ICYMI: The Future of LOA AMA — Recap

Just last week, we announced our updated roadmap and other changes pertaining to the future of LOA.

Unsurprisingly, the changes evoked a lot of questions from the community, which we have carefully gathered and addressed in today’s AMA. There were a lot of great questions that we were happy to dive into, and we hope that our responses have shed some light on the most pressing queries that the community has.

In case you missed it, here’s a recap of all the questions and answers to the session.

Date: 27th June 2022 (Monday)
Time: 12pm UTC
Platform: League of Ancients’ Official Discord
Host: Alejandra (LOA Community Lead)
Guests: Dwayne Ong (LOA Project Lead)

Can you provide a detailed explanation on the new roadmap, phase by phase. So we can fully understand what you and the LOA development team have planned for the future of LOA.

The revised roadmap has added new things and broken down items into smaller pieces so the community can have a better idea of our progress along each step of the way.

Items 6 -10 on the new roadmap focus on the marketplace, branding, and the essential parts of game development leading up to the full release of our MOBA game. Items 11–16 will focus more on the launch and rollout of the game.

Why are there no dates for the new roadmap? How long is each phase supposed to take?

After our experience with the less-than-ideal launch of our yield farming feature on the marketplace, we have decided that the team’s priority is to focus on quality, rather than rushing to meet a set deadline, which risks compromising security and quality.

I have spoken to the team, and we have determined that this is a better decision instead of choosing to rush out a product quickly but have it filled with problems. However, rest assured that this does not mean that we are dragging our feet — we are still very much working towards the fastest timeline possible while setting more realistic expectations for our community.

What is NFT Land and why are we having it? Is there going to be another sale?

League of Ancients is not going to be just a MOBA game — we have always envisioned it be part of the Metaverse. We want to constantly create utility for the $LOA token as well as the NFT skins. NFT Land would be a stepping stone towards that direction to allow for more project collaborations, partnerships, and creating an ecosystem in LOA. Look forward to more details in the future.

What is a partner staking pool? And if it’s like yield farming, which token allocation category does it take from?

Partner staking pools are a new initiative to promote interoperability of tokens between projects that are related. We hope to generate more interest, awareness and create more opportunities for other projects to learn about LOA. During this bearish market, we also hope to open up our staking pools for other projects without this feature and help each other survive the brunt of the meltdown. The goal is to spread awareness of League of Ancients to other projects who are very likely to invest in our vision, thus creating new token holders in the long run.

I see from the new roadmap that the marketplace and game release will be delayed from the initial plan. What actions are you planning to take to regain the trust from the LOA community and investors, can you please elaborate?

We have underestimated the time needed to deliver certain milestones and are actively trying to make up for the lost time. Our plan to maintain and regain trust is to continue delivering and communicating on a consistent basis. Although there are many who are not pleased with our roadmap, we hope to manage the expectations of the community by doing this.

Trust is earned by adapting to circumstances and moving forward despite the obstacles thrown our way, and we believe that by adhering to the new roadmap, long-term investors and new investors will see the value in LOA as well as regain trust in the LOA team.

Why didn’t you keep any promises for the roadmap? Why do you make decisions without asking the opinion of investors? Without the investors the project will not exist, yet you have never asked for their advice.

To answer the first question, the roadmap is not set in stone but an outline of the plans we intend to carry out. When we run into issues, we cannot simply deliver a faulty product just for the sake of meeting the deadline. Although the ideal outcome is to meet each milestone on time, we will inevitably run into setbacks as there are many challenges involved in the relatively new field of Web3 development.

The team is equally invested in the project; we hold 20% of the tokens. If we don’t bring value to the tokens, we will also not benefit from it. So believe me when I say that the successful completion of the project is also in our best interests.

