In this coin report, we highlight the workings of our partner Merit Circle, a decentralized entity that is seeking to revolutionize the crypto gaming scene. With a treasury north of $200M+, their DAO channels their funds into their investment portfolio and bets big via their own network – Beam. How are they doing this exactly? Well, let’s take a look at their magic.
The Merit Circle DAO pioneers a digital ecosystem designed by a global community that aims to redefine the future of gaming. With years of expertise and a strong foothold in the web3 domain, the ‘circle of merit’ is dedicated to investing in the space and eyes to become the household name in Web3 Gaming.
The Merit Circle DAO is an ever-evolving digital ecosystem built by a global community to ensure the future of gaming.
The utilization of their own sovereign network will enable true ownership for users, and will allow the collective, rather than solely developers, to own their ‘weight’ in the next generation of games. A paradigm shift that could bring a transformation to the way effort and skills convert into tangible ownership.
Merit Circle Opening up Game economies
The vision for the project was founded in 2020 and was incubated by Flow Ventures. Quickly the team behind Merit Circle formed and ranged from gaming and cryptocurrency experts.
With the founder of the project and Chief Growth Officer Marco van den Heuvel, who previously worked for Presearch and other blockchain projects, up front, Tommy Quite as the CFO and who is also the Co-founder of Flow Ventures, and Mark Borsten as the COO that has experience in the finance industry.
This review of Merit Circle – BEAM was created for informational purposes. This article is not intended for promotion.
To do this, Merit Circle has launched their own sovereign network, Beam. Which started as an open-source blockchain subnet on Avalanche that is engineered for the gaming universe and stands as an ecosystem within game development while lifting the player’s experience.
It’s important to note that the Beam tech stack is chain agnostic, which allows it to potentially be implemented on any blockchain where gaming is popular. An agile approach that is exemplified by their first step towards expansion: the collaboration with Immutable ZKevm.
Beam is not just a set of tools for gamers and developers; it is a vision that seeks to permeate through various gaming communities and studios.
With this network, Merit Circle aims to open up limitless potential to transform games into something much greater, where gaming becomes not only a lifestyle, which it is for many already, but a way to earn an income and own what value you put into it.
The ecosystem exists out of more than an open source blockchain specialized for gaming. It has other important sectors that each simplify the complexities of game development and enhance the gaming experience.
The current suite of products is currently as follows:
The Beam companion app is a gaming buddy that lets gamers take control of their in-game assets and send them to friends seamlessly, with a limited number of games currently live that can be found there.
It is especially designed for gamers on the Beam network, letting them keep track of their gaming assets and statistics. Potentially interesting as you will earn while gaming in future game launches done via the Beam network. This Beam companion app can be downloaded via IOS; Android.
The NFT marketplace for gaming assets can be found in the sphere, not to be confused with the Las Vegas sphere, but more of a digital market that deserves as much attention as the one in Vegas. Here you can buy or sell your collections which could be customizations and skins of the games running on Beam. For example, Forgotten Playland boxes or customizations can be found in the Sphere.
Given the collaboration of Merit Circle with Immutable and Polygon, they support the Immutable zkEVM (ZeroKnowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine), built specially for gaming, and a way to index every single collection on that network.
Next, we have the Beam hub. If you want to explore games and don’t know where to start, then the Beam hub is the perfect place to discover new games and even take part in web3 campaigns.
This is the place where you can complete a list of quests and earn points, while you are at it. With these points, you are eligible for the rewards set out by the projects that host their campaign on Beam. You can create an account via this link.
The Gaming Academy is an educational initiative within Beam Hub, designed to empower gamers by providing them with the knowledge and tools to enhance their gaming skills.
BeamOS is the operating system and starting point for Beam. Meaning whenever significant updates are live for any game, they become visible on the OS. So anyone can see the newly added products and developers can use the Beam SDK (Software Development Kit) as a starting point to launch their games.
Merit Circle DAO has established partnerships with prominent names in our industry, such as well-established companies like LayerZero, Immutable and Polygon for interoperability solutions and scalable infrastructure providing. Crypto-native firms or funds show their deep entrenchment in the crypto Industry. These will probably not be their only ones, going into the future, as they are bound to scale.
Merit Circle, crypto-native that it is, is run by the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which means Merit Circle is governed in a decentralized manner by its community of token holders.
This means that core decisions are made by the community who uses the BEAM token to cast their votes on potential outcomes on proposals that could be made by anyone via their governance forums.
