DISCLAIMER: THIS CONTENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION TO PURCHASE TOKENS OR ANY OTHER ASSETS. ANY INVESTMENTS MADE IN THE PROJECTS OR ASSETS MENTIONED BELOW ARE DONE SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.

Figure 1: Chillchat Pixel Art NFT Metaverse

Project Highlights

Overview

#CREATE2EARN - Where Pixel Art meets the Metaverse!

In the traditional gaming market, Roblox and Minecraft are the two leading sandbox games in which players actually build and shape the games themselves. These titles are cultural touchstones for Gen Z and have generated astonishing profits. In 2020, Minecraft earned $415 million in revenue, while Roblox earned $920 million. Clearly, there is a market for social sandbox games like Chillchat.

In the GameFi market, The SandBox and Decentraland have dominated the metaverse game genre, capitalizing on digital land sales and user-generated content. Players can already explore these voxel-based worlds of virtual land plots and interact with other players through various activities. The market cap of Decentraland's $MANA token and The Sandbox’s $SAND token both stand around $2 billion despite bearish market conditions, showing strong long term potential for projects that focus on user-generated content (UGC).

Chillchat brings a simplified, retro aesthetic and UI to the UGC game genre. Chillchat is a 2D, pixel-based Metaverse centered around Art and socializing. Players can easily create artwork, characters, and setpieces, which offers a creative and social online environment. Chillchat is building a social, virtual world that lets people enjoy and earn rewards for their creativity through NFTs.

Gameplay

Figure 2: Chillchat Interface

Chillchat is building a social, pixel art metaverse on the Solana network in which players can socialize, explore environments, and play games using the Identity NFTs. These NFTs can be purchased or created on their own or traded with other creators.

The game is free to play; however, players are encouraged to buy NFTs for extra rewards and access full game functionality.

• Players are encouraged to create their own characters, pets, and items using the Pixel Editor, an intuitive pixel art tool that’s accessible from within the browser or game application and does not require demanding CPU/GPU specs.

   

Figure 3: Chillchat’s Pixel Editor

• In the World Engine, creators can create their own pixelated environments. Players will enjoy the personal satisfaction of being able to customize their own space and spending time there with friends. The Engine even offers users the ability to design original games using the proposed coding language of C++.

Figure 4: Chillchat’s World Engine

These powerful creator tools indicate Chillchat’s long-term vision. They encourage user contribution and a community-owned ecosystem that can satisfy gamers’ expectations and stay true to the principles of Web3.

Since the business model is based around user-generated characters and game content as well as selling character NFTs, the game will only succeed if they attract enough dedicated artists and game content generators, along with a massive user base.

The Sandbox and Decentraland currently dominate the UGC open metaverse genre and could be considered competitors, but Chillchat is clearly targeting its own niche, betting that enough players will prefer easy creator tools and a more cozy, retro aesthetic to those immersive and CPU-heavy open-world experiences.

Figure 5: Chillchat’s competitive advantages

While Sandbox and Decentraland both offer user customization and creator tools, they are far more complex. Take their focus on virtual real estate — for example, Decentraland has 90,601 individual land properties divided into plots, districts, estates, and plazas, and Sandbox contains 166,464 land pieces divided into districts and estates. These scarce land plots have been driven up to valuations that are unaffordable for most people, and the complexity of land ownership, land building and ownership rights also create a daunting learning curve for newcomers.

Chillchat’s gameplay appears to be much easier to use, more casual, and more accessible to the masses. Chillchat shrewdly targets the pleasure of creating art, customizing environments, and communal experience. Opportunities for social fun include hanging out in personal spaces, multiplayer competitions in user-developed games, and the joy of self-actualization and world-building through NFTs.

Game Economy

Chillchat features a single-token economy built around the $CHILL token. But it has far more utility beyond in-game currency.

Figure 6: Inflationary and Deflationary factors of $CHILL token

Figure 7: $CHILL Flow

The figures indicate how users can earn rewards. However, for the time being, owning one of the 1,500 Origin NFT characters is the only way to earn $CHILL in the form of a daily reward. In the future, staking $CHILL will also be rewarded in $CHILL. Playing games inside Chillchat will offer another way to earn $CHILL, which will be introduced in the forthcoming World Logic system.

The major use case for the $CHILL is to mint future generations of Chillchat characters, which offers creators a potential revenue stream by trading them on the marketplace. Worlds are another key item that users can purchase with their $CHILL. Users can build anything in Worlds using tileset NFTs, which may also be exchanged and generated in-game with the pixel editor. World NFTs will soon be available for purchase through in-game auctions to any player for— you guessed it— $CHILL. Origin Owners will receive their first world for free along with a base game tileset to build their world with.

Single-token economies certainly provide some benefits (e.g. simplified token administration), but they still suffer from inflation and sell pressure similar to utility tokens in the more popular dual-token model. Time has yet to determine which is the “better” model. Needless to say, Chillchat will have to closely monitor market conditions and user behavior and make adjustments as needed.

