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Today marks the third day of voting for $PRIME unlock. Voters are deciding between three options, all of which would unlock $PRIME this year. With the anticipation of the token becoming publicly tradable, it’s time we discussed the potential it has. Here’s where we stand at 11am ET:
$PRIME is an ERC-20 token with a total capped supply of 111,111,111.111. It was issued by Echelon Foundation and is the utility token for the Echelon Ecosystem. It was launched on July 17, 2022 and became claimable on July 18, 2022. Distribution of the token was quick, with over a 1,000 wallets claiming in less than a month. Today, over 3,000 wallets hold $PRIME.
The Echelon Foundation is a decentralized gaming entity that aims to enable Win-to-Earn experiences for players. It is powered by the $PRIME token, which is distributed to players through a variety of mechanisms, including caching and participating in “PRIME Events,” which are snapshots of Echelon-approved digital assets (EADAs) and PRIMEsets. The Foundation is governed by a unit called the Emissary Primes, which is made up of 11 members elected by the community. The Foundation’s goal is to provide a collection of smart contracts and SDKs for games to use in order to integrate with the Echelon Ecosystem and access the W2E pool for distributing $PRIME to players.
If you’re new to digital assets, you might think that all tokens that have been issued have utility. I’m sorry to say this, but you would be wrong. There are many projects that launch based on white papers, founder fame, hype, or any number of reasons other than utility. Today, many of those projects are still measured at hundreds of millions or even billions in Fully Diluted Valuation.
FDV takes into account the total number of tokens that could be outstanding for a project, including circulating tokens, investor tokens, team tokens, and tokens that are received via emission schedules. This provides a complete picture of value, as it includes all tokens available to a project or company.
FDV = Total Token Supply * Price
Eg. if $PRIME is worth $10, then the FDV is $1.1 Billion.
So you might say, ‘Who cares if a project or token has utility? These projects don’t, and they have been wildly successful.’ You would be right, but many of them were valued much higher 18 months ago. Sure, we are in a bear market, so every project that was around 18 months ago is probably down. That being said, could some of the projects have retained more value and been more insulated from the fallout? Maybe so. Especially if they have an active user base with product market fit.
This is reason one why I am bullish on $PRIME. It will be used as the functioning currency of a Gaming Ecosystem. Games now represent a multi-billion dollar industry with digital games leading the way. Just how big is the online gaming market? Early numbers from 2022 say it was worth close to $200 Billion, while it is expected to grow to $300 Billion in 2025. And how many people play games online? Approximately three billion as of last year. That’s over a third of the world’s population that participate in some way in the gaming space.
With that in mind, it’s easy for me to get excited about the potential $PRIME has. Utility is at the heart of the token. It will be the lifeblood of the Echelon Ecosystem, used for many different functions and products. December 2022 marked the first two examples of utility, with the launch of Artigraphs and Payload. As the first two ‘$PRIME Sinks’ they allowed holders of the token to spend it and receive something of value in return. Not only is $PRIME already in use, the largest use cases still lie ahead of us, including earning $PRIME by winning games of Parallel TCG.
Parallel is a digital trading card game built by Parallel Studios. Check out this page to learn more about the game: Parallel.
Parallel will be the first of many games to launch in the Echelon Ecosystem. As a digital trading card game, it will attract players that already play other TCGs like Hearthstone and Marvel Snap.
The gaming community in general loves new games and new challenges. Getting users to play the game is a function of awareness in my opinion. Keeping them is a function of quality. We’ll talk more about that in the next section.
$PRIME’s success is dependent on the flywheel effect of the Echelon Ecosystem. It will accrue value as more participants enter and as its velocity increases.
The velocity of money is a measure of the rate at which money is exchanged from one transaction to another and how much a unit of currency is used in a given period of time.
More players = more games played.
More games played = more transactions.
More transactions = more value.
Add another game? Add incremental growth to the values in the equation and exponential growth to the sum.
The quality of work that is on display from both Echelon Foundation and Parallel is second to none.
This video is one example of the cinematic experience that I have come to expect from Parallel:
This video was created by the Parallel team, based on the existing artwork that they have created. If you look carefully you can see the TE4 submerged in the water.
Using these assets to create compelling videos like the one above, are sure to attract more players.
Echelon succeeded mightily when it launched its website last summer, and continues to improve it with additional features. With echelon.io, users can cache and uncache cards, claim $PRIME, and more.
Echelon.io represents one of the initial building blocks of the Echelon Ecosystem, paving the way for more innovation and tooling. As new tooling comes online, the depth and breadth of the ecosystem grows, and the infrastructure to support more projects and gamers expands.
The last note I’ll make on quality is regarding the first game expected to launch on the Echelon Ecosystem: Parallel TCG. As a Warden, I have had the privilege of playing the grey box client. Playing the game itself is fun and quite frankly, a little addicting.
One of the key principals of the game that the designers had in mind when creating it was to make every decision meaningful. In one turn, you are faced with a multitude of decisions, each just as important as the next. One wrong move and your opponent will have the advantage. I can honestly say I’ve made lots of wrong moves. You will not see me at the top of the win-loss leaderboard.
That said, I still have fun playing the game, because it’s fun to play. Each time I play, I learn something new. Whether that’s a function for a card that I haven’t seen before, a strategy tweak that an opponent uses, or a combination of cards for a win condition, I’m always experiencing something new. No game is the same, and those permutations keep things interesting.
After seeing some of the production client gameplay animations shared by the team last month, I’m more excited than ever for the future gameplay experience.
The last reason why I am bullish on $PRIME is the communication and transparency from the Echelon Foundation and Parallel teams.
2022 was a wild ride for Digital Assets. We saw the Ronin hack, 3AC imploding, the crazy unwind of LUNA, and the fall of SBF and FTX. There are many other stories like them or related to them. In each of those instances I observed some suspicious communication from teams and founders alike. The decision making that lead to their failures and the way they handled it was quite frankly embarrassing for the industry.
That was not the case for Echelon and Parallel. I’ll speak to two specific examples that I think are noteworthy.
Example 1: Pack Drop III
PDIII was a particularly tumultuous drop for a number of reasons. To name a few: the server was overwhelmed, the new vault functionality was not fully baked, and the number of packs was higher than previous drops.
Instead of point fingers, or avoid the issues completely, the team took ownership of the issues and published this post-mortem:
This kind of communication and ownership is something to be lauded. In general nowadays, there is a trend to not take any responsibility. We saw this time and again last year. This post here gives me significant confidence in the team and their ability to work through the issues at hand. There will always be challenges in this space, but to see the team take accountability, highlight the positives, and seek to improve, shows that they have the right mindset to cultivate the growth of the community.
The same can be said for Echelon. Late last year the dialogue around $PRIME unlock began. Along with it came an updated Bulletin that made some changes that the community disagreed with. What followed was a few weeks of discussion and dialogue between the EPs and the community.
This led to some open forum-style calls where the community could voice their concerns and the EPs could explain their reasoning.
Here is the Bulletin process as shared by Echelon for reference:
The result from the calls and activity, were some changes to the original bulletin (e.g. reverting back to the original internal voting structure), and the current options that are now available for $PRIME unlock vote.
It got heated at times, but ultimately the discussion was healthy, and I found I have the same confidence in Echelon that I have in Parallel. The EPs have the right mindset to cultivate and grow the ecosystem.
Today we covered three reasons why I am bullish on $PRIME: Utility, Quality, and Communication and Transparency.
These three areas are ones that I believe are areas of strength. Personally I have not been more excited about a token launch in recent memory.
I can’t wait for the future to unfold with so many exciting developments planned for 2023.