【Eesee】 NFT Marketplace with Gamification / Create and sell lottery tickets for listed NFTs / Could you win a CryptoPunk for $1?
You can buy and sell NFTs, FTs, and RWA tokens incorporating elements of the game.
Good morning.
I'm mitsui, a web3 researcher.
Today, I researched about "eesee".
Table of Contents
1. Overview | What is eesee?
-Mechanism
-Benefits
-Supported Chains
2. Evolution and Outlook | Achieving 300,000 Wallets and 50 Million Circulation on the Testnet,
3. Analysis | Will it become a function of the next-generation marketplace?
Overview | What is eesee?
"eesee" is a token marketplace that incorporates gamification. It allows the buying and selling of NFTs, FTs, and RWA tokens by incorporating elements of gaming.
◼️ Mechanism
Specifically, sellers create lottery tickets for the tokens (NFTs and FTs) they want to list and sell these tickets at the listed price. The mechanism is that one ticket buyer will win the NFT listed by another participant.
For example, let's take a look at the currently listed "Doodles" NFT.
Total Price: Listed price
Ticket Sold / Total: Number of tickets sold and total
Below this, there is an "Amount" field where you can select the number of tickets and the Ticket price is displayed. You can select these options and there is an "Enter now" button.
This is basically:
The regular price of Doodles is $5,000 (if you buy it normally, it costs that much).
40,000 lottery tickets (tickets) for a chance to win this NFT are being created.
Splitting $5,000 among 40,000 tickets results in $0.13 per ticket.
By entering with $0.13, you have a chance to win a Doodles NFT.
This is the logic behind it. It might be easier to understand if you think of it as a lottery. Winners can acquire a Doodles worth $5,000 for just $0.13. Of course, you can purchase multiple tickets to increase your chances of winning. By the way, the lottery mechanism adopts Chainlink VRF.
The marketplace where this mechanism can be implemented for both FT and RWA is called "eesee".
◼️ Benefits
First, it is easy for buyers to understand.
Buyers can acquire expensive NFTs at a fraction of their original price, sometimes even hundreds of times lower. Additionally, even if they are not selected in the lottery, they can still earn rewards by simply applying for the lottery, as the utility token $ESE is issued.
$ESE can be distributed through transactions, learning, and friend referrals on the marketplace, and can be used for paying fees within the marketplace. A portion of the token transaction fees on "eesee" is stored in a reward pool, and at least 1% of the total transaction volume is used as the capital for $ESE.
Going off topic for a bit, the benefits for buyers include the chance to acquire tokens at a low price and the potential for rewards through $ESE even if they are not selected in the lottery.
Now let's look at the benefits for sellers.
"eesee" was created specifically to solve the challenges faced by sellers. The major issue is "liquidity," especially the lack of liquidity for high-value NFTs.
NFTs can take time to sell because of their uniqueness. While FTs can be quickly traded for profit, NFTs require buyers to wait. This becomes even more challenging in the world of NFTs that range from millions to tens of millions of yen and have unique designs. It becomes difficult to sell at the desired timing.
As a result, sellers have no choice but to give up on selling or offer discounts to attract buyers.
That's where "eesee" comes in, aiming to solve the liquidity problem by not lowering the fixed price of high-value NFTs but instead dividing them into smaller units called tickets and selling them. If there is a lottery where participants can win a CryptoPunk worth 10 million yen for just 500 yen per ticket, there would likely be many participants. And even if they don't win, receiving token rewards would be an added bonus.
By implementing this ticket system as a gamified experience, "eesee" provides liquidity to all types of NFTs and expands the NFT market.
■ Supported Chains
"eesee" supports ETH and POL chains. It is currently operating on the testnet.
Transition and Outlook | Achieving 300,000 Wallets and 50 Million Circulation on the Testnet
"eesee" was announced in June 2023. Alpha testing started in September, and the Testnet began in November. It is still in the Testnet environment.
The founder and CEO, Vova Sadkov, is a serial entrepreneur with two previous exit experiences. "eesee" is a startup based in Dubai.
During the testing on the Alpha network, the focus was on Zealy, and through daily campaigns, it grew into a community within the top 30 globally. Although not explained so far, "eesee" also emphasizes gamification, with mission features within the platform where users can earn tokens by playing, among other mechanisms, to keep users engaged.
And in January 2024, it was announced that a funding of $2.85 million had been successfully completed.
The funding amount includes a seed round of $1.1 million and a private round of $1.75 million, with participation from SevenX Ventures, Maven Capital, MetaBros, Contango Digital Assets, BasementDAO, and others. The company has also announced partnerships with Ape Terminal, ApeCoin, Polygon, Chainlink, and others.
At this point in time, the total number of Total Wallet Connect users has exceeded 300,000, and the assets being handled have surpassed 50 million yen. We will now begin preparations for the mainnet.
To register an account in the current testnet, you will need an invitation code. It seems that these codes are regularly distributed on SNS and Discord, so if you are interested, you may want to find and use them from there.
Analysis | Will it be a feature of the next-generation marketplace?
The last part is an analysis.
I found the solution proposed by "eesee" to be very interesting. As mentioned in the issue, it becomes difficult to sell high-priced NFTs. While uniqueness is one of the strengths of NFTs, it can also be a reason for not being purchased if the creativity doesn't appeal to buyers.
Therefore, while there is an option to divide and fractionalize them, so far, fractional NFTs that divide ownership have been the existing solution. While this is fine, it becomes quite complicated, and there are not many benefits for buyers of fragmented NFTs.
Selling tickets as lottery tickets seems to overlap with both problem-solving and market needs. Since everyone likes lotteries and gambling, there may be prizes such as CryptoPunks, Doodles, and sometimes even RWA real estate. It feels like there might be people who would buy tickets for the chance to win real estate worth 100 million yen that has been tokenized (although there may be legal and tax issues such as gift taxes).
Oh, I forgot to mention earlier, but there is also the possibility that not all tickets will be sold. In such cases, if the ticket purchase amount is less than 50% of the regular price, it will be considered invalid and refunded. If it is 50% or more, the winner will be given the right to purchase the difference up to the regular price.
However, since it is still in the testnet stage, I think this ecosystem will also be hypothesis validated in the future.
If I speculate, since this is a game of chance, there might be people who would be interested in a subscription plan where they participate in a lottery of some kind every month for a fixed amount. Also, since it would be difficult for buyers to choose tickets for each NFT, it might be possible to issue integrated tokens instead of individual tickets.
As for concerns as a platform, the possibility of competitors adding this feature when it becomes explosively popular is a concern. For example, if Blur or OpenSea adds a lottery ticket function, differentiation becomes difficult. This is the same as with existing startups, where it is good when not niche and not attracting attention, but when it becomes popular (successful), big companies imitate it, so it is necessary not to lose there.
Incentives and tokenomics through token issuance are possible, but building a larger economy than Blur or OpenSea would be quite challenging. Therefore, personally, I am considering how "eesee" can survive and have a winning strategy in the context of lottery tickets becoming one of the fundamental features of NFT trading. It seems interesting, so I will continue to follow the information in the future!
Disclaimer：I carefully examine and write the information that I research, but since it is personally operated and there are many parts with English sources, there may be some paraphrasing or incorrect information. Please understand. Also, there may be introductions of Dapps, NFTs, and tokens in the articles, but there is absolutely no solicitation purpose. Please purchase and use them at your own risk.
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Author
mitsui
A web3 researcher. Operating the newsletter "web3 Research" delivered in five languages around the world.
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The author is a web3 researcher based in Japan. If you have a project that is interested in expanding to Japan, please contact the following:
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