The District Monthly — June 2023
News and updates from the district0x Network
It’s that time of the month again! We‘re back with the latest updates from our developers, a look at the game system and future plans of our community game Aqua Prime, as well as some curated reads about the most important developments in web3!
TL;DR of what we will cover this month:
- Spotlight: All of DeFi on LSDs.
- Aqua Prime: Gameplay and Future Plans
- Latest DappStream Episodes
- This month’s Dev Updates
If you missed the last update, check it out here.
Don’t forget, we’re still hiring! We continue growing our bullpen of developers in 2023 to build out the tools of the future! If you have any experience developing smart contracts or web3 dApps, please email talent@district0x.io with a resume and an overview of your experience. We’d love to have you on board!
Now, let’s dive right in!
Spotlight: A fundamental paradigm shift is coming: All of DeFi on LSDs. — by Henri.M
LSDfi is the hottest thing in crypto since NFTs. Is it ushering in a sustainable growth model for DeFi? In our latest Spotlight article, let’s explore the current state of liquid staking derivatives.
LSD’s (or LST’s as some prefer to call them) are a type of financial instrument that allows users to earn staking rewards on their staked cryptocurrency holdings without having to lock them up. The idle liquidity is simply derived into a new token: stETH (‘stakedETH’). This makes it possible for users to participate in staking while still maintaining access to their funds, and being able to trade in and out of their position on the liquid markets of these derivatives.
The idea of liquid staking derivatives was first proposed in 2016 by Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum. Buterin argued that liquid staking would make it possible for users to participate in staking without having to lock up their funds.
Liquid staking derivatives bring a number of benefits to DeFi, and lead to it’s growth. Growth in TVL, growth in users, volume, and applications. LSDs are a catalyst for all of crypto. When looking more closely, we can observe growth in the LSD space in a number of areas, where the benefits are most impactful…
Want to learn more about LSDs? Read the full article: A fundamental paradigm shift is coming: All of DeFi on LSDs.
Aqua Prime: Gameplay and Future Plans
Bringing Crypto to the Masses
Aqua Prime is a tabletop RPG-inspired game played across Web3, Discord, and other social platforms. This is a proof of concept for a Minimum Viable Metaverse. The story revolves around characters who are newly sentient NFTs that have just realized they are part of an NFT “rug pull” scam project called “Tide Pool Platypus.” It is a satirical take on the numerous clones of 10k PFP projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Moon Birds, and Pudgy Penguins.
Gameplay
Players assume the roles of various NFTs in the game world and defend themselves from corrupting memes using popular AI-enabled memes. The game is primarily played in Discord, where players interact with AI bots and engage in role-playing activities. The integration with Twitch adds an optional interactive element, allowing viewers to act as pseudo Game Masters alongside the streamer, using Twitch Channel Points and engagement to influence the game world. However, the game is fully playable in Discord without this feature.
In Aqua Prime, players’ actions and decisions shape the narrative, creating a unique blend of role-playing and strategy. The game is loosely based on tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) such as Dungeons & Dragons, but with simplified mechanics. It features a virtual economy, NFT rewards, avatars, roles, achievements, and NFT-based keys to unlock various in-game features. Players can own planets and stores, earning passive in-game income. NFT-based roles provide access to salaries and income opportunities. The game also incorporates AI-based narrative and storytelling triggered and governed by Twitch viewers. Players can discover magical items that unlock hidden quests, features, Web3 rewards, and more. The game includes a dice system for randomization in encounters and role-play situations.
Future Plans
In addition to Aqua Prime, we have a dedicated team of developers working on several exciting projects, including the new crowdfunding and grants tool Stream Tide, which will help creators fund their projects and connect with their audience. And finally, we are continuing the development of Meme Factory, an online platform that will allow users to create and share meme NFTs with others.
We have a talented team of developers working hard on each of these projects, and we are always open to feedback and suggestions from our users. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to sharing more updates with you in the future.
Disclaimer: Aqua Prime’s story generation utilizes AI, which may provide untrue or misleading content. Players should take this into consideration when interacting with the game’s story and characters. We carefully curate our community and contributors, and prioritize user security and safety to prevent any harmful experiences. However, since the content is generated, players should remain aware of this fact.
