Hashkey Grant Application - PopCraft

[k1ic]

Grant Type

Session 1

Email

[email protected]

Telegram

https://t.me/PopCraftOnChain

X/Twitter Handle

https://x.com/popcraftonchain

Discord/Community

https://discord.gg/yRt6be237P

Previous Application

N/A

Code Audit

Although our contract code has not yet undergone a formal audit, it has successfully handled a large-scale event on MintChain (with over 430k contract transactions). Throughout the event, the system operated stably without any bugs or security vulnerabilities. Our contract code is publicly available on GitHub.

Project Information

1. Project Description and Objectives:
   PopCraft is a fully on-chain match-three game designed with cross-application composability at its core. It boasts exceptional gas efficiency, a seamless gaming experience, and a perfect fusion of gameplay and financial mechanics. As a leading project in the space, PopCraft was invited to Devcon 2024 to deliver a keynote speech and showcase the game live on stage. PopCraft enables ERC-20 tokens on HashkeyChain to be directly used as in-game items and leverages the chain’s DEX as a marketplace for trading these items. By integrating gameplay with on-chain assets, PopCraft not only fosters economic circulation between different projects but also drives deeper cross-application interaction, contributing to a more vibrant and thriving ecosystem.
   Objectives
   Through technological and model innovation, PopCraft delivers a groundbreaking blockchain gaming experience for players while injecting new vitality into the HashkeyChain ecosystem.

2. Success Potential:
   As a major innovation within the Ethereum ecosystem, fully on-chain games represent the forefront of blockchain’s exploration beyond finance. PopCraft seamlessly blends financial mechanics with engaging gameplay to create a unique gaming experience. During last month’s month-long MintChain event, PopCraft saw remarkable engagement, with just 1.8K unique addresses contributing over 430K on-chain interactions—demonstrating its immense potential for success.

3. Mission Alignment:
   HashkeyChain aims to Empower the Masses, and PopCraft is fully aligned with this vision. As a fully on-chain game, PopCraft leverages HashkeyChain’s high-performance public blockchain to deliver a seamless gaming experience. Additionally, through its unique game mechanics, PopCraft enhances economic circulation within the ecosystem, strengthening the synergy between existing projects on HashkeyChain.

4. Innovation:
   PopCraft is built on the advanced fully on-chain MUD framework and designed with cross-application composability at its core. It seamlessly integrates ERC-20 tokens on HashkeyChain as in-game items and leverages HashkeyChain’s DEX as a marketplace for trading these assets. This creates a fully open and transparent ecosystem for item issuance, pricing, and trading, offering a new model for blockchain gaming.

5. Is it open source?
   Yes, PopCraft's frontend and smart contract code are fully open-source under the MIT license. You can find the code repository here: https://github.com/themetacat/popcraft.

6. Free or fee-based for end users?
   Since PopCraft is a fully on-chain game, every in-game action is an on-chain interaction. However, players don’t need to worry—the game features a built-in session wallet, so they won’t have to constantly sign transactions. The only time a player needs to make a purchase is when eliminating a single isolated element from the board using a game item. Aside from this, the game is completely free to play.

7. Interoperability with Hashkey ecosystem:
   PopCraft enables all ERC-20 tokens on HashkeyChain to be used as in-game items and any DEX on HashkeyChain to serve as a marketplace for trading these items, facilitating economic interoperability within the Hashkey ecosystem. Additionally, PopCraft allows project logos from the Hashkey ecosystem to be integrated as in-game elements, increasing exposure for these projects and fostering brand interoperability within Hashkey ecosystem.

Market Analysis

1. Competitors and Differentiation

Competitors: Fully On-Chain Games vs. Web2.5 Games

Fully on-chain games represent the cutting edge of blockchain gaming, offering a distinct technological paradigm compared to Web2.5 games. Unlike Web2.5 games, fully on-chain games have all logic and data recorded on-chain, ensuring complete decentralization and high transparency. Just as finance has transitioned from CeFi to DeFi, the gaming industry is also evolving from centralized to decentralized models, making fully on-chain games a natural product of blockchain technology's progression.

