In February 2023, under the popularity of Treasure DAO, Trident DAO also rapidly sparked a frenzy in the Arbitrum ecosystem. Its native token PSI, after public fundraising, increased by 400% in three days, becoming a standout in the market. However, its price has now fallen to 0.018, a decline of 99.75%. From its rapid rise to sudden decline, how should we view Trident DAO and its innovation in game mechanics?

What is Trident DAO?

Trident plans to develop three main products: Trident MMO, Trident Sprite Duels, and a decentralized exchange, OasisSwap.

Trident MMO is a procedurally generated infinite universe where players can explore the world, collect resources (which drop upon death), poach animals, battle bosses, engage in PvP, and undertake various bounty missions.

Source: Official website screenshot

Trident Sprite Duels is a turn-based PK game (similar to Pokémon) where players can strategically arrange three “sprites” with different attributes (strength, accuracy, effect, recoil) for online duels against other players. Besides these two official games, Trident also offers a trial window, Legacy Trident, on its website for interested players to practice. Trident’s third main product, OasisSwap, is both an open DEX based on Arbitrum and an in-game DEX for Trident games.

The Chinese translation of Trident is “Trident,” the weapon of Poseidon in Greek mythology. Poseidon could control the entire ocean by merely waving his trident. This symbolizes Trident’s ambition to break the shackles of traditional GameFi.

Trident is developed by Geyser Forge Studios, a team that operates anonymously. The founder, monolith (@0xMonolith on Twitter), oversees Trident’s art, development, and operations. The other co-founder and CTO, BrocDev (@BrocDev on Twitter), handles the development of the blockchain game.

Source: Official website screenshot

How Does Trident DAO Work?

Trident DAO’s most notable feature is its innovative GameFi approach—Risk to Earn. Traditional Play to Earn games have a significant issue. To continually motivate players, they must constantly increase the supply of assets (tokens), which dilutes their value. To maintain stable prices, a continuously growing player base is needed to balance supply and demand. Once growth stagnates, the economic system can easily spiral into decline, leading to the rapid rise and fall of many GameFi projects.

In Trident’s Risk to Earn model, the mechanism to reward (victorious) players is no longer dependent on continuous supply growth but is based on the outcome between players, with winners earning from losers. This means the economic system will not continuously inflate. In fact, due to Trident’s in-game tax and burn mechanisms, PSI will tend to contract.

In other words, under the Risk-to-earn mechanism, the game’s economic system becomes a zero-sum game. In battles, players must bet (primarily in Sprite Duels), with the winner taking the “bounty” from the loser. As the game progresses, the “bounty” keeps circulating among players, but its total amount never increases.

Source: Official website screenshot

To involve fewer combat-skilled players, Trident also supports spectator betting. Players can bet on more skilled “big shots” in matches. Winners share a portion of the profits, while the “big shots” take a fee, increasing their “bounty,” motivating them to further improve their skills and showcase their strength.

After each battle, Trident’s treasury takes a fee, reinvesting it in project development and operation. Trident believes the Risk to Earn model will not only contribute to its sustainable development but also become a new trend in the GameFi field, providing players with more gaming motivation.

Trident DAO Game Introduction

Sprite Duels is a Pokémon-like pet battle mini-game where players choose and arrange 3 pets from 15 types to battle against another player’s 3 pets. Each pet has unique combat stats (like attack, defense, speed) and four selectable actions. Players take turns choosing actions until a pet’s health is depleted, then the game switches to the next pet. The player with the last surviving pet wins.

Source: Official website game screenshot

Trial of the Trident is a practice mode in Trident, where newcomers can enhance their gaming skills. Players need to dodge the Sea Monster BOSS’s attacks of crystal rain and magma, and decrease its health by attacking until it is defeated. After defeating the Sea Monster, players unlock more gameplay features. Although players have four lives, some in the community have reported the difficulty of defeating the Sea Monster in this mode to be quite high.

NFT Pseudo-Krakens are the first NFT series in Trident, with a limited supply of 3,000, initially minted at a price of 0.03 ETH. The current minimum price of these NFTs is nearly 0.28 ETH. Players owning this series of NFTs will gain cosmetic options in the game, and holding the NFT grants the right to vote on future game decisions in Trident, with each NFT representing one vote.

Account badges offer unique opportunities for Trident’s loyal fans and partner communities, such as access to in-game equipment, exclusive mini-game eligibility, and limited edition skins. The badges released so far include We’re So Early, Sprite Duelist, Kraken Killer, DegenScore Degenerate, and CryptoPunk Bourgeoisie.

PSI Token Model

PSI is the in-game utility token of Trident MMO. PSI is used for trading items in-game and supports the game’s R2E (Reward-to-Earn) reward mechanism.

The PSI token was initially created on the Harmony One mainnet and later migrated to Arbitrum. The 10,228,512 tokens from the Harmony mainnet were transferred to holders on the Arbitrum mainnet after the migration.

PSI Supply Allocation

• Team: The team owns 26.7% of the PSI supply, already attributed, with the following schedule: a 6-month lock-up period, 20 months of linear release, and 10% immediately available.
• Treasury: The Treasury owns 21.16% of the PSI supply, unattributed, with immediate access. This figure was initially 24% but was later reduced to keep the PSI supply at a more moderate level.

The remaining allocation is not very detailed.

Overall, PSI only had a public offering, with no VC (Venture Capital) investment. This approach ties the project’s development more closely to the community, but the lack of VC support also means fewer resources and financial backing.

Significant Milestones in Trident DAO’s Development

The project’s official roadmap includes the following milestones:

In reality, the project is almost at a standstill, with only inconsequential updates and no substantial progress. The project’s social media is still active, but the number of followers on their Discord account has plummeted from over 6,000 to just over a thousand in the past six months. Moreover, the majority of their Twitter posts are retweets. The current state of the project’s development is concerning, and the roadmap outlined on their official website seems increasingly unattainable.

Source: Nansen Official Tweet

Early this year, some large-scale participants in TridentDAO’s public offering began to sell PSI. Following the initial ARB distribution to its ecological DAO by Arbitrum on April 25th, the official Trident team sold all their allocated 257,540 ARB tokens (worth approximately $334,000), converting them into ETH and USDC. Many investors, including officials, seem to have mostly exited with profits.

Is Trident DAO a good investment?

The popularity of Trident DAO stems both from its innovative “Risk to Earn” model and the surge in Arbitrum’s ecosystem in the first quarter of this year, which spilled over to the project. The “Risk to Earn” model undoubtedly helps delay token selling pressure, increases consumption, and fosters better circulation within the ecosystem. However, a model is just a part of the overall design. The actual operation of the game requires the team to continually refine product details and user experience, which are composed of various elements. Evidently, the subsequent development of the project and game development did not keep pace. Ultimately, Trident DAO can be considered a failure, but its novel approach has left a valuable legacy for the development of GameFi.