As for the second question, there are a lot of types of investors, from short-term, advisory, to diamond-hands with very different goals when they invest in League of Ancients. As the project owners, we need to filter out the noise from short-term investors whose incentive is to flip our tokens and NFTs, to the detriment of the long-term health of the project. As much as we try to listen to the community and take constructive criticism, we are not bound to take every single piece of advice / criticism / FUD thrown at us.

We were misled to think that $LOA was the governance token, else we wouldn’t have invested so much to start with. How can you justify this change now?

To be a community-driven project, the LOA team decided that having governance in the future would be one of the stepping stones. However, if the $LOA token has governance capability, our tokens will be very similar to securities and it does not give a fair chance to the community as the team token portion is already 20% of the total supply.

Hence, the $LOA token will still have its utility in creating governance, whereby the $LOA token is needed to mint governance tokens. We will be releasing more details on the mechanics prior to the release phase.

What is the governance token, and how do we get it? Can it be bought and sold on CEX and DEX? And how about DAO staking, will we have this feature?

The governance token allows holders to create proposals on the project, which needs a majority vote to pass. The changes will be made by the dev team based on all successful proposals.

The $LOA token plays the utility in minting governance tokens, which we will release more details on when the phase approaches. As for now, governance tokens will only be available in the LOA ecosystem. DAO staking is another feature we are planning, which is only accessible for governance holders which will be in the future and not an immediate focus for the project.

Why announce the governance token if you haven’t fully thought it out yet? It just causes panic and confusion for new and existing investors.

We have already planned the mechanics of our governance token, as this has already been discussed internally for quite some time among the management team. We are also aware that there are many rumours and speculations floating around, so please be informed at the ONLY source of project-related news and information is our official Medium website and social media platforms.

Is the team still working with Anantarupa Studios? We have not seen much progress in terms of the partnership. May I know what exactly falls under Anantarupa’s scope?

Anantarupa is only one of our numerous partners in developing LOA. We have many other development partners as well, such as Bad Moon Art Studio which was showcased in our last Dev Chat Live stream.

But to answer your question, yes, we are still communicating with Anantarupa on a daily basis. They are mainly in charge of the heroes’ in-game models, animation, VFX and other asset integration.

Rumours say that the team is harvesting 50% of LP rewards. Is this true? If so, why? I also heard that the team is selling tokens daily.

Most LOA team members have staked their tokens in marketplace because they believe in LOA’s long-term potential once the game is launched. We do not restrict anyone from staking, as the more people who stake their tokens, the more the total value locked increases, which brings confidence to new investors. Would you tell the CEO of a bank that he cannot deposit his money into his own bank? Wouldn’t that indicate that the owner does not have faith in their own product?

In addition, our team wallet address is stated in the token contract. As of today, contrary to many rumours floating around, we have not sold any tokens at all.

The LOA team raised so much money during the sales, why can’t you hire more manpower or better skilled employees to develop the game? We’re tired of hearing you use ‘we are a small team’ as an excuse.

The BNB funds that were raised during sales were kept in BNB. The current value of BNB due to the bear market has shrunk our capital by a high margin. We have restructured the team in the first quarter to manage costs. This was necessary to reorganise the team according organisation goals, vision and mission. We are still actively looking for candidates who fit these criterias to join the organization.

The project is a traditional 5v5 MOBA game. The feasibility of this type of game has been fully verified in Web2, so those who are willing to invest will not be unfamiliar with this game. And if you want to integrate into Web3, the token economic model is particularly important. Even the tokens that are praised in the bull market will also fail in the downtrend due to the defects of their economic model. Therefore, good tokenomics can avoid the death spiral and withstand the baptism of bulls and bears.

What I know so far is that our project has $LOA tokens and an in-game application sub-coin ASL. Has the project party has fully considered the application scenarios and value of these two tokens?

Can the project party provide a tokenomic model that can withstand the decline, and give sellers a reason to buy $LOA again? If only considering how to increase TVL, or by issuing new tokens to dilute the original token, the value of the currency will be affected. LUNA is a good example.

