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🎮What is Parallel? I Market Design, Mechanism Design and Token Design Explained🎮

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Introduction

Parallel is a sci-fi trading card game (TCG) built in the Echelon ecosystem. The game involves augmented reality (AR) properties and a very successful NFT collection (top 10 NFT collections on OpenSEA in 2021). The native token, $PRIME, is used in the Echelon ecosystem at large, and within the Parallel TCG. Parallel is backed by Paradigm and Chad Hurley (co-founder of Youtube) among others.

3 Highlights

  • $50 million funding round from Paradigm at a $500 million valuation in 2021.

  • Targets a huge market of TCGs that have always involved real-money-trades, and applies novel elements to it like a sci-fi storyline, AR, and p2e.

  • Strong NFT ecosystem even before the game details were out.

Game-play

  • Core loop involves the 1v1 turn-based battle involving a strategic selection of cards belonging to any 1 deck and 1 Parallel (as well as a few non-Parallel universal cards).

  • Ladder mode will only involve PvP games and will impact player rankings. Sector mode will involve low stakes battles either against other players or against the environment.

  • Rookie Queue would be a player-limited free to play game-mode for onboarding new but uncommitted players onto the game. This mode will provide players with a Rookie Deck that is non-tradable. Players given this deck can then try battles with other players in the same mode with the same deck category.

Market Design

The global card game market size last year was $12 billion. While TCGs involved real money trades, there was no way for developers to capture this value. Parallel solves that problem. It Primarily caters to Achiever, Socialiser, and Investor player types.

Thickness: The core Parallel NFT collection has nearly 50,000 owners with a trade volume of 65,000 $ETH ($71,306,300 at current valuation). The $PRIME token is yet to be rolled out.

Mechanism Design

There are various types of staking for tiered NFTs as well as $PRIME token that lead to token emissions and accumulation of fees. The DAO is currently voting on proposals to set this in stone. The other source of token allocation would be game-play via wins. Tiered NFTs are currently priced in $ETH but eventually they will be priced in $PRIME. $PRIME token proposal has passed r ecently and is yet to be fully implemented.

Token Design – Token Value

Game takes faucets and sinks into deliberate consideration. It also ensures that sinks involve not only tradable but also non-tradable assets/rights.

Faucets and Sinks

Drivers of $PRIME value

Token Design – Financial incentives and token distribution

Users can stake NFT assets to earn $PRIME tokens but rewards can only be accessed in monthly cycles. Special rewards according to tiers of NFT assets also exist like stakers of Masterpieces earn 5% royalties every time a matching card is sold. 10% of all Parallel NFT sales are charged as fees and some of it goes to the treasury and some of it goes to the team.

Risks

Systematic

$PRIME token is used both in-game and outside game in Echelon ecosystem. What might be suitable for Echelon monetary policy might not be suitable for Parallel. This can be solved by introducing a game-specific utility token.

Idiosyncratic

Physical requirement of AR might prove to be a barrier to maintain game stickiness over time as It is demanding. Can be solved by involving a blend of AR and virtual gaming experiences (one for the novelty, the other for the long term stickiness)

Why this project is interesting?

It takes on a big addressable market with a unique product that taps into the product but goes beyond its confines: AR + NFTs + Tradable Card Game genre. It has strong strategic backing from industry leader, Paradigm Research. Card games are relatively easy to design but hard to play so there is room for skill expression as well as predictable economy control.