Introduction

I have setup a goal: convince as many as possible of you to try 0XUniverse and join a growing cooperative community.

I will describe:

0xUniverse history (game foundation)

How to enjoy and break even playing 0XUniverse

Hints for new starters

Add on to base game: corps and energy introduction. More interaction

Investors in digital assests

Statistics

Rebels corporation

Some etherscan views

0xUniverse history [the foundation of the game]

0Xuniverse started as one of the few ethereum based games and gained quite a good base of players. Basically in the first period you had to:

buy planets

find planets throwing spaceships

trade planets for eth in the market

Already this apparently simple setup requires a certain capability in assessing the value of the single planets and adapt the strategy depending on the situation. The planets actually come in 4 categories depending on their rarity:

Common

Rare

Epic

Legendary

The value of the planet increase with rarity and among the single category with the composition of the resources produced. The first rows are common resources, then 2 and a half rows of rares, then 2 rows of epic ones and 2 of legendary. From top bottom they get more and more scarce.

Each planet produce three categories of the resources above.

An epic is

a pure epic if all the res are in the category in yellow

a lepic if 2 are in yellow and one in purple

Obviously the two planets will not be priced the same as the lepic is more rare and the usage of the resources more advanced. An expert player is able to assess anomalies in prices and profit from them in the market. There are plenty of guides on how to play using the market or launching the spaceships in exploration missions. I will describe some simple scenarios and reference the guides later.

Legendary

Let’s talk about legendary planets. I see them more as a perfect advertisment of the game then the real reason to join. Anyway they are so special that deserve a special section.

There are few legendary planets and the scarcity has determined very high market price for them.

Most recently found:

Note that some are legendary where the border with lepics is minimal, apart from the energy available which is bigger by a factor 10.

Currently only 6 are for sales:

Often owners are contacted off game and direct negotiations are performed. The price are indicative, but you can have an idea of the legendary planer market.

The sale of just one of them with eth at 500usd and a couple of whales in the game could lead to news in the press and quite some players willing to discover what 0Xuniverse is about. It is not unlikely to see a top legendary traded for 50-100k USD in future. I can imagine that planet Earth will reach a unique valuation.

How to play (without going in red or earning)

You can start investing few dollars: I don’t recommend the package provided to enter till the ETH has prices below the 1000 USD or they lower a bit the price unless you want to support indirectly the game (eventually you will do it after, once you see that you like the game).

What I recommend is to set up a wallet: arkane or metamask

Arkane is for less expert users (at the moment of writing arkane is the only one available for smartphones but I have heard of accounts a bit stuck, therefore I recommend Metamask)

Metamask is for for expert users (it means that you know how to buy and transfer eth … so I can imagine that all the readers will have no problems in going to metamask).

You will need to connect the wallet to the account and to send funds into it (start with the equivalent of 10-50usd to learn the game and discipline yourself).

Step: join, if you wish, with my referral link: referral link

Here a video on how to connect the metamask wallet (and much more). tutorial video

If you have watched the video (if you have not please do it) and tried it out you should have a funded account.

Time to buy some planets in the market (at the time of my writing it is the best option).

Can be done through the screen above. I have added the filters cheapest first and min pop 6000 as the population builds knowledge which is a pre requisite to research space ships.

Don’t shoot any spaceship till you do not have a decent model:

The ship in the picture is a more than acceptable level to start launching: the numbers 21 and 36 are respectively an indication of how far it can reach from the launching base and how powerful it will be in finding planets of high rarity. It is not uncommon to lose the ship (with the gas paid, the resources invested and the population on board: 450 in case of the ship in the picture). You can launch the ship from an own planet or from a rented one. Make your math depending on the prices to decide. Below a view on the galaxy. It is divided in sectors (the grid you can see) and depending on the color the probability of finding planets will be higher or low (actually depending on the amount of planets already found in the quadrant).

