23/07/2018, Nikolai
Okay, I know, this is outrageous. We’ve been quite for half a year and there was not a single update on the project status. The problem is that there is no “we” for nearly anything you may think of, and right now I’m the one man army behind a project plagued by all kinds of problems. First - it was the terrible advertisement plan that swallowed over 5 BTC payments, most of them upfront (meaning we had to replace the money at the end of the campaign, when the crypto world got really crazy), with 2.8 BTC payment for ICORating project evaluation being one of the worst investments we made. Then we hurried and promised a new coin launch way before we secured the funding and the crew behind it, and now we (e.g. “me”) are at the mercy of Crypto-mining Blog, and they delayed things after a number of misunderstandings and miscommunication that were easy to blame on either side. Then we exchanged currencies before the December crypto hype, so I had to buy BTC at nearly double the price for fear I wouldn’t be able to pay the marketing budget (listing the coin, etc.) at this rate of inflation, and then the bubble mostly crashed. Then another publisher’s game used the same name we planned for our first game and failed. And that’s not even all.
And I’m only one person that has a regular job, and also an infant that takes a lot of dad time. So at some point I just said Fuck whatever the plague, I will just work on it as much as I can when I can.
But first things first, there is the issue with funding first:
Cryptum was funded as much as we needed to actually produce couple of games, and 5% of the funding should have been for the Cryptumcoin. But then we spent alont more than we had to on advertisement and I really blame the greedy websites, the number of those actually accepting new listings for free was becoming minimal. I can put myself in their shoes - after all, between the announcement and the start of Cryptum ICO, the market was literally flooded with ICOs (48 announced just days between Cryptum started). Sure, it was reckless to spend amounts of few thousand dollars for something that hardly led to few website hits, but we expected better funding. The main problem with it is that it was largely dependent on few larger investments from people we know.
In fact the amount of tokens bought from “unknown” sources is less than 14%, the rest are money from people we talked to and we deal on fairly regular basis. The first thing to suffer the underfunding was the Cryptumcoin. Delay after a delay, then the holiday season where the lead programmer vanished on a planned vacation, then another one, than another delay. I cannot count the number of times we talked about it and agreed on something, and yet it was “when I have time”. And I cannot do anything about it, as the funding is low, and we are so past the times programmers agreed to work for a future bounty. New coins are launched on a daily basis (well, there were times when the Russians launched new neoscrypt-based coins nearly hourly).
So what is happening with Cryptumcoin? I do not know, I got a another promise it will be done soontm. Right now the new coins are still a dozen per day, and exchange listing prices are through the roof. I’ve no idea how to deal with that yet.
Game updates:
Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Bord Game - the project is on hold. When I said the project was plagued by problem after a problem, I’m not even scratching the surface of it. For starters, the December hype started changing the less important coins so fast it was hard to catch up. I’ve remade the coin database few times, and then another hurricane arrived - someone decided to launch a Kickstarter for a game called Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Game. One word change in the name and Boardgamegeek database accepted it. And they were first on Kickstarter, but at least I learned a lesson after their project failed miserably. In turn, I thought of a new name (and I’m not sharing it, sorry, I don’t want it stolen), but there was also the issue with the declining interest - after the December hype and the expected market crash, people started avoiding the topic of Bitcoin. And a game from unknown publisher would have zero chances of succeeding where another game of another unknown publisher didn’t make it (even using the same name). The solution was to put the game on hold and proceed with the Primewarp game, since it was in much more advanced state of development, and start working on the next game (Godforge) too, with the idea of building some popularity before we try the Blockchain game under a new name.
Well, that also didn’t work as intended.
Primewarp is nearly ready. I would never imagine it would take so much time, but it is still on the way. With “nearly” being a state that actually still needs a lot of work. Worst of it that the 3D freelancer Francesco Orru still has to make the last 3 miniatures sculpts. I cannot hire anyone else, since the style change would require a total overhaul, and with 320 pounds a piece I just can’t afford it. He started working on bigger projects and I can only wait and hope he’ll find the time.
Then I have to personally rework all the cards, as they are currently just placeholders for effects that are not described with proper text. I’m working on it almost on a daily basis. Problem is that my free time is not what it was. Still that’s the small issue with the game, and even after the huge delays, I plan to finish all graphic work by the end of August. Meaning I would only have to send the files for quotation the moment I receive the 3D files from Francesco, and then proceed with the Kickstarter campaign.
I could have made it sooner, but with all the other problems there was also the issue of the lack of motivation when everything around was crashing and affecting my life too. The bigger investors were OK with a delay, so I didn’t push it hard enough.
