is quite a pleasure.
If folks are looking to learn more I’d recommend starting with our website. From there you can access the web app, our various socials, and our documentation.
If you have questions please join the Discord! You can chat with me, the rest of the team, and our community.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the people interviewed are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG. Moreover, this content is for educational purposes, it doesn’t constitute financial advice.