The Ultimate Guide to Cronics
The first NFT on the Internet Computer. Mini-game ecosystem and play-to-earn economy: incorporates breeding, battle stats, wearables and more! From the team at Toniq Labs.
What are Cronics?
Cronics are little shape creatures with a fun variety of backgrounds, eyes, hair, mouths, colors, and accessories. They use a similar format as the popular 10k profile picture NFTs in that they are constructed from many different layers such that there are no 2 Cronics that are exactly alike. Each Cronic has a set of visual traits and battle traits that make it completely unique.
You can battle, breed, or dress up your Cronics with wearables, and we’ll dive deep into each of these to give you all the juicy details.
The History of Cronics
Cronics started as an experiment from Toniq Labs in July of 2021. NFTs were starting to grow in popularity and so Toniq Labs released a set of NFTs on the Internet Computer blockchain. In fact, Cronics were the first NFT on the Internet Computer. You could donate 0.2 ICP and you would receive a Cronic NFT as a thank you for your donation. That means each Cronic sold for $6.
There were 5,000 Cronics for sale and they sold out in 48 hours! With such quick success from the NFT “experiment”, the team decided to continue to build functionality around Cronics as the Cronics community wanted more.
The first NFT auction on the Internet Computer was soon after, with the first Cronic selling for 11 ICP — 55x what it was originally purchased for.
Now the Cronics ecosystem has a play to earn game (released 11/19/21), wearables to purchase and use to dress up your Cronics, and an in-game token (CRN) for in-game use.
Everything About Genes and Stats
Every Cronic has a set of genes. The genes specify visual and battle traits, and include a dominant and a recessive gene/value for each trait. For example, let’s look at this Cronic:
First notice the wearables. The pink hair afro and the black bowtie are wearables that have been added to the Cronic. Beyond that, you’ll notice a background shape and color, a background pattern and color, a Cronic shape and color, a set of eyes and color, and a mouth. Each of these values is determined by the genes of the Cronic. In this case, the Cronic has the following visual traits:
Background shape: Circle
Background color: Screamin’ Green
Background pattern: Circle Up / Arrow Diag
Background pattern color: Emerald
Cronic shape: Pentagon
Cronic color: Heliotrope
Eyes: Wink
Eye color: San Marino Light
Mouth: Slight Open Teeth
These are all of the dominant visual traits for this Cronic. In the Cronic genes, you also have a set of recessive visual traits. The recessive visual traits are not expressed in the Cronic, but can be selected to be passed onto offspring. We’ll discuss breeding more in the “Breeding” section.
Next, the genes for each Cronic also have a set of battle traits. Battle traits include a number of categories:
Base: The most important battle stat. Base forms the base of all other stats. Currently it is estimated that base accounts for about 30% of all stat categories (unofficial). This means that in order to get your true attack score, you need to take your base * 0.3 + attack * 0.7 and that will give you your final attack score.
Health: A health stat.
Attack: An attack stat.
Defense: A defense stat.
Speed: A speed stat.
Range: A range stat.
Magic: A magic stat.
Resistance: A resistance stat.
Basic: Selected from 0 to 63 and mapped to an actual basic move
Special: Selected from 0 to 63 and mapped to an actual special move
For the Cronic shown above, it has the following battle stats:
Base: 29 / 59
Health: 7 / 13
Attack: 4 / 56
Defense: 1 / 43
Speed: 17 / 26
Range: 49 / 26
Magic: 55 / 55
Resistance: 4 / 61
Basic: 29 / 5
Special: 0 / 6
The first number is the dominant value in the gene, and the second number is the recessive value in the gene. This means the dominant number is the number actually expressed in the Cronic, and the recessive gene has a chance to carry onto future generations.
The battle stat values range from 0 to 63, 0 being the lowest, and 63 being the highest.
Finally, let’s talk about summary numbers for the Cronics as seen in NFT Village (nftvillage.ai).
Overall battle is a summation of dominant and recessive values for all battle stats (except Basic and Special since those are moves and not stat values).
Warrior battle is a summation of all dominant values for all battle stats (except Basic and Special since those are moves and not stat values)
Battle Base (the most important battle stat) shows dominant on the left and recessive on the right for the base value
Trait / Color Rarity is the NRI, or NFT Rarity Index, for that Cronic. This is the statistical rarity of the Cronic, computed as follows: 1) compute the probability of each individual trait, then (2) multiply together to get a probability of getting that exact Cronic (using only visual traits), finally 3) rank order the probabilities and assign ranks and percentiles to each Cronic based on the likelihood of being created. The higher the NRI (or trait / color rarity) the more rare the Cronic’s visual attributes.
Mint # is simply when the Cronic was minted in relation to others. 54 would mean it was the 54th Cronic to be minted.
