Zone AMA With CBO Sayan Mukherjee

Zone is an Algorand-based GameFi ecosystem that offers on-chain game challenges, yield farming, NFTs, and free-to-play and play-to-earn gaming features.

The General Manager of Altcoin Buzz, Anindya (Ani) Baidya, anchored the Zone AMA session on our Telegram channel with Sayan Mukherjee, the Chief Business Officer of Zone.

Below is a recap of the AMA session with Sayan Mukherjee to understand what they are up to. Besides, the AMA is in three segments: introduction, deep dive, and community questions and answers.

Segment 1: Introduction to Zone

Background Information
Q – Tell us about your company. How was the concept created?

I am Sayan Mukherjee, the CBO of ZONE. The core team has also been working together for the past 2+ years. Starting with ZPX Ventures, Singapore’s first venture-backed crypto company.

At ZPX, we created some amazing products in the DeFi space. The core team is also the founding team of XTZ Esports, which is one of the most dominant esports companies in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Thinking of scaling up and amplifying the success of XTZ Esports and our deep expertise in blockchain, we launched Zone. Besides, the platform is one of the premiere Play2Earn GameFi ecosystems.

Through Zone, gamers can challenge their other gamers on most of the popular games in the world. We built the platform to empower the 99%. The entire gaming industry heavily skews towards only a few people making all the returns, while the 99% are not able to generate any income. We’re here to disrupt the gaming industry once and for all.

Q – Tell us a bit about your team. Where is the team based out of?

Our team is global and decentralized. With the experience of the leadership team, our product management and operations are perfectly streamlined.

Our CTO’s career spans from his own start-up and leading pioneering companies such as Fidelity Investments as their Global Director of Technology, Qualcomm, Motorola, and Intel. 20+ years in Financial Services, Telecomm, Wireless, and Semi-Conductors. Holds a patent in wireless signal processing. We have a strong development team led by our CTO Kodis.

Our CEO has 8+ years of experience working in the crypto industry in multiple DeFi projects. The CEO is also the co-founder of ZPX, Singapore’s first venture-backed crypto company, and the founder of www.projectartha.com, which aims to re-imagine decentralized finance.

Director of XTZ esports Tech – the first esports company under the DIFC Innovation Hub. Launched a crypto index and a crypto news portal in addition to one of the largest crypto conferences in Singapore – De/Centralize 2018.

Segment 2: Deep Dive

More Information
Q – So what is Zone? Can you give us an overview of its value proposition?

We saw a number of problems that needed to be solved in the Gaming industry, which is also a massive economic opportunity.

There are a number of issues in the current GameFi ecosystem. A few of them are:

  • While blockchain games with complex game mechanics are being developed at a rapid rate throughout the GameFi ecosystem, there is still no comprehensive solution or support for non-blockchain games to be placed on the DeFi stack. Furthermore, gamers are loyal to the games they love with some playing the same title for months at a time. It is imperative for the growth of GameFi that non-blockchain be part of the GameFi phenomenon.
  • Migrating large communities is a herculean task. Gamers form some of the most vibrant and tight-knit communities that exist on the internet with millions banding together to share in the fun of the activity. Larger communities attract even more members, essentially driving a positive feedback loop. The inertia GameFi developers have to overcome is visibly immense.
  • There exists no vehicle to transport value across games on different ecosystems. GameFi developers till now have focused on building an ecosystem of their games and incentives based on those games, unintentionally creating the very centrality that they rally against.

Zone solves all these problems and generates massive value for the community of gamers and investors. Besides, it’s the first GameFi ecosystem on the Algorand blockchain that combines on-chain gaming challenges, yield farming, and NFTs to create a free-to-play and play-to-earn ecosystem. We help 99% of the gamers that spend many hours on a daily basis playing games, upgrading their skills to monetize their time and effort.

Q – What are your different verticals of offerings?

Zone is an ecosystem and therefore has multiple verticals gamified to amplify the others as well.

  1. Zone Play

This feature provides essential cross-blockchain support for player engagement. Players from multiple blockchains can play a variety of games together using ZONE without leaving their native blockchain. Users only need to connect their wallets to the platform to begin playing.

