What is Saga? The Gaming Network, Play-to-Airdrop Push, and Token Launch

Gaming-focused layer-1 blockchain Saga Protocol has made a reputation for itself in current months with an airdrop marketing campaign. This led to a record-breaking $13.4 billion staked on Binance to earn SAGA token rewards as soon as the token launches… which occurs to be lower than a day away, as of this writing.

To not be confused with Solana’s Saga smartphone (or gaming titan Sega, for that matter), Saga is scheduled to launch its mainnet and SAGA token Tuesday, April 9.

With all this hype, it may be simple to overlook the main points of how every little thing works. However don’t fret, right here at Decrypt’s GG we have been rigorously watching, studying up on lore, and now know every little thing that is about to occur on this upcoming saga.

What’s Saga?

Saga is a “layer-1 to launch layer-1s“, Saga CEO and co-founder Rebecca Liao defined in a Twitter (aka X) video. “There isn’t any such factor as launching instantly on Saga mainnet.” 

As an alternative, builders will use Saga to launch their very own chain (known as a chainlet) or a set of chains. These chainlets can be utilized in parallel to energy decentralized apps (dapps) or help apps on different chainlets throughout the Saga community. That is known as horizontal scaling, which Liao claims means tasks can “infinitely scale”.

There are presently over 350 tasks—or “innovators” as Saga calls them—constructing within the ecosystem. Saga is technically not a gaming-exclusive community, however the overwhelming majority of tasks being constructed on the community contain gaming not directly with round 80% of tasks on the testnet being gaming-related.

What’s the SAGA token?

Together with the launch of the mainnet, the SAGA token might be obtainable on April 9 and might be listed on Binance on day one. 

This follows Saga declaring the mission’s Launchpool marketing campaign had damaged the $13 billion mark final Friday. Binance Launchpool promotions provide up soon-to-launch tokens to prospects who stake different cryptocurrencies—on this case Binance Coin (BNB) and the FDUSD stablecoin.

Decrypt‘s personal evaluation of previous Launchpool campaigns means that Saga is the primary mission to interrupt the $13 billion barrier, with ENA and ETHFI coming shut. Whereas the token has been a fantastic incentive to get individuals within the mission, turning them into “Saganauts,” there’s a actual goal behind SAGA.

Anybody who has ever used cryptocurrency understands the pains of transaction charges. Within the Saga litepaper, the present mannequin is likened to somebody grabbing an Uber and paying Amazon for internet hosting the Uber app—it simply would not make sense! Subsequently, Saga places the price burden on builders, paid utilizing the SAGA token.

Builders are anticipated to pay a deposit of SAGA tokens in trade for computing energy, and because the deposit diminishes, the developer should consider the way it will fund extra computing energy. They will select to make customers pay a price with every transaction or discover different choice similar to a subscription, ad-based, or freemium fashions. 

SAGA can have an preliminary circulating provide of 90 million tokens (or 9% of the full provide), and half of that was provided to the over 500,000 Launchpool members that finally staked their cash.

How did play-to-airdrop work?

In December, Saga started its “play-to-airdrop” competitors marketing campaign which incentivized players to check out the tasks on the Saga testnet. On the time, it was themed across the Christmas holidays however the marketing campaign bumped into the early months of 2024 with out the festivities.

Saga spotlighted a spread of video games on the testnet just like the motion role-playing recreation Rogue Nation, the fantasy-themed Generative Dungeon, and the Pokémon Go-esque location recreation Vennity. Avid gamers that topped every recreation’s leaderboard on the finish of the competitions had been rewarded with SAGA tokens.

It’s price noting, nonetheless, that this was topic to location as some elements of the world (together with america) couldn’t declare the airdrop. Saga launched an eligibility information that detailed who might and couldn’t declare the airdrop earlier than the window closed in late March.

Whereas nearly all of video games featured on this marketing campaign had been on the Saga check community, some video games on different chains—together with Avalanche-based shooter Shrapnel—had been additionally featured in play-to-airdrop competitions as Saga aimed to draw extra customers.

What’s Saga Origins?

Because the airdrop marketing campaign got here to an in depth in March, Saga introduced a recreation publishing division known as Saga Origins.

Regardless of having no video games introduced, the publishing arm guarantees to supply a “full service and collaborative strategy” to bringing video games to market. This consists of consumer acquisition, group constructing, and promotional efforts.

Saga Origins claims to be “first and solely layer-1 Web3 recreation writer,” although there have been layer-2 publishers (see: Immutable on Ethereum).

“Saga Origins is our love letter to the builders constructing video games in Web3,” Liao mentioned in a launch. “Whereas the onus of bringing customers to the platforms typically falls on the sport builders, we wish to buck that conference and use our platform to deliver customers to the video games as a substitute.”

The Saga mainnet goes stay Tuesday, April 9 with a record-breaking token as well. The group has infinitely huge plans for the layer-1 community to launch future layer-1s. However will the Binance hype, horizontal scaling, and a publishing division be sufficient to deliver Web3 gaming to the mainstream? The saga begins Tuesday.

Edited by Andrew Hayward