Selecting the missile and clicking to launch the following galaxy view will appear:

The colored sectors are the ones where the player owns planet can perform the launch (enough population). The less planets are displayed in the sector selected and in the ones around it the more likely will be to find a planet.

Here a video quite sophisticated that shows what I have described and even more: advanced video

0xUniverse: enjoy and break even

The game till now has been basically an explore the galaxy, expand and trade the main variables being:

Number of players

Eth to USD price

Cost of gas

Eventual big investor entering the game

The development team is bringing a lot of new feature through active development.

I describe now the traditional part of the game.To succed a player needs to interact (reddit and discord official channels: links here ) and understand the economical dimension of the game. The assets ‘grow’ by themselves from their discovery to the time (1/2 year later) in which they are maxed out in population and resources. The picture below shows a new planet. Population is 111 and growth rate is 48 per day. 48 time 200 will give the pop when planet is maxed out. Si, Pt and Ru are resources. The pattern is: Resource name (current availability, growth rate per day), max out at growth rate time 200.

Below I show a maxed out planet found searching for common planet and min population 8000

The resources are different but all in the common category. The rule daily growth time 200 applies: 43x200 =8600 population is maxed out and so on. Using the market window is possible to take a real time picture of the difference in price that the market asks for the same planet category new and developed. Example: search for cheapest planet common with given resources and compare with same rarity and resources maxed out (ideally also growth should be comparable)

Same maxed out (notice the criteria on the left):

The comparison, to be fair, has to be made in a conservative way. Taking into account the exchange volume (liquidity of assets) and gas price. You can assume that it is possible to sell a maxed out common at 0.003 and find the correspondent at 0.002. This means, considering gas price that a trade of commons is not convenient at the moment.

Let’s analyze it better. A player can start to think that common will become for whatever reason more relevant in future. This means that such player could think that 0.002 is a perfect bottom to buy (nobody would price it less considering gas price unless the latter really collapses) and the max out common could reach a 0.004-0.006. If this speculation is correct, factoring the gas cost in buying and selling, the player could end up in average, doubling is eth investment in few months.

An ether investor should be very satisfied of such a performance. I don’t see any way of investing ETH at higher rate just putting them in liquidity (not risk free) pools.

The scenario above is a 50% return in half year but, obviously, is purely hypotetical.

Such an approach can be taken on large scale making statistics for each subcategory. The astute reader will have already noticed that the game runs on ethereum and much more sophisticated trades could be setup. Before doing so I consider mandatory to play the game for at least one month to get knowledge of it as the pure numbers in my opinion are not enough to enforce a speculative position. Other variables have to be taken into account; in particular growth, which is directly connected with amusement in playing and an active community, eventual big investors stepping in. A player should create his own narrative, question it from time to time and try to play accordingly. Some players will just try to enjoy the game making sure not to loose money and probably adding some little profit, some will take some risk assuming speculative positions which could end up in losses. In this case it is important to clarify in advance the amount invested and stay disciplined. The main take here is that new players starting with 10-20 usd can already open a position and put themselves in a passive mode exploring the game and building connections whithout even loosing the initial investment (very likely). This game plan, by almost doing nothing, should pay back in half an year leaving the player in a break even or little gain status and with a deeper knowledge of the game. It is very unlikely to loose from the initial investment with a bit of self discipline. It is possible to set up a strategy to generate some returns in ethers terms too. It is also possible to loose money obviously and this is why I recommend to stay disciplined. Note that, the game can become quite attractive and a player could consider spending and risking the like of 10-50 USD per month a kind of normality (how many traditional game asks for much more just in exchange of the pleasure of playing and with no possibility of getting back anything?)

Some hints for new starters

If you want to give a try to the game take in mind that a lot of planets have been discovered and launching ships will be expensive. Resist the temptation at least till you have not researched a decent one. Note also that to research a spaceship you need knowledge. This depends on population and the cheapest way to have population is buying common planets. At current prices consider therefore to buy some maxed out commons.

