Waves.tech, an ecosystem of innovative blockchain solutions and products based on the Waves.protocol, announced today that it will expand its native NFT game Waves Ducks to become the first NFT gaming platform to incorporate trading and DeFi yield farming mechanics.

While demand and prices for top NFT art have decreased in recent weeks, innovation and experimentation combining NFTs with DeFi has increased, with projects like Aave and Teller Finance exploring the utility of loans via collateralized NFTs, and Uniswap leveragingNFTs to represent liquidity providers' positions.

“Crypto has a history of ‘gamifying' aspects of innovation, trading, and ecosystem participation,” Waves founder Sasha Ivanov said. “However, NFTs have opened up a new avenue of excitement for decentralized finance. We can increase the fun factor in our community by using NFTs, and our friendly duck characters can guide new users through concepts like yield farming, staking and general smart contract functions, as well as a reasonable level of profitability.”

Waves Ducks are unique in this regard, as they provide NFT collectors and crypto enthusiasts with additional financial utility beyond the strictly aesthetic appeal of more traditional static collectibles such as CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties. In April2021, Waves set a record for the highest sale of an NFT outside of Ethereum with its first Waves Duck, "Perfection," which sold for 1,000,000 $USDN, resulting in the release of the first iteration of Duck Hunters, which generated over 5,000 Ducks and a market cap of more than $10,000,000 for EGG tokens in the weeks following the initial launch.

The current game's mechanics include the following, which will be updated on a regular basis:Gathering and hatching $EGG tokens can be purchased on the Waves exchange or won by completing regular tasks on social media or within Waves-based DeFi products. These tokens can be hatched in order to produce genesis Duck NFTs.

Duck Breeding: Players can then breed these ducks together to create new ducks with varying degrees of uniqueness or rarity, unlocking yields ranging from 300 percent to 5,000 percent APY inside.

Duck Markets: Using Waves smart contracts, ducks can be sold directly on the newly developed secondary market.

Duck Farming: By staking their duck NFTs, players can further monetize their collections. Placing your duck on a perch will earn you $EGG Tokens as a passive return.

Waves is not making its first foray into the DeFi space. Waves has continued to develop DeFi projects such as their flagship Waves Exchange, the Neutrino protocol, an infrastructure for plug-and-play algorithmic finance, and Swop.fi, a Waves-based automated market maker (AMM) protocol similar to Ethereum-based AMMs such as Uniswap and SushiSwap. Unlike blockchains like Ethereum, which have variable fees and block times, the Waves protocol has instant transactions and low fixed transaction fees, making it ideal for innovations in NFTs and decentralized finance.

About the big DIP4 - v2 update:

You won't need money to begin your adventure after the DIP-4 v2 update (except for the smallest sums in $WAVES for blockchain commission). There's no need to be concerned about the value of your $EGG and ducks because we're introducing new harvesting mechanics and the $GROW token to compensate!

How harvesting works:

Nearly 500 $GROW tokens will be distributed in the game every 4 hours, which is known as a lap. They will be automatically distributed to all of the baby ducks who have won battles during this lap. Their $GROW tokens will be converted automatically into their growth rate: One percent equals one GROW.

You'll be able to get a duck worth several thousand dollars in about a month! A nice passive income with no investment, because a new player will receive its baby duck for free.

Aside from getting regular $GROW from harvesting, you can also feed all the babies extra $GROW once per lap. However, if you fail to feed your baby duck or fight with it for 24 hours (6 laps), its growth rate will slow.

Baby duck market:

Even if your baby duck has not yet matured into an adult duck, but is growing at a rapid rate, it is still valuable. As a result, It'll include baby duck trading in the marketplace for those with a certain minimum growth rate.

By the way, baby ducks born after a rebirth have a 20% growth rate start bonus, whereas other baby ducks start with zero.

Goal of the DIP:

The primary goal is, of course, to increase the value of ducks and $EGG. The new players will have to show off their baby ducks in battle — and this is where your skilled Jedi ducks will show off their Force! You can rent a Jedi duck for a percentage of your baby duck winnings, as described in our previous DIP. The commission will be paid in $GROW to the owner of the Jedi duck.

Duck owners will have a new passive income option to choose from, depending on their strategies and the market: farming or leasing a duck as a Jedi.

About EGG and GROW tokens:

It is worth noting that issuing an additional token will only benefit $EGG capitalization. The lower the barriers to entry, the more new players who join the game, and the higher the demand for the Jedi duck and $EGG.

The main in-game token, $EGG, is still required for all valuable items. With a stable high exchange rate and short digit length, $EGG approaches NFT, becoming a rare and valuable token. $GROW becomes a utility token and will be used in governance in the future. In a separate post, we'll go over the Duck Growth ($GROW) tokenomics.

Waves Duck's new stage of development will bring mass adoption closer than ever before. Prepare your pets, hunters: massive duck wars are on their way to your farm!