From 3 to 5 December 2021, Atocha Protocol has joined Portals: New Horizon as one of the community supporters and sponsors. We would like to thank Ahmad Hakym (aka Kymio) for inviting us and providing such a good opportunity for us to engage with the local community.
The event is situated in Rumah Tangsi, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was a residence for Loke Chow Kit which was a renowned businessman and later on converted to a hotel and now an event space owned by the municipal of Kuala Lumpur. The space is very much a convergence point of all kinds of art, creativity, and cultural event.
Atocha Protocol has created 2 puzzle games for the event, they are:
- Finding the 3 numeric password to unlock Limited Edition NFT airdrop. The puzzle is accompanied with 5 clues that are pasted around the building which allows the players to have more clue about what is the password.
- Collaborating with the treasure hunt event, there is a hidden easter egg within the building. The treasure hunt players will need to find the easter egg based on the clue “Save Vladimir” and take photo of the easter egg which then to be DM to Atocha Protocol Twitter. The easter egg will be the doorway into the real puzzle that has a 250 USDC prize pool to be won.
So far, there is one winner that solved both and now is in the middle of solving the “Save Vladimir” puzzle. We are excited to see the outcome on whether he can successfully win the prize. From the interview with the winner, we realized that the first puzzle is not an easy one either as it took 2 hours for him to solve. Again, we would like to congratulate on your achievement! Shout out to Mr.SuperDodol.
In this event, there are some takeaways that we want to share:
A Combination of Metaverse & Physical World
Portals 2021 has shown to the public how an event can be conducted by combining both the physical world and metaverse together. On one hand, the physical world is filled with physical art pieces, signage, furniture, and people. On another end which is the metaverse, there are avatars, NFT artworks that are 2D and 3D, VR accessible metaverse and etc. It is exciting to see how the event space started to involve from solely with physical presence to be both happening concurrently on both sides of the world.
With that being said, that would create a lot of opportunities for Atocha Protocol to venture into like:
- Combination of physical & virtual puzzle pieces for treasure hunt (this was co-created by Amirual Aqib, one of the avid member of NFXT) which is fun and with limitless possibilities.
- Allowing people from any corner of the world to participate.
- Create multiverse which can be matched with the physical world that creates limitless themes and community engagements.
The Industry Is Still Young
From the engagement with the visitors, the majority of the visitors know about NFT & blockchain but have not been involved or tried on the technology itself. That reflects on how skeptical the public is towards the whole industry. Despite that skepticism, all participating entities like Atocha Protocol, NFXT, Sketchnation Meta are all about providing exposure to the public that this is something worth looking into and try it out.
Atocha Protocol has been working on finding methods to onboard the public onto the Web3 through puzzle game engagement. Ideally, the user experience should be seamless for the players and creators so that they can create and play the puzzle game without the technical barrier that many of the NFT artists will be facing. Although this would still be impossible due to the need of having a decentralized wallet and knowledge to acquire native tokens for all kinds of utility purposes on the platform, it is still achievable.
Nevertheless, we are amazed at the local community that is so passionate about art, creativity, NFTs, and the technology that they form such a strong entity and pulls out an event that is also funded by the government funding entities like MyCreative and Cendana Fund. Again, it is part of our role to continuously and consistently promote how can technology bring new convenience and redistribution of rights back to the creators.
The Misconception of The Technology
After interviewing with a few visitors, we found that NFT, cryptocurrency, blockchain is still something that people misunderstood as a tool for scam and Ponzi. It is saddening that there are still bad players out there that uses the convenience of anonymity on the blockchain to raise fund and rug pull the community. However, there are good players like the NFXT community as well as Atocha Protocol that stands for the community and technology.
It will not be easy to get people to understand how the technology can bring changes to someone unless they are benefited in some way. Therefore, we think that creating useful, valuable utility projects will be a good and feasible way to drive the public towards the mass adoption of blockchain as a whole. We are excited to see how the puzzle games can be a catalyst to create new momentum for the community.
On-ramp Strategies to Be Newbie Friendly
One big hurdle for people who are interested in the know-how is to kick start their journey towards the decentralized world. Being independent and trusting only yourself is something that we are not used to especially in the fiat world. One must be cautious and aware that the secureness of your asset is all on your hand by not taking action like revealing your seed phrase in public, connecting to a fishy web app just for some airdrop, trusting any entities that they can help you on a decentralized wallet issue or free money (of course, there is legit airdrop).
We see that NFXT is doing a great job to onboard new users by getting them started with Metamask wallet. Although the process might be tedious as it is a one on one session in most cases due to the unfamiliarity with the space, this is still a very noble and most efficient way to do it. Through such sincere and specific education, the ones who have benefited will eventually become an evangelist as well for this movement.
As for Atocha Protocol, we will also be going to launch some educative contents that could help the crowd to learn about Near Protocol, create their Near Wallet, and interact with the ecosystem’s applications. We understand that it may not be directly relevant to our core service which is to provide puzzle game protocol for the puzzle game community. Yet, without the right onboarding process, it would be even harder to get people to try and adopt.
Hidden Talents & Collaboration
Throughout the event, we get to talk to different NFT artists as well as artists that do fine arts, music, and performance. Without a doubt, the local community is full of talents that deserve to be noticed and appreciated. However, it is challenging to build a following and to create an impact. That is also what Atocha Protocol currently is now which is at its infant stage of building up the foundation of the community.
With that being said, one way to break through is to leverage different established communities/entities to work on some form of collaboration. As long as we are creating values for others, it is not difficult for us to form a collaborative relationship with others and build something we believe together. This reminds us about “no man is an island”. We need to work together to get things done efficiently and impactful.
Atocha Protocol is also publicly seeking collaboration especially from the puzzle game community to onboard creative and talented puzzle creators. We view the creators as the main asset for the protocol as puzzle creation is a niche skillset and to be able to create a challenging puzzle is hard to come by. Thus, we also created the Puzzle Creator Contest that is already published and live since November 2021. All are welcome to join and test your puzzle!
We look forward to more collaboration like such in different parts of the world. The puzzle game can be very fun when the playground expands crossing different nations! Till next time.
Some Important Links:
NFXT Website: https://nfxt.io/portals/
Rumah Tangsi Page: https://www.facebook.com/rumahtangsi
Sketchnation Meta: https://www.instagram.com/sketchnationm1/