You can start loading the metamask account with 0.1 eth and think to not put anything more for 1 months. Begin spending just 0.004 X 3 maxed out commons and buy a couple of rare (cheapest) just to have an account and start interacting.

The main channel to interact is on discord: official discord channel

Once you are setup and have understood the game u can decide if:

it is not for you. Ignore the account to find it richer in future or liquidate it

you like it. Set up a medium and long term strategy.

Take into account that the game is under strong development and is very likely that lot of new players will come in when the addons will be mature in addition to the solid base of passionate players already involved. Preparing yourself will put you in an advantage position to get economic benefit from an eventual growth scenario.

New from base game: corps and energy introduction (already implemented). More interaction

Already active are the following implemented features.

Corporations

Energy (production and market)

On going:

Energy usage

New buildings

New spaceships

New planet type: black hole

A new galaxy

Corporate wars

Corporations (corps):

You join a corporation by buying shares of it. The shares market is a new variable in game which has increased the daily trade volume. This is the corporation screen:

There are currently 5 corporation (left side of the screen). On the right the selected one characteristics are displayed. It is a very special corp as it is a kind of monopoly owned by two big players (whales; yes there are few whales in 0XUniverse). The picture below show the newest corp, rebels, to which I belong:

It is the fastest growing corp in term of territory and planets.

You can see a very different picture here. Lot of little packages of shares are for sale. Anyway the majority is in solid hands and only a little part of shares is actually traded. Price for 0.01% is atm around 0.02-0.025, biggest blocks trade, as normal, with a little discount. In some case shares are offered with a format: x% of the price not cash out by the owner but goes to corporation. This means that the seller is committed to the corp and the buyer is realistically taking a long term position as both are economically financing the corp by their trade.

Incognita: corp wars. These will come in few months and is not yet clear how will impact the game. The general opinion is that there will be a big buzz around bringing in new players. Joining a corp now is the best way to be prepared and can be a speculation to try too.

Shares in more corps: a player can buy everywhere, actually multiaccounts are also allowed (are just different accounts in the ethereum). There are plenty of players just flipping shares looking to gain on anomalies in pricing. Every opportunistic position is allowed and I have personally no problem with it: there is an economical dimension in this game and everybody is free to choose how to play with it.

If you have already joined the game (but also if you are not registered yet), you can already explore the full corp menu. From the official discord chat room, it is possible to have a view on the real time shares market:

I have copied the last transactions to give an idea of volumes and prices.

The same can be done with sales, discoveries and energy market.

Energy:

The energy market is a recent add on. Energy can be extracted only from rare, epic and legendary planets. A new building has to be built (factory) and the amount of energy is limited per planet.

The energy is off chain (a feature not managed in the ethereum) and has to be tokenized (put on chain) to be traded. Currently it has no usage but it will be an important part of the game to build war spaceships and other buildings. Being capped it should find a price and become scarce. It is interesting to observe its price evolution. It is a new component in the game dynamic. Some players with little budget could just think of trading it (if the price is reasonable enough to do it once is tokenized). Some players say that it will sink to a minimum very low, some others that the price will then grow, as the demand will explode with wars and supply will be too low. About wars, from the discord chat a sentence from a well known player and corp head:

It is already enough to think how to build your own model and play with it.

The on development features will make the game more playable and expand the economy to new dimensions. My main take is that a user base growth of 50-100% would activate a cycle, attracting some bigger investor and perhaps whales and this would boost the asset values by a meaningful factor.

The investors in digital assets

On top of pure eth investments investors are considering digital assets running on ethereum looking at a net growth of their ethers (and therefore in their view dollar one).

