Echelon Foundation Whitepaper Redux
We’re back again but this time to break down the pivotal decentralized ecosystem that will leave a mark on web3 and beyond.
Article written by @metaregular, @defiberg and guest yunt @dishydefi.
The Parallel community has been eagerly anticipating news of the Prime Proposal since August 2021, and we are blessed with not one but two papers: The Echelon Prime Foundation Whitepaper and the Parallel Prime Proposal. As always, your frens at Yunt Capital are here to help you break it all down and capture the key highlights.
In this article, we will outline the key items of the Echelon Prime Foundation Whitepaper. If you want to skip to the more game-centric Parallel Prime Proposal, check out our coverage here. Lastly, if you’re new, or need a recap of one of the most anticipated gaming projects in our space, you can find info in our original WTF is…Parallel? article.
Overview
The Echelon Prime Foundation Whitepaper introduces a new organizational entity into the Parallel sphere known as the Echelon Prime Foundation (EPF). The EPF will be stewards of the PRIME token and its ecosystem, and will be charged with fostering its adoption and growth. The initial approach to achieving this is through:
- The establishment of a network of quality games that utilize PRIME, including Parallel.
- Building a host of web3 development tools available to the ecosystem which utilize PRIME.
- Overseeing the implementation of the PRIME smart contract ecosystem.
- Empowering the community to oversee and determine the path forward for the EPF.
1. Decentralization & Governance
In order for PRIME to be decentralized and effectively navigate fluid regulatory environments, an arms length entity run by the community needs to be created (separate from Parallel) to handle these operations. This also allows the Parallel team to focus on their primary objective — creating a premier, next generation Trading Card Game (TCG) that is fun, competitive, and inclusive. In this regard, Parallel is merely the first P2E title supported by the EPF, utilizing PRIME as its ecosystem token.
The EPF will have elected members, known as Emissary Primes, voted in by the community that will form the council in charge of overseeing the direction of PRIME. As new games are developed on Echelon’s infrastructure, the council will grow with respective community representation.
The initial tasks that that the EPF will likely set out to achieve include:
- Implementation of the smart contracts related to staking of PRIME and PRIME related assets.
- Establishing a liquidity pool for PRIME.
- Seeding teams that would develop tools or games that utilize PRIME.
- Building tools that support PRIME and it’s gaming ecosystem, such as a marketplace.
To achieve these tasks, the EPF will have a treasury of funds to draw from. Since the launch of Parallel pre-sale, half of all resale royalties (10% of resale volume) from secondary market sales has been earmarked to go to the community. Of this community pool, a portion is slated for rewards for Masterpiece holders (1% of Resale), while the remaining 4% will form part of the EPF treasury pool. The EPF will also receive a token allocation of 10% of total PRIME and will also receive 2% of all game sinks volume. This community treasury, which currently amounts to over $8M dollars, will be used to bootstrap the Echelon Foundation and will be voted on by PRIME holders.
With the formation of the Echelon Prime Foundation, the gaming community will have a say in the direction of the token as well as future aspects of the gaming infrastructure. The Paradox, the online proposal platform which will likely become one of the primary avenues of how the EPF operates, has been receiving proposals since the summer. Currently, it feeds proposals to the Parallel team but in the future it will govern itself and work hand-in-hand with the gaming teams building in the Echelon system.
2. Echelon Approved Digital Assets
The vision for Echelon is to create a platform for decentralized games. To lay the groundwork so that future games can plug into the current network, classifications for NFTs have been outlined. While the Parallel community has already been introduced to Parallel versions of these assets, these classifications also help understand the tokenomic distribution that follows.
Each game building on the Echelon system will have these tiers of Assets:
- NFTs are the general pool of NFTs that are required to play the game. They comprise the general bulk of assets and can be freely bought and sold like any other NFTs.
- Primary NFTs (Prime Keys) are used to initiate the distribution of PRIME to new gamers and also grant holders additional benefits such as NFT reservation and special access to events and features.
- Cornerstone NFTs (Masterpiece, Core, Prime Drive) bring foundation value to a particular games ecosystem. They provide a higher tier of collectible.
- Primesets are a subset of a pool of NFTs sets that cater to players which prioritize collecting and completion.
3. Token Distribution & Air Drops
PRIME has a fixed supply of 111,111,111.111 and will be used for governance within Parallel and Echelon, as well as spent, through in game/app functions, also known as Game Sinks. Game Sinks will take PRIME out of circulation to be redistributed in the form of rewards for playing and winning at Parallel and other future Echelon games. In essence, Game Sinks is a fancy way of describing token utility.
Of the 111,111,111.111 PRIME tokens, the proposed distribution will be as follows:
A few notes to unpack from this distribution above:
- 63.8% of the tokens are allocated to players, 20% are allocated to Team, and 16.2% are allocated to Investors.
- The 6.6% of the token will be given in a one-time drop (airdrop!) to cardholders and primeset holders claimed through staking.
- The P2E Emissions pool is topped up by game sinks. The full distribution of game sinks can be found in Prime Proposal Redux article.
- 11% is allocated to Primary NFTs, or rather, Prime Keys. This means each key holds 8148 PRIME. You can determine the value of each Prime Key by projecting the FDV of PRIME. For sake of comparison Illuvium is $5.6B Market Cap, Defi Kingdoms is $4B, and Axie Infinity is $13.7B.
4. IP & Decentralized Gaming Platform
While Parallel is the inaugural game within the Echelon System, it will play an important role in establishing the foundation for other games to build within the ecosystem. The team has meticulously and carefully built a rich story that manifests itself in digital assets, character design, environments, and lore. The team has alluded to these stories being translated into graphic novels, books, and potentially even films!
These narratives are ripe for interpretation into other gaming titles and it is not difficult to imagine a spin-off first person shooter or an action role playing game. Expanding on this, the gaming asset library along with any tooling such as PR[SYS] and inb0x, will be made available to the Echelon ecosystem of games. This will ensure that games built within the Echelon system retains the authenticity and quality that Parallel has become known for.
Conclusion
In essence, Echelon in its current form is aiming to become the Steam and/or Shopify of Web3/decentralized games. The bricks have been laid, and it’s up to us as the community to take those building blocks provided by Echelon to steer the priorities and direction of this foundation. We are experiencing a paradigm shift with decentralization, NFTs, and gaming. With the community’s participation, we can shape this new space into something truly special!
Disclaimer: Yunt Capital is an investor and advisor in Parallel. As always, please do your own research. This is not financial advice. Every strategy is not for everyone. Each investor needs to understand what is right for them.
