In a recent Web3 Weekly, we wrote about a game dominating the attention of web3 gamers and threadors: Parallel. For those who were out touching grass, Parallel is a sci-fi TCG game on Coinbase’s Base L2 that’s being dubbed the web3 Magic the Gathering (MTG).

Growing up, I played a ton of MTG and found myself grinding up the ranks on Hearthstone into college and beyond. I remember how exciting it felt to reach legend for the first time in Hearthstone—almost as well as the post-season frustration of having my decks fall from the meta or get rotated out of standard.

At some point along my Hearthstone journey, it became clear that I was probably going to need a second job if I wanted to keep opening packs and stay at the top of the ladder. At the same time, work requires time, and most of my free time was exclusively reserved for opening packs and grinding. So, I ended up retiring from Hearthstone and took a break from TCGs for the most part.

I’ve found myself playing a casual game of Gods Unchained over the past few months, but seeing the hype around Parallel made me really want to dive back in. As part of Coinbase’s Onchain Summer, Parallel is offering starter packs for 5 Factions and beta access for anyone who participates. So, I asked Tom if we could use the No Re budget for some packs. He reminded me that we don’t have any income streams and told me I’d have to buy them myself. Budget approved.

Over the first weekend, I bought all the starter packs, a Parallel Avatar, and sank about ~10hrs into the game. The consensus: We’re so back. Even in beta, Parallel offers an incredible playing experience that uses web3 infrastructure in a way that feels less gimmicky and more like the promise of web3 gaming than any web3 game I have played before.

Since I didn’t do much else this weekend, we’re going to be talking about Parallel. Specifically, I want to look at the current state of Parallel, its top players, and how PRIME and other web3 elements can bring me back from the pains I experienced from Hearthstone.

// What’s Bringing Me Back?

To start, and echo the words of everyone who’s ever made web3 gaming content: the game has to be good.

✅ game good

The biggest issue that led to my breakup with Hearthstone was money and time. If I’m going to sink all of my time back into a game, I ideally don’t want to go through the seasonal cycle of falling out of the meta, dropping down the ladder, spending $$$ on packs to get a competitive deck again, and grinding my way back up.

I’ll happily degen into packs for fun, don’t get me wrong. But getting rewarded for the time I spend playing and having the opportunity to cycle out cards I’m not using is just a better deal—and that’s sort of the whole point with this web3 gaming thing, right?

So, in my attempt to achieve meta homeostasis, let’s take a look at the economics of Parallel, what players are earning right now, and what they’re playing with to get there.

// Parallel Economy

The Parallel economy consists of both non-fungible and fungible tokens on Ethereum and the Ethereum L2 Base. In addition to NFT cards for gameplay, avatars, and keys are available to customize your profile and upgrade your in-game earnings. PRIME is the primary fungible token of the Parallel ecosystem—earned through gameplay and used for in-game purchases and governance.

To factor in the potential for earnings, we'll first dive into the different non-fungible token offerings as well as the distribution mechanics of PRIME.

Avatars

Avatars are character NFTs based on the five existing Fractions in Parallel. There's a total of 11,001 Avatars, with each Fraction having 2,200 unique Avatars. Players can earn extra PRIME by setting an Avatar as their in-game PFP and winning with a deck of the same Faction.

Don't have one yet? Parallel is giving them away at the start of this season. During the Avatar challenge, players can play ranked matches and receive invite codes and Avatars for every win. On the table is the one Avatar holding out in the 11,001 without a Faction. What does it mean to be Factionless? I'm not sure, but it looks cool, its 1/1, and I'm gunning to get it.

Keys

Keys are another NFT component that players can use Keys with the Key Framing system to modify their PRIME rewards from winning matches. A player can add one Key for each of their Key Framing slots. More Keys are expected to be released, but a few of the current available Keys are:

1. Prime Keys: Unlock more Key Framing slots.

2. Galaxy Keys: Increase in-game PRIME emission by a random amount.

3. Overclock Keys: Multiply PRIME earnings based on a win streak.

4. Galaxy Keys: Random PRIME bonuses for each win.

5. Gravity Keys: like Loot Goblins, but for Parallel. Gravity Keys put you in random high-reward situations in games where you can earn additional PRIME, Avatars, or other in-game rewards if you win.

6. Surge Keys: Increase renown, a soft currency for NFT cards. Renown can be combined with PRIME to create echos, which let rare NFT card holders replicate new cards and distribute them to players. Essentially, Surge Keys put holders in a position to be the franchise owners of their own rare cards. We’ll talk more about Echos and replication dynamics in the future, but in the meantime, check out the docs for more information.

PRIME

Echelon Prime (PRIME) is the primary fungible token for the Parallel ecosystem, used as a P2E reward, governance token and in-game currency. PRIME has a fixed supply of 111,111,111,111.

Players are rewarded PRIME for wins, with the amount depending on the following factors:

1. Outcome: Tokens are only emitted when a player wins a match

2. Time since launch: Emissions decrease based on the time from launch to incentivize early adoption.

3. Ladder: The higher the ladder rank, the more challenging matches will be to win and the higher the emission from a given game.