Currently, the number of projects in the fully on-chain gaming space remains relatively small. Some well-known examples include the Realms.World series on Starknet, such as Realms: Eternum, and Biomes on the Redstone chain. These games are often large-scale, with complex visuals and deep gameplay mechanics, but they generally lack lighthearted and casual elements. PopCraft, on the other hand, takes a unique approach by seamlessly integrating classic match-3 mechanics with blockchain technology, injecting fresh energy into the fully on-chain casual gaming sector and filling this market gap.

Differentiation

1. Core Gameplay Differentiation

PopCraft innovatively integrates classic match-3 mechanics with blockchain tokenomics, creating a unique gaming ecosystem. In the game, the elements players eliminate directly originate from on-chain ERC-20 tokens or project-issued in-game items. This not only enhances the game’s financial attributes but also leverages blockchain composability for seamless interaction with other DeFi protocols. Players must acquire token-based items through purchases or strategic planning to eliminate isolated elements, adding significant depth and playability. This design preserves the casual and enjoyable nature of match-3 games while embedding blockchain’s economic model, offering players a novel gaming experience and new value capture mechanisms.

2. Strong Composability

Ethereum's vision of a "world computer" aims to build a decentralized computing platform where various applications operate independently yet interact seamlessly. PopCraft brings this vision to life through an innovative design: the game supports any ERC-20 token and deeply integrates with decentralized exchanges (DEXs), making financial infrastructure an organic part of its gameplay. This open architecture not only exemplifies Ethereum’s composability but also transforms PopCraft into a highly extensible gaming platform, setting a new paradigm for blockchain gaming.

3. Technical Differentiation

Account Delegation & Session Wallet

• Zero-Friction Transactions: Using an innovative session wallet mechanism, users can play without directly paying gas fees. The system automatically handles gas costs via temporary wallets, enabling a truly seamless gaming experience.
• Invisible Blockchain Interaction Layer: Although the game is fully on-chain, all operations are processed through on-chain transactions without requiring manual confirmations from users. This design abstracts blockchain complexity, significantly lowering the technical barrier and providing a smooth experience indistinguishable from traditional games.

This mechanism solves the common issue of transaction confirmation delays in blockchain games while making blockchain interactions virtually imperceptible. By eliminating friction, it enables mass adoption of Web3 gaming.

Optimistic Rendering Technology

• Real-Time Interaction Feedback: Using an advanced client-side pre-rendering mechanism, PopCraft instantly displays elimination effects locally when a player makes a move, eliminating the need to wait for blockchain confirmations and ensuring responsive interactions.
• Seamless Experience Optimization: By decoupling game state updates from blockchain confirmations, players can immediately see the results of their actions, significantly improving fluidity and engagement, making fully on-chain games as smooth as traditional ones.
• State Consistency Assurance: While providing instant feedback, the system continuously monitors on-chain transaction statuses to ensure consistency between the pre-rendered client view and final on-chain data, automatically correcting any discrepancies in rare cases.

This technical approach effectively addresses the latency issues common in blockchain games. While maintaining decentralization, it delivers near-instantaneous responsiveness, greatly enhancing playability and user experience.

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2. Current User Base and Estimation Method

Current Performance

• Total Paying Users: 1,800+
• Recent Active Daily Users (DAU): 200+
• On-Chain Interactions: 200 DAU generate over 10,000 on-chain interactions daily

Future Growth Expectations

Growth Strategy

• User Acquisition – Launch tasks on platforms like TaskOn and QuestN, leveraging their promotional reach to attract new players to PopCraft.
• User Retention – Increase player engagement and stickiness through features like daily check-ins, rewards, and streak bonuses.
• Viral Growth – Implement an invite system where players earn in-game items, points, or other rewards for successfully referring new players.

Expected Impact

• If DAU reaches 200, with each player playing 3 games per day, this will generate 720K contract interactions per month:
  200 * 3 * 30 * 40 = 720,000
• If DAU reaches 400, with each player playing 3 games per day, this will generate 1.44M+ contract interactions per month:
  400 * 3 * 30 * 40 = 1,440,000

Recipient Address

0x1EdB62E8350AeE3e9A59DAc17Ce3544279E06C4D

Budget and Plan

1. Grant Size and Justification:
   PopCraft is requesting a grant of 8,000 HSK, which will be used to incentivize platform users, enhance community engagement, and support the growth of the PopCraft ecosystem.

