PlanetQuest Whitepaper: concerns and early answers
The WP is out and it raises some concerns as far as I am able to interpret it. In this piece I want to bring to light why I am concerned and take away key notes but also offer some insight on these issues directly from RetroBooster him self.
With the release of the Whitepaper and the ambiguous yet broad for interpretation wording, the sentiment amongst many, including me, was wary, borderline to the feeling of disappointment. To be honest and transparent, as I am part of the community and therefore will always take the side of the community without being afraid to call out the developers and the Universal Council, I threw a fit in the moderator chat on discord, thinking that this fit would be the end for me in PlanetQuest, to my surprise, only to be met with some answers through a pleasant conversation with Loren, the main man behind the project.
Even though the whitepaper does say that it is not concentrating on the technical aspects of the project, which for me in it self is rather disappointing, I do understand that as far as investors and the main backers concerned, a full whitepaper could jeopardize the integrity of the project at this early stage. However, I do hope that the wider public, and especially the community which I proclaim as being the backbone, the spine of this project, will eventually get to see the “corporate” whitepaper, including a roadmap and most importantly a clear and detailed review of PlanetQuest tokenomics.
Clear tokenomics are vital for a project of this scale, and to be fair I would prefer to know the mentioned but never explained deflationary mechanisms the team plans to implement for a stable ecosystem, before the first sale, apparently planned to happen in a few weeks time. Even though they do mention, quite a few times, that they will regulate the flow of PQX, the whole ordeal of this is the vesting period, and contradictory sentiment when deflation is mentioned in the WP, as for example a few of the notes underneath the distribution graphs, without giving any explanation as to which TGE they are implying to.
Lets speculate a bit since we don't have any clarity about PQX so far.
“In-game earnings bring in by far the largest amount of PQX. Which is highly valuable to both other players and asset owners, such as planet owners, who need access to a sizeable supply of PQX to activate artifacts and upgrade their planets. This allows successful players to make a pretty penny by taking their earnings to the market.”
That statement is just even more confusing if you look at this excerpt from the whitepaper.
Why is the player getting only 50% from the 100% of the price when purchasing? Does that mean that the seller does not get a full amount of the listed price? I understand that when constructing, the 50% of the 100% vested goes to the company, I am guessing the team plans to have a roll-around token, but wouldn't it be better to have no cap on PQX but instead have specific burn mechanisms in place?
“All assets in PlanetQuest come with a both an inflationary and deflationary mechanic, which ensures there is ways to meet excess demand, as well as ways to deal with excess supply in such a way that even when these fluctuations occur, the economic system will rapidly rebalance itself.”
I just cant see it clearly yet, there are a lot of this little things that could use a lot of explaining, and it would be advisable to release tokenomics before any sale, specifically since we don't even know who will have access to the private sale and pre-public token sale. My guess, investors or even Guilds as YGG, Merit Circle and others will have access to the private sale while certain community members to the pre-public sale, yet again very confusing to say the least.
Its fine, I do not want to argue about semantics with the developers and decimate the whitepaper on every point but hopefully a detailed and clear plan will be given to us soon enough. What concerns me the most is how the planet sale and guild sale will be handled. I raised the question of market control by big actors, never mind the tier 1 investors, who we are yet to know, but I am talking about players such as this big Guilds that want to have a finger in every GameFi project and which could jump out as quickly as they joined. Yes, there is a vested period for PQX and that minimizes the risks considerably, but their control of the secondary market could mean that new players will be forced to fall under their control as to be able to play with progression and dividends in mind. If a player joins and borrows the gear on the market as to progress, that player will be forced to oblige by the pricing set out by the controlling actors such as these huge Guilds holding the power through in-game houses, corporations and coalitions. If the ecosystem is to fall under the control of big actors rather then being dictated by the community through a free-market there will always be a form of disbalance in the ecosystem.
Apparently this has been already thought off, some through solutions while some through acknowledgment that if this huge actors will somehow misuse the ecosystem, the player base will dwindle, and even though that is disheartening to hear, I love the honesty. I am sorry that I bring forth some of the things from my discussion with Retro without asking first as the discussion was in confidentiality but I believe in transparency and this is something the community will love to see and actually needs to see:
“At the scale we’ll operate at, any one individual guild will be only a small part of the player base and if demand is anything like we expect, regular community members will actually end up holding the majority of guild NFTs”
“Rest assured our design is very much focussed on being resilient and offering great experiences to players irrespective of the behaviour of asset owners.”
“Yeah, the earnings model is actually such that the total population of players earns quite a bit more than all the asset owners combined. Which makes for a healthy situation. While still ensuring great earnings for asset owners.”
“In the end the players playing, spending or earning etc. is what drives the game and ensures that asset owners can make a healthy return in the long term. So the game itself should cater to its population, if it does, the asset owners win too.”
“Asset owners being allowed to be too greedy for example, means players might move to fairer games.”
A few quotes from our discussion that I believe you guys needed to see as reassurance after the WP drop. This sentiment from the main force behind the project gives hope that the average Joe is still the primary focus of this game.
I wish that we could touch a bit more on DAO’s by the community, but that will be another topic as certain things cant be rushed even though I might have some information.
I know that you guys might think that I am shilling this project and going soft on certain things, not fully evaluating this WP for example, I just don't think there is anything to evaluate or review, but only pointing out concerns and possible failures will not help the project we came to love. The developers are fully aware of the issues raised and they will bring in to the light solutions and argument their case in due time, respond and answer to anything that concerns us all.
I promise you that I will always stand amongst this community, and will always be amongst the first to question the developers and raise questions that we all have, I believe we are the backbone of this project and I know that the core team understands that in every meaning of that statement.
Everything in due time.
Best regards, Danny.
