Everything You Need To Know About DeFi Kingdoms: DeFi, NFT, and P2E Game

What Is DeFi Kingdoms?

DeFi Kingdoms is a utility NFT game, a decentralized exchange (DEX), and a way to learn about liquidity pools (LP). Perhaps the most successful of the early NFT and DeFi crossovers, DeFi Kingdoms aims to be an ecosystem of features that includes the $JEWEL token, the DEX, the Gardens (LP), and NFT assets (Heroes, Equipment, and Land) all while providing users activities to interact with those NFTs.

What Is $JEWEL?

The JEWEL token is the main token of value in DeFi Kingdoms. JEWEL tokens can be used to purchase NFTs such as Heroes and Kingdoms in the game, as well as items that will be later used in the eventual combat game. JEWEL is also used in DeFi Kingdoms liquidity pools, allowing you to earn more JEWEL through staking or as a liquidity provider. Additionally, JEWEL also acts as a governance token, allowing holders to have a voice in the growth and development of the game.

The proceeds of every JEWEL transaction are proportionately allocated to different groups of investors in the game. The JEWEL is deposited into the bank to reward xJEWEL holders, recycled back into the community treasury, returned to the players as quest rewards, and lastly some tokens are funneled to development costs of the game. The JEWEL token has a hard cap of 500,000,000 tokens. At the time of writing, CoinGecko estimates about 63M tokens are in the current circulating supply. 

How Do I Get Started in DeFi Kingdoms?

Setting Yourself Up on Harmony Mainnet

The first step to interacting with DeFi Kingdoms is to get set up and prepared to interact with the Harmony blockchain. To do so, you must first add the Harmony Mainnet to your Metamask wallet or compatible web3 wallet. The best place to start this process is via the documentation from the Harmony team. Here, we can safely and securely find the data necessary to add the network to our wallets. It's important to always check the source of this information to ensure you are appropriately adding the network to your wallet for use. To gain a better sense for this process, you can refer to our video tutorial below. 

Once you've securely added the Harmony network to your MetaMask wallet, you can then conveniently send ETH from Ethereum Mainnet to the Harmony network using the Harmony Bridge. Simply put, the Harmony Bridge allows users to take tokens from the Ethereum network, and "bridge" them over to use on a different blockchain (Harmony).

Once on the Harmony bridge, you will first connect to the Ethereum Mainnet and enter the amount of ETH that wish to bridge over to Harmony. After selecting the amount, you will also need to ensure you enter or select this same address as the "receiver" address under the "ONE address" field. 

Once you're satisfied with the information you've entered, clicking "continue" will start the bridging transaction. The transaction will then go through three steps which can take approximately ten minutes to complete. After the transaction is confirmed on the blockchain, you will see your ETH on Harmony Mainnet, and a small amount of ONE, the native token of the Harmony blockchain.

Note: Make sure you always keep a small amount of $ONE in your wallet to pay gas fees on the Harmony network.

With your ETH bridged over, and enough ONE to kick off a few transactions you're ready to start with DeFi Kingdoms. While still on the Harmony Mainnet, you can connect to the DeFi Kingdoms game. Once connected, you'll be prompted to choose an avatar and name your character! 

The DeFi Kingdoms Marketplace: Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

DeFi Kingdoms has its own decentralized exchange, accessible via the Marketplace, that uses the UniswapV2 Protocol. Here you can swap for or from in-game tokens at the current exchange rates from the Trader, known as Merchant Matoya. For example, after you've bridged your ETH to Harmony, you may wish to swap 1ETH (the bridged ETH) for $JEWEL the DeFi Kingdoms in-game token, or $ONE the Harmony blockchain's native token. All of those swaps can be made within the Marketplace exchange with Merchant Matoya. 

Vendor Zada, who can also be found in the marketplace, is used to buy or sell in-game items that may be found on quests in return for $GOLD, a separate in-game currency. All items, as well as $GOLD, can be traded through the decentralized exchange back for JEWEL or other tokens.

Additionally, you can also become a Liquidity Provider in the marketplace. To do so, you'll visit Druid Lazarus and add liquidity to any of the token pools you'd like. These liquidity pools will earn you prorated rewards based on your percentage of the pool any time anyone trades the pair you've provided liquidity for. To learn more about liquidity pools, you can refer to our Beginner's Guide to DeFi and How To Use Uniswap. Alternatively, while you can provide liquidity via Druid Lazarus, LP tokens can also be staked in the Gardens to earn JEWEL rewards.

The DeFi Kingdom Gardens: Liquidity Pools

The Gardens are the place to stake liquidity provider (LP) tokens to earn JEWEL rewards. By providing your LP tokens in the Gardens, you’ll be gaining JEWEL tokens that can later be used in the game for purchasing rare NFTs or other items. 

