About ZooDAO

ZooDAO is a community-run NFT platform that prioritizes NFT utility. This approach is very close to our heart, as at  XP.NETWORK we believe that the time of NFTs as simple collectibles or speculative investments has passed. The next bull market will be ruled by NFTs that offer real utility: passive DeFi yields, gaming, governance, etc. 

ZooDAO’s token is $ZOO. It’s slightly deflationary (as some of the ZOO staked on battles is burned) and is used for gamified staking and yield farming rewards. $ZOO is traded on SushiSwap and StellaSwap (a DEX on Moonbeam).

Providing fresh utility through NFT battles

ZooDAO came up with a very innovative source of utility through gamification: NFT battles. Users make their NFTs “fight” each other, and the community votes on the result using stablecoins (similar to placing bets). The current reward pool for each Battle Season is up to $6,750, and the APY is over 51%.

All battles run on the Moonbeam blockchain. It’s an EVM-compatible network that is part of the Polkadot ecosystem. Moonbeam is optimized for cross-chain projects, and it’s also very cheap and fast – just what an NFT gamification platform needs. It’s also one of the blockchains supported by XP.NETWORK.

To be eligible for rewards, you need to stake an eligible NFT and then vote on any of the staked NFTs by depositing some FRAX stablecoins. The earlier you vote, the higher the reward APY will be. Another way to boost the voting power (and rewards) is to stake $ZOO alongside with stables.

You can also pair your NFT with another to become an active battle participant, so that others can vote on you. The outcome of each battle is randome.

The staked stablecoins are paid out as rewards to everyone who participate. This no-loss strategy makes ZooDAO battles different from many other platforms where only the winner gets a prize.

NFT battles combine entertainment and gaming with passive DeFi income for stakers. ZooDAO collaborates with Chainlink for verified randomness, and with Yearn Finance to  offer safe DeFi yields. 

Another great feature of battles is that NFTs from different collections can compete against each other. Instead of a competition between two holders, every battle becomes a competition against the communities of each collection. 

ZooDAO supports many popular collections on Moonbeam: MoonCats, GlimmerApes, MOONPETS, etc. The next step is to allow users from other ecosystems benefit from the battles – and that requires a reliable bridging partner, such as XP.NETWORK

ZooDAO opens up DeFi yields and Battle fun to NFT holders on Ethereum

We always say that the key advantage of NFT bridging is increased awareness. When you send over NFTs from a lesser-known blockchain to a bigger one and list them on a marketplace there, you can intrigue a new audience and bring it over. 

The same goes for bridging a popular collection from a big network like Ethereum to a smaller one like Moonbeam – only here you’re acting as an ambassador of the whole ecosystem. Ethereum users won’t leave their chain just to check out some different NFT art – but they can be attracted by new sources of utility (like NFT battles with rewards) and tiny gas fees. 

The real key to success here is to let Ethereum users bring their NFTs over with them. “Get new utility and rewards with your old NFTs” is a very strong selling proposition. This is the approach that ZooDAO chose.

The only challenge with this strategy is that you have to guarantee security for NFT holders. If you propose to bridge valuable NFTs from Ethereum, you have to make sure that the original NFT is safe and sound, so that the owners can always bridge back. 

Another sticky point is flexibility. A collection can have complex smart contract logic, with royalties, a sophisticated rarity system, etc. You have to preserve all this when bridging.

Flexibility and security are XP.NETWORK’s strongest points – together with the fact that we support over 25 blockchains. We can offer each partner a tailored approach and personal assistance from the team, led by our experienced CEO Dima Brook.

Bringing Divine Anarchy to Moonbeam, to be followed by Hashmasks

ZooDAO decided that the first Ethereum collection to be enabled in Battles should be Divine Anarchy. It’s a successful project with over 4,400 unique owners and $10.2 million in overall trading volume on OpenSea. Only 2% of the original collection are listed, showing that owners hold on to their Anarchy characters.

Divine Anarchy is billed as the first Social RPG, and the structure of the original collection is pretty complex. There are 9 bloodlines, all with different looks, morals, and culture. On top of this, every NFT belongs to one of the two factions and has a certain voting power. We made sure that the bridged NFTs preserve all these traits.

The partnership between ZooDAO and Divine Anarchy was announced back in January 2022 but only came to fruition now. We started by bridging 5 Divine Anarchy NFTs from Ethereum to Moonbeam. Here is an example:

Note that the description lists the original chain nonce and the original metadata URI. This is a hallmark of all NFTs bridged with XP.NETWORK and a guarantee that an asset is genuine. A scammer can mint an NFT with the same picture on a different chain, but they won’t be able to replicate these data fields. If a bridged NFT is listed on some marketplaces, it will also say “Bridged from Ethereum”.

On the ZooDAO platform, you can also see that a couple of Divine Anarchy NFTs have already been successfully staked and unstaked. Thus we made sure that they function  exactly as they should. 

While working together with XP.NETWORK, the team of ZooDAO praised our responsiveness and readiness to accommodate complex collections that require special treatment. 

Divine Anarchy is just the start of ZooDAO’s big bridging experiment. The next collection on the list should be the legendary Hashmasks, followed by CryptoKitties. As these beloved characters enter the Battle Arena, you can expect gaming activity onMoonbeam to jump up a notch, so stay tuned!