I believe this question refers to reducing selling pressure of the token. There are two ways about this, which include giving the current holders incentives and utilities for the $LOA Token so they will not sell, or having new investors and community to invest in the project. For more info on our token economic model, you can refer to our whitepaper.

On that note, sustainability comes from having more demand then supply. Right now, there are over 300m MOBA players in the world, and we only have 300k+ NFT skins. In order to play-to-earn you need to own an NFT, which in turn requires $LOA tokens. Even if we only attract 1% of the world’s MOBA gamers to LOA, the NFTs will still be in high demand, so there shouldn’t be an issue with oversupply.

Why don’t you burn your own tokens? Your ill-designed tokenomics has caused many investors to suffer massive losses. Early adopters have suffered the most; those who believed in LOA and invested in the beginning; REWARD EARLY ADOPTERS.

We would’ve burned if the $LOA token had an unlimited supply. However, we only have a fixed 1 billion supply, and with the huge market of MOBA and crypto, even the 1 billion supply would not be sufficient enough to cater for the entire market. Hence, you may feel as though early adopters are not being rewarded, however it is a long-term future we are looking for. And in order to help stabilise the $LOA token price in future, we are working towards developing our treasury pool and prepare for full release of marketplace functionalities which will increase the $LOA utilies and value.

All currencies will rise and fall. Assuming the $LOA token price is now rising and has reached a high price. The project side has about 20% of the $LOA tokens, and now all the tokens in their hands need to be sold at a considerable profit (everyone needs to make money after all).

Then I would like to ask, what reason would people have to buy $LOA tokens again at relatively low level, and still have confidence that it can rise again? Is it worth it to do so? In addition to the mandatory consumption by skin upgrades, staking, etc. what is the $LOA token’s real value and usage scenarios? Are the skins you make worth buying? Or is there a reasonable ranking mechanism? Or something else? Can you explain?

I guess from this question, the concern consists of 2 parts.

First question, the team has 20% token allocation — will we dump the tokens?

In regards to our 20% team token allocation, this is not purely given to the core team and is focused on human resource development and finding new talents to grow the project. The 20% is vested over a period of 5 years and will be used to stabilise, develop and grow the team. Team members who do hold $LOA tokens are also in it for the long term. At this juncture, there is no point selling as we plan to hit major milestones to see growth and long-term ROI.

LOA is a long-term project, and not for short-term profit. GameFi is currently still in its infancy; it has only become popular less then a year ago. There is still so much evolution to expect in the coming years, and I’m sure that MOBA is one of the preferred genres to lead this space. It makes no sense to sell $LOA tokens now, based on the current situation and price.

Second question, why would people want to buy $LOA tokens when it is so low?

At the moment, the entire global market is in extreme fear — not only the crypto market, but also the stock market. Even Netflix and Microsoft — these are established companies with a long legacy of success, but even so, their prices have gone down drastically. LOA is not spared from the situation, especially since we are only 6 months old.

We are operating in a turbulent time, and we believe that the bear market will not last forever. Historically, a bull market will always follow a bear market, as trends are cyclical. What we are focusing on as developer is building the project, and preparing for when the time is right.

In terms of the value of $LOA and encouraging more users to be involved in the project, we believe we are creating something that is going to have many eyeballs once the game successfully launches. The $LOA token will be used in many aspects within our marketplace, as well as having a direct relation with the utilities of the NFT skins. When people love playing a game, they are willing to spend money even though it’s just purely for cosmetics purposes, like in Dota 2 or Mobile Legends).

We hope that these answers have clarified your concerns as well as assuage some of your fears and doubts about the project. If you wish to read the recap in other languages, please head on over to our Discord and check out the pinned posts in the country-specific channels.

Also, make sure to check out our new #leaks channel for more exciting game dev updates in the coming days!

If you would like to find out more about League of Ancients, visit our website at www.leagueofancients.com, and join our Discord at https://discord.gg/loa