Hello, fellow Crabadians, Snibbers and Treasure Under the Sea Enthusiasts. This is the first edition of The Crab Report, a weekly summary of everything that’s happening with Crabada. Myself and other collaborating Snibbers will try to cover everything important that happens via Twitter/Discord/Crab Radio/Medium Posts and hope to find every last bit of alpha out there.
Who am I? I’m @deepinthesesh and I started playing Crabada in December with a lowly floor team and a lose strategy. After a fair bit of research and playing the game, I realized the game’s huge potential and went deep into the ecosystem. Now I have an irresponsible amount of my net worth in digital crabs and I want to see the game reach its full potential.
This report is for anyone interested in Crabada. Which includes experienced players and total newbs alike. Some people don’t have eight hours to research/play Crabada all day. Luckily I do! I hope this newsletter is useful and enjoyable. The Crabada ecosystem has grown immensely in just a few short months and I hope I can help to grow that ecosystem further. Now let’s talk crabs.
TUS Price
I think it’s fair to say the biggest thing on everyone’s mind at the moment is the TUS price action. If you are not aware, the price of TUS has been absolutely destroyed (down 60%+) since the team announced Swimmer Network migration will be delayed until May 13th. After migrating to Swimmer Network, TUS will be the gas token and gas fees are expected to be reduced by 85%. This delay has had an especially sinister effect on the TUS price since a sinking TUS price and rising AVAX gas fees creates a double squeeze on profitability. Players need to sell TUS to pay for gas which has caused a vicious downward spiral in TUS price action. As TUS price drops it requires more TUS to buy the same amount of AVAX which only makes the price of TUS go lower. I know for my teams I have been spending 40-50% of TUS earnings on gas. Some people report as much as 80% of earnings spent on gas.
In one respect, Crabada is a victim of its own success since the primary sell pressure is not because people are leaving the game but because more people are playing the game. In the past few weeks there have been a few times where it was simply not profitable to play the game because gas was so expensive and TUS price was so low. While we all collectively shat our pants when that happened, it looks like we are starting to see a bit of a bottom. Luckily this sell pressure will go away when we migrate to Swimmer Network. No one wants to see the game stop because of high gas fees (except crab haters who also hate themselves). To see this in graph form check out @nftcashflow1 post that shows how gas has affected profitability.
User Growth
Over the last 7 days, Daily Active Users (DAU) and Marketplace Users continue their steady climb up and to the right. Despite the volatility in TUS price and discontent in the main Discord, people are joining the game at a healthy clip. It’s also worth pointing out that this has happened with a marketing spend of less than $1,000. Shinigummy, the team’s marketing lead, has indicated marketing/education spend will ramp up when the time is right.
Main Discord
The angst in the main discord is palpable these days due to the high gas and low TUS price. It’s understandable as many players are probably experiencing crypto’s volatility for the first time. The silver lining about the current situation is that the team has become much more communicative about current progress. They are aware of the gas issue and are trying to implement a solution. The problem is, if they spend time trying to implement a stop-gap solution, that will delay Swimmer Network launch, which no one wants. Shinigummy has been very active in answering questions and we also had an AMA (recap here) which was full of good info. Below are selected comments:
In Battle Game TUS will not be emitted. Materials will be emitted. Think of this game loop. To earn more Materials, you need strong Crabs. To get stronger Crabs, you need to use Materials to feed the crabs consistently to maintain a certain level of efficiency. To level the Crab up, you also need TUS at certain levels. So until the Crab is strong enough, TUS is not emitted.
Battle Game will be running off-chain and native to each platform (this means Battle Game wont require gas). Idle Game will still be running on-chain.
We are in the process of making updates on the website for a more visual Crabadex.
Switching crabs from Battle game to Idle game will reset the crab’s points so it looks like going back and forth will not work well.
Idle game rewards may be adjusted. Team will decide this later.
Future plans for mutations in pure crab breeding. No specific details.
Crab swap feature coming to marketplace.
No stats bonuses for breed type (i.e. 18/18) at this time.
Crab eyes come with a “passive” skill. Crab pincers come with an “active” skill. These typically are a good combo if the crab is the same breed type. New metas will emerge for mixed-breed crabs when game progresses.
Materials can be withdrawn from game to trade on p2p marketplace (Correction: this is planned for future but not v1 of Battle Game. No specific timeline yet).
Materials are minted on-chain as game rewards.
This means that materials and crafting TUS will be done on a backend server but there are plans to bring it on chain which would extend marketplace to support materials and withdraw materials to wallet. However minting materials on-chain needs some more solutioning.
Crab Radio
This week’s Crab Radio’s special guest was gigachad VC investor 0xWangarian. He came from a tradfi background and joined Arthur_0x at DeFiance Capital 18 months ago (DeFiance is an early round investor in Crabada). He’s now left DeFiance to start his own project. He is bullish the Crabada team and game and had the following comments:
0xTender and he met 7 or 8 years ago in the armed services. He’s a visionary and an excellent leader.
Crabada stood out because of its dedication and focus on serving the community.
They didn’t foresee this many users doing this many transactions on AVAX. Exceeded expectations significantly.
He believes Crabada will morph into a different vehicle with the launch of Swimmer Network. Crabada will now become a gamefi platform. If you’re playing Crabada, you’ll now be part of a platform not just a game.
Swimmer Network changes the valuation of CRA. Once you start building 5-10 games on the network, you won’t be compared to other games you’re going to be compared to other networks like Flow or other L1 gaming chains.
Based on his discussions with 0xTender, there will be no shortage of games wanting to launch on Swimmer. Most games don’t have the technical capability or financial resources to launch their own subnet.
The current high gas fees are not sustainable but in the short run it should lower TUS inflation and help TUS price.
CRA may play a larger role in Battle Game. It’s possible the more CRA staked could allow you to change the meta of the game. Let’s say your staked CRA makes up a significant portion of a particular faction, you could change the meta of different factions based on where incentives go - similar to the ve staking model (see veCurve Wars explanation).
Example: a large stake holder who holds a significant amount of primes decides to boost TUS emissions to prime crabs.
It could create a pretty strong token sink if you have vested stakeholders in an ecosystem engaging in veCrab wars. This is a dynamic no other game has right now and can last indefinitely.
Tweet of the Week
If you don’t follow @TheCrypoGemini already please give him a follow. He’s been doing the Lord’s work lately tweeting a meme a day until battle game launches. Here is the tweet of the week and a personal favorite (make sure to watch video):
Upcoming News
April 22nd (today) Testnet begins and is critical to making sure there are no bugs. Everyone should get on Testnet and test it out.
April 26th the team will announce info on Crab stats and effects for Battle Game. This will help crystalize the next meta (the game’s dominant strategy) which should stimulate breeding which should also help TUS price action. If you look at how the meta shift has historically affected TUS price, you can see it has a significant effect (see below).
May 9th - Swimmer Network Mainnet Launch
May 13th - The Great Crabada Migration (Idle Game and Marketplace Bridging)
May 15th - Crabada Battle Game Launch
That’s all for this week. There is so much going on with Crabada that it’s difficult to synthesize it into a short weekly summary without making it a long form essay. I hope this was useful. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe (it’s free!) and follow on Twitter at @deepinthesesh (will set up separate Crab Report account soon). If you have any comments or suggestions please reach out!
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