Animation is None, Pulsating, or Spinning. Pulsating is a rare animation that only occurs 2.6% of the time. Spinning is a rare animation that only occurs 5.9% of the time.
Animation Mint # is when the Cronic was minted in relation to other animated Cronics. If the Cronic was a pulsating Cronic, then 54 would mean it was the 54th pulsating Cronic to be minted.
Twin score is an indication of how rare of a twin the Cronic is. A twin is a Cronic that shares all visual traits with a different Cronic, and as you add more matching colors the twin % gets more and more rare.
The battle numbers for each battle attribute were assigned uniformly, meaning there are as many “0” attack Cronics as there are “63” attack Cronics. However, if you add all of the battle values together, the sum of the stats follows a bell curve distribution. Very few Cronics have very high total battle stats (everything summed together), while many Cronics have middle of the road battle stats, and very few Cronics have low battle stats. This is what happens when you add together a bunch of uniformly distributed variables.
Here are the summary statistics for the Cronic shown above:
Overall Battle: 37.4%
Warrior Battle: 4.3%
Battle Base: 47.1% / 92.9%
Trait / Color Rarity: 33.8%
Mint #: 5514
Animation: None
Animation Mint #: None
Twin Score: 0.0%
This Cronic has an excellent recessive Battle Base (92.9%) but is otherwise not very impressive. An NRI (or trait / color rarity) of 33.8% means it is more rare visually than 33.8% of Cronics, an overall battle score of 37.4% means it has higher battle stats than 37.4% of Cronics, and a warrior battle score means it has higher battle stats than 4.3% of Cronics.
Breeding: Gene Selection
When 2 Cronics breed, one of the visual or battle traits from each parent is selected to be passed on to the child. From parent A, the visual or battle trait is randomly selected (50/50 chance) between the dominant or recessive genes, and from parent B, the visual or battle trait is randomly selected (50/50 chance) between the dominant or recessive genes. Then, for the child, the two parent genes are randomly selected as dominant or recessive. So there is a 25% chance of a single trait (dominant gene parent A, recessive gene parent A, dominant gene parent B, dominant gene Parent B) to be selected as the dominant gene for the child, and a 25% chance for a single trait to be selected as the recessive gene for the child.
Breeding: Costs and Cooldowns
In order to breed, you have to pay the breeding cost in CRN for each Cronic you will breed. The CRN cost increases after every breed until it plateaus after 6–7 breeds. The exact cost numbers are still being worked on and will be tweaked over time to keep the Cronics supply under control based on number of people in the ecosystem
There is also a breeding delay to help control the supply of Cronics. After every breed, there is a delay until you can breed again (breeding cooldown), as well as a delay until you can breed the new baby Cronic. The breeding cooldown increases with every breed until it plateaus after 6–7 breeds. These numbers are similarly being worked on and will be
Breeding: Limitations
Gen 0 Cronics can breed forever. It’s true! They have an unlimited number of breeds. However, subsequent generations are all limited:
- Gen 1 Cronics can breed 7 times
- Gen 2 Cronics can breed 4 times
- Gen 3 Cronics can breed 2 times
- Gen 4 Cronics can breed 1 time
- Gen 5 Cronics cannot breed at all
These breeding limitations help to control the supply of Cronics so that supply can grow as the player base grows instead of growing too fast and devaluing Cronics.
One final note on breeding — the child always takes the highest “Gen” possible when breeding two different generations. So if I breed a Gen 1 Cronic with a Gen 4 Cronic, the resulting offspring will be a Gen 5 Cronic.
Battle Mechanics
Will be released after the battle game(s) are released.
Wearables
Dressing up your Cronic is as simple as purchasing a Cronic wearable from the Entrepot.app marketplace and then adding the wearable to your Cronic in the Cronics dashboard cronic.toniqlabs.com. The Cronic dashboard enables you to add/remove wearables at your leisure and is the perfect way to style your Cronic just the way you like.
Power Cells
*Note: Power cells are still in an experimental stage, so all numbers are subject to change as we continue to test the effectiveness of each Power Cell.
Power Cells provide bonuses throughout the Cronics ecosystem. Power Cells allow you to stake (lock-up) your animated Cronics to receive in-game boosts.
There are currently five types of Power Cells:
- Money Maker: Increases CRN earnings from mini-games
- Haste: Reduces the cooldown between breeding
- Lucky Charm: Increases the chance of animated offspring
- Reinforcements: Increase battle stats in game (if battle stats used in game)
- Sweet Deal: Reduce the cost of breeding (does not include Siring costs)
Each Power Cell has two slots that you can unlock using CRN. You can stake up to three Cronics at any time by placing them into different slots. You can double up 2 cronics in the same type of Power Cell if you have unlocked both cells of that type. Cronics cannot be transferred, sold, or used for breeding, siring or playing games while they are staked in a Power Cell, and they take 24 hours to be released from a slot.
