AMA Highlights: Avocado Guild
By Daniel Dal Bello, Director.
January 5, 2022–12 min read.
On Thursday 23 December, we welcomed Brendan Wong of Avocado Guild into the Hillrise Group Telegram chat for an AMA about the emergence of gaming Guilds over the second half of 2021.
Avocado Guild is one of the largest and most successful Guilds in existence. With over 50,000 Discord members and more than 10,000 ‘Scholars’ — Avocado Guild has earned more than 73m SLP in Axie Infinity.
Guilds have shown potential to be very important foundational supports for the continued growth of blockchain-enabled gaming.
In this post, we have compiled key questions and answers from the event.
Daniel Dal Bello
Hey @BrendinoAG and thank you for joining us tonight. For anyone new to yourself and Avocado Guild — could you please start us off with an introduction and some background on your project?
Brendan Wong
Hello everyone, I am Brendan Wong, the CEO and Co-Founder of Avocado Guild. Avocado Guild is a Play-2-Earn Guild that exists in the metaverse.
What we do in layman terms — we hire a lot people from all over the world (currently in South East Asia) and we lend them NFTs. They use the NFTs to play games and farm for in-game cryptocurrency tokens.
We profit share with our players whom we refer to as ‘Scholars’. We are currently the largest Play-2-Earn Guild in the world having over 10.7k+ Scholars.
We profit share with our players whom we refer to as ‘Scholars’. We are currently the largest Play-2-Earn Guild in the world having over 10.7k+ Scholars.
On top of providing NFTs to lend to our Scholars for the purpose of yield farming. We also do a lot of humanitarian work, disaster relief and education programs for our Scholars to onboard them to become the newest users and adopters of Web3 through gaming technologies.
Daniel Dal Bello
I guess the extension here is where does the money come from to purchase the NFTs?
Brendan Wong
At first the founding team funded the project. We have now raised USD$18m in our Series A from reputable investors such as — Animoca Brands, QSN, HASHED, Three Arrows Capital, BSC, Solana Ventures, Polygon, Kenetic Capital, and Algorand to name a few.
Daniel Dal Bello
Being on the topic of scale, what factors and strategies have enabled you to build your position as one of the biggest Guilds by Scholar count?
How do you stack up against the other premier Guild brands in terms of numbers?
Brendan Wong
We are 10.7k+ and the next Guild will likely be 5-6k. Lots of Guilds float around the 500-2k mark.
Our strategy is on scalability. We have built out custom technology to help with scaling and management of 10k+ scholars.
Daniel Dal Bello
When did you begin this Guild and what drove such rapid growth?
Brendan Wong
We began this guild in late June, early-July 2021. I assessed the problem that the market was facing, put my team together in 2 days and started leveraging my previous experience in scaling at SnowPak (I was a cofounder).
My team and I have very good synergies. They’ve worked with me on projects previously. A lot of the initial scaling was through hard work, labour and grit. Now, we have much better management and frameworks for scaling.
We built the necessary tools with the possibility to allow us to streamline tasks that aided with scaling.
Daniel Dal Bello
You state early in your documentation that Avocado DAO aims to be a community builder for new games. Then later, in the area of future growth, you have marked a “Game Launchpad and Incubator” as one of your Technological Development goals.
This is a really interesting angle for Guilds that I’ve been thinking about a lot. When it comes to a new game being launched, Avocado is basically a ready-to-play community of over 10,000 players which is of huge value to the game developers.
What is the vision for this kind of ‘launchpad’ and how would you incubate a game?
Brendan Wong
Avocado DAO can provide players to bootstrap a game, or test a game, or build out the ecosystem of a game. We already do this for some of our gaming partners.
Myself, I am now very versed in the management of scholars within the Guild as well as I have a good idea of what games will do well for what market. I provide advisory not just on game development, but sometimes on tokenomics as well since the P2E games rely heavily on the economies of their games.
A future game launchpad is something we are considering building out (on top of many other ideas), it will allow us to presell tokens of other games as well as aid in their development.
Incubation is the next natural step. Avocado DAO will also heavily invest in games in terms of capital in exchange for tokens. Since we will provide the players, the advice, the capital, it’s quite natural for us to incubate the games until they’re ready for mass market as well.
These are just some of the ideas that we have for the DAO.
Daniel Dal Bello
You have discussed in detail in your documentation the concept of a Guild portal, Scholar reporting, and the ability to track Scholar performance. On what basis and for what metrics would you judge the performance of Scholars and what consequences will that have for them?
Brendan Wong
We have no consequences or earning limit for our scholars. They come and go as they please, but [the] majority of them love our community.
