Tye Beach is the Lead Gaming Developer at Squidanomics. He is an experienced CEO from Charlotte, North Carolina, with a demonstrated history of working in the computer and network security industry. Tye holds an Associates of Applied Science degree in Electronics Engineering Technology focused in Electronics, Physics, Computers from ECPI. He is one of the founding team members of Squidanomics. I had the chance to interview Tye to learn more about Squidanomics, how the project differentiates itself from other crypto gaming projects, and the role Squidanomics will take in the metaverse.
It’s nice to meet you Tye. Can you please tell us a bit more about yourself and the inspiration behind Squidanomics.
Hi there! Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you. You could best describe me as someone that cares deeply about crypto. I have spent the past five years of my life learning about the foundations of blockchain and crypto in general. I enjoy teaching others about our space, why it matters, what to look out for, and where I see it going in the future. As a kid I enjoyed not only playing games, but making them. In grade school, I would hand draw mazes on paper and pass them to my friends to see how fast they could finish them (I may be showing my age here). I also loved to write stories and poems and I feel a lot of that creativity at a younger age is coming back to me while I work in this industry. It feels really good to be able to bring all of my skills together through this project.
They say some stories just write themselves and I feel that way about Squidanomics. It is amazing the connections that are made in the crypto landscape and I was lucky to have found an innovative and dedicated team to share this journey with. The inspiration found us developers by way of the Netflix series and sticking to the nature of the show we wanted to create a way for people to face off in a digital world for a real world currency. As they feature in the hit series, have money problems? Boy do we have a game for you!
What is Squidanomics and its main features?
Launched on October 18th, 2021 by a team based in Canada and the United States, Squidanomics is an NFT Gaming platform with BUSD rewards on the Binance Smart Chain. This means that holders can receive BUSD prizes across the platform for participating in the games we have developed that require holding NFTs to receive rewards or also from holding the SQUID token. With inspiration from the hit TV series, Squid Game, Squidanomics intends to help as many people earn additional income through gaming and NFT utility.
The tax fee structure of the token (also known as tokenomics), allows holders of the SQUID token to receive many benefits. It is with this fee that the incredible prizes, giveaways, marketing and development are possible. The fee of 15% on every buy, sell or transaction is broken down as follows:
- 5% BUSD rewards distributed to holders from buys, sells and transfers
- 5% Marketing fee to allow the budget required to implement innovative marketing strategy on a day to day basis to gain and retain holders
3% Liquidity tax added to the liquidity pool
2% Development tax to pay for game, NFT, team and project development
Squidanomics is revolutionizing the world of NFTs through innovative utility for NFT holders. Every NFT sold brings a utility to the project. 50% of sales are used to buy and then permanently burn some of the supply of SQUID which increases the price floor or for marketing, and the other half is for project development. NFTs are required to earn BUSD from playing the games provided by Squidanomics in both their web-browser shooter and private access telegram based “Gamesroom.” Other NFTs allow holders unique benefits such as unlockable characters in our 2D platform shooter for PC (mobile release coming) or increased prize money from our chat based telegram games. Add to that ongoing contests for holders with large prize rewards and you can see there are many options for community members to be involved and to earn more.
What makes Squidanomics unique in comparison to other crypto gaming projects (what’s unique about its play-to-earn/hold-to-earn/hold-to-play structure, rewards and benefits)?
I think a lot of crypto gaming projects don’t take into consideration that people in crypto want to buy low and sell high. When your sole mechanism is centered around a free to play – free to earn model there is going to be a lot of people that come into your project and dump their free tokens. This is not ideal for sustaining a healthy price floor and in my opinion there is an easy fix for it.
In April of 2021, I created a hold-to-play gaming model in an effort to create buying pressure. I have seen that some play-to-earn models use a method where you insert coins like an arcade to play and I have nothing against those, but most do not have a tobin tax applied, so the tokens spent just go back to the developers. A tobin tax is a fee that can be applied when a currency is converted into another. Without one the developer will have to sell tokens for development and growth. This is harmful to the community in the long run. With Squidanomics we pay out in BUSD and our contract enacts a fee on transactions so there is no need to sell our native token for marketing or any other business expense.