You receive bonuses based on the animation rarity of the staked Cronic:
- Pulsing animation — 9% bonus
- Spinning animation — 4% bonus
- No animation — 1% bonus
Additional Power Cells may be released in the future as mini-games are released and the community grows.
Siring
If you want some extra CRN, you can sire your Cronic, or make it available in the siring marketplace for others to breed your Cronic. When you sire a Cronic you put a siring fee on it, and then someone else can pay the siring fee (along with any relevant breeding fees) to breed with your Cronic. Normal cooldown periods still apply, so once your Cronic has been used by another player to breed, it must wait the appropriate amount of cooldown time until it can be sired again.
Scholarships/Leasing
We want the Cronics games to be as accessible as possible to anyone who would like to play them. The Cronics floor is sitting right around 5 ICP right now, which means that based on current ICP price, someone will have to pay around $200 USD to get a Cronic. This may be cost prohibitive to some players, which is where scholarships/leasing comes in.
Players can lease other players’ Cronics (like a “scholarship” in play to earn lingo). The person renting out the Cronics will receive a pre-specified share of the in-game token earned by the person who rented the Cronics. Usually a fair split is 50:50, but that can be decided by the game players.
CRN Alpha Tokenomics
*Note: CRN tokenomics is still in an alpha stage and will need to be iteratively improved over time.
There are many ways to earn and spend CRN that make the Cronics ecosystem function properly:
Earn CRN +
- Playing the game and winning battles
- Selling Cronics for CRN on the marketplace
- Selling Wearables for CRN on the marketplace
- Siring out your Cronic so others can breed it
- Scholarshipping (or leasing) out your Cronic so others can use it to battle
Pay CRN -
- Purchasing Cronics with CRN
- Purchasing Wearables with CRN
- Purchasing Power Cells with CRN (after fees CRN is burned)
- Paying CRN to breed 2 Cronics (after fees CRN is burned)
- Paying CRN to sire (breed) someone else’s Cronic
Toniq Labs takes a 4.5% fee on in-game activities (breeding, siring, leasing, power cells) and a 1.5% fee on marketplace transactions (buying/selling wearables, Cronics) in order to continue to sustain development around the game.
There is no max supply for CRN. Initial supply starts at ~12M and is broken down as follows:
- 3 million CRN to those who purchased a Cronic during the original TipCan
- 3 million CRN to those who participated in the test breeding
- 6 million CRN to those who purchased during the public sale (auction and blind sale included)
Finally, to prevent bots from trying to ruin the tokenomics of the game, there will be a daily earnings cap set. This will be extremely generous and will allow for around 8 hours of continuous gameplay (on average) per 24 hours.
Cronics Hackathon
The first Cronic hackathon will be held in 2022. Toniq Labs will provide a game API to allow JavaScript developers to build a game without having to worry about building on an Internet Computer Blockchain backend. They can simply connect to the game APIs which will facilitate all of the smart contract code for the game logic backend.
There will be a prize fund for the winning games (still to be announced) and the winning game will be included in the Cronics ecosystem as a mini-game. Voting in the upcoming hackathon will be restricted to Gen-0 Cronic holders — 11,000 possible votes may be cast.
Mini-Game Central: The Future of Cronics
The long term vision for Cronics is that there will be many Cronics mini-games that are all based on the same line of Cronics NFTs. Each mini-game will have its own token and token economics. Each game will balance its own token economy and then will have a custom conversion rate up to a larger/broader cross-game token, so the earnings across each play to earn game is consistent and fair. This also means that there will be a broad play to earn gaming economy, where the amount of rewards you receive per hour of gameplay can fluctuate between games at different times.
None of these mini-game central ideas are set in stone as of yet, but this is the general vision of the Cronics ecosystem moving forward.
100% On The Blockchain
Yep, EVERYTHING is 100% on the blockchain. The Cronics ecosystem is built on a blockchain called the Internet Computer (IC for short). The Internet Computer blockchain was initially built by the DFINITY foundation and is now governed by the community. You can think of the IC blockchain like a decentralized Amazon Web Services (AWS). Compute resources, storage, hosting, etc. all on-chain, secure, and decentralized.
Most blockchain games have frontend/image/video assets that run on centralized infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) or peer-to-peer infrastructure (IPFS, etc.). Unfortunately, even peer-to-peer infrastructure is dependent in some capacity on centralized infrastructure right now.
The Cronics ecosystem, however, is 100% on chain. All assets stored on chain. All frontend code served up from the blockchain. All images/videos on chain. All marketplace, wallet, and dashboard functionality all on chain. Even the game is completely on chain. This means that the Cronics ecosystem is not dependent on any centralized hosting provider, like AWS or Google Cloud. If the entirety of AWS and GCP went down today, the Cronics ecosystem would still be alive and well due to being built on a 100% decentralized blockchain.