We have one of the strongest if not the strongest actual community of Scholars within Axie Infinity and P2E guilds. The type of data we will track will include their earnings in not just one game, but multiple games. We aim to track time spent playing, earning, skill level MMR, social circle, who they like to play with, and how consistent their earnings are etc.
We aim to educate the next generation of Web3 players — it’s not a labour house.
We are a community that wants to educate our Scholars on cryptocurrency and help them get the most out of the opportunity.
Daniel Dal Bello
So is it the community piece that keeps your Scholars with Avocado?
Brendan Wong
Correct. Avocado community to me is our number 1 asset. A lot of our Scholar leaders help with the moderation and contribute to the success of the Guild.
Daniel Dal Bello
I am curious to understand the education angle a bit better. I have spoken with some other Guild founders about their approach to this.
Why is it important to have a strong education focus and what are you actually aiming to teach?
Brendan Wong
At Avocado, we see an opportunity to improve the lives of many people. We don’t just want to talk about it, but we actually want to walk the walk.
All 10k+ Scholars now have supplementary income in exchange for a couple of hours a day enjoying a game. Education is important because technology will get better. Not everything will be about Axie Infinity or on the Ethereum blockchain. We are starting to see games come up on BSC, Solana etc.
We are already working with games on these chains to think what better way they can design their infrastructure to help us manage our Scholars. The Scholars themselves will require non-custodian wallets and an understanding of the difference between chains to be able to benefit from our scholarships.
All 10k+ Scholars now have supplementary income in exchange for a couple of hours a day enjoying a game.
As Avocado tokenizes, we will look at introducing DeFi products to help our Scholars with savings etc.
Games will be developed on many different chains eventually, and for the Scholars to really benefit from all opportunities, they need an understanding of how blockchain works, what is DeFi, what is a token, how do I navigate this crypto-space correctly without losing opportunity? Then even worse, how to not lose all of their hard earned tokens.
Daniel Dal Bello
One of the responsibilities for the token holders is to vote on how treasury money is deployed into new games and NFTs. We could imagine that with your community and Scholar base that there is a significant level of value to be brought through a purchase to any given new game. We spoke about how you can test, launch, invest, and incubate — you would have strong negotiating power in those discussions.
Would you then be transparent about the pricing and favourable terms the DAO would be offered for these kinds of deals?
Brendan Wong
Interesting question. I haven’t really thought about that answer, but I assume eventually the terms of the deals will be transparent to the token holders in order for the token holders to be able to make informative decisions.
This brings us back to the point that the Scholars need to be educated and understand how cryptocurrency in the space works and how economies in games work as well to better navigate the decision making for future proposals and governance.
I do also want to mention that the earnings of DAO activities will also eventually flow back into rewarding token holders.
Daniel Dal Bello
Maybe we can discuss that, where and how does value accrue to the AVG token holders?
Also, who do you expect your token holders to be in terms of a more general ‘demographic’ — Scholars, VCs, speculators?
Brendan Wong
I expect our token holders to be many investors, the founding team, and general public that believe in the project, and Scholars.
Value from the activities of the DAO will be passed down to token holders. I’m still working on the details, but at the moment I’m thinking via staking.
Avocado Guild is different to the other Guilds. We have 10k+ Scholars on a 50/50 base earning split. We are much more profitable than any other guild. Eventually these profits will be passed back down to AVG token holders, once I build out the technology and work out the details.
It’s a project that I hope to benefit the Scholars, the community as a whole, and definitely the industry — a US$140b industry.
Play-2-Earn doesn’t even scratch the surface, right now people are earning $3-$5 a day. Imagine when the industry develops and better games come out and you can earn $50-$200 a day.
Avocado Guild is different to the other Guilds. We have 10k+ Scholars on a 50/50 base earning split. We are much more profitable than any other guild. Eventually these profits will be passed back down to AVG token holders, once I build out the technology and work out the details.
It’s not impossible, it’s just a matter of relative perspective. There are Hondas and there are Ferraris, the rental prices vary, but the market exists for both. I believe this industry is here to stay.
TS
Same here. I sometimes have doubts about those gaming business models, especially when I see a major project’s main token — which is $SLP from Axie Infinity — falling.
Brendan Wong
Correct, I agree. What we are seeing is still 1st generation P2E games. Imagine when the first RPG games came out? 8-bit squares and all the damage and spells are in words?
Look at World of Warcraft now, look at how the industry has developed. $5 for a shareware game. Now $50 a month just for a subscription.
Industries will naturally mature. We must not look at what they are just now, but what they can become. The concept is the same for Guilds.
TS
So tokenomics and earning mechanisms will get better naturally — makes sense.
Brendan Wong
I believe so. Look at Thetan Arena for example, their earning mechanics are very different to Axie. I expect more creativity in tokenized reward schemes.