Godforge was started much earlier than expected. But it’s bigger than expected too. This is actually where I’ve spend most of my hours of work, since it requires tremendous amount of explanation, references, descriptions, etc. The lead artist for the game is Ania Kryczkowska, and I think I found a great artist in her, with plenty of ideas, allowing me to give her great artistic freedom bound only by my basic requirements. We also found a way to lower the cost of the card art considerably (which is a know-how I will keep to myself, even if I suspect most people in the business are aware of it).
But… she’s way over talented. You can see above some of the “sketches” she made while we talked about the art stile. Those would be regarded as advanced artwork by 99% of the artists out there, and yet these are just that - free sketches. And these take more time that I’d like. Anyway, except for June, when she was working on another project, and July (which was my holiday month), we’ve been in touch and we are working on the database of the cards and the art needed for each race, planet, etc.
I have to sort the cards I’d like to include for sure. I have nearly 3000 “ideas” for cards and I have to cut them to between 850 and 1200 (may be separate some for expansion). I usually do that when I have some free time.
Other games - not much to tell here. We agreed with another designer to produce his game at some point. I also worked some basic ideas for two more games, one of them on an epic scale and both of them including mechanics never used in another game. Lately there have been plenty of outright thefts of ideas (you know, no patenting games ideas hurts), so I’m not sharing any details before I have something in nearly ready state. But these are projects for another time, after the Primewarp is ready. The cyberpunk game that was initially planned will be made after Godforge as I definitely want Ania working on the art side.
So what does all that mean or you?
Basically you can blame me for promising more than I could deliver on my own. I’ve learned to rely on myself, and every time I had to rely on other people something failed. Yet, I’m no artist and I’m not good with the brush, and I’m not a programmer and I have to rely on others for the coin launch (if and when it happens). And while everything is coming with a huge delay, things are still on the way, so fear not, I haven’t ran with the money. Most of them come from people I know, so I cannot do it even if I wanted to do anything else other tan designing games.
To be continued.
The Cryptum Tokens (CRTM) have been added to the TOKEN.STORE exchange! Now you buy tokens directly from the exchange or offer your tokens up for sale. The Token.store is ERC-20 token exchange that allows you to buy or sell any Ethereum-based tokens listed there much as with any other exchange. You need to create an account (and keep the private key secure), then add some Ether to it an start trading.
Still, there are few things you should to know. Your account is where you send the Ether or Cryptum tokens, but the trade is do through the internal contract. The first thing you have to do is to Create an account. You can always see it later “Manage accounts”, top right corner:
Once you have an account, you can send ETH to it if you wish to but Cryptum tokens, or, in case you want to sell them, you should send to your account address both CRTM and some really small amount of Ether (you need 0.001 to move CRTM between your account and the trading contract). Once your Ethereum and tokens arrive at Token.store,
Cryptum ICO Stage II starts on October 17:
Cryptum ICO Stage II sale is your last chance to take part in our multi-project ICO (check our this article and our Whitepaper for more information) with the following features:
You can participate in the Stage II of the Cryptum ICO by purchasing CRTM tokens using BTC, ETH, ETC, BCH, LTC, DASH or ZEC. Note that any amounts lower than the shown in table will not receive CRTM and will not be refunded!
After raising about $136 000 during Stage I, we realized we won’t make it to Mining project level of sales even in Stage II. Somewhere during Stage I and we received a sound advice from ICO Rating regarding the project - to devote on the board games. At the end, we made the decision to focus on the two aspects of the ICO that are most important to us: the board games project and the Cryptumcoin currency we are launching in December.
That means any side projects such as icodbase and the mining project are being cancelled, allowing us to concentrate our efforts to the board games and the Cryptumcoin. It also leads to a very important change regarding the total amount of CRTM, as we no longer need to sell so many tokens to get the funding we want - the maximum supply of Cryptum Tokens changes from 1.102 million to a bit over 156 000, with 129 520 available for sale during Stage II of the Cryptum ICO. The Stage II will continue to November 17 or until the tokens are sold, whichever comes first.
Initially we announced the prices will be 25% over the Stage I Sale amounts, but with the latest Bitcoin rate changes, we decided on a new approach. Instead of the ETH price, we are now using the BTC price as a base (and it remains the same 0.00135 BTC/CRTM). All prices include CRTM and CRYC transfer fees. The minimum participation amount is 25 CRTM (which is the same as Tier 1, so you will be able to get a bonus free crypto-mining board game when it’s released, and a share of the games profits each time we release a game on the market).
What do you achieve with these changes?
For once, we will be working harder on the games and the CRYC currency development, and we will not split the main funding to make a partial investment in a mining farm. This lowers the basic needs of the project to much more manageable levels.