Figure 8: $CHILL Supply Distribution

It is worth noting that a significant amount of $CHILL token supply is distributed to Seed investors, Team, and Advisors. A tailored unlock and multi-year vesting schedule should be designed in order to build a great product and attract lots of users without worrying about significant selling pressure in the short term.

Origin NFTs (Gen 1)

What is a Chillchat Origin NFT?

• Chillchat Origin NFTs are a central part of the Chillchat experience, with special utility built into the social metaverse. Chillchat Origin NFTs are handcrafted and animated collectible characters. As reflected in the name, each Origin NFT is one-of-one with unique looks, cute animations, and great attention to detail by the team’s pixel artists.
• There are 1,500 Origin NFTs in total. 400 of the NFTs are being auctioned throughout 2022, 900 of them have been reserved for whitelisted members to mint at 2 SOL, the other 100 NFTs went to public mint, and the remaining 100 Origins have been reserved for team members, giveaways, and partnerships.
• Origin NFTs can be bought, sold, and traded in or outside of the Chillchat metaverse.

Figure 9: Chillchat Origin Minting & Auctions

How to acquire an Origin NFT?

• Purchase on secondaries such as MagicEden, OpenSea, Fractal

  Chillchat Origin NFTs are currently trading at a return of around 9.5x on MagicEden *(whitelist minting took place on Jan 21st at the price of 2 $SOL, with a current floor price of 19 $SOL as May 18, 2022), which indicates lasting demand for the NFTs.

  

  Figure 10: Chillchat Origin NFTs on Magic Eden

  

  Figure 11: Chillchat Origin NFTs’s Floor Price & Volume (90 days)

• Purchase during weekly auctions on Magic Eden.

  • 10 Origins are being auctioned off every week with a starting price of 2 $SOL and 0.25 $SOL increments.

  • Auctions last 24 hours and will run for 35 weeks (400 Origins) in total. If the bidding continues after 24 hours, there will be a 5-minute time extension per bid.

  • Origins will be revealed 5 days prior to the auction. All Origins will be animated. Auction announcements will be updated on the Chillchat Twitter & Discord.

  • Included among the auctioned Origins will be fun collaborations with other Solana projects including Jambo Mambo, Skull Division, Lotus Gang, Artificial Irrelevants, Goo Glitz, Sollamas, Amoebits, Jungle Cats, Thugbirdz, Bounty Hunter, Gnarly Gnomies, Friendly Frogs, Toadboys, Famous Fox Federation, Pesky Penguins, The Mystic Analos, Stoned Ape Crew, SolGods, Mini Royale, Botborgs, SolFlowers, Zillaz, and more.

    

    Figure 12: Chillchat Auctions - Collaborations

Utility of Origin NFTs

Figure 13: Chillchat Origins and Lineage

• Mint Gen 2 Origins

  Origins are Gen 1, indicated in their names “Origin of ____”, and will be able to create & mint Gen 2 NFTs that can continue to expand the Lineage.

  The Progenitor trait is an integral part of the Origins that can be used to create new Gen 2 characters. All the descendants of an Origin are part of their Origin’s lineage. In future generations, players will have the option to either enable or disable the progenitor trait, meaning they can allow Gen 3 and onward to be made or choose to stop the lineage.

• Receive daily $CHILL tokens

  Origin holders will receive a set daily amount of $CHILL, which can be claimed at the bank in Chill World.

• Access to exclusive Origin communities

  Origin owners have access to a unique part of the Chillchat community: the character sub-DAOs. Depending on the Origin, players will be sorted into either the Holy DAO, Legion of Evil DAO, or Chaos DAO. Members will be able to access cool features like a dedicated World and DAO mini-game tournaments. Exclusive perks include early updates, collaboration opportunities with the Chillchat team, and even a role in the governance of the metaverse.

• One free Chillchat World

  Every Origin holder will receive 1 free World, which can be customized using the World Building tool or turned into games with the World Engine.

Backers and Funding

Figure 14: Chillchat’s Investors & Backers

In February 2022, Chillchat successfully raised $1.85 million in a Seed Equity Round, which brought the project's valuation to $10 million. The round was led by Solana Ventures, followed by FTX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Griffin Games Partners, Infinity Ventures Crypto, YGGSEA, A&T Capital, Diamond Hands Ventures, PKO Investments (Notable advisors include Kevin Lin - co-founder at Twitch; Kun Gao - co-founder at Crunchyroll; Holly Liu, co-founder at Kabam; Patrick Lee, co-founder at Rotten Tomatoes; Dhiraj Mukherjee - co-founder at Shazam; James Park - co-founder at Fitbit, Kunal Sarkar; co-founder at Luminosity; Nigel Eccles - co-founder at FanDuel; Ray Chan - co-founder at 9GAG; Wesley Ng - co-founder at Casetify; Yat Siu - co-founder at Animoca Brands).

