Staking third party NFTs on the R-Planet website to accumulate Aether (AETH) is almost a right of passage on the WAX blockchain. Hosting dozens of projects and hundreds of thousands of NFTs, R-Planet was once the darling of the WAX community. And though things change slowly in the lands of R-Planet, change they do. And soon, third party staking as we know it will change to a player governed system.
R-Planet players have waited a long time for some sort of major update on the R-planet system, particularly in regards to the upcoming Conquest game. And though, this latest announcement brings us no closer to the highly anticipated robot wars, we do get some rather interesting news. R-Planet has decided that they will be closing (and then later re-opening) Aether (AETH) production from 3rd party NFTs.
Mining Aether for Fun and Profit?
When R-Planet first opened its doors and allowed WAX users to stake and earn from a variety of NFTs, even ones from other projects, it was a groundbreaking system. They promoted cross-project collaborations and showed us a very under-utilized feature of NFTs. Since then, many other projects offer some utility for third party NFTs and cross-dapp collaborations have become commonplace on the WAX ecosystem.
But, with a lack of in-depth gameplay, and a deluge of staked NFTs, the supply of Aether on R-Planet has far outstripped demand. So much so that Aether value is less than 1% of what it was seven months ago! Discovering new elements in R-Planet has become mostly a random guessing game. One that very few players seem interested in playing.
And though it may be too late to save the dying patient, R-Planet breaking out the defibrillator to try and resuscitate their project. Beginning on December 31st, 2021, all third party NFTs will no longer generate AETH! Only official R-Planet NFTs (elements and miners)will continue mining. But not to worry! For every end there is a new beginning. In Q1 of 2022, R-Planet has plans to introduce a new staking system and bring some of these projects back.
New 3rd party staking system?
R-Planet has long promised that one day, their third party NFT staking system would be controlled by the players. And at long last, it seems that day arrives soon!
On December 31st, the mining pools for all third party collections will drop to 0. You can leave your NFTs staked, but they won’t generate any Aether. In Q1 of 2022, players begin voting on which projects should be included in the mining pools. In order to vote, interested parties stake AETH, with an unstake period of 30 days. Players stake their AETH to a specific project. The top 21 projects with the most Aether staked will begin mining again. It’s unclear as to how often the top projects are recalculated, and how the mining power will be distributed across all the NFTs for the top 21 projects. After all, not all NFTs have a standard rarity system. But details aside, it’s great to see this system actually coming to life.
Will this make much of a difference in AETH value? Probably not. The AETH market is already so over-saturated that it would take astronomical expenditures and stakes to even put a dent in the current supply. However, it will be very interesting to see what projects are voted into the top spots and how much AETH gets staked in the process!
What is R-Planet?
The story from R-Planet is about colonizing other planets. But in order to do so, resources must be created. That’s where the NFT elements come into play. Players stake NFTs, mine AETHER, and use the Aether to attempt to create new elements. These elements can be sold or staked for more Aether production.
R-Planet is currently building a ‘next-phase’ called Conquest where players build bases, construct robots, and send them off to fight each other for land and resources. Players already own lands and accumulate minerals for this phase of the game, but development has proceeded slowly. The latest expected alpha test has been pushed to Q1 2022.
Phil Hall has been a gaming enthusiast since birth and a crypto enthusiast since 2017. He enjoys new discoveries and sharing those with others via blogging and photography. You can follow him on Twitter or read his other articles on Medium.