(Note that all information dependent on the amount of CRTM sold during Stage I is non-final. We will keep the ratios and final amounts as close as possible to the information below, but some calculations use the CRTM sold during Stage I and we are compiling it before its end).
In order to promote the change, we will be distributing much higher amounts of Cryptumcoins during their launch in December. Launching a currency that has both a fair launch targeted at miners and a large pre-mine, which are somehow mutually exclusive, is not easy, but we found a way to balance between the ICO supply and the coin effective supply (the supply in the most active mining and trade periods we call “ages”, see the table below) and the max supply. We are keeping the total pre-mine to between 0.42% and 2.64% of the max supply of Cryptumcoins (depending on final ICO sales) and between 2.22% and 12.70% of the ages of peak interest supply.
The pre-mine volume is based on the CRTM tokens sold during the ICO stage plus any bonuses, and varies between 397 823 and 2.6 million CRYC. It is distributed on the following conditions (formulas are explained in the notes, further information can be found in our Whitepaper):
| CRTMsold1 | CRYC per CRTM2 | TOPx Bonus3 | Additional Marketing4 |
| 19.8-50.5k | 10.00-11.11 CRYC/CRTM | 11.8k-33.6k | =(200k-Bonus) |
| 50.5K-100.5k | 11.11-12.93 CRYC/CRTM | 33.6k-77.9k | =(200k-Bonus) |
| 100.5k-156.1k | 12.93-14.95 CRYC/CRTM | 77.9k-140.1k | =(200k-Bonus) |
1 Example categories starting from the current distribution of 19 776 CRTM and up to theoretical maximum of 156 118 CRTM incl. bonuses
2 Current CRYC/CRTM Rate (CRYCrate) = 10+(CRTMsold - CRTMstage1) / 27500). After the coin launch, token owners will have 30 to 45 days to claim their Cryptumcoins on our website. Please follow our social accounts on top of the page to avoid missing the deadline. Distribution will be done in waves on a first come, first served basis.
3 After launching the Cryptumcoin, and after the claims period is over, we will distribute an additional bonus amount of CRYC (Bonustotal = CRTMsold * CRYCrate * 0.06) to the top contributors based on the following formula: Bonustop = BonusTotal / TOPx where the number of TOP contributors is TOPx = (CRTMsold - CRTMstage1) / 250 if < of the total number of contributors, or else the number of contributors.
4 As we would try to list the Cryptumcoin on as many quality exchanges as possible instead of relying on voted listing, and considering the prices for listing a coin lately (3-5 BTC on some exchanges), we’ll need an extended marketing support. The formula here is: Marketing Budget = 200 000 - CRYCbonus.
In any case that doesn’t allow us to use anything but integers, we will be rounding in a way that leaves the difference in our wallet. Unclaimed amounts of Cryptumcoin will be considered forfeit.
Consider the following example:
If we sell a total 35 000 CRTM with 5% bonus on the amount sold during Stage II, we will distribute 35 760.88 CRTM to token owners, and, after the Cryptumcoin launch, any owner would be able to claim 10.58 CRYC per token (for a total of 578 387.35 CRYC, representing less than 0.6% of the theoretical future maximum supply of Cryptumcoins). Additionally, in this example, after the claims, we will distribute 22 703 bonus CRYC via aidrops to TOP63 contributors (355 each), we will have 11 351 CRYC for bounties (note that social bounties will only be distributed if we sell more than 55 000 CRTM total) and 177296 CRYC budget for exchanges listing.
Not in the table - we will have a bounty campaigns, distributing an amount equal to 50% of the post-sale bonus, but these will be announced after the Cryptumcoin pre-announcement.
Creating a currency that can be equally attractive to miners and ICO investors is hard. There are number of other goals we had in mind, as well as solutions for them:
Cryptumcoin is developed together with one of the leading mining blogs - Crypto Mining Blog, meaning it is primarily a miners’, trade-centric currency, but we developed in a way that promotes long-term investment value and that fights some common failures of other currencies launched in the past. We want to be able to use it as a main currency for our products and services in the future, and we don’t see any value in poorly copy-pasted currencies that cannot be regarded as even a short term trade opportunity, much less as a long-term investment.
The theoretical maximum supply of Cryptumcoins is over 98.5 million coins, which is not unusually high. Still, we had to consider that it has some influence over the market price, and that we have a pre-mine for highly-mineable cryptocurrency. We have developed changes in the block rewards according to the block height, which we call Ages. These ages address the most common issues of newly launched digital currencies and are aimed at creating a lasting currency with slowly inflating price that can be considered stable.
