The gamified sports prediction app Pooky has announced that its play-and-earn game’s full version goes live on March 23. The game’s full release combines immersive gameplay with a sustainable tokenomic design.
Pooky’s co-founders – Claudio Riff and Stefano Riff – are avid sports fans and have first-hand experience with traditional sports betting platforms. The shortcomings of the existing platforms inspired them to create a blockchain-based app, which the brothers kicked off in September 2022.
The company now has over 15 employees with sports, gaming, and Web3 technology expertise. Pre-seed investors, including Claster Investments VC, backed Pooky with more than €3 million.
About the Pooky game
Pooky is a football results prediction game built on Polygon that challenges players to forecast the outcomes of matches from the world’s top leagues and tournaments.
The game features two playing modes: basic league and play-and-earn league. Players earn rewards when they rank high on leaderboards. In the future, the team will add other GameFi elements, such as new NFT types that help tailor game strategy and the ability to manufacture in-game items.
Pooky was designed by Alfred Vesligaj – a former game designer of Splinterlands. Damian Volatino, Sandbox’s former Head of Product, leads the product design.
The game has been in beta for four months. During this time, 7,000 people participated in 700k football predictions. Influencers, including Fiago, RazzHD, and Sims2, created content around the game project.
Pookyball collectible NFTs
In the full version, gamers need Pookyballs collectibles to be eligible to make predictions. They accumulate XPs by participating in the prediction games and can use their points to increase the value of their collectibles, skills, and leaderboard ranks to gain more rewards.
Pookyball NFTs are necessary to unlock the play-and-earn mode from the outset. A basic league will allow football fans to play for free and upgrade to the play-and-earn version later.
NFT holders are granted access to pro leagues. The first 1,000 genesis NFTs with 768 Common (76,71%), 180 Rare (18.05%), 42 Epic (4.25%), and 10 Legendary (1%). The collection is already sold out. You can grab them from the OpenSea secondary market.
Pooky will continue releasing new NFT mints through its native marketplace. To ensure the demand is higher than the supply, Pooky utilizes an NFT strategy that is based on the total number of active players in the free-to-play version.
Play-and-earn reward pools
Each match day will feature a dedicated reward pool that increases with each newly minted Pookyball NFT.
At present, the minimum reward pool per match and per league is 500 MATIC, Polygon’s native cryptocurrency, and 35,730 POK, Pooky’s in-game native token. Rewards will be distributed to the top 50% of the leaderboards. In other words, half of the players have the chance of winning monetary incentives.
There’ll be two types of leaderboards. 10% of the rewards will be distributed to the base leaderboard, which only includes points from the players’ predictions based on predetermined odds. Pookyball’s attributes have no influence here.
90% is reserved for the boosted points leaderboard. Both fixed and variable attributes, as well as rarities of Pookyballs, determine the boosted points.
The tokenomics of the Pooky game
The gameplay will initially revolve around the in-game currency POK which has an unlimited supply. Its supply will increase inside the game as a linear function of the total number of players and total minted Pookyball NFTs.
In the second phase, the game will introduce another ERC-20 utility token, TPK, that will replace POK. While specific details have not yet been disclosed, TPK will have a capped supply. Additionally, the game’s economic model will include more spending utilities than rewarding utilities, and various burning mechanisms will be deployed to decrease the supply of TPK over time.
