Dear Martians!
It’s been a crucial eighteen months for all of us, the creators, the team, and Martians for everyone involved in MarsColony. We want to share an open letter with everyone who was with us during this time.
How it all started
Our adventure started back in April 2021 when I and @father decided to build something valuable in a web3 space. We didn’t know exactly how it should look and work, but we knew the direction. In June 2021, we met @MEMOLOGICAL_EXPEDITI and started working on a detailed concept.
Having come up with a polished concept, we started building and launched our first virtual planet on BNB Chain. Unfortunately, the result of the launch could have been more impressive - we could not tap into the right audience there and attract users. But we didn’t give up.
During the Fall of 2021, after conducting user research and interviews, we came up with the revised concept and started improving the MarsColony project.
On 6 of Jan 2022, MarsColony went live on the Harmony chain. It was a success, we reached 3k DAU in the week from launch and became the highest-traded NFT collection on the Harmony chain. Soon after, we launched our token and started working on the Gamefi modules, launching liquidity mining, DEX, and avatar collection.
The crisis
In May this year, the crypto market crashed, followed by a chain of events that negatively affected the whole industry, including our project.
Later in June, the Harmony hack happened, draining our treasury on Harmony. In addition, the global market downturn and rising inflation rates, followed by food shortages and the war in Ukraine, have worsened the global economic outlook. But we didn’t stop, and continued building and delivering on our commitments.
With the recent FTX crash, we don’t see any indications that the winter will soon be over. Understand that we are living in a new reality, and to survive this crisis, we must adapt.
Next steps:
Since the crisis started, we’ve been working on a project funding plan and testing out concepts for Marscolony that can help deliver more value to stakeholders and attract fresh funds for the project.
The turning point for us was Devcon VI Bogotá - the top Ethereum conference in the world.
Having observed what other similar projects are building (0xParc) and after multiple meetings with Ethereum Foundation team & Gitcoin, we were able to test our ideas and get feedback on our work. The insights we gathered will help us to revamp Marscolony, gain needed funds, and survive the crypto winter, keeping the project and community alive.
Solution:
Prior to jumping into the solution, it’s worth mentioning where we currently stand with Marscolony:
- It is a colonization framework (P&E) - game-fi.
- It’s an early iteration of DAO, where we have adopted snapshot-based voting with NFTs, however, decision-making is still done in a centralized manner.
- It’s a project with a private repository, so nobody can access it, modify or improve the code but the dev team.
- It’s a project where the development process is fully handled by a private company (MC devs)
What needs to be done:
- Play-to-earn module:
- Complete game-fi MarsColony Harmony & Polygon (game balances, ROI, and other CLNY use cases)
- Decentralize decision-making to the appropriate DAOs
- Open-source the MarsColony codebase and allow anyone to contribute to the project. (done)
- Focus on user engagement and community
- Society module
- Work with the Ethereum foundation on research about how the future of society should look like.
- Explore launching a new model of society within existing planets on Harmony/Polygon or Ethereum main-net.
How are we going to achieve it:
Step 1 Refocus on Community Interests
- The core team working with CoP (Community of Practice) Guild on recovery strategy (ongoing)*
- Guild focus on the next direction with the current platform
- Guild focus on exploring the storyline (past, current, and future)
Step 2: Open-sourcing & revamping MC
- Open Sourcing codebase and documentation**
- Launching DAO & adopting decentralized decision-making
Step 3: Research***
- Collaboration with ETH Foundation & Gitcoin, Lens
- Research topics Web3 Society and coordination problems in autonomous worlds
Step 4: Development
- Building society module on Ethereum (More detailed steps on what should be done for each category will be represented in our road map)
- Support Marscolony on Polygon and Harmony with the community’s help.
*Over the past few months, we’ve been working with our most active community members, FitzRoy 7Danos and Bhoj35, to work out strategies to grow Marscolony and recover it from the ongoing crisis.
**Open-sourcing code means that anyone from the community who has ideas on improving the system or building new features can create a PR (pull request). It also means that this project is easily forkable, so if now you would like to launch your own planet somewhere on Jupiter, feel free to do so. Just make sure you’re on the EVM-compatible chain.
***Marscolony needs to survive this crypto winter. To make this happen, we’re refocusing our efforts on research and development. Our core team will focus on writing articles and publications on the decentralized nations. In contrast, the development will be primarily focused on fixing bugs/issues and re-working game balance logic.
Appreciation
Additionally, we want to share appreciation with people and the community who are still with us. We went through many challenges together and are grateful to you for your support. We highly appreciate that you guys are still around and helping and contributing to the project. As we mentioned in direct communication with @father and me many times, we are here until the end. Until the moment, web3 adoption will become the new normal. We will keep building, learning, and improving the tech and ourselves.
In our world paradigms, MarsColony Landlords are the project’s major stakeholders, and It will always be represented in this way. In the context of new planets or MarsColony updates, the Landlords should own a portion of MarsColony Ethereum or other planets that will be launched in the future. Exact details will be shared once in the nearest time. Your belief in us gives us the energy to go through the Hardest times!
Articles to be additionally shared
- MarsColony Stats (MAU by months, etc.)
- MC PitchDeck
- MarsColony Open Source - GitHub current state
- Additional work needed to complete the Game-fi module
- MarsColony Operational Decentralization
- MarsColony Polygon Plan
- Pricing Strategy
- Ownership Strategy
- Growth Strategy
- MarsColony on Ethereum Research
We are looking forward to hearing your feedback!
—————