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At the same time, the ages also help us establish the Cryptumcoin as a coin dedicated to miners, and protect the initial investors that participate in the Cryptum ICO. For example, we will start with low block reward for the initial 8064 blocks. As this is the time when most ICO contributors are claiming their rewards (practically proving they own certain amount of CRTM tokens and confirming their address with a minimal ETH transfer from it), and we are listing the Cryptumcoin on as many exchanges it is possible, it is the ICO participants job to establish the trade with the early investors. Yet we will not start with completely useless rewards, and early miners will be able to take some advantage of the low difficulty.
Click for a higher resolution image
The scheme is shown in on the image above and explained in detail below:
Detailed specifications, tables and additional information can be found in our Whitepaper. Additionally, you can visit cryptumcoin.com.
Together with the long list of features and specific ideas we introduced in the development of Cryptumcoin, we hope to establish it as one of the most popular crypto currencies on the market. You can participate early buying Cryptum Tokens - the Cryptumcoin is only a bonus feature of the tokens as they are helping us fund board games publishing, featuring shared profits and free access to our games, but each CRTM token owner will receive initial amounts of CRYC to use as he sees fit.
We just passed $110000 raised in ETH and BTC, and that cracks open a new possibility - to work on few games at once. We are in for another change of plan, and here it is.
As we are still unable to establish a contact with most of the big exchanges, we will proceed into the Blockchain crypto mining game development using only those that reply before the end of the Stage I sale, and agree to our conditions and supply us with high-res logo, slogan and permission to include them in the game. While the currencies information we use in the game is not a subject of copyrights, the exchanges logos, names and slogans are owned by the respective companies, and we cannot use them without permission, taking legal risks. But we are free to mock their lack of support and appreciation for our work, so you can expect some close representation of the “unofficial” versions. The game will enter active development the moment Stage I of the ICO is over, so if you have any way reaching the TOP10 exchanges, please remind them they still have few days to reply!
Because of the low Cryptum ICO sales, you can expect very high returns even from the Blockchain game - 20% of any profits after the Kickstarter campaign and future wholesale and retail deals. For example, if we raise $250 000 in KS (which requires only 4167 backers), and assume 30% off the KS price cost (remember, we will not include development in the formula, you’ve already paid for it), taxes and shipping fees,
Let’s face it - our ICO was not among the top September picks, and it’s about funding something that probably nobody ever thought of funding with ICO - a board games studio. So things were going slow, and we were starting to worry that our initial plans would have to be changed and we will have to invest further into publishing those games. But then a group of investors approached and asked if we can reach an agreement so at least the crypto mining game would be secured and published on time (see here: Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Board Game), which would power up the whole chain of games - with Primewarp already past half done, and with the news about Godforge already being developed (stay tuned for it and follow our News feed, it is a long post and we want to tell you the whole story), we are already ahead of schedule for two of the games and we would concentrate on the Blockchain game the moment our ICO is over.
If you followed the information about our crypto mining board game - one of the games we are funding with the Cyptum ICO, you probably know that we will be releasing an expansion called “Exchanges” that would offer expanded gameplay and more exchange mechanics. But we also wanted the game to be educational and somehow closer to the real world, and this also means to include some of the real exchanges in the base game, even adding some optional rules on the way, if necessary.
Of course, we had to ask them - which is essentially done by filling in a support ticket on most of the big ones. ShapeShift support was instantly on the line and since they are not the typical trading website, we quickly decided to include them as a base exchange service for the supported currencies that are already included in the game. Basically this means any currency that stays in the game (remember, you can vote in the Bitcointalk thread) that is also supported in real life by ShapeShift, will be safe from the dump practice we mentioned in the game description.
This would change an essential part of the gameplay, yet it will make it closer to how we wanted to represent the “safe” currencies - ones that settled down and are no longer subject to easy pumps and dumps.
So, welcome to ShapeShift, the first real wold exchange in Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Board Game!
If you have followed the information about our new cryptomining board game, you’d know the two main currencies the players are collecting are Bitcoin and Ethereum. We decided that we may add real metal coins to the game instead of the typical paper tokens. One quick order to Francesco Orrù and few hours later we already have the models:
Beautiful, aren’t they? But we had to test the models, so today we tried simple 3D printing to see how the detail will show. It was fairly low res, so for the most part the detail wasn’t there, but we are still very happy with the result. With some modifications, the game will feature some nice shiny Bitcoins and Ethereums. Well, you can’t really spend them, but… they are gorgeous!