There are a few different ways people can play our games, but they all require holding Squidanomics NFTs. For the shooter (Name to be announced shortly), you must hold a General Admission NFT. To participate in the telegram games you must hold special NFTs as well. You are free to sell your NFTs at any date, however, the game will not load or you will not be able to participate if you do so. We give out hefty prizes every week in our tournaments and we are able to do so from our sales. This is a benefit of the hold to play model. This included an hour long tournament for $1000 on launch and ongoing weekly tournaments for $1000 on our shooter and daily games for hundreds of dollars in our “Gamesroom.” Through our tokens fees we are able to afford life changing prizes such as the “DiamondHead” contest in which holders had to buy and then not sell for a week and also our current $25,000 VRA giveaway.
Earlier this month, another project inspired by the hit Netflix series Squid Game made the news by draining their token’s liquidity and crashing their project. This surely had to affect Squidanomics and your own SQUID token in its wake. Can you tell me how the team responded to this and what you are doing to build back credibility and trust with your community while growing beyond the shadow of the rug pull?
I waited years to see DeFi come into fruition. I dreamed of the day we would see decentralized liquidity pools built on top of trustless protocols and now we finally have it. Unfortunately, human nature has reared its ugly head and with these permissionless systems people are free to act as they wish.
It has been a challenge to differentiate ourselves from the bad actors in this space, but I feel our team does the best with our backs against the wall. We like having to prove ourselves…we feel comfortable in that environment. Just like anything worthy in life you have to work hard for it.
Our tokenomics have afforded us the ability to hire a marketing team and ensure that who we are will come to light. We have several audits and are fully doxxed with government ID. There isn’t a day that goes by that we aren’t giving back to our community and being transparent about our goals. It doesn’t take much in crypto to create a solid project, you just have to be accountable and do what you say. We always believe that in time, people will see what you are about. And anyone that is a part of the SQUID community will be generously rewarded as they continue to trust in us and participate in our gaming ecosystem.
How do NFTs come into play with your project?
“Use case” is often a buzz word in crypto and hardly ever followed through with. Many projects give roadmaps of a promised use case and with Squidanomics we started with multiple. We have two sets of NFTs pertaining to two different game types.
The first set allows people to participate in our Telegram games. Holding a Dagger or Star Candy NFT will allow you to not only play in the games, but give you the ability to earn BUSD. By giving out BUSD we give people the option to buy SQUID instead of letting them dump it back on other investors which helps create more buying pressure.
The second set of NFTs work with our 2D Shooter. The game is currently built out for webGL and will have mobile support soon. Players are pitted against one another and the top five with the most kills for the week are paid out in BUSD. The game will only unlock if you have a General Admission NFT. I consider this NFT similar to purchasing the game, however, unlike other games you buy you can always sell your NFT at a later date. The GA unlocks a few default characters, however, there are other NFT characters that have better abilities. NFT profits from both sets go back to the community. 50% goes to buy backs and burns/ prizes determined by market sentiment at that time and 50% goes to further developing the game.
What major project developments do you have underway through the rest of the year? And planned for Q1 2022?
It is no secret that mobile games are explosive and we plan to put our game in the app stores. We are currently in a beta state as our game is built out through webGL at the moment. This allows us to easily test with the community before moving forward with porting out to another platform.
We will be releasing a scavenger hunt in the coming week(s) that will reveal more of our business plans. We have some really exciting news to share and felt it was better to drop the bomb in a virtual environment. All I will say is you want to be around when the scavenger hunt releases as we are about to approach this industry in a manner no other team has! You will figure out what we’re up to through in-game clues and those that play to win will be handsomely rewarded…after all we are a gaming company and suspense is half the fun!
What are you most excited about with regards to the metaverse and the role Squidanomics will play in it?
The internet is changing and we can thank crypto for that. Currency was always just the first application of crypto. Soon we won’t be looking at web pages the same way and I am extremely happy to see where this goes. Crypto, NFTs and Gaming are the perfect synergy for the metaverse as people find new ways to express themselves virtually and also earn and spend in this inspiring new world. Squidanomics does a great job of representing all facets of the metaverse and soon will have even more to reveal through the adoption of relevant metaverse platforms such as Decentraland. There are infinite possibilities for people to make new realities inside the metaverse and this can be brought together with the Squidanomics play-to-earn/hold-to-earn/hold-to-play structure so participants can experience the metaverse in its fullest capacity while earning as well.
