Hi Splinterlands freinds,

Splinterlands announced on Last Town Hall the full partnership with Balthazar. https://www.splintertalk.io/@splinterlands/splinterlands-town-hall-summary-march-16th-2022-10am-eastern
This post is about Balthazar and their activity and how they can help players and the game to grow.

Introduction

Balthazar, which commenced operations in 2021, wants to be the largest decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) in the play-to-earn space.

“I’m excited about the future of the play-to-earn space, in particular how it’s spreading earning opportunities to those who need it most, as well as providing a new use-case for cryptocurrency,” the CEO of Balthazar, John Stefanidis, stated.

The company is a community-focused platform, removing the barrier to entry for gamers to access play-to-earn games through its scholarship program with no upfront costs.The company’s goal is to connect people who want to play but can’t afford the price of entry with NFT investors who can, and let both profit.

Entering pay-to-earn games requires an upfront investment to buy NFTs. Depending on the game, entry can cost anywhere from under $100 to several thousand dollars. This entry costs can make it difficult for new players who can’t afford to buy NFTs.

Balthazar solves this problem by letting players borrow NFTs from investors.

What’s more, Balthazar’s skilled gamers give expert advice to scholars to help them use the optimal winning strategy. The result in the popular Axie Infinity game is that Balthazar’s scholars earn 227% more than the minimum yield of 75 SLP per day. This is beneficial for the players, the NFT investors and the Balthazar ecosystem.

Previous Token Sale and History

Balthazar, a young entry in the growing play-to-earn NFT game space, raised $3 million in its first token sale and opened a private token sale to raise $8 million, which closed in February with Animoca Brands emerging as the lead purchaser.Other token purchasers were Finder Group (through Hive Empire Capital, which is led by Fred Schebesta), Zip co-founder Larry Diamond, Digital Asset Capital Management (DACM), Fantom, ZED Run, Darling Ventures, Pluto Digital, San Francisco-based VC Side Door Ventures, Algorand, and Three Arrows Capital’s TPS Capital.

Initially, the Balthazar team will maintain the platform governance, but once the governance utility is live, the community will decide via voting. Every DAO has a treasury funded through token sales. Balthazar’s token is $BGG and token owners can vote on DAO governance in the future, or they can stake it for future rewards.

The treasury funded with the token sale will be primarily used to buy and manage NFT gaming assets, to manage undistributed tokens in circulation and to perform financial operations.

Prior to the token sale, Balthazar deployed 1,100 scholars into several NFT games including Axie Infinity, Splinterlands and Thetan Arena, with a further 30,000 people on its waitlist, and a community of more than 70,000 people in its Discord channel.

Balthazar scholarship program

Accessed via the link https://my.bltzr.gg/scholarships/splinterlands . Balthazar’s long-term scholar incentive program has been designed to provide scholars with skin in the game, allowing them to gain exposure to Balthazar’s long term success. Every Balthazar Wizard in this scholarship program will receive $100 in the Balthazar token after 12 months of being a scholar.

Scholarship conditions

- Play 20-30 matches every day
- Keep Dark Energy Crystals Capture Rate levels between 70% and 99%

Balthazar also hired Nicholas Korsgård (NicoThePico) Chief Gaming Officer and advisor E-Sports coaching phenomenon. A professional gamer at the highest level for both LoL and Starcraft to help promote growth for Splinterlands. Moreover, he opened 250,000 packs live 2 days ago

Other Balthazar activities

As of January 2022, Balthazar has around 70,000 discord members and over 1,500 scholars who are actively playing games, including Axie Infinity, Splinterlands and Thetan Arena. There are 30,000 players on the waitlist.

Balthazar also does original research reports and insights into the NFT gaming metaverse. It has published its first research about Splinterlands on February 20th, 2022. check it out here. https://bltzr.gg/splinterlands-the-sleeping-giant/

Future plans

Balthazar’s goal is to become the leading guild in the play-to-earn gaming space by having the most numbers of scholars deployed than any other guild.

Balthazar also aims to launch its own NFT game, to release a gaming console concept and let gaming studios launch games through the platform. At some point, platform members will be able to sell NFT game assets through Balthazar.