Starting an ICO about board games (well, not only, but people read only so far) was bound to raise the question why are we seeking funding in the crypto world, instead of using the market we already have. And we believe that deserves an answer, and a honest one:
Because it’s a competitive market dominated by big corporations and high expectations, yet it has some sweet spots available to anyone, and with a decent funding we can get there. It’s a lucrative business with very high margins if you optimize well.
Someone at Bitcointalk asked us how far we are with the Blockchain: The Cryptcurrency Board Game development. It’s a great question, as somehow we haven’t thought of sharing more info, and there is a matter that would require public opinion anyway, so we decided to give you a status about the game.
First of all, you should definitely read the all the available information about the Blockchain board game on our website, but here is a less formal summary of the info:
This is informal summary with some expanded information:
Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Board Game allows up to five players to compete by building mining rigs or investing in ASICs or even a limited number of ICOs, buying and upgrading high-end mining hardware with the goal of owning most Bitcoins and Ethereum at the end of the game. Bitcoin and Ethereum have a “floating” cost and it is set throughout the game as an optional rule, which adds another strategy layer (exchanging for BTC or ETH will raise their prices).Blockchain simulates both the competition and cooperation between miners by using solo and pooled mining (each new coin starts at low difficulty, but adding more miners raises it, opening pool slots and lowering the solo mining profitability), difficulty changes (as explained) and market development (heavily investing in a coin may rise its price), while player interaction is achieved by event manipulation (the algorithm deck has double-sided cards with events on the back) and a limited set of exchange practices (holding or dumping, more will be added in the Exchanges expansion). There are limited set of ICO offerings add some risk-taking elements for the endgame.
Blockchain is using well known engine-building and worker placement mechanics, and the game features 85 mineable coins and 15 of the top assets, as well as 25 mining algorithms and a large number of upgrades, hardware, software and events.
The mechanics are pretty self explanatory for most gamers, but here are few more pieces of info - you start by building a rig (actually 4 slots for each player, all comes through cards from drafting and the market), mine on it by assigning hardware (workers), sell, dump or hodl at the end of a round. The little trick we used with the workers is that you actually assign a whole rig worth of them at once for each action point (4). Coins are populated with each new algo, and events are on the same cards, so whenever a new coin is out, conditional events trigger.
During the Kickcstarter campaign we will unlock new coins (you can help us with that, see the Voting paragraph further below, and we will have a stretch goal to unlock metal Bitcoin and Ethereum coins for the game (note that they are just game coins, and are not backed by real BTC or ETH).
The Cryptum token sale is now live, and you may want to rush your decision a bit in on order to get the 16% bonus we are paying in the first 24 hours. Of course, if you miss the opportunity, there will be another 4 days with 8% bonus, and then final 2 days with 4% bonus, but we wouldn’t advise you to wait that long.
If you want to keep at least some bonus CRTM after the first week of sale - try to get some BTC and pay with them instead - the BTC sale has a permanent bonus (of course that makes it less attractive in the first few days), but the number of tokens we are selling for BTC is limited - only 250 000 in Stage I sale.
If you are interested in Cryptum, but still undecided - take a look around our Blog section, there are quite a few informative posts there. Cryptum is a strange project and it is going to fund something that seems completely unrelated to the world of cryptocurrencies, yet we are backing it up with mining farm, and sharing the profits from all projects. And we are working on a market that is quite profitable to begin with.
Finally - head to the Status page and see if others beat you to it, we are sure that real transfers from other people would be much more convincing than our own words.
Sofia, September 14, 2017 – Cryptum ICO (launching September 16) announces that the project just gained great recognition by the game development company Imperia Online, which pledged their support for the Cryptum network of projects.
The company will offer software development support and their in-house artists to help the projects under the Cryptum brand. Imperia Online is one of the leading game developers in Bulgaria, with over 160 employees offering services for over 35 million users, and the company is bearer of many awards and nominations, including awards for fastest growing companies in Central Europe, nominations and awards from Forbes and European Business Awards.
“We have a lot to learn from this project and by supporting it we get an opportunity to explore some new horizons, like the blockchain technology and its interaction with the world of physical products and online services,” – said Moni Dochev, CEO of Imperia Online and one of the company founders. “We’ve been partnering with the project developers from hardwareBG.com and BoardGames.BG for quite some time, and they are trustworthy beyond reproach.”
Time to make it worth for some of the more active members of the ICO community! In the following days we are releasing some small bounties. Some are not really the typical ones, some require a simple follow on Twitter. You will find them all in our Twitter and Facebook pages, so follow them. Two of the bounties would require from you to gather some points and rank on one of the top 3 spots in order to receive 30, 25 and 20 CRTM respectively (25 CRTM = 0.5 ETH at regular sale price). We also have additional bounties for both categories.