2. Project Execution Plan & Token Distribution:

   • 5,000 HSK will be allocated for player incentives (distributed at the end of each 4-week season).
   • 3,000 HSK will be used for platform operations, market promotion, brand awareness, as well as community building and user growth to increase PopCraft's visibility and user activity, further expanding community influence.

3. Post-Incentives Sustainability:
   After the grant is fully utilized, PopCraft will allocate a portion of in-game item revenue to create a regular reward pool, ensuring ongoing player incentives and maintaining long-term user engagement.

Hashkey Relationship

1. Problem Solved for Hashkey:
   Enhancing ecosystem diversity—As the first Fully on-chain Game on HashKey Chain, PopCraft leverages cross-application composability to bring greater utility to ERC-20 tokens within the HashKey Chain ecosystem. It offers players a unique gaming experience while driving increased user engagement activity on the network through its gameplay.

2. Value Proposition:
   As a fully on-chain elimination game, PopCraft brings a unique gaming experience to players within the Hashkey ecosystem. By leveraging the advanced MUD on-chain game engine, PopCraft offers superior user experience, exceptional gas efficiency, and vast cross-application composability potential.
   Beyond gaming, PopCraft enhances economic interoperability within the Hashkey ecosystem by integrating existing ERC-20 tokens as in-game items and utilizing HashkeyChain’s DEX as a marketplace. This not only fosters deeper interactions between ecosystem projects but also drives sustainable economic activity.
   By combining innovative game mechanics with blockchain’s transparency and composability, PopCraft pioneers a new model for blockchain gaming, pushing the boundaries of on-chain entertainment and ecosystem engagement.

3. Growth Potential for Hashkey:
   PopCraft drives user engagement and economic activity for HashkeyChain by offering a seamless on-chain gaming experience with built-in session wallets, attracting both Web3 and traditional gamers. It boosts on-chain transactions by integrating HashkeyChain’s ERC-20 tokens and DEX as in-game assets and trading markets. Additionally, PopCraft showcases HashkeyChain’s high-performance, low-cost infrastructure, fostering cross-project collaborations and expanding the ecosystem’s influence, driving growth and adoption.

4. Commitment to Building on Hashkey:
   We are committed to building on Hashkey because PopCraft is a project invested by Hashkey Capital in 2022, reflecting our strong alignment with Hashkey’s vision and ecosystem. The low transaction fees, high performance, and supportive infrastructure provided by Hashkey make it an ideal platform for fully on-chain gaming. Moving forward, we plan to continue developing and expanding PopCraft, leveraging Hashkey’s ecosystem to introduce new features and foster deeper interoperability with other projects. We are dedicated to contributing to the growth and success of Hashkey through ongoing innovation and collaboration.

5. Deployment Status:
   PopCraft is now integrated with HashKey Mainnet and can be accessed at https://popcraft.pixelaw.xyz/hashkey.
   Contract address: https://explorer.hsk.xyz/address/0xC44504Ab6a2C4dF9a9ce82aecFc453FeC3C8771C.

Milestones

2025.Q1

• Product: Optimize UI, effects, smoothness, and onboarding experience to enhance gameplay and immersion.
• Operations: Ensure DAU stays stable at 200+, with monthly contract interactions remaining stable at 600,000, solidifying the core user base.

2025.Q2

• Product: Develop the PopCraft H5 version to lower the entry barrier and improve user retention and activity with a better user experience.
• Operations: Expand the mobile user base and drive monthly contract interactions to exceed 1 million. Use strategies like new user gift packs and item airdrops to enhance user retention and growth.

2025.Q3-Q4

• Product: Build the player UGC system, supporting user creation of effects, gameplay, skins, and other content, enriching the game ecosystem and enhancing user creativity and diversity.
• Operations: Promote multi-chain deployment, expand the community ecosystem, and enhance user interaction and contribution. Connect PopCraft players across different chains for cross-chain traffic. Push monthly contract interactions to exceed 1.5 million and further expand the player base and increase retention.

Terms Confirmation

• I confirm that all information provided is true and accurate
• I understand and agree to comply with the grant policies
• I understand the KYC requirements
• I confirm token distribution complies with legal requirements