Recipient Address: 16Q4cR5vHLkoNqtqCZcdeKnZhY9a8AiXZAtemRJmMCpeiu82 (verified)

Date: December 28th, 2023

Allocation requested: 21,969 DOT - ($158,507 converted in DOT based on the EMA-30 price on Subscan on the day of the submission: 7.215$/DOT)

Short Description:

This proposal aims to retroactively fund a concrete application of the Polkadot tech to GameFi by the Great Escape, effectively promoting the adoption of XCM for gaming purposes.

It also funds the delivery of an open-source Jungle EVM/XCM Toolkit to help game developers, game studios and even DeFi Dapp builders to easily integrate our cross-chain deposit/withdrawal solution to allow players to onboard on their Polkadot-based dApp from any-chain, thus bringing more users to Polkadot.

Problem statement:

Although Polkadot has seen a lot of infrastructure and tooling applications developed over the past 2 years, it often still lacks concrete use-case and applications.

This is particularly visible when it comes to GameFi, which is one of the strongest narratives in terms of mass-adoption for Web3 products.

There is a clear mandate from the Polkadot community to expand the gaming universe in our ecosystem, and we believe the best way to unlock this massive opportunity is by simplifying the gaming experience to attract new users.

Games help bring some fun and contribute to the increase in the user adoption of more complex infrastructure/DeFi projects operating on the same ecosystem as they create bridges between communities.

However, Web3 gamers often have to face many hurdles such as low accessibility, complex chain interactions, high gas fees, upfront investment costs, and tokenomics concerns. This makes it difficult for players to experiment with games on different blockchains.

As web3 gamers are scattered across multiple competing blockchains (Immutable X, Avax, Polygon, Solana, Ronin etc...), the fragmentation of the GameFi offer increases the entry barrier for newcomers and weighs on the builder's decision to select one ecosystem to build their dApp.

There is a strong incentive for builders to go build on already popular chains as it makes the player acquisition easier. This is a challenge for Polkadot, given the limited number of games available.

How do we solve this?

Polkadot has actually a lot to offer when it comes to GameFi, by leveraging on the XCM standard, the Great Escape has been able to create a concrete use-case of what Polkadot provides and poses itself as a factor of growth for the ecosystem while increasing the attractiveness of Polkadot to other game developers.

It showcases how an accessible, gas-less, wallet-less and chain-agnostic game could be built on Polkadot and provides detailed documentation for other builders in the form of a Jungle EVM/XCM Toolkit to further promote the adoption of Polkadot for dApp builders.

By building a game that focuses on lowering the entry barriers to Web3 gaming by having an easy to play game, available on mobile and desktop with a free, easy and chain-agnostic on-boarding process.

Milestones

✅Delivered (retroactive funding):

• The build of an accessible Polkadot-based game (Milestone 1)
• The design of a smooth gaming experience (Milestone 2)
• The creation of a fun game with a stable and secure infrastructure (Milestone 3)
• The creation of a concrete use case showcasing the unique possibilities offered by the Polkadot technical stack with the creation of an original cross-chain deposit/rewards system (Milestone 4)
• The delivery of an open-source toolkit to help other builders adopt and adapt our cross-chain funding/withdraw solution to their Polkadot-based dApps (Milestone 5)

⚒️ To deliver:

An inter-Parachain tournament aiming at creating a fun hub of collaborations for Parachains and initiate a Polkadot GameFi revolution. (Milestone 6)

About us:

The Great Escape is a hyper-casual platformer game leveraging the Polkadot and Moonbeam tech stack, to create a new generation of Web 3 game with the following model:

• Free-to-play
• Gas-less
• Wallet-less (players can join without a wallet, they create one when they off-ramp)
• Chain-agnostic (players can join the game from any chain)
• Offers rewards in any token (players can claim rewards in their preferred token).
• Allows players to deposit/fund their player’s account in any token

Read our FULL PROPOSAL HERE.