What is Saga? The Gaming Network, Play-to-Airdrop Push, and Token Launch

Gaming-focused layer-1 blockchain Saga Protocol has made a reputation for itself in latest months with an airdrop marketing campaign. This led to a record-breaking $13.4 billion staked on Binance to earn SAGA token rewards as soon as the token launches… which occurs to be lower than a day away, as of this writing.

To not be confused with Solana’s Saga smartphone (or gaming titan Sega, for that matter), Saga is scheduled to launch its mainnet and SAGA token Tuesday, April 9.

With all this hype, it may be straightforward to overlook the main points of how the whole lot works. However don’t fret, right here at Decrypt’s GG we have been fastidiously watching, studying up on lore, and now know the whole lot that is about to occur on this upcoming saga.

What’s Saga?

Saga is a “layer-1 to launch layer-1s“, Saga CEO and co-founder Rebecca Liao defined in a Twitter (aka X) video. “There isn’t a such factor as launching instantly on Saga mainnet.” 

As a substitute, builders will use Saga to launch their very own chain (known as a chainlet) or a set of chains. These chainlets can be utilized in parallel to energy decentralized apps (dapps) or assist apps on different chainlets inside the Saga community. That is known as horizontal scaling, which Liao claims means initiatives can “infinitely scale”.

There are presently over 350 initiatives—or “innovators” as Saga calls them—constructing within the ecosystem. Saga is technically not a gaming-exclusive community, however the overwhelming majority of initiatives being constructed on the community contain gaming indirectly with round 80% of initiatives on the testnet being gaming-related.

What’s the SAGA token?

Together with the launch of the mainnet, the SAGA token shall be accessible on April 9 and shall be listed on Binance on day one. 

This follows Saga declaring the venture’s Launchpool marketing campaign had damaged the $13 billion mark final Friday. Binance Launchpool promotions provide up soon-to-launch tokens to prospects who stake different cryptocurrencies—on this case Binance Coin (BNB) and the FDUSD stablecoin.

Decrypt‘s personal evaluation of previous Launchpool campaigns means that Saga is the primary venture to interrupt the $13 billion barrier, with ENA and ETHFI coming shut. Whereas the token has been an ideal incentive to get folks within the venture, turning them into “Saganauts,” there’s a actual objective behind SAGA.

Anybody who has ever used cryptocurrency understands the pains of transaction charges. Within the Saga litepaper, the present mannequin is likened to somebody grabbing an Uber and paying Amazon for internet hosting the Uber app—it simply would not make sense! Due to this fact, Saga places the payment burden on builders, paid utilizing the SAGA token.

Builders are anticipated to pay a deposit of SAGA tokens in trade for computing energy, and because the deposit diminishes, the developer should consider the way it will fund extra computing energy. They’ll select to make customers pay a payment with every transaction or discover different possibility corresponding to a subscription, ad-based, or freemium fashions. 

SAGA can have an preliminary circulating provide of 90 million tokens (or 9% of the overall provide), and half of that was provided to the over 500,000 Launchpool members that finally staked their cash.

How did play-to-airdrop work?

In December, Saga started its “play-to-airdrop” competitors marketing campaign which incentivized players to check out the initiatives on the Saga testnet. On the time, it was themed across the Christmas holidays however the marketing campaign bumped into the early months of 2024 with out the festivities.

Saga spotlighted a variety of video games on the testnet just like the motion role-playing sport Rogue Nation, the fantasy-themed Generative Dungeon, and the Pokémon Go-esque location sport Vennity. Players that topped every sport’s leaderboard on the finish of the competitions had been rewarded with SAGA tokens.

It’s value noting, nonetheless, that this was topic to location as some elements of the world (together with the USA) couldn’t declare the airdrop. Saga launched an eligibility information that detailed who might and couldn’t declare the airdrop earlier than the window closed in late March.

Whereas nearly all of video games featured on this marketing campaign had been on the Saga take a look at community, some video games on different chains—together with Avalanche-based shooter Shrapnel—had been additionally featured in play-to-airdrop competitions as Saga aimed to draw extra customers.

What’s Saga Origins?

Because the airdrop marketing campaign got here to a detailed in March, Saga introduced a sport publishing division known as Saga Origins.

Regardless of having no video games introduced, the publishing arm guarantees to supply a “full service and collaborative method” to bringing video games to market. This contains consumer acquisition, group constructing, and promotional efforts.

Saga Origins claims to be “first and solely layer-1 Web3 sport writer,” although there have been layer-2 publishers (see: Immutable on Ethereum).

“Saga Origins is our love letter to the builders constructing video games in Web3,” Liao mentioned in a launch. “Whereas the onus of bringing customers to the platforms typically falls on the sport builders, we need to buck that conference and use our platform to carry customers to the video games as a substitute.”

The Saga mainnet goes stay Tuesday, April 9 with a record-breaking token besides. The workforce has infinitely large plans for the layer-1 community to launch future layer-1s. However will the Binance hype, horizontal scaling, and a publishing division be sufficient to carry Web3 gaming to the mainstream? The saga begins Tuesday.

Edited by Andrew Hayward