Lately, Chillchat continued to raise $6 million in a Seed Token Round, which brought the project's valuation to $50 million. The round is co-led by FTX Ventures and Crypto.com Capital. Other investors and partners include Zipmex, SwordFish Guild, Avocado Guild, Loud GG, MonkeVentures, MightyJaxx, A&T Capital, Old Fashioned Research, Double Peaks, Defi Capital, Yat Siu, FOMO Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners, Jump Capital, Morning Star Ventures, Animoca Brands, Ancient 8, Spartan, Shima Capital, Gate.io, Overwolf, UNIX Gaming, GuildFi.

In general, Chillchat’s board backers are veteran Web 3.0, crypto/NFT, and gaming investors and VCs.

• Solana Ventures focuses on investing in the most potential projects in the Solana ecosystem. At the end of 2021, Solana Ventures announced a $150 million fund to invest in blockchain gaming startups.
• FTX Ventures and Crypto.com Capital have extensive experience and resources from incubating top-tier blockchain projects.
• Gaming VC veterans Animoca Brands (The Sandbox) and Griffin Gaming Partners have extensive experience and specialize in NFT, Metaverse, and Web3 games.
• Large and small gaming guilds to reinforce the player base.
• Other partners include A&T Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, PKO Investments, Snackclub.gg, Double Peak, DAOvergence, Old Fashion Research, Zipmex, MonkeVentures, FOMOPay Ventures, Mighty Jaxx, and more.

Chillchat Team

“We consider ourselves a product company, not an NFT project...”

On April 28th, in an impressively candid statement to the members of the Chillchat Discord server, Co-founder & CEO James Au justified his team’s decision to postpone the launch of the Chillchat platform. He outlined their approach as a tech company focused 100% on finding product market fit, which is why they refused to push out an unfinished demo, even if it would have drawn attention and boosted the price of their NFTs.

In this decision, and this statement, Au distinguished Chillchat as a project committed to a long-term vision. Sometimes, a team must make hard decisions that may even be unpopular among their community for the greater good of the project, but that sort of willpower among leadership is essential for any project to last.

Figure 15: Chillchat Team

James Au (CEO)

• Corporate Finance and Accounting Background
• Experienced in real estate, gaming and hospitality.

Jessica Manighetti (Head of Product)

• Marketing Background
• Former Creative Director at Zlapped and Project Manager at G.Round (Marketing and Promotion platform for indie game developers)

Paracha Brient (Head of Marketing)

• Business Administration, Hospitality and Marketing Background

Cabin Yim (Head of Operation)

• Business Administration, Marketing and E-commerce Background
• Former CMO and Head of Business Development at FairPlay Studios

Ahmad Rashid (Head of People)

• International Business and HR Background
• Former BestBuy, FutureShop and Apple

Pontus Mahler (Business Development)

• Former professional gamer, streamer at Twitch and Youtube channels owner of over 40M views and 300,000+ followers
• Vice President at Global Top Round

Kimmi Goh (Head of Community)

• Broadcast Journalism Background
• Former Social Media Manager at G.Round

Ihor Malaniuk (Lead Software Engineer)

• Software Engineering Background
• 8 years of software development experience

Soham Adwani (Lead Web Developer)

• Business Information Systems Background

Chillchat has many other experienced team members who have worked on titles such as Star Wars (RPG), Lord of the Rings (RPG), James Bond Card game, Dobedo, Spineworld, Star Stable, Kult (RPG), Mutant (RPG), Mutant Chronicles (RPG), Drakar och Demoner (RPG), and other prominent titles.

The team behind Chillchat undoubtedly has extensive experience in the traditional gaming market and software engineering, which will work to their advantage by incorporating traditional gaming elements into the Blockchain world. However, at the same time, they lack deep experience in the Crypto space, which may be a challenge for them in the long run. The team may want to add more Crypto veterans and/or work closely with their board of advisors.

Community

Figure 16: Social media statistics of Chillchat and other projects in this genre (SparkToro)

Discord is the main channel used by their community, in which users are highly engaged in Chillchat-related conversations, flexing their NFTs as well as providing feedback. Community members and moderators are usually quite active and thorough in answering questions and concerns of members, but less so during daytime hours in the Western hemisphere (the team is based in Bangkok).

Go-to-market Strategy

Chillchat has outlined a detailed go-to-market strategy aligned with its long-term vision:

• Market Positioning: Chillchat combines social platforms elements of gaming, social metaverse, and marketplace
• Twitter Spaces: create a real-time audio space for Chillchat and followers to engage
• Influencer Marketing - with a focus on female marketing partners, to make Chillchat the place women feel comfortable in Web3
• Shareable links for inviting friends onto Chillchat
• Social Proof marketing for NFTs on Instagram
• Collaborate and Integrate popular brands’ IP to expand marketing reach and benefit users
• Partner with games, guilds and NFT communities
• Creator Program: reward and monetize the creations of artists and content creators on Chillchat