Within each liquidity pool pair (garden), you will be able to see your portion of the total pool of "plants." The gardener (Horticulturist Henry) tends to your plants and when you harvest, the gardener is the one who deposits your yield (rewards) based on your share of JEWEL tokens of the block mined. There will be ways to increase your yield through in-game items that will provide you with increased JEWEL token rewards in the future.

Only a portion of the JEWEL grown in the Gardens can be unlocked and harvested immediately, while the rest are dispersed deep underground and are locked for a longer period of time. This locked JEWEL will slowly work its way upward and will be rewarded to the owners over time. 

The issuance of JEWEL is scheduled to change after every 302,400 blocks - referred to as an Epoch on the Harmony Blockchain. The length of each Epoch depends on the average block speed on Harmony, but the 302,400 number was chosen to represent an average of seven days of transactions on the network.

Once claimed, locked tokens remain locked until the end of Epoch 51 (estimated to be in Q3 2022) at which point such locked JEWEL will begin to unlock over the next year (estimated to fully unlock in Q3 2023).

For example, Garden staking rewards claimed during Epoch 1 were 5% unlocked, 95% locked; during Epoch 2, 7% unlocked, 93% locked; during Epoch 3  9% unlocked, 91% locked, and so on, until after Epoch 51, when no more locking of staked rewards will occur for newly claimed Garden rewards.

One unique feature in DeFi Kingdoms is the ability for Heroes, the game's characters NFTs, to mine your locked JEWEL, potentially allowing access to the tokens before Epoch 51. A Hero's stats and attributes help determine their ability to unlock this locked JEWEL.

There are no deposit fees for staking LP tokens in the Gardens, but withdrawing staked LP tokens does incur a fee. The DeFi Kingdom game developers have put in place some mechanisms to help defend against flash loans and pump and dump schemes as well. Overall, the longer you keep the LP tokens staked, the less the fee will be, ranging from 0.01% (after 4 epochs) to 25% (in the same block).

DeFi Kingdoms Liquidity Pool Example: JEWEL-ONE Pair

Below we'll walk through an example of providing liquidity to a liquidity pool in the DeFi Kingdoms ecosystem. First, navigate to the marketplace on the map and click on "Trader."

Once you've done so, swap 51% of the ETH that you have bridged over to the Harmony blockchain for the chain's native token, ONE. After you've successfully added a position of ONE, next swap the remaining 49% of your ETH for JEWEL, the in-game token. 

With both ONE and JEWEL positions added, you can now navigate back to the Marketplace and talk to the Druid. Here, you can click "Create Pool." Once you've done so, select ONE  as the top pairing, and JEWEL as the bottom. Clicking "max" next to JEWEL will automatically select the appropriate portion of ONE for pairing. After approving both tokens for spending, you can click "supply." 

Note: It is important to never use all of your ONE, as it is needed in order to pay for transactions on the blockchain. Therefore, if you do not have any ONE, you can not make any transactions.  

With the tokens supplied, you can head back to the maps and select "Gardens." At the Seed Box you can search for the JEWEL-ONE pool and click "manage." Here, you can deposit the LP tokens you'd generated in the previous step.

Select the amount of LP tokens you wish to deposit, and then hit "deposit." This will first require that you approve the use of your LP tokens.

Now you're gardening and will be eligible to harvest JEWEL rewards, as described previously. 

The DeFi Kingdoms Bank: Staking

The Bank is another place in the DeFi Kingdoms ecosystem that provides players the opportunity to earn rewards with their unlocked JEWEL. At the Jeweler, you can deposit JEWEL tokens to the Jeweler and receive xJEWEL shares. The Bank receives fees from the Marketplace's decentralized exchange and will periodically market buy more JEWEL tokens. Additionally, every in-game transaction of JEWEL will deposit a percentage into the Bank to further reward xJEWEL holders.

The DeFi Kingdom Docks: Anyswap

Inside the Docks page, you'll be taken to Anyswap. Here, you'll be able to bridge over coins from other networks similarly to how you had bridged ETH from the Ethereum blockchain to Harmony.  The Anyswap platform supports the bridging of all the most popular cryptocurrencies. 

The DeFi Kingdom Heroes

Heroes are the foundation of the DeFi Kingdoms game and can be purchased with the in-game token, JEWEL. To start, 50 Gen 0 Heroes were given to randomly selected individuals who had at least 5,000 xJEWEL tokens in their bank balance on September 15, 2021. 

Heroes serve a few different purposes in the DeFi Kingdoms game. The Gen0 Heroes have summoned (bred) further generations of Heroes that hold a mixture of professions and stats.

These Heroes can be assigned to quests earn them experience and drops. Profession quests include mining, fishing, gardening, and foraging which allow you to increase your JEWEL yield, farm for in-game items and currency, and gain experience points (XP). In the future, Dungeon Raiding and PVE quests will allow Heroes to gain loot and XP. 

