DEGEN Updates #9

Nifty League
6 min readSep 24, 2022

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This edition of DEGEN Updates is very special for our team and community, as it marks the 1 year anniversary of the first DEGEN ever minted by the public (DEGEN #4…now lovingly named ‘OG’). This DEGEN happened to be minted by our beloved Bolo 1 year ago today at 5:00 PM +UTC. In this ninth release of DEGEN Updates, we’ll cover our anniversary and plans to celebrate our community in the coming week. As usual, we’ll also share a recap of Marketing and Community news, and Product and Game Development updates since our last publication. Let’s dive in 🥳

Game Updates

Nifty Smashers

  • 9/14/22: Snarfy pushed a new Nifty Smashers build — v0.39.1 (WebGL/Windows). This build featured anti-cheat improvement. This is the 4th release with anti-cheat improvements since late August. We’ve seen a significant decline in abuse and cheating in the game, which is promising.
  • 9/23/22: Snarfy pushed a new Nifty Smashers built — v0.39.2 (WebGL/Windows), which fixed ghost player issues and Kongz VX loading issues.

Crypto Winter

  • 9/21/22: Snarfy pushed the first build of 🧊 Crypto Winter 🧊 live — v1.0.14 (WebGL)! Bolo announced the mini-game launch on Discord and Twitter.
Link to Tweet. Credit to Ben for the awesome timelapse video.
Initial Gameplay Stats for Crypto Winter (Source: Plausible)
Satoshi thinks the Crypto Winter Leaderboard is looking pretty frosty ❄ LEFT: Screenshot from 9/23/22. RIGHT: Screenshot from 9/22/22.
  • 9/22/22: Snarfy pushed the second build of Crypto Winter — v1.0.17 (WebGL), which included a new end sequence and Original Soundtrack (OST), a bug fix resolving an incorrect score being displayed, updates to leaderboard submissions, and anti-cheat.

What’s Next?

  • Ship Compete & Earn and our new Moon Map for Nifty Smashers. We are now more thoroughly speccing out and estimating new features and game modes, which will prevent over-promising our development timelines in the future.
  • Continued work on Core Gameplay Loop for Niftyverse.
  • Continued development on a player progression and matchmaking system.

Product Updates

  • 9/21/22: Art and videos/gif assets for our new website are finalized (thanks Gideon and Spike). Below is a list of all videos by Gideon and some of the art assets created by Spike 🔥
View all the videos created by Gideon for the new website on our official YouTube channel under uploads
Art by Spike for our new website
  • 9/20/22: Tweaked the placement and added a line break to the game page in the Dashboard.
Screenshot of the Game page in the Dashboard from 9/23/22
  • 9/20/22: Added support for Crypto Winter, including the Game Card and Leaderboard.
  • 9/20/22: Crypto wallet interaction fixes and improvements including (1) fixing an Opera browser-only wallet connect issue on production, (2) adding a dialog informing users their wallet is locked, (3) improving wallet status and balance management consistency.
  • 9/20/22: UX improvements and optimization to rental history including displaying past/inactive rentals, etc.
  • 9/20/22: Added another column to the mobile leaderboard for enhanced readability.
  • 9/20/22: Implemented a new filter bar design in DEGEN Rentals and My Dashboard > DEGENs.
  • 9/20/22: Optimization of the subgraph API resource usage (keeps fees minimal).
  • 9/20/22: Miscellaneous bug fixes including (1) to crashes reported by production users, (2) "arcade token required" warning appearing briefly when opening mini-game, (3) removing the 404 page that appeared briefly when reloading the game profile page, (4) fixing an issue occurring when terminating a DEGEN rental.
  • 9/24/22: Announced changes to Play & Earn and Rentals ahead of our Compete & Earn launch. TL;DR. All DEGENs became unavailable for new rentals on 9/23/22 at 1:47 PM PT. All existing rentals will continue for the active rental period as of 9/23/22 at 1:47 PM PT but will not renew. NFTL earnings will continue for Rentals until 9/30/22. NFTL earnings from Play & Earn will continue for DEGEN holders until Compete & Earn is live. Rentals will be reevaluated after Compete & Earn has launched.

What’s Next?

  • Add support for Crypto Winter in the Gamer Profile.
  • Add the Rank feature to the Crypto Winter Leaderboard.
  • Disabled all Rental related content from the Dashboard.
  • More work on the new website — incorporate videos/gifs and art assets.
  • Add and update Docs content.
  • Finalize Compete & Earn / Brawl Mode tokenomics.
  • Something fun planned with the beloved Mint-o-Matic.

Community & Marketing Updates

  • 9/15/22: Bolo hosted our latest DEGEN & Frens Twitter Space. We had a smaller crowd than usual join live, but our largest ever post-Space tune-in count at 641 (as of 9/23/22 10:47 AM PT) 👀
Link to Tweet
Link to Tweet
Link to Tweet
  • EU and APAC/AU Nifty Smashers Regional Tournaments were wrapped! EU winners include 🥇 Aglaron, 🥈 I_M_I and 🥉 BossinN (and KriptoKangal coming in at 4th). APAC winners include 🥇 Rifachnia, 🥈 CrimsonLnz and 🥉 AldoSake (and beverly coming in at 4th). Congratulations to all and thank you for your patience while we worked through abuse/cheat issues during the tournament.

What’s Next?

1 year Anniversary — First DEGEN Minted

Wow. It’s been a full year since the very first DEGEN was minted publicly. Of course that NFT, DEGEN #4, was minted by Bolo, our Nifty League OG.

OpenSea link to DEGEN #4
He’s a clean, naked Ape. Perhaps the king of Nude Beach? 🏖️

Our genesis collection minted out 7 days later on 9/30/21 at 7:51 PM UTC. We plan to celebrate our community of minters and DEGEN owners in a very special way in the coming week and more. Please stay tuned for announcements in Discord and Twitter.

We’d like to thank all our loyal minters and owners. This project would not be where it is today without each and every one of you. We are beyond bullish on the future of Nifty League, and that’s largely due to your continued support throughout the last 12 months. Quotes from our founders are included below…

Can hardly believe it’s been a full year since mint. The team has developed fast, we’ve released a number of products and delivered on many promises, and still have a long way to go. I’m looking forward to us opening the doors to the Niftyverse and ushering in the next evolution of the project; it’s a big one. Grateful to the team and community who continue to strengthen despite current tricky climates, and to founders Andy and Snarf for their calm and reason.
- Spike

It’s been an incredible journey since our mint-o-matic first went live. Through the ups and downs we’ve grown stronger as a team and I’m thrilled to see our early vision start to come to life. Now that our foundation is laid out, year two will be even more exciting as we focus on building fun games and experiences for our community. The market may not be the same as it was back then but I’m grateful for our team, partners, and community members who have stayed around with likeminded goals of disrupting gaming for years to come.
- Andy

Much Love 💜
Team Nifty League (Officially 1 Year Old Today 🥳)

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Nifty League

Sultans of smash. Purveyors of gaming nostalgia. Learn more at niftyleague.com!