4. Keys: Players can equip keys to receive a higher emission from a given game win.

5. Avatar: Players receive a higher emission when an Avatar is equipped that matches the winning deck’s Faction.

6. NFT Bonus: Players will receive bonus PRIME according to what percentage of a player’s deck are NFTs.

The output of PRIME is dependent on the amount put into PRIME Sinks. PRIME Sinks are token-gated products, services, and experiences (i.e., cosmetics, equipment, Artrigraphs) that can be exchanged for PRIME. Rather than have PRIME reclaimed by Parallel, all of the PRIME put into Sinks are redistributed to Parallel and other future Echelon games as game rewards. Around 70% of PRIME spent is currently redistributed into the Gameplay Pool.

Are we back?

We haven't gotten to what distribution actually looks like yet, but there's a lot of functionality in the game economy that would keep me here.

Governance. It's impossible to believe that Activision Blizzard Microsoft would ever hear your input on a game unless you're a board member or majority shareholder of the multi-billion dollar conglomerate. PRIME governance mechanics offer an opportunity to have your voice heard beyond Discord and let you steer the direction in a way that supports players.

The Prime developers and good people over Echelon are supportive of their early community and—particularly in the early phases of the game—seem upfront and open about feedback from gamers.

Boost Mechanics. I really like the idea of boosts from Keys, but more specifically, Avatars. Pledging your allegiance to a Faction, picking an Avatar that fits your style, and showing it off during gameplay works for me. So much so that I picked up Arlen as soon as I finished up with the Augencore rookie challenge.

More broadly, I think Avatars and Keys are an interesting way to realize your strengths and plan out decks accordingly. If I’m aiming to run a high tempo, early chance deck, I might not want to pair that with an Overclock Key as I progress up in rank, but I would be willing to gamble on a Galaxy Key.

Redistribution. One of the more exciting pieces of the Parallel ecosystem is its Sink redistribution mechanism. Sinks make a circular economy, where players participating in games receive PRIME through P2E, and spent PRIME goes back into the prize pool.

This distribution emission system is dynamic rather than static. With a starting balance of 33M, the total number of emissions is reduced to refill the pool to that number. If more players use sinks, and the total pool amount exceeds that 33M balance, that means more rewards for anyone.

Not only does this redistribution system create a positive feedback look for PRIME holders in Parallel, but it also will support future Echelon titles like Colony. Like Parallel, the dynamic emission system can allocate rewards to Colony from the Parallel reward ecosystem, incentivizing players to try the new game through P2E mechanics over marketing efforts. To be honest, though, we haven’t gotten much promotion on the new game yet, but it already looks good enough to change Gaben’s mind about games containing AI.

// Reward Distribution

About time, right? We know how the ecosystem works and how much PRIME we could make while playing, but how much are gamers actually getting? We looked through on-chain data and got some help from our frens over at Parallel to try to see what players are using and get to our answer.

As it turns out, using keys and pairing your Avatar to your deck do, in fact, support increased earnings. More early players are getting initial boosts from these items, and increased streaks, rank, and NFT cards are driving later-stage rewards.

So, what exactly are these players earning? The last distribution before the new Beta update shows that the average player made about 3.81 PRIME (~$13.71 at current prices). The median is slightly lower at 2.38, skewing from the median due to top players like MrKvak making over 40 PRIME.

With a floor price of 0.111, both the mean and median aren’t at a bad reward distribution if you’re just playing for cards. You might not be able to buy some SE cards right away, but at least you’re not paying $2.99 to open packs for cards you probably won’t ever use. Plus, with reward distribution only at 8% and expecting to increase soon, maybe you’ll get that SE card in a week.

Though the initial reward decay in the whitepaper outlined higher rewards for new players, an update to the distribution flipped the decay to better reward players for climbing the later. This appears consistent with the top 10% of players receiving the most PRIME. And it pays to be good.

The top 10% of players earned 35% of the total PRIME distributed in the last round. In comparison, the bottom 50% of players only earned 1.65 PRIME, totaling 22% of the distribution.

// Conclusion

Of course, the ability to be rewarded for your time is always good. Still, the current reward distribution makes earning enough to support buying new cards, packs, and the occasional Key more than possible. As I said in the beginning, I’m not trying to make a living off of Parallel. I just want to have fun and not just burn money.

Honestly, even in my first week, when I received a total of 0 PRIME (I was pretty locked into the Rookie Quests), I wasn’t even worried about the reward structure. Parallel is a fun game. The storytelling and graphics make for a really deep experience that pairs nicely with some great gameplay. Unlike God’s Unchained, I felt that there were more opportunities for strategy that went beyond the scope of Hearthstone, but it was laid out intuitively and wasn’t difficult to pick up right away.

A great game with a good token economy that doesn’t require me to support Activision Blizzard is a win-win-win for me. If anyone wants to play, feel free to hit me up, and we can get a direct battle going. Otherwise, I’ll keep grinding up the ladder and finding excuses to tell Tom why it takes me weeks to write a piece.

Shoutout to the Parallel team for helping us with our research. This was not a sponsored post, and we didn’t expect their support when we started writing this. The Parallel team is really that cool, and we can’t thank them enough for their insights and support.

*This article looks at data before the latest patch and meta updates. Check out the Echelon blog if you want more alpha on the update.