Daniel Dal Bello
On the point of what you can earn a day and how difficult and competitive the games are here. Can you elaborate on your goals to cater to both casual players on one end to competitive at the other extreme?
How will you appeal to a competitive audience and through what means?
Brendan Wong
We provide access through the lending of NFTs. We want to understand our players and we listen to what they want. Right now [the] majority of scholars are playing Axie Infinity.
We have invested in over 10 game projects that we believe will be more evolved than Axie or different in nature but still have P2E earning elements. With 10k+ scholars, not all of them would just want to play a casual game.
Some like puzzles, some play Valorant for fun, some like to stream. In the future Avocado DAO will be able to offer the whole variety to our growing community. Everyone can choose what suits them. The support networks for all those games would exist as well.
Daniel Dal Bello
For me, the topic of DAOs and community governance is always an interesting topic to discuss. It generally feels like there are great intentions for distributed governance, but often it ends up being in the control of a wealthy few token holders. We could talk about Sushi or others.
Your tokenomics have been released and the team controls close to a third of supply, which is higher than what I would call “typical”. How do you assure the community that you will progress towards a truly community-run DAO?
As mentioned, to get to that position in the future you would need to divest those tokens out of the team’s control, so how do you navigate the potential discussion around selling on your community?
Brendan Wong
If you look at the comparing Avocado Guild with other Guilds or gaming projects you will find that when you combine the Investors with the Team, the comparison is very similar. I think we are actually even lower than YGG if memory serves me right when you combine Investors with the Team.
What’s the difference why does it matter?
We had over 2.5k Scholars and tech built up before we even approached VCs and investors for our round. The team funded the entire project and acted as our own seed investors.
Why? Because we didn’t have time to lose.
The industry is new and expanding fast. In business, in positions of emerging markets, we can’t just wait to raise. We funded multiple millions into this project.
Also the team is not just myself, but consists of many parties as well. You can view it as a Team + Investor pool also. If the team needs to divest our position, I think it’s something I might be fairly transparent about. The project is my baby and I will want it to do well. I built this.
Daniel Dal Bello
Staying on tokenomics, one of the more jarring points for investors would be the small initial supply and significant supply inflation over time. A lot has been said and discussed recently about token raises, VC firms, and charts.
Maybe some of your most eager Scholars and community members want to get involved early and hold your token, but they are staring at big circulating supply changes over time.
You’re not the only Guild project to pick a 1bn token supply, so what factors played into your decisions for vesting and ultimately having just shy of 4% circulating at launch?
Brendan Wong
We are actually aiming at more towards a 2% token release on Copper [Launch]. Depending on demand we’re hoping for 50/50 parity. Some other portions of that 4% includes listing fees and airdrops too.
Initially, I actually wanted 3b token supply — in the end we settled for 1b so it’s easier. Our vesting schedule is fairly long. Our reward incentives are there to help the Scholars. They will be rewarded tokens for their contributions in game testing, contribution to Avocado DAO society, and help with Guild activities, moderation, management, and direction.
Daniel Dal Bello
So what do you make of the proposition to purchase the token when there are steep supply increases around the corner?
Brendan Wong
The scalability of our project. The revenue of the project will also increase exponentially as we scale. Supply increases are natural. We do not aim to hold 99% of supply and sell 1%. An the end of the day, for the project to really do well, we want our tokens held by everyone and for them to understand what we are trying to achieve and find the utility that our token will offer.
Daniel Dal Bello
What are some of the key and impactful decisions that the token holders could make in influencing the direction of the DAO?
Brendan Wong
Given the infancy of the market and project. I think there are many, many things to choose from. From where we mobilize our Scholars to provide relief for humanitarian aid, to supporting local communities and districts, and disaster relief fund execution etc.
Then to more complicated decisions, investment projects, tech developments, geographic penetration, governance, and proposal of high level Guild directions.
I want to provide a situation where your digital world actions can impact and improve your real world. I don’t want to take anything away, I want to add value.
Daniel Dal Bello
To wrap things up today, what are you looking forward to for the early-part of the new year? What are some of the most pressing goals for the team?
Brendan Wong
I want to be able to integrate another game into our ecosystem. Not just have a couple of Scholars, but really penetrate the games with over 1k Scholars. I want my Scholars to level up and understand the technology better. I want stronger game-agnostic reporting and Scholar management.
If all of this goes through, Avocado will be more profitable, and the lives of more Scholars will genuinely be improved.
In the end, the value will pass back down to token holders
Hillrise Group supports ambitious Web3 startups with early-stage venture capital and fundamental research.
Avocado Guild is a gaming Guild with a mission to inspire NFT gamers to thrive while advancing the world’s shift to the digital economy.
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