Description
One of the core elements of that makes Defi Kingdoms truly unique is the Hero Summoning mechanics. This mechanism mimicks the principle of genetic reproduction to determine a summoned hero’s Classes and Skills which results in a deceptively complex gameplay. To aid players in buying or hiring heroes to summon with, I’ve created a matchmaking webapp.
The webapp, DFKmatchmaker (dfkmatchmaker.herokuapp.com) has been live since late March and has been regularly used by players. In the current iteration it’s a simple tool where the player enters a Search Hero ID (or enters their wallet and selects a hero they own) to return a table of heroes in the Auction Houses to either buy or hire. The table includes attribute ‘scores’ (e.g. class or skill) where players can sort and select. For example, the highest Class ‘score’ is the hero that when summoned with the Search Hero will have the highest (out of all heroes listed in the Auction House) chance of summoning a hero with higher tier class (e.g. Wizard and Priest summoning a Summoner). Players then can click on that hero to view the likely resulting hero attributes and the respective likelihood (essentially the output of the /match discord bot).
As the game expands and the pool of heroes (and players) grows, there is an opportunity to expand by:
- providing more advanced tools to look for heroes to buy or hire
- enabling more proactive approach to finding heroes, and
- applying statistical modelling and machine learning techniques to support summoning.
Grant Rationale
This Grant will enable expansion of DFKmatchmaker by covering the development and hosting costs as well as potentially adding new team members to speed up development. While there are plans in the Stage 2 (see Deliverables) to monetize via premium subscription, the grant will ensure that users can still access all services for free at a limited capacity. Specifically, the grant will fund the following:
- upgraded Heroku Server tier, Databases tier and add-ons to support expansion
- subsidise the time spent and time that will be spent on expansion
- onboard additional developers (especially in Stage 2-3) to speed up development.
- obtain a better domain name than the free heroku domain name
Grant Amount
The hope is to receive the 10K USD grant, as this will be sufficient to cover the cost listed above and sustain the webapp for free use for the foreseeable future (2+ years).
Team Information
Team Lead - David Wu
The webapp (frontend and backend) was developed by myself. My name is David Wu and I was a Systems Engineer by trade in Australia. After 10 years in the Defence industry I am currently a full time dad and transitioning into software development (studying a Masters in Machine Learning) as this has always been my passion.
Requests from DFK Team
Currently, the webapp interacts with DFK Hero contract via Harmony API for hero data and with DFK community API gateway for auction data. For future expansions to other blockchains and/or new features, API access will be requested
Connection to DFK Game and DFK Blockchain
The current system makes the following API calls:
- individual Hero and Wallet data from Harmony blockchain
- Auction house data using GraphQL API
The webapp will only ever pull data from the DFK Blockchain. I do not intend this app to directly purchase/rental of heroes and are to be used as an aid to decision making only.
Deliverables
Milestone 1 (completed) -
Current App - Features:
- Hero Match (User enters a hero ID or Wallet Address to find optimal hero for summoning)
- Manual Match (User enters two IDs to calculate genetic likelihood)
Milestone 2
Additional Matchmaking Functions - Features:
-
Additional matching measures, optimal chance of purple, blue, green stats matching hero class (i.e. optimal chance if a warrior is summoned, it’ll also have Str and End as its stat boost), QoL improvements and mobile support.
-
Advanced Results filter, Auction House visualisation, price distribution.
-
Free Match mode. Enable creation of a table of target heroes and users can freely match against Auction House heroes. Match results can be added to a third match table with all the results for comparison selected possible matches.
Estimated Completion by the 31 Jul 22.
Milestone 3
Matchmaking Services - Features:
Auction Listing Alert - Search all heroes (not just what’s listed in Auction Houses) and allow users to sign up for alerts on when that hero is listed.
Match Alert - Submit heroes to be on a search list and scoring threshold and alert user when a hero is listed that matches the threshold
At this milestone monetization could be implemented but rather than a direct subscription model, the plan is to make all functionalities free with limit and offer a premium service. As an example, in Free mode each unique wallet is allowed to submit up to 5 heroes each for Auction Listing Alert and Match Alert. Premium model may allow much high capped submissions for each alert subscription.
Estimated Completion by the 30 September 22 (on assumption that no new developer is added to the team).
Milestone 4
Advanced Functions - Features:
Auction Price Guide - Using Machine Learning techniques to predict the value of specific genes (dominant and recessive) so a user can value heroes. This will be possible provided sufficient number of transactions has been conducted since the latest major change (e.g. introduction of PvP will change value of genes and value of impacted genes will need to be adjusted). In theory this will provide a much more accurate estimation.
Multi-generational matching (stretch goal) - User provides multiple heroes (4, 8, 16) to optimise 2nd, 3rd, 4th generational likelihood. Like the simple matchmaking, users can provide 1 or more heroes and the Auction House will be searched to identify the optimal set of heroes for a full set of summoning. For example, an user could provide 2 heroes and the tool to calculate a list of potential pairs of heroes to match with that will summon the optimal set of 2 heroes that will in turn summon the optimum 2nd generation (i.e. best chance to summon Sages or Dragoon or heroes with Transcendent skills). Further statistical modelling is required to confirm the viability of this stretch goal as potentially the calculation cost might be too much
Estimated Completion by the 31 December 22 (on assumption that no new developer is added to the team)
Payment Schedule
Payment Schedule
Milestone 1 - $1,000
Milestone 2 - $2,500
Milestone 3 - $3,000
Milestone 4 - $3,500
Based on estimated level of effort to implement the described features.
Timeline with Milestones
Milestone 1 - Upon Grant Approval
Milestone 2 - 31 Jul 22
Milestone 3 - 30 Sep 22
Milestone 4 - 31 Dec 22
Long Term Plan
Upon completion of the Milestone 4, it is envisaged that I will maintain the service with periodic feature improvements/additions and implement the service in new blockchains brought online by DFK.
External Links
Product: https://dfkmatchmaker.herokuapp.com/
Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/DfkMatchmaker