DeFi Kingdoms Professions: Questing

DeFi Kingdom Hero's can participate in different professions. The mining profession is hinges on a Hero's strength and endurance stats. When mining you will be able to visit the mines to unlock JEWEL that was previously locked. Increasing a Hero’s mining skill increases the yields that Hero will receive and allows the Hero to mine longer without a rest.

Gardening focuses on a Hero's wisdom and vitality stats. Gardening is primarily for your own Garden, and the quest helps speed up the growth of your liquidity pools. Increasing a Hero’s gardening skills can lead to more JEWEL rewards and the greater likelihood your hero finds other resources. 

The fishing profession tests a Hero's agility and luck stats. Increasing the fishing skill improves the chances to catch better fish and allows Heroes to fish more often.

The foraging profession centers on a Hero's dexterity and intelligence stats. Increasing the foraging skill improves the opportunity to find useful items and allows a Hero to forage more often.

The DeFi Kingdoms Portal: Summoning

Summoning, the breeding mechanism in DeFi Kingdoms, requires two heroes visit the Portal on the map. At the Portal, the Arch Druid will infuse a summoning crystal to seek heroes from far away lands that are in tune with the heroes that infused the crystal. You can click on the summoner and choose the Hero you wish to breed from your pool of Heroes. You may match this Hero with one of your own, or you may rent a Hero from the summoning marketplace. Breeding "in-house," or with your own Heroes, costs less as it does not require a rented Hero fee. 

The Summoning process requires $JEWEL, as well as Gaia’s Tears, which can be found from quests or purchased in the marketplace. More advanced classes require more tears to summon.

Summoning is an exhausting process for Heroes. For each summon a Hero performs, they face a cooldown period before they can summon again. The cooldown period increases by four hours with each summon. Additionally, the amount of JEWEL needed to summon increases by 2 JEWEL after each summon.

Gen 0 Heroes come with the ability to summon in an unlimited fashion. Conversely, Gen 1 Heroes can only summon up to 10 times. Plus, the result of Gen 1 summons take the difference of 10 minus the amount of remaining summons the Gen 1 Hero had left. For example, if a Gen 0 Hero summons with a Gen 1 Hero with seven remaining summons, then the resulting summoned Hero will be a Gen2 and will hold a maximum of three summons.

Heroes of higher rank have better starting stats and scaling than those of lower ranks. However, they require more of Gaia's Tears to perform a summon than Heroes of lower ranks. For example, a Paladin, an advanced Hero per the chart above, would pay 40 tears to summon.

Despite being higher-ranked, the higher-ranked heroes such as Dreadknights and Dragoons, actually have lower maximum summons than their lower ranked counterparts. The breakdown of maximum summons is as follows:

• Basic - 10 
• Advanced - 5 
• Elite - 3
• Exalted - 1

See the chart above to see which classes can be summoned together to make more advanced classes, though advanced classes are not guaranteed when you summon. The class and rarity of each summon are based on the stats and attributes of the parents. 

The DeFi Kingdoms Meditation Circle: Leveling

Heroes can increase their stats by leveling up within the DeFi Kingdoms Meditation Circle. Once a Hero has accumulated a full bar of experience from their quests, holders can head to the Meditation Circle on the DeFi Kingdoms Map. To level up, you will use a certain number of runes and JEWEL based on the respective Hero's level. Each set of 10 levels has a focus rune associated with it.

For levels 1 through 10, that rune is the Shvās rune. We will provide an update when Heroes start reaching level 10, but as of now, no Hero has exceeded level 3. 

The JEWEL cost of leveling up is 0.1 times the Hero's current level. When leveling, each Hero will get two rolls per stat to see if they increase.

The first roll will be based on the hero’s Primary Stat Growth percentage, which additionally depends on its class. The second roll is for the Secondary Stat Growth percentage, which is based on the subclass. For each successful roll, the stat receives +1 to its value.

In addition to these two rolls per stat, the player will be given a choice of one stat to automatically grant an extra +1 bonus. Players will then choose an additional two stats which have a 50% chance to add +1 to their category.

For more on DeFi Kingdoms, stay tuned to the Lucky Trader YouTube Channel and the DeFi Kingdoms playlist! 

Additional Resources

Defi Kingdoms Game: https://defikingdoms.com/

DFK Discord: https://discord.gg/defikingdoms

Harmony bridge: https://bridge.harmony.one/eth

Map Tour: https://defikingdoms.com/tour.html

Personal APR/Hero Tracker: https://kingdom.watch/

Price Tracker: https://info.defikingdoms.com/home

Helpful Strategy Tips: http://dfktavern.com/allinone

Club NGMI DFK Streams: playlist