FTX-Backed DeFi Land Opens Public Testing of Gaming Platform

DeFi Land, the agriculture-simulation game that won recognition in Solana’s summer hackathon, is inviting GameFi enthusiasts to put the platform through its paces. The launch of DeFi Land for public testing – on December 22 at 4 pm UTC – follows an intensive six-week period of behind-closed-doors testing involving 3,000 verified users, a third of whom were active daily.

Ahead of the game’s full launch in Q1 of next year, DeFi Land’s developers are eager to let the public experience all that the ecosystem has to offer. An all-in-one amalgam of DeFi, gaming, NFTs and metaverse, the colourful release is open to everyone: all that’s required is a wallet containing some SOL.

Demystifying DeFi Land

The first game on Solana to conduct a public testing event prior to its full public launch, DeFi Land is laser-focused on shipping products and meeting milestones rather than endlessly building hype. During public testing, players can complete mini-games to win rewards, farm for yield, trade tokens, fish, and explore the vast, visually rich landscape at their leisure. In other words, they can get an accurate impression of what’s in store come February/March.

Ostensibly, the farm-themed project brings disparate DeFi protocols under a single roof, making it altogether easier for users to manage their portfolio from a single dashboard – while having the opportunity to earn additional income in the metaverse. Key to the game is its native DFL token, which will variously be used for governance, staking, trading and NFT crafting.

Interestingly, DeFi Land recently partnered with decentralized music streaming platform Audius, the end result being that players can listen to the radio station directly while gaming. The sound waves will be beaming from Audius Radio Tower, a 3D fixture recently added to the metaverse, from the time of launch on December 22. Soon, social elements such as a chat function will be integrated to provide a richer and more interactive experience for players.

Although a great many DeFi protocols have tumbled off the production line in 2021 (around 70 new crypto games are debuting each month), the core team at DeFi Land believe their release offers something far more satisfying, not just from a visual and aesthetic perspective but also in terms of the learning curve: both DeFi novices and O.G. liquidity providers can connect their wallets and get a kick out of the fun gameplay, DeFi mechanisms, and various gamified elements.

Rather than providing the infrastructure for users to acquire tokens and passively farm, the brain trust at DeFi Land believes the DeFi community is crying out for more. Thus, players who conduct swaps and farm tokens will also get to embark on quests and record achievements, with results and rewards filtering into their portfolios. Rewards, incidentally, will include those generated by the platform itself and others that come from DeFi Land’s extensive partner network.

At this public beta testing event, users will be able to assess several implemented features of the project including gamified DeFi services (swapping, LP, farming), aggregator, mini-games for XP and leverage, and map edit mode. The project’s creators intend to add further play-to-earn (P2E) models and NFT integrations in the near future (Q1 2022), with a continued emphasis on gamification and user experience. They have also teased a reward for the dedicated players who participated in the public testing phase that commenced in October, with further details on that front expected soon.

Go-Time for Gamefi

The public’s appetite for Gamefi is undeniable, with half of those connecting crypto wallets in November doing so for the purpose of playing games. Little wonder Solana Ventures this week pledged to invest $150m in startups building play-to-earn games for its ecosystem. DeFi Land, it would appear, is launching at just the right time.

Having already closed a $4.1 million funding round, the platform’s promise has been recognized by several dozen major investors, among them FTX, Animoca Brands (Axie Infinity, Dapper Labs), Alameda Research, Jump Capital, NGC Ventures, Solana Foundation and Gate.io. The latter platform, incidentally, supported the recent public sale of DeFi Land’s native DFL token, alongside Raydium and Solanium.

Conducting a public testing phase is a bold step, and a sure sign that DeFi Land’s anonymous team (each of their names are prefixed by ‘DFL’) expect a significant volume of players to whet their appetites for the full launch next year. They’re probably right.