Loot, Rarity and the Power of Developers
*Disclaimer: this is not financial advice and should not be viewed as recommendations to buy or sell any asset, this is purely educational and the information below is solely my opinion, please do your own research and develop your own conviction*
Usually when people talk about crypto, they focus on the opportunities to make money, the volatility or the Ponzi schemes and rug pulls that they use to denigrate the entire sector. But crypto is one of the most amazing thought experiments in modern history.
Some of the best thinkers and innovators have come together to create really awesome products that people have been able to leverage into crazy opportunities. I’ve spoken about yield farming in the past, which is a wild ride to take your money, compound it and build new opportunities with it, but the focus of this article is going to revolve around two phenomenons that are laying the groundwork and foundation to a revolutionary experience for NFTs and gaming, Loot and Rarity.
Loot and Rarity are the result of two legendary developers deciding to start something special and give complete creative control to communities of people that share like minded interests and values.
Loot
If you’ve been following NFTs and crypto pretty closely, you’ve probably heard of Loot by now. Plenty of other publications have talked about it and discussed the potential merits of its existence.
Whereas projects are typically built top down, Loot functions as an open source idea for developers to build on top of from a bottom up perspective. Basically, Loot is just a series of words that can be used as items in a game. Those words have no attachment to anything, they don’t have an image or any front end of any sort linked to them, they are just words that represent a bigger idea that you, the developer, can interpret and have fun with.
Developers have the ability to take those items and assign meaning to them, dictating their purpose for existence and utility and create a world around them in a way that is liberating and creatively encouraging. It’s a pretty wild thing to think about and a completely open source, community sourced concept that folks can endorse and embrace.
People have wondered and discussed what the world can be surrounding Loot, whether it will be items that can be ported over to other networks or used in other games, or staked and loaned out to create other opportunities, and it’s a great example in the one thing that makes crypto this amazing, beautiful, land grabbing opportunity for the world of creators.
Loot is a representation of the selflessness and community aspect that has led to crypto’s meteoric rise into mainstream culture. People are coming together to create and utilize this simple list of words to build an empire that others can fall in love with and occupy their time playing.
This concept has also become pretty prevalent in a different realm, thanks to another legendary developer, Andre Cronje.
Rarity
Rarity is an open sourced RPG game on the Fantom network that is being completely built out and developed by a random community of developers who are taking its shell and turning it into a Dungeon & Dragons like metaverse of sorts.
Users can mint summoners, which are just characters, and assign them to various quests and dungeons once a day. This is a project that has been developing consistently thanks to the community of developers who are obsessed with having fun playing RPG games with new features and front ends being added each time the community gets together to accept a proposal as beneficial for the selfless vision that Cronje laid out.
What once was just a place to press the adventure and dungeon button has now blossomed into a game that lets users assign names, craft items, weapons and armor, slay monsters, and participate in lending protocols. The game is ever evolving with new front ends being added with new features showing up throughout the week, keeping up with its Discord has honestly become a job in itself.
At some point, users may be able to monetize their efforts by leveling up their summoners, farming crafting materials, creating items and providing value for other players, but it doesn’t seem like those who are in this community are here to make money or possess any selfish motives. Folks are looking for the best way to engage each other, create an open sourced RPG game that gives them a nostalgic throwback to their youth when they used to spend hours creating lore and fawning over their Dungeons & Dragons boards.
Developers
The world of crypto has been made entirely by people who sit behind a computer, interacting with lines of code each day. Whether it’s the white hat trying to break smart contracts for bounties, the black hat who is looking to take advantage of exploits for selfish gain, or the anonymous devs looking to create an awesome project that benefits the world and allows people to live off the grid, crypto is the culmination of human nature meeting its most liberating form.
Loot and Rarity may cease to exist in a few years, developers may lose interest and abandon both projects, but along the way, we will have seen communities of people come together and develop new friendships and bonds cultivated because of the internet, because of lines of code.
Developers are the key to this industry, and quite frankly, they are the key to the next stage of human life as we head further and further into the metaverse, blending ourselves into our digital version. Crypto may seem like a cheap and easy way to make money for some, and a confusing scam for others, but the reality of it is really simple, crypto is a place for communities to develop, for people to come together because of developers utilizing their ability and power to create amazing opportunities for the world.
This may not have been a thrilling article for you if you were looking for some financial alpha to take advantage of, but to me, these two projects embody everything I love about this industry and it was worth writing about from that regard.
If you are lost or confused by anything, or just intrigued, jump down the rabbit hole and begin exploring the other side of crypto, the one beyond coins and JPEGs and see what is going on beneath the surface, where a series of hobbits living in Middle Earth are crafting the next chapter of our lives.