GAINS AMA with LitCraft — January 24
On Tuesday, January 24, we had the pleasure to welcome to our Telegram chat:
Tom Anderson, CEO of LitCraft.
We asked him questions about the development of LitCraft.
Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.
Introduction
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Please tell us about yourself. What did you do before crypto and did you have any other previous venture in crypto?
A — Tom from LitCraft: I’m Tom Anderson, Devvio’s CEO and the creator of LitCraft. I’m an experienced entrepreneur. I’ve raised over $60 million in funding for my companies. The first company I founded was a video game company, so a lot of my experience is in the video game industry. In that business, I licensed on the order of $100 million in video game development, and we published over 100 titles. My second big company is Devvio, a blockchain company. I started it 7 years ago as I see blockchain as one of the few technologies we’ll see in our lifetime that will fundamentally change computing, on par with the internet. We saw a lot of need and room to innovate, so we designed our own blockchain protocol from scratch, the DevvX platform. I’ve been working in crypto for 7 years now
Q — Telegram user Bruxa Tantrica (USA): How many team members do you have? Do they have enough experience in the blockchain field? Do they have any experience working in crypto and non-crypto project?
A — Tom from LitCraft: We have over 20 team members. We have an incredible team. here are some examples.
— Tom Anderson, former video game exec, founded a robotics company that raised $34m and went public, sold IP to Facebook
— Ray Quintana, one of two general partners at the best performing early-stage venture capital company in the country according to Preqin
— Will Stewart, cream of the crop VC, has invested in over 400 companies and has invested over $5 billion in tech
— Mike DiPetrillo, former head of blockchain at VMWare a $9b tech company. One of the few people in the world who has successfully deployed enterprise blockchain projects
— Sunny Trinh, former executive VP at Avnet, a Fortune 200 electronics distributor. Sunny was in charge of new product innovation, including all blockchain initiatives.
— Chris Church, former CEO of SWIFT, the international payments company
— Vincent Stewart, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and former Deputy Commander of US Cybercommand
We have been in the crypto space itself for over 7 years and know it well at this point. We have experts on our team in cryptography and crypto designs in general, and I consider myself a crypto expert at this point too.
About LitCraft
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Tell us more about LitCraft. What the project is about in a few simple sentences.
A — Tom from LitCraft: LitCraft is a rich and deep sci-fi fantasy universe. The main idea in the LitCraft lore is that there are mages with powerful magical abilities living all around us, hidden in plain view. There are hidden mage cities, a complex society, a powerful magic system, numerous magical creatures, and races, and it encompasses many metaphysical concepts that explore the nature of our lives and existence. From a business perspective, LitCraft is a brand that encompasses many different types of IPs — video games (LitCraft Nysperience and many more to come), books (Grant Beagan, etc), shows (Paps n Eeee, coming soon), and hopefully movies and broad expansions of everything.
LitCraft represents a society that I feel we should strive for. Importantly, with respect to the blockchain space, LitCraft is a beachhead in our Digital Financial Ecosystem. I believe it is the longest-running blockchain game, but most importantly, it is a complex ecosystem of digital assets and platform tools. We have a marketplace, seller’s portal, digital wallet, and the games and applications themselves. I believe that companies that create digital financial ecosystems (as opposed to specific applications) will be the winners across all metaverse applications.
You can see more and download the game at LitCraft.com
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: What connection do LitCraft Nysperience, Lit Legion and Glassblock have with LitCraft?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Nysperience is the first game in the LitCraft universe. It was a testbed to test the DevvX blockchain for years, and we built a loyal following of players, but we spun it out as its product, and it is a foundational part of the overall LitCraft gaming ecosystem, with many more games to come. Lit Legion is one of our biggest upcoming efforts. It is a real-world MMO (massively multiplayer online game) where people do real-life tasks and get rewarded. It is the foundation for our overall community efforts, which is one of the biggest aspects of our overall growth plans. GlassBlock.io is the website where people can buy and sell digital assets on the DevvX blockchain, as well as view the DevvX wallet. It will also host a non-custodial exchange. These are all important building blocks for the Digital Financial Ecosystem.
