The Balthazar team has been working hard on developing technology, expanding the team and global network, and launching new projects. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve been up to:

The Balthazar Launchpad

The Balthazar Launchpad lights were successfully switched on as a new revenue stream, after recording our first commercial partnerships. The first game to join the Balthazar Launchpad was MetaShooter with an Initial NFT Offering (INO) of 500 Mystery Boxes, each worth up to US$3,380.

The second partnership for the Balthazar Launchpad is with arguably the best Web3 fighting game, Kenkado. It’s one of the largest play-to-earn games in Japan and Balthazar will be its western partner, which is part of a multi-game deal.

There are currently 60 NFT games lined up to join the Balthazar Launchpad, Including a few we’re particularly excited about including NFT11, The Harvest, Sky Frontier and ARPC. Each INO is typically worth between $10-20,000 USD to the DAO.

With respect to token utility and how the DAO will tie into the product, staking will be a key part of the Balthazar launchpad. It will unlock opportunities for exclusive access and other special offers. As more games join the Balthazar Launchpad, it will attract more users and more opportunities for people to buy NFT game assets, which will in turn create more value for token holders.

This is an exciting project to help game developers launch their games into the Balthazar community. If you have a game project and interested in the Launchpad, click here to apply.

NFT.NYC

Some of the Balthazar team represented at NFT.NYC conference in New York. It was a fantastic opportunity to get the Balthazar brand out in the community. We made connections within the industry, we met and discussed a potential partnership with Warner Music Group, and learnt a lot about the biggest problems and pain points that game developers face.

Balthazar Game Score

We’ve launched the most comprehensive scoring system for NFT gafmes in an effort to help create transparency and validity in the NFT gaming space. We have started with 10 pre-released games and Parallel scored the highest with a near perfect 9.5.

The Balthazar Game Score is an exciting development for NFT gaming because it will help to sift through more than 1,400 games in the space. Our Alpha team led by Nicholas Korsgård has created an incredibly helpful resource for the industry that will not only help developers create better games but also help gamers choose where to spend their time.

The scoring system follows Balthazar’s extensive research reports by our Alpha Team, which has produced 21 reports to date. Several of the reports are more than 10,000 words, with our recent Dogamí report hitting more than 17,000 worlds.

Read more about Balthazar Game Score here.

The latest game reports:

• Shrapnel: a P2E competitive first-person shooter (FPS) game that lets players have their creative take on the game, including skins, map creations, and more.

• Moonray: a P2E 3rd-person action RPG game from Moonray PBC, built on the Ethereum blockchain. The game is set in a sci-fi-themed world, letting players play and progress through beautiful landscapes while exploring a vast, surreal, creative, open world. The game is built in Unreal Engine 5.

• Dogamí: our second report on this play-and-earn, metaverse-ready, virtual companion, which is a cross between a game and lifestyle app for mobile. Players will care for their pet Dogamí through its different phases in life, and play, compete, earn and socialise through the game.

• Rebel Bots: a P2E cross-platform card battle game from Xoilium Ltd. The game is set in a sci-fi-themed game world and lets players play and progress in single- and multiplayer modes. Players build armies of robots to compete against other players for valuable Xoil.

• Kitsumon: a P2E game with breeding, farming, and MOBA features. The game wants you to breed forth a strong Kitsu which players then take to the Battle Arena to fight it out MOBA style in either 3v3 or 5v5 matches.

• Sky Frontier: an anime-style NFT MMORPG with hunting focus from the company BIGBANG, Sky Frontier Fantasy Battle. It’s built for PC and mobile, and is a free-to-play game set in a fantasy world where players hunt flying whales from their airship. The tokens and NFTs are launched on Binance Smart Chain which seems to be a trend for anime-style games.

Check out our Game Research hub here.

Consolidation of Balthazar technology

Our dev team have been working on consolidating our applications into one system, including our research, Launchpad, NFT Management System and the Balthazar Marketplace. It’s faster, much smoother, better design and more accessible. This is set to be released in the first week of August.

The consolidation, as well as SEO work from our marketing team, has led to securing important positions for key search terms relating to our product suite. We have achieved strong page 1 results across multiple NFT games including Pegaxy, Illuvium, Sunflower Farmers and Crababa. We also have increased our positions for large keywords such as “NFT games” and “play to earn gaming”.

We’ve been developing our product suite to build on the sustainability of the DAO and its token value. We’ve been reworking our roadmap, which will be released in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Token Generation Event and Token Sale

We’re looking forward to preparing for our Token Generation Event (TGE). It will be launching following a longer than expected private round raise. The token sale was extended due to several factors including extreme market volatility and an internal legal entity restructuring.

We want to ensure our TGE drives the best result for our DAO community, and we’re committed to building a market-leading product.

Stay tuned for updates on these events coming soon.

June NFT Marketplace Update

We released an NFT Marketplace Update, for the first time analyzing the whole month of June. The report analyzed NFT sales data across four of the largest NFT marketplaces (by all-time trade volume) – OpenSea, Magic Eden, LooksRare and Solanart.

There was a further decline in NFT sales volume in June 2022, recording a combined US$831.75 million – 76 percent down on May 2022. It’s the lowest sales volume recorded this year.

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace in the world, saw a US$1.78 billion decline in sales volume, or 81 percent down from May 2022, to US$413.31 million. Despite this, OpenSea recorded US$288.06 million more in sales in June 2022 compared to June 2021. That’s a 230 percent increase.

Read more on this report here.

Scholarship Program and community initiatives 

Balthazar has over 50,000 people on its waitlist for the Scholarship Program and over 5,000 in the program playing and earning. We’re exploring new opportunities for our program while we rolled out some fun initiatives for our community.

These initiatives included game-focused competitions in Axie Infinity and Splinterlands: Wizards of the Week for the top SLP earners in Axie Infinity and for Splinterlands there were coaching sessions, weekly tournaments and a Battle of the Champions contest.

We also released giveaways:

• 2x Generation Zero Horse Tickets for Photo Finish Racing to 2 winners

• 1x Metaverse and 1 IRL Pass courtesy of Balthazar for Psychedelics Anonymous

• 3x unopened Dogamí Puppy Boxes (worth US$2,000) to 3 winners

• And Kitsumon NFTs to 5 lucky winners

New hire: Ruben Antao

Our newest hire is Ruben Antao who joined the Balthazar team as a Unity Developer. Ruben’s role will take our development team to the next level, with a specific set of skills that are critical to both discovery, and innovation.

We’re always on the lookout for top talent to join our team. Get in touch if you’re interested in product management, development, design and web3 gaming – john@bltzr.gg

Get in touch!

• For more on Balthazar, check out our Whitepaper or head to bltzr.gg

• Feel free to comment below with questions or enquiries

• And don’t forget to subscribe to this newsletter if you’re interested to learn more and be the first to access these opportunities.