The highly anticipated “Nyan Heroes” is finally making a big move after a long period of silence in the bear market. The official announcement states that the “Play-to-Airdrop” event will be launched for early access, and the two-week game testing will take place on the Epic Games Store, with an expected launch this month. After almost two and a half years since the launch of the Nyan Heroes project, the community and players will finally have the opportunity to earn the native token NYN of the ecosystem.
“Nyan Heroes” is a third-person shooter battle royale game built on Solana. The development team positions it as an AAA-grade game, comparable to Epic Games’ third-person shooter game “Fortnite” and Respawn’s tactical competitive game “Apex Legends.”
Nyan Heroes in the Crypto Bear Market: Valued at Over a Billion, Millions in Funding, and ID0 Delayed
In November 2021, Nyan Heroes completed a $2.5 million seed round of financing, led by Three Arrows Capital, Mechanism Capital, and DeFiance Capital, with participation from Sino Global Capital, Infinity Ventures Capital, Solana Ventures, Skyvision Capital, Yield Guild Games, and Merit Circle. Nyan Heroes used this funding to rapidly expand its team. By March 2022, Nyan Heroes had grown from an initial team of 5 to over 40 members, with two-thirds of the team coming from AAA-grade game developers such as Riot Games, Ubisoft, and EA. Nyan Heroes also announced an upcoming IDO in the second quarter of the same year, with relevant contracts and portals already prepared.
In May 2022, Nyan Heroes completed a strategic financing round of $7.5 million, valuing the company at $100 million. Venture capital participants included Kosmos Ventures, Sino Global Capital, Shima Capital, Perock Capital, Morningstar Ventures, 32-bit Ventures, Crypto.com, Tess Ventures, Master Ventures, Wave7, Ancient8, Drops Ventures, Andromeda Capital, Salad Ventures, MonkeVentures, Moonchain Capital, and Snackclub. The day after announcing this round of financing, Nyan Heroes announced that, after consulting with team members, investors, advisors, and the Nyan Heroes community, the team unanimously voted to postpone its IDO to a more favorable market condition in the future.
Play-to-Airdrop for Early Access
The basic gameplay of Nyan Heroes is a team-based shooter game, with players controlling small cats that can pilot and operate giant mechas. This can be inferred from the game’s name, as “Nyan” in Japanese refers to small cats or the sound they make. Players can use unique abilities, customizable mecha equipment with various weapons and modules to defeat opponents, and explore a variety of strategic gameplay styles.
The early access game testing will take place on the Epic Games Store and will be open to all players. According to the announcement, players can qualify for the airdrop by performing the following actions:
Join the community: Follow Nyan Heroes’ Twitter account and join the Discord community.
Sign up: Fill out the pre-registration form.
Hold NFTs: Players who own Nyan Heroes NFTs (Nyan Heroes or Guardians) will be eligible for additional airdrop rewards.
Participate in events, competitions, and challenges: Players without NFTs can win Genesis series NFTs through challenges that Nyan Heroes plans to host in the coming weeks, which can be used to increase airdrop rewards during the Play-to-Airdrop event.
Currently, details about the event are limited, but the team will release more updates and detailed information in the coming weeks.
Change in Tokenomics: Abandoning the Dual-Token Model
In the initial tokenomics of Nyan Heroes, a dual-token model was created with $CTNP and $NYN as governance and utility tokens within the game, respectively. However, with the changing trends in the blockchain gaming industry, the dual-token model pioneered by Axie Infinity’s AXS and SLP tokens is no longer the norm. Many developers have abandoned complex tokenomics and switched to a fixed-supply single-token model.
In the continued development of the game, Nyan Heroes has also abandoned its previous approach. According to its latest “White Paper 2024,” the Nyan Heroes ecosystem will only use the native token $NYAN (which is the same token mentioned at the beginning of the article, as NYN is the name used for the token in the white paper), with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. The value accumulation of $NYAN tokens is achieved through various channels, including the allocation of market trading fees and minting fees, as well as through token purchases for treasury management. Due to these mechanisms, the supply of $NYAN tokens will decrease over time, with the rate of deflation depending on network activity and the frequency and scale of market transactions. $NYAN will continue to serve as a governance token and will be staked.
In the game, the original in-game token $CTNP will be replaced by the traditional virtual game currency CATNIP, which can be used to purchase skins, loot boxes, advanced consumables, and other in-game items. It can also be used to unlock characters, equipment, modifiers faster and for in-game market transactions, high entry fees for competitions, and as rewards for players in the game. CATNIP is not an on-chain token and has a fixed value, similar to Robux in the leading metaverse game Roblox. Through this change, Nyan Heroes aims to effectively eliminate the incentive for non-players to speculate and influence the currency price, promoting a healthy game economy.
Nyan Heroes’ Roadmap
In the “White Paper 2024,” Nyan Heroes updated its roadmap for 2024 and beyond. The plans for this year include launching token airdrops in the first quarter, launching token deployment, providing early access to Nyan Heroes, conducting land sales, and introducing NYN staking and a closed beta version of Nyan Heroes, as well as releasing Guardian NFTs to introduce new characters and elements into the game.
However, considering Nyan Heroes’ past experiences, the realization of the above plans within the year remains uncertain. As an AAA-grade game, a long game development cycle is inevitable. Nyan Heroes did not “strike while the iron was hot” by raising funds from users in the early stages, which can be seen as a responsible attitude for a team dedicated to game development. Although they have survived the bear market, Nyan Heroes still has a long road ahead, and PANews will continue to monitor their progress.
This article is authorized to be reposted from PANews.
Proofread by: Shao Yu-Ting