We recently ran a Facebook ad and received a question from an interested individual — what was his question?

“Am I the only one who thinks this is a pyramid scheme?”

We understand the concern, and we’re happy to answer that very legitimate question. But where does such a concern stem from? Firstly, we believe it showcases a misunderstanding of both how pyramid schemes work and how cryptocurrencies work — at least from an ideological perspective. The implementation of which, I must admit varies from ponzi-scheme to truly revolutionary.

People are wary of promises and plots that seem too good to be true, and rightfully so, but underneath that hesitation is a very real acceptance of being ripped off by big corporations and governments(not all, but many).

So when we (Costume Studios) say it’s possible to play-to-earn, some people automatically draw a hard line in the sand.

“How can I play a video game and earn money?”

They’re used to paying more and more for their beloved video games, so when they hear the reverse is possible, they think it must be a scam, right? They question themselves, secretly hoping it isn’t.

Lucky for them, it isn’t a scam! And yes, it is possible to play-to-earn. How? With Token Economics, or what we like to call a sustainable economic-loop.

In any currency driven economy, the currency naturally appreciates in value as the economic activity flourishes, and assuming there isn’t a corrupt government that is printing money — drastically devaluing the currency through inflation. Like Bitcoin, Costume Tokens and Coins have a fixed supply — which solves the inflation problem.

Now let’s talk about activity — in token economies or decentralized systems, activity fees and block rewards are given to the users who secure master-nodes in exchange for their system maintenance. User activity is what makes system maintenance necessary — you see how that works? It’s a loop, where activity-requires-work, and work-requires-activity.

We’re not a big corporation looking to only bloat ourselves with capital, rather, our aim is to create a self-sustaining system that can survive with or without us, again, like Bitcoin.

This is made possible by CPOS or Competitive Proof-of-Stake. Unlike Bitcoin, which uses PoW or Proof-of-Work, which consumes massive amounts of electricity, and is becoming more and more centralized in China, CPOS is light weight and cost effective, but additionally, it’s fair for gamers.

The CPOS Consensus model favors in-game activity and contribution, which affectively becomes a type of pay-it-forward system. This is how play-to-earn is made possible, by incentivizing community-sustaining attributes over bloat and greed. Nodes who are interested in securing higher scores, giving themselves more earning potential, are incentivized to feed a portion of their earnings back into the system, thereby creating an economic-loop.

Making it possible to Play-to-Earn.