Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs and the onchain frontier
Dear Bankless Nation,
Parallel, a sci-fi trading card battler, is one of crypto’s leading games.
And while it is the flagship of the Echelon Prime gaming ecosystem, it’s being joined in this universe by a highly-anticipated second title: Parallel Colony.
An AI-driven survival simulation game, Colony will center around humans collaborating with AI avatars that can learn and adapt and autonomously transact over time to stack resources and battle other players for dominance.
The builders, Parallel Studios, just dropped the official whitepapers for Colony and Wayfinder, with the latter being a new type of AI protocol that will help underpin Colony’s gameplay.
There’s a lot to unpack from these papers, so let’s get you up to speed on everything you need to know here for today’s post!
-WMP
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Understanding the New Parallel Colony Updates
The Basics of Parallel Colony
The 101: With a public alpha slated for as early as Q4 2024, Parallel Colony is centered around Colony Avatars, which will be deployed on Solana. Powered by large language model (LLM) tech, these AI avatars will be semi-autonomous AI agents acting per players’ generalized instructions rather than direct control.
Why this matters: Colony’s AI setup will allow the avatars to retain memories, learn from experiences, and influence each other through conversations. Sometimes, the avatars will even defy their human player’s suggestions based on their unique personalities and experiences accumulated over time. As such, Colony is the first title to go all-in on the crossroads of generative AI and blockchain gaming.
Money machines: With each one tied to a dedicated Solana wallet, Colony Avatars will conduct their own transactions around buying and crafting resources, a dynamic that will actualize a real economy in the game. Commerce and combat will lead to shifting tides and shifting resources, and colonies that amass the most wealth at any given time will become bigger targets for both trade and warfare.
An avatars expansion: While there will be a free-to-play mode, the main gameplay will see players create Colony Avatars by paying in PRIME, Parallel’s native currency. Starting out, the creation process will require holding a Parallel Avatar NFT on Ethereum, but a Parallel Universal Avatar series that involves a breeding mechanism may eventually be introduced on Solana. This update would make the game more accessible and expand the avatar count well beyond the existing 11,000 unique NFTs.
What to expect: The core Colony gameplay involves undertaking tasks to enhance an avatar’s skills and the overall wealth of their colony. As colonies flourish, they can mount defenses against incoming raids or launch their own attacks against neighboring colonies. A typical game session starts with players consulting their avatars and deciding which goals to pursue, from accumulating valuable items to running for political office, after which their avatars will start pursuing these objectives. Like in the main Parallel game, Colony players will also be able to earn PRIME rewards for in-game achievements.
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The Rise of Wayfinder
An onchain map for AI: Built on Solana to underpin Parallel Colony’s AI gameplay, Wayfinder is a new protocol designed to bring the power of AI agents onchain. In short, the system allows AI agents, referred to as “Shells,” to navigate through blockchain environments, perform transactions, and interact with decentralized apps.
At its core, then, Wayfinder is like a map and toolkit for AI agents to use when they’re moving around blockchains. Just like you might use a map app on your phone to find the best route to a new restaurant, Wayfinder provides AI agents with “wayfinding paths.” These paths are a set of instructions that help the agents find their way to specific goals onchain, like making a trade on a decentralized exchange or minting an NFT.
An omni-chain tool: While Solana will be the home base for Wayfinder, its architecture and the development of “wayfinding paths” allow it to seamlessly work across a wide range of blockchains. The protocol will initially support the most popular chains, like Ethereum, Solana, and Base, but additional networks are expected to be added via governance over time.
A new AI token: The Wayfinder whitepaper proposes PROMPT as the utility and governance token within the Wayfinder ecosystem. Its roles are multifaceted, including governance facilitation, paying for the creation of AI agents, and paying for gas fees for transactions around the Wayfinder ecosystem. It will also be possible to stake PROMPT to propose new wayfinding paths, with stakers earning a share of the transaction fees generated when their paths are used.
The PROMPT distribution: PROMPT is set to have a 1 billion maximum supply. The distribution strategy, once officially approved, will see tokens allocated to various stakeholders, including the Wayfinder Foundation, developers, and users. Notably, 40% of all PROMPT tokens will be distributed as awards over a 3-year period to people who “cache,” or stake, their PRIME within Wayfinder. Accordingly, not only will Parallel Colony be a powerful new deflationary sink for the PRIME token, but PROMPT rewards will also undoubtedly drive up demand for PRIME for the foreseeable future.
The big picture: Wayfinder has been created to underpin Parallel Colony, but its infra will be open and can be used toward a variety of different use cases in both gaming and non-gaming contexts. For example, onchain games could use Wayfinder to spin up their own autonomous AI agents or to manage the discovery and distribution of scarce in-game resources. The protocol could be used for creating smart trading or NFT minting bots or even AI customer service agents. The possibilities ahead here are limited mainly by our imaginations, and any project interested in onchain AI capabilities should take note accordingly.
Zooming out
Personally speaking, it’s hard to explain just how bullish I am on the Parallel ecosystem, and Parallel Colony is a huge keystone in that equation. I’m an avid gamer myself across every genre really, and Colony represents new terrain as far as the AI x gaming crossroads goes. Count me in, I love the prospects of pioneering here!
And moreso than just my bare excitement, I think Colony has a sensible design that can actually be fruitful both for its gamers and the wider Parallel ecosystem. If nothing else, this is one of the biggest ongoing gaming experiments, not just in crypto but in all of gaming, and you should be tracking it accordingly. That’s the bottom line.
As a PRIME holder myself, and narratively speaking, one of the things I like about Colony is how it now exposes the Parallel ecosystem to all the dominant chains in the cryptoeconomy. The main Parallel TCG covers Ethereum and Base, Colony covers Solana, and Wayfinder covers any chain you can conceive of, from Cosmos appchains to Ethereum L2s and everything in between.
More importantly, the Wayfinder Protocol is not just an engine for Colony, but the wider crypto AI scene. Soon, projects of all stripes will be able to tap into the Wayfinder system to bring AI into their onchain processes. I believe this is going to prove a major boon to PRIME and the wider Parallel ecosystem, not to mention AI x crypto projects at large!
Action steps:
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🪰 Side quest: Mint XCOPY’s Base NFT (1 day)
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💎 Catch up on my previous roundup: Will ETH NFTs Rally?
Author bio
William M. Peaster, Senior Writer, has been with Bankless since January 2021. Immersed in Ethereum since 2017, he writes the Metaversal newsletter on the onchain frontier, covering everything from AI projects to crypto games, as the team’s lead NFT analyst. With a background in creative writing, he writes fiction and publishes art on Ethereum in his free time. He lives in Washington.
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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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