Launchpool AMA Recap — NiftyFootball
Launchpool x NiftyFootball AMA Summary
Place: Launchpool Official Telegram Community
Date & Time: March 9th, 14:00 UTC
Guests: Andrew Ivison, CEO
Host: Mickie (Launchpool Team)
Launchpool was excited to host Andrew Ivison, CEO of Nifty Football for an interactive Ask-Me-Anything session with the Launchpool Community. This AMA comes in anticipation of NiftyFootball’s weeklong Allocation Mining Event on Launchpool from Monday March 7th 2022. The session lasted approximately 1hr, and consisted of questions from the Launchpool Team as well as questions from the Community.
Questions from the Launchpool Team
Mickie:
Hello and Welcome all LPOOLers, as many in our Community already know, today we have an AMA session with Andrew Ivison, CEO of Nifty Football. Nifty football is a play-to-earn football management game. With Nifty Football you are taking on the challenge of managing a non-league team from the very bottom to world league domination.
As always, the chat will be muted for roughly 30 mins whilst we ask the pre-prepared questions. After this, we will open up to questions from the Community for another 15 mins. We will also enable “Slow Mode” for all questions.
Welcome, Andrew!
Andrew Ivison: Hello Mickie and hello Launchpoolers!
Mickie: Let’s start off by telling us a bit about yourself, your background and your involvement with the space.
Andrew Ivison: Sure, I am Andrew and I’m the CEO of Nifty football. I got into crypto back in early 2016 and went on to become a co-founder of the Alphabit fund later that year.
I spent 5 years as the Director of Operations there and have now stepped back from that role, although I remain on the board. Concurrently, since early 2021 I was also a founder of Launchpool.
Mickie: Great stuff. Could you tell us about the rest of the NiftyFootball team?
Andrew Ivison: The team comprises of only a few core members for the time being, with myself and Eleanor from Launchpool driving the Nifty vision and coordinating the efforts of the main development partners, Sequence (UX/UI), Silverchip (backend/game engine) and Softbinator (smart contracts/NFT’s).
We also now have Shishkausas, Sleed, Vevery and Marmaladex of the Fixers taking care of our community management. They have only recently started but we share a philosophy of doing these things right. Please stop by and say hello to them on our new discord server:
Mickie: I’ve heard about the Fixers and they really are doing great. What problem are you trying to solve with NiftyFootball? What is the overall vision for the project?
Andrew Ivison: At its core this project is about making a game that is fun to play and creating a token economy that supports its active community i.e. people who play the game.
I suppose the main problem we have tried to solve is a high barrier to entry for new players, where people are priced out of the game just because they were a little late to the party. As the nifty model involves giving every user some NFT’s to enter the game, we ensure that everyone who signs up has a chance to participate.
Moreover, the randomisation of the player card ‘potential ability’ means that anyone at all could end up with a desirable card just by virtue of signing up.
Mickie: Cool. That being said, how are you differentiated from other similar projects?
Andrew Ivison: I’ve said before that we try not to focus on what similar projects are doing. At the end of the day anyone who builds a football management game is going to have very similar features as we are all trying to capture the experience of managing a real football team.
I would say that personally I’ve not seen any other projects with such unique art work as ours, which is all down to the fantastic Manchester artist Stanley Chow.
Our focus is on supporting the Community and in turn allowing the Community to share in the development of the project, so perhaps we are fairly unique in that we give our NFT’s away, and it is for the Community to decide their worth within the game.
Mickie: Where are you at in your roadmap? Could you please talk us through the next steps.
Andrew Ivison: From the very beginning we have been focussed on building the core of the game before creating too much hype. As with any tech build we have had our trials and tribulations, but I’m pleased to say we are moving along nicely with our roadmap.
We currently have most of the Beta game completed and will move into internal testing very soon. We have also added a staking dashboard to be released along with the token and game beta. This will allow NFTF holders the chance to stake in various pools with rewards in both NFTF, XP and some coveted special edition player cards.
Aside from that the roadmap on the website is in progress and on target!
Mickie: I like that move. It makes sense, really. Football fans and our Community is sure to be excited for that! Are there any strategic partners (excluding Launchpool) that you can share?
Andrew Ivison: As I mentioned above our main partners in this are Sequence and Silverchip, with our blockchain devs Softbinator just recently joining us. We are in advanced talks with an IDO platform and some real world football marketing agencies that we hope we can confirm as partners shortly.
Mickie: How was the project funded up to this point? How will the funds from the pre-IDO be used?
Andrew Ivison: The funding for the project is still only from a contribution from the Alphabit Fund and the money raised through the Launchpool Community. The majority of the funds spent to date have been on game development. Our intention was to have increased our marketing spend by now, unfortunately we never really found the right partners.