I recently did an hour-long, in-depth summary of our Digital Financial Ecosystem — it is the main foundation of everything we’re doing. You can find out more about it here.
Q — Telegram user 𝘽𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙈𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙖𝙏𝙮: Your project name seems to be very interesting. Does it have any story behind it? Can you share us with the inspiration for approaching this name?
A — Tom from LitCraft: LitCraft was created years before Devvio, so it is a long-term effort and personal passion project
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Can you elaborate on the concept of the seven branches of magic studied by the Lit in Nysperience, and how they play a role in the gameplay and earning potential?
A — Tom from LitCraft: LitCraft has a complex magical ecosystem. It has seven branches of magic, as shown in the LitCraft diagram called the Heptagen. Every mage has a locus (point of focus) on the Heptagen that defines their powers. Mages channel different types of energy for their abilities. In books and other media, it makes for a nice aspect of our storytelling. In games, it represents magical abilities and powers that you have as a mage or that your LitPets have when you battle in battles called Heptones. Given the complexity of the magic system, there are lots of combinations of using abilities, which creates a great system for collectibles that have both rarity as well as utility. Cards also have other abilities that affect how you can earn in the digital businesses in LitCraft.
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: A big problem of the NFTs communities is poor control of the supply and circulation of the native tokens that lead to a terrible devaluation. Could you explain to us the circulation reduction strategies and how they hope to maintain them in the long term?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Unfortunately, I can’t go into much detail on tokens in a public forum. We are a US-based company. We’re planning communications channels in Lit Legion which will include KYC, and will make comms regarding tokens easier to implement.
One of the mistakes I think a lot of blockchain games make is simply thinking of their economy as a system of issuances and sinks. That type of mentality only works while a project is growing, but it leads to a system that will collapse at some point. Our entire design is based around a complex ecosystem with a lot of flow between many different types of effort. For example, in the real world, you don’t build a business trying to do everything yourself. You hire a lawyer for your legal needs, an accountant for your accounting needs, programmers for your software development, etc. There are analogies for these concepts in our ecosystem that creates value between members of our ecosystem, and over time that value is more and more tied to real-world concepts (like social media, ESG efforts, etc). Again, I give a full overview here… https://t.me/DevvioAnnouncements/80
The Heptagen 🔥🔥
Q — Telegram user Pepe: What specifications are needed to run the game?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Pretty basic pc or mac at this point — not high-end requirements
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: One of the difficulties facing P2E games is that most of them are only available on PC and that being so, it reduces the level of adoption by a great percentage. Do you guys plan on creating a mobile version or will it be limited to only pc users?
A — Tom from LitCraft: LitCraft Nysperience was designed from the beginning for mobile usage. Four years ago, I would pull out my phone and show people much of the gameplay that is still today core to the game :) — We are planning both iOS and Android versions of the games. We have expertise on our team deploying mobile games. We see mobile as a key aspect of where we are going. It will also open up many other types of players, and marketing techniques, and in particular drives a large part of the ecosystem. In our Digital Financial Ecosystem, we mimic many tried and true techniques for monetization in games (again, I’m a video game industry veteran), but in our design, the players are the ones that get money from those sources. Having mobile gamers opens up a set of players who will be customers to other players who take the time to craft power-ups, skins, etc. Devvio takes a small commission on GlassBlock.io sales.
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: For someone just hearing about LitCraft on this forum and wants to get started, what are the requirements? How much money do I need? Is it required that I need to have NFT characters or a specific number of tokens? Also, tell us, is the focus more on the player experience in and out of games to create a balance between playing and earning?