We’ve built Aqua Prime on a public Replit-hosted instance of the bot, which means it can be freely forked by anyone. You can check out the code here: https://replit.com/@StreamTide/Aqua-Prime-or-GPT3-Testing#index.js.
We encourage everyone to contribute to the development of Aqua Prime. Anyone can add features, integrate their own favorite NFTs, and even earn bounties for contributing to the code.
Some players have already earned NFTs and become “owners” of the in-game Meme Factory and its in-game store. New players can also earn NFTs by joining the chat and using their creativity to negotiate with NPCs and game characters. One of our community members, GraspOnCrypto, held an NPC captive with a ransom and talked them out of a Meme Factory Medallion NFT, which gave them part-ownership over all in-game sales from the Meme Factory. Others have earned the ‘License to steal NFT’ and joined the thieves guild giving them access to the criminal side of the game economy.
We will continue to build out Aqua Prime and reward our most engaged community members with StreamTide & Meme Factory NFTs, memberships, and other perks, so stay tuned!
In this month’s DappStream episodes, your favorite host Brady McKenna is preparing StreamTide for its imminent launch and sharing the ins and outs along the way, as well as keeping you updated on the latest crypto news and market trends:
You can also dive back into previous episodes on our Youtube Channel. 📺
A quick reminder that our DappStream schedule is once a week, focusing on quality over quantity:
- Tuesdays at 5 PM PT (Wednesdays at 2 AM UTC)
Monthly Dev Updates
Ethlance
This month our developers executed various implementations on Ethlance, considerably improving the dApp and getting it ready for beta-testing:
- Implemented automatic sign-in pop-up when switching wallets
- Enabling/disabling UI features based on logged-in user role
- Implemented automatic fetch & store token info on job creation
- Refactored Ethlance specific graphql code to district.ui.graphql
- Implemented a My Activity page that lists jobs, proposals and disputes in different states for the 3 user types (candidate, employer, arbiter)
- Enabled accepting proposals (for Employer) and accepting invitations (for Candidate)
- Implemented Invoice details page and paying invoices
- Finished Candidate and Arbiter search pages and added more filters (̣number of feedbacks, min/max hourly rate)
- Added pagination to all sections and tabs on My Activity page: Employer/Candidate/Arbiter — Jobs/Contracts/Invoices/Disputes
That should conclude the implementation of all the currently existing pages covering current functionalities:
- Registration & login
- Job creation & search
- Inviting & accepting candidates
- Creating & accepting proposals
- Messaging between participants (employer, candidate, arbiter)
- Invoice creation & payment
- Dispute creation & resolution
Next steps for Ethlance include testing, integrating with L2, fixing any errors found, and preparing for beta testing deployment.
StreamTide
This month we’ve made considerable progress on StreamTide as we are approaching the platform’s launch, including some much needed UI polishes and improved mobile support.
Furthermore:
- We’ve integrated the contract events with the server-side implementation. While doing that we’ve identified some improvements for the contract to make future integrations easier and more robust
- Implemented functionality to allow accepting or denying multiple grants at once
- Made improvements on Authentication: 1. Introduced OTP (One-Time Password) for login (this prevents impersonation in case of stolen tokens), and added expire time to the JWT Token used to keep “sessions”
- Removed private information from HTTP Requests logs
- Enabled blacklisting users directly in the smart contract
- Added pop-up notifications to show relevant messages, such as error messages, or notifying users when a tx successfully went trough, etc.
- Reworked the UI layout to improve users’ content presentation
- Improved external content embedding: adding audio and other content types, i.e. to support embedding Spotify music
- Other minor UI improvements
Transparency is a core value of district0x. You can find up-to-date disclosures on our overall progress in our GitHub Repository: https://github.com/district0x
District Proposals
Take these opportunities to earn more DNT and vote to either keep or get rid of the challenged districts. If you are on the winning side of the challenge, you will earn DNT from the Token-Curated Registry’s built-in incentives.
For more information on how proposals are now being migrated, please check out the District Proposal Rewards topic in this article.
Joining the district0x DAO
For more information about the district0x network,
• Head to our Onboarding Terminal for all links at a glance
• Check out our Education Portal for all things #web3
• Join the official Discord server or Telegram channel
• Watch the DappStream live or on our Youtube Channel
• Subscribe to email updates or to our Subreddit forum