Zone Play also bridges games and other front-end applications to the back-end gamified Zone smart contracts enforcing game-theoretic incentive models rewarding good behavior in the community. The platform supports multiple blockchains and is cross-blockchain enabled.

  1. Zobo Bot

Discord has the largest esports and gaming community in the world with over 6.5 million servers. A majority of these groups focus on esports, gaming, traditional sports, and betting. Yet, most of them remain unmonetized.

Features of Zobo – To bring GameFi to the mainstream, the primary focus should be on the games and communities that gamers already love instead of requiring them to abandon what makes them gamers in the first place. Users also should be able to play the same games they want with the people they want and be able to derive monetary value out of the experience. On the other hand, communities, and the people that sustain them, should also be rewarded. Zobo does exactly that.

  1. Zone Fantasy Sports

Users can use Zobo’s Fantasy Sports features to form their virtual sports teams and emulate their favorite Fantasy Leagues on the blockchain. As fantasy owners, users form the best teams and stack up fantasy points throughout the game, with the best performing teams winning the league and the ZONE token pool along with it.

  1. Zone NFTs

ZONE NFTs express the spirit of GameFi where not only are the NFTs themselves gamified but they, in turn, gamify the ZONE ecosystem as well. They are multi-utility in nature with both cosmetic and GameFi features.

  1. Zone Token

ZONE is the governance and the native utility token that powers the ZONE GameFi ecosystem. Also, the platform rewards stakeholders through the usage of the ZONE token, establishing a system for community expansion.

Q – Let’s talk about Zone Play. Through Zone Play, we can challenge other players and win crypto. What are the different games available now? Also, what are the future plans?

Zone Play provides that essential cross-blockchain support for player engagement. Players from multiple blockchains can play a variety of games together using ZONE without leaving their native blockchain. Users only need to connect their wallets to the platform to begin playing.

Also, Zone Play bridges games and other front-end applications to the back-end gamified Zone smart contracts enforcing game-theoretic incentive models rewarding good behavior in the community. The platform supports multiple blockchains and is cross-blockchain enabled.

The platform allows any game to be placed on the Zone smart contracts through the game’s API endpoints. The smart contracts also execute the instruction set based on the state of the gameplay or any decentralized oracle-based off-chain data, allowing for virtually any gamification instance per model.

Q – In the long run do you plan to integrate AAA games also in the platform?

There are three macro-categories:

  1. Hypercasual games
  2. Esports
  3. Fantasy sports and esports

In the esports segment, Zone Play will add uber-popular and high-quality games like Clash Royale (early April 2022), League of Legends (June 2022), CS GO, and DOTA (Q4). These integrations will unlock the Web3 world to millions of global hardcore esports players and fans.

Q – You currently have a testnet where the community can test Zone Play. What different things can we do there now?

In the Zone Play testnet (v2), gamers can create custom Chess challenges against their friends. Zone Testnet V3 goes live at 12PM UTC today. Less than six hours to go. (Note: the testnet is now live.)

Zone Testnet V3 has an updated, slick UI and also has the P2E challenges enabled.

Segment 3: Community Questions and Answers

For this segment, the five best questions shared 500 USDT. One of the questions is as follows:

Q. Twitter – I am an amateur player of many of the games supported by Zone, such as Clash Royale and League of Legends. Could you tell us how connecting to Zone Play will change my gaming experience? How does Zone collaborate with all these big game companies?

Zone Play completely transforms your gaming experience. The platform allows any game to be placed on the Zone smart contracts through the game’s API endpoints. The smart contracts execute the instruction set based on the state of the gameplay or any decentralized oracle-based off-chain data, allowing for virtually any gamification instance per model.

Zone Play can bring gamification to all online games (including Clash Royale) with open APIs directly. Millions of possible game integrations. Zone Play is non-custodial in nature. Users are always in control of their funds.

Zone uses public APIs of the games available on Web2 and bridges them to a Web3 ecosystem. The games integrated with Zone Play all have long-standing, stable, and robust public APIs.

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