A — Tom from LitCraft: At the end of 2021, we had a blockchain game that had been running live for years, but it was primarily a testbed for the DevvX blockchain. Then Axie Infinity exploded and created an opportunity for blockchain games. We had a ready-to-go game, so worked towards releasing it as a full product (I have a lot of experience in publishing traditional games — I’ve licensed some of the biggest game franchises of all time, and overall published over 100 games). One of the things that Axie did right, that we learned from, was the customer-centric focus that Play-to-earn demands. One of the things that I thought they could improve, though, was the entry cost, so we designed our system to not have any cost to get started. Simply download the game at LitCraft.com and start playing. You can further your efforts in increasingly complex ways — there are many hundreds of hours of gameplay, and many more to come in our upcoming v4 release. You can craft items of value, grow expertise in dozens of earning games (match 3, merge, solitaire, etc) and then sell your items on GlassBlock.io. You don’t have to have NFTs (LitPets) to start — you can play and earn and craft them yourself. There are Genesis LitPets, though, that have particular abilities in the ecosystem, and those abilities will continue to be enhanced over time. Much of the balance in the game comes from the design of the ecosystem, where players coordinate their efforts in a system that is complex enough to require specialization.
Also when you’re getting started, we aspired for the game to be easy to learn but difficult to master. When you first start playing, simply follow the tasks the system gives you and the game will teach you all of the basics, by simply doing those tasks (the star button on the right side of the screen). After you have the game down, we have an amazing community that will help you to expand. We also are about to release the first version of our Heptone PVP, where you can battle against other players with LitPets. You get a starter deck and can craft your own, or there is a large number of LitPets available on GlassBlock.io to get the specific deck strategy you want to battle with.
Q — Telegram user Onur G: Can I earn from LitCraft?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Yes, we have lots of exits to fiat. Have a look at the presentation here to see exits and ways to earn.
Q — Telegram user Ramana Reddy: Do you have tutorial videos so we can get to know your project more clearly, or do you have a YouTube channel or something? can you share it with us?
A — Tom from LitCraft: @tomlucient on YouTube is a good place to see some initial videos.
Technology
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Will LitCraft would run on DevvX? And will it be a cross-chain in the future?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Yeah, since I’m the creator of LitCraft and the founder of Devvio, LitCraft runs on DevvX ha! We built our entire platform foundation around a RESTful API, so I would argue we have the potential to become the most interoperable blockchain system. 25 million web developers right now have all the understanding they need to build on our system, as it mirrors traditional web2 strategies. That type of approach, given our RESTful API, will allow us to integrate with any system, including other blockchains, so yes, I do expect we will build a variety of bridges over time. In the meantime, we built our system to work with regular, non-crypto folks who are used to using applications. You can hop on GlassBlock, create an account as easily as you do with Paypal, check out as easily as you do with Shopify, etc. It is web3 tech with a web2 interface.
Competitive Advantage
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Who would you consider the main competitor for LitCraft and what makes you stand out from the crowd?
A — Tom from LitCraft: There are two categories of competitors. One is layer 1 blockchains like Solana, Ripple, etc. The other is metaverse applications like Axie Infinity or other games and applications. That said, our real focus is a Digital Financial Ecosystem and given our powerful RESTful API-based interface where any of the world’s web developers can instantly use our system, any of those companies I feel are as likely to become partners as competitors and use our Digital Financial Ecosystem.
In terms of what sets us apart, our blockchain itself is a big part of what sets us apart. We can process millions of transactions per second, sub-second settlement, millions of times less expensive than Ethereum, and importantly, we have our RESTful API interface which allows any of the world’s 25 million web developers to use our system (we have 100x more people that have the knowledge to build with our system as compared to Ethereum). Also, our focus on a Digital Financial Ecosystem is a strong competitive advantage. Given that we have all of the foundational tools to build an entire ecosystem, as well as a design that takes many different types of efforts and values and coordinates them, I feel we will emerge as a leader in the metaverse space.
I’m really proud of what we’ve done with GlassBlock. It was designed and initially implemented by the creator of the Amazon Kindle and its global marketplace. It is scalable professional, enterprise-grade application software.