Among investors there are many categories:

normal players (with assets from decimals to less than 10 ethers)

some players which have built a decent asset exposure (cases in the range of 10-20 etheres are relatively common)

few which have opened big positions (over 100 ethers)

On top of them we can consider:

Case of whales

Case of market in infancy

Whales are big investors suddenly popping up for asset shopping. They can drop 100 ethers in short time and disappear for a while. The net effect is liquidity in the market and a general rise in price of the assets. In general the game is played by a solid base but ethereum games are still for a minority of gamers. Just doubling the base would have huge implications on growth.

The main take here is the potential for enormous growth.

Statistics

Dapps allows to check some statistics:

The volume shows the transit of some big whales from time to time. I expect that the innovation introduced will strongly expand the base of players.

Ranking in opensea by user base:

Good reasons to have a try

How underlined above:

Game is nice

Game is developing and increasing playability

With self-discipline the game is not costing any money and can allow some gains

Strong growth is expected

How to get some support

To get support:

Official discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/R8fwEPC

Official website: https://0xuniverse.com/how-to-play/

Rebel academy discord: public channel rebel

Selection of videos:

Configuring account and basics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPOnVRdSv0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MplZ4sL6Xuk

Advanced https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htjMbwalwtQ&t=1646s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBaTTb9uxiA (skip from 4:44 to 8:49 as not updated)



My two favourite articles to learn at start and advanced level:

https://medium.com/@BWKearns/playing-0xuniverse-on-a-shoestring-budget-d3b371e7ff99 (read when starting and bookmark)

https://medium.com/@BWKearns/shapeshifting-in-0xuniverse-7281c6fd74c2 (meaningful only after having developed one account and if you are adopting this gameplan. Useful to read anyway)

Very useful to add to your models to assess fair pricing of planets: https://medium.com/@yostari/0xu-galactic-markets-issue-5-december-22-2019-2b4ff28078b6

My corporation (Rebels): dynamic of share prices.

I have joined the Rebels corp. It is an extremely dynamic team with a good group of connected players. The head has passion for the game and is setting up a strategy to make it better for everybody. We have a partial common view on the need of advertise the platform so that lot of new players will come to add to the already solid base.

Rebels is expanding very fast and in less than 1 month from its birth has put together a good amount of planets (over 1000) and boasts an impressive growth rate, by far superior to all the other corps.

The expectation is that the share value could continue to grow to eventually reach a level comparable to the current library corp shareprice (Library is the second corp in game): a x3 factor over current price.

What is very important is that shares should be backed up by asset growth and I do not see many other corps growing at that speed. Such assets, loaded from the corp will not only increase the share value but also make the supply of assets lower with a growing demand with great reward for the most committed player in the game.

I can imagine a scenario in which some speculators who have only bought shares can profit from the growth of corps with Rebels being in a top position. In parallel I see the asset holder getting more and more from their trades.

New players reached a certain level of space ships will be able to grow through exploration and wise usage of the market.

Main take: active corp shares rising. Rebels are particularly valuable. Asset collateralization of shares. Demand offer of assets in game shifting towards demand and price dinamic favorable to big holders.

Consequences of running in ethereum

0XUniverse runs on the ethereum blockchain with some oracle call and few off/on chain features

We can then take for granted that:

Ethereum is a very well known blockchain.

The ERC-XXX tokens are fullfilling very well known contracts.

The code of smart contracts can be examined and understood

The distributed ledger is easily accessible without the need of running a node. It is possible to use third party services like etherscan https://etherscan.io . This allows everybody to verify the transactions and what is happeining without the curtains.

. This allows everybody to verify the transactions and what is happeining without the curtains. The tokens issued on ethereum can be traded at cost of gas.

It is possible to trade in chain without the usage of an exchange or with an intermediate layer like for example opensea or developing one alone.

All the existing contracts can be searched and analyzed on the ethereum.

https://0xuniverse.com/presskit/ the previous link has a list of all the contracts. I will give a look at the most common asset: planets.

https://etherscan.io/address/0x06a6a7af298129e3a2ab396c9c06f91d3c54aba8

What do do now if you want to give it a try

Join (if you wish) with my still unapproved referral link: referral link