Thankfully search is now at an end and you should start to see a massive ramp up in marketing activity as we head towards our beta launch. Some of that pre-IDO funds will be used to support that, along with the ongoing development costs.
Mickie: Having the right partners is certainly important. What made you choose Launchpool as your launchpad partner for the AME?
Andrew Ivison: This once is easy as founder of Launchpool. I know it’s the best place to be!
✨ Special Announcement ✨
To welcome NiftyFootball to Launchpool, we’ve teamed up to give away $2,000 worth of $NFTF tokens! We’re currently running a Gleam campaign with NiftyFootball
👉 Just fill out the Gleam form for a chance to win❗😎
https://gleam.io/KyDew/enter-the-nifty-football-2000-contest
Mickie: What is the total allocation you’ve set aside for the Launchpool Community? Are there any limitations or is the Allocation Mining Event open to everyone? Please list any countries that are excluded from the allocation event due to regulatory reasons.
Andrew Ivison: We are currently offering $250K in tokens to the Launchpool Community. Any restrictions are those imposed by the Launchpool platform. Please check their T&C’s!
Mickie: What happens after the AME? Could you talk us through the tokenomics: total supply, initial circulating supply, initial market cap, initial vesting, total vesting period (from launch until when will the last token be vested for), etc.
Andrew Ivison: Since the last time we spoke there have been some tweaks to the release schedule for the tokens. We have decreased the initial distribution to investors from 10% to 5%, and spread the majority of the vesting over 18 months as opposed to 12 months.
The full details of the tokenomics are in our deck, which can be found on our Discord Server
Mickie: What are the use cases for the token? Do you have any mechanisms planned to support the DeFi component (staking, burning, earning, spending, etc?)
Andrew Ivison: We will be opening up some staking pools in parallel to the beta release of the game. This will allow users to earn more $NFTF and also give them the opportunity to get their hands on some limited edition player card NFT’s.
NFTF tokens can be used to purchase in-game XP, which is what you need to train your players and upgrade your staff and facilities. XP can also be redeemed for NFTF, but with the caveat of having a higher commission to exit the game. This commission is to be distributed to worthy grassroots football causes.
In the longer term we want the NFTF token to be the stakes for winning curated leagues and cups.
Mickie: Staking pools! 🤩 Sounds really exciting. I can hear football fans roaring! ⚽️ Where can we join your community?
👉 GLEAM SECRET CODE: FOOTBALL
Andrew Ivison: I can’t stress enough that our Discord is the place to be!
Discord: http://discord.gg/niftyfootball
Telegram: https://t.me/NiftyFootballAnnouncements
Twitter: @niftyfootball
Mickie: Thank you again for sharing these great updates with the Community. Our Community will be sure to join NiftyFootball on Discord. I will now open up the Community to questions from the floor.
Questions from the Launchpool Community
Question: How would I go about selling my players? Do I need to keep a certain number of players or can I have more or less than a full team?
Andrew Ivison: Once we move to the full version of the game and players are minted as NFT’s, you would be able to trade them on OpenSea. We do have our own marketplace roadmapped though.
Question: Is it possible for me to connect my social account with my collection, if I wanted to show others the players that I have?
Andrew Ivison: You will be able to look at the squads of other users, and your achievements recorded as part of your manager NFT.
Question: You’ve mentioned staking for XP and NFTs, will these be allowed to be traded on a secondary market?
Andrew Ivison: XP is an in-game currency. Our Token $NFTF can be staked for more NFTF, plus NFT’s. All NFT’s are freely tradable.
Question: Hello Andrew, can we expect to see some football clubs signing on in the near future? It would be great to have well known players form part of the NFT collection.
Andrew Ivison: We like to think of the Niftyverse as its own alternate football world! As such our focus does not lie with real world players for now…but never say never!
Question: What is your biggest focus currently and where do you see the project going?
Andrew Ivison: Our primary focus is on making a realistic simulation of football management, incrementally improving our game logic. In 5 years it would be a great achievement to say we are the leading P2E football management game. That is where we would like to be!
Mickie: Thank you Andrew for your time in sharing all the info. We can’t wait for what’s ahead! Thank you to everyone that participated! This will be the end of our AMA. 🚀
Andrew Ivison: Thank you Mickie and thanks to everyone who came along today. Much appreciated and looking forward to building the Niftyverse with you all!
About Launchpool
Launchpool leverages communities, knowledge, expertise, contacts and capital to provide crypto projects with the best possible start to life, maximising their chances for success in this fast moving & dynamic space.
About NiftyFootball
NiftyFootball is an exciting football based NFT collectable game that allows players to buy pseudo-random packs of cards which they can collect, trade, and play with friends. Players are minted and assigned various traits that make up the DNA of that unique trading card.