Partnerships and Funding
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Who are your current investors/backers? And how are the funds that have been raised so far going to be deployed in the project development?
A — Tom from LitCraft: We have raised over twenty million dollars. Our funds are used for building the Digital Financial Ecosystem and related tools, as well as the technology underlying our ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) efforts, and the blockchain technology itself. We have several traditional angel investors who got in early, as well as several crypto groups who have been supporters. I like the way we have been growing and where we are headed, as opposed to the types of deals that VCs typically structure. VCs typically arrange for themselves to prosper at the expense of others, whereas our entire Digital Financial Ecosystem is designed for all of the participants to take the lion’s share of value.
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Are you planning to do any future raises?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Nothing specific planned. Always a possibility, but we have 18 months of a runway at our current burn.
Business Development
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: In terms of plans, how far along are you with your roadmap and what should we expect in the next weeks and months?
A — Tom from LitCraft: We’ve been working on DevvX for 7 years, and when you look at the folks on our team (a world-class team) it is industry professionals with decades of expertise in tech industries. Our goal is to become a leader in the blockchain space, and I believe we will.
We have a robust game ecosystem and financial ecosystem already. We launched the game officially last April for Earth Day, but it has been running live (as a testbed) for over 4 years now. We are going to release version 4.0 on Earth Day this year, 4/22/23, which will include a greatly expanded financial ecosystem, many more games (there are dozens of games), and a more robust digital business ecosystem. There will be thousands of tokens and recipes (there are hundreds now), a complex ecosystem in which you can build a business and coordinate many different types of games and efforts, some great PVP games, and overall a foundation for a Digital Financial Ecosystem that incorporates not just effort in games, but real-world effort as well. It is an exciting vision — I think it is the type of thing that is bigger than what even Meta is envisioning.
I’ll also point out, many of our players have played for hundreds of hours. Many did so even before we got the game out as a play-to-own/earn game, so the game itself is a lot of fun I think.
Q — Telegram user tree: By understanding what users value and need, you can prioritize features and improvements based on the greatest impact and return on investment. Do you believe that feedback from the community can help to prioritize features and improvements?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Feedback from the community has been key to everything we’re doing. We have a tight-knit community, and I answer any questions our community has. I hope to keep that up as long as possible, but I’m sure we’ll grow beyond it soon.
Q — Telegram user Snowflake❄️: You mentioned earlier that you have long them gamers who have been with you a while…so What do you do to provide long-term benefits to gamers who work hard in the ecosystem?
A — Tom from LitCraft: I’ve always kept in mind designs that are great for our earliest supporters. Many people have gotten in early, and have a head start on growing within the ecosystem.
Q — Telegram user Bhutan Delioriz: By collecting feedback from the community, you can learn about issues and challenges that users are facing and identify areas where the project could be improved. Do you use this feedback to help to identify problems and areas for improvement?
A — Tom from LitCraft: I interact with our community daily and highly value their feedback. It is an amazing community.
Q — Telegram user CryMOONcry 💢: Do you evaluate the ideas and suggestions of pro gamers who have been playing games for a long time and have a lot of experience? Does the community have a say in in-game updates, new steps, project development, etc. or does the team decide everything?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Our games are more casual right now, but we are looking to get into AAA games that are competitive.
Q — Telegram user 𝗛𝗬𝗩𝗘: Can you tell me? What’s your main focus right now, are you focused on the community or market/Exchange or the products?
A — Tom from LitCraft: Our Digital Financial Ecosystem and our ESG efforts
Thanks for coming in today Tom, and for taking the time to address all our questions
Where can we get all the latest news about LitCraft? Can you share your social media links here so we keep up to date with the project — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS
Thanks, everyone for coming. Always great interacting with GAINS. Feel free to ask more in our LitCraft Telegram. It has links to other social media as well. — Tom from LitCraft