On these forums, the proposals will be determined on Snapshot, the DAO’s preferred voting platform.
There are two main categories of governance proposals:
Once a proposal has been discussed and meets the necessary criteria, it moves to the voting stage. A proposal needs at least 25% of poll votes in favor at the end of the discussion period to proceed.
If a proposal is approved in the voting phase, the decision will be implemented if it is enforceable on-chain. If the decision cannot be enforced on-chain, it remains non-binding and serves primarily for sentiment signaling purposes.
The investment vertical of Merit Circle manages the DAO’s treasury, and focuses on venture, token, equity, and NFT investments to ensure long-term, risk-adjusted returns. It seeks to grow the treasury while maintaining transparency, operational efficiency, and capital efficiency.
This is done all on-chain and is kept published in their quarterly treasury management updates, where they report on their strategic asset liquidation.
As seen in the Treasury Report, Merit Circle has a strategic and symbiotic relationship with Aethir, having invested significantly in it (a position of staked ATH, locked ATH, and Aethir Nodes), thereby facilitating integration with the Beam gaming ecosystem to distribute cloud computing.
This investment not only benefits Aethir by expanding its operational scope and user base but also enhances the Beam ecosystem by providing its developers with essential computing resources. An in-depth analysis of Aethir can be found here.
They have also invested heavily and contributed to the incubation of Sophon, a Modular Rollup utilizing zkSync technology that focuses on providing logistics for high-throughput applications like AI and gaming. An in-depth analysis can be found here.
Additionally, Sophon has sold 123,554 nodes, gathering over 20,000 in ETH. Concluding the node sale, Sophon has opened the farming portal, which allows anyone to deposit a wide variety of assets to earn SP (Sophon Points). To date, over 220M in TVL has been committed.
Forgotten Playland, the own game of Merit Circle and incubated by major stakeholders in the gaming industry, has also received the deserved attention and funds, as they geared up for a comprehensive launch that includes new token utilities for FP. With a funding position of $5,546,275, the project is set to capture significant attention towards the end of the year. A complete analysis of Forgotten Playland can be found here.
Quick note, Merit Circle also has its own unique NFT collection, Edenhorde, that is a vertically integrated gaming DAO. It is not a subsidiary but a core part of Merit Circle. With plans to create a maximum of 8,800 NFTs, excluding future collections and spin-offs, Edenhorde offers an innovative approach to collective world-building and intellectual property development within Web3.
The BEAM token is the lifeblood of the Beam network. It operates as the essential crypto asset that users need to interact with the many features offered by Beam.
Fundamentally, $BEAM is used for the following purposes:
The BEAM token is available on multiple blockchain networks to improve accessibility for users. The native token contract addresses are:
This multi-chain approach makes the BEAM token more accessible by being available on networks with different features and fees. The various contract addresses allow BEAM to be used by chain evangelists and users who prefer particular networks.
Initially, the total supply was set at 1 billion $MC tokens. However, this number has decreased since the token generation event and continues to change. Here’s how the tokens were originally distributed:
After the MIP-28 and MIP-29 passing, all MC tokens are migrated to the BEAM token with a 1:100 conversion ratio. The only way to receive BEAM is by either acquiring or migrating MC tokens.
At this time there are no intentions of Merit Circle for airdropping Beam. This is because there are mainly three reasons why it was not proposed:
Merit Circle wants and (is probably) going to be the big player in the GameFi world or the now small but keeps getting bigger Web3 gaming space. It doesn’t want to be a cog in the system, it wants to be the wheel.
The Merit Circle DAO, with its own Beam network, could mature to an industry giant. With a treasury that will run for decades and at this level of management will be getting into the billions in the next 5 years, it would be understandable to expect the project to succeed.
By putting several eggs in different baskets all spread out in the gaming niche of web3, we can see that the players and developers are using Beam and Merit Circle. They are not just building games; they could be crafting the future of interactive entertainment.
As a partner we don’t only hope they will succeed but are invested (mentally) in their success. Let’s all cheer for Merit Circle.
There are a few main ways community members can get involved with Merit Circle:
Merit Circle is a forward-thinking decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that is creating the next generation of gaming and earning. But with its own sovereign blockchain, Beam, a more than substantial treasury, successful strategic investments, and a suite of developer and player-focused products, Merit Circle is well-positioned to become a major player in the decentralized gaming space.
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