[DRAFT] [GF: Phase 1 Proposal] zkHoldem

Project name: zkHoldem

Author name and contact info (please provide a reliable point of contact for the project):
rambo, boyuan, henry rambo@zkholdem.xyz, boyuan@zkholdem.xyz, henry@zkholdem.xyz

I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant: Yes

I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here: Yes

L2 recipient address: 0x45E36b25d9e5ce82a71Ec2620E65D60Dcc484fC7

Which Voting Cycle are you applying for?: Cycle 10

Which sub-committee should review your proposal? (Builders Grants, Growth Experiment Grants): Builders Grants

Project description (please explain how your project works): zkHoldem is the world’s first fully on-chain Texas Hold’em platform with 100% fairness guaranteed by Zero Knowledge Proof and Homomorphic Encryption.

Website: https://zkholdem.xyz/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/zkholdem

Discord/Discourse/Community: Discord

Other relevant links (including any demos): React App (to test the game, change the board id to any number)

Additional team member info (please link): Rambo (tg: @ramboliao), Co-founder, 7 years Senior Game Designer and Producer at Tencent, shipped the Tencent Texas Hold’em” International version

Boyuan (tg: @BoyuanFeng), Co-founder, UCSB cryptography phd, ex-Facebook

Henry (tg: @mary0x1), Co-founder, ex-Parallel Finance, ParaSpace, Tokemak

Sam H, Smart Contract Engineer, ex-Bnb chain

Lucy, Frontend Engineer, ex-Goldman Sachs

Sam Hou, Backend Engineer, ex-Huobi

Ye Han (tg: @yeyehanye), Designer, 10+ years design experience, winner of IF design award

Please link to any previous projects the team has meaningfully contributed to: Rambo: Tencent Texas Hold’em, Pubg Mobile
Henry: Parallel Finance, ParaSpace, Tokemak
Boyuan: Manta Network & Calamari Network

Relevant usage metrics (TVL, transactions, volume, unique addresses, etc. Optimism metrics preferred; please link to public sources such as Dune Analytics, etc.): Parallel Finance: $600M TVL at top and $280M currently
Parallel Finance Analytics

ParaSpace: 162 BAYC and 323 MAYC supplied. $48M assets supplied
ParaSpace Cross-Margin NFT Lending Platform Stats

Calamari: 35K token holders
https://calamari.subscan.io/

Competitors, peers, or similar projects (please link): zkHoldem is the only web3 Texas Hold’em Platform that guarantees 100% fairness with ZKP.
A few other web3 poker platforms listed below:

Coin Poker: https://coinpoker.com/
W3poker: https://w3poker.com/
Virtue poker: https://virtue.poker/
NUTSDAO: https://www.nutsdao.org/

Is/will this project be open sourced?: In the Future

Optimism native?: Yes

Date of deployment/expected deployment on Optimism: 6/1/2023

What is the problem statement this proposal hopes to solve for the Optimism ecosystem?: There has been a lack of GameFi/Social Project within the Optimism ecosystem and these two sectors are crucial to building a consistent and engaging community.

How does your proposal offer a value proposition solving the above problem?: zkHoldem as a poker platform can potentially become a great tool for the Optimism community to engage and have fun, since poker has always been a common hobby for a large number of degens, traders and VCs.

Why will this solution be a source of growth for the Optimism ecosystem?: Currently, despite the heavy interest towards poker within the crypto community (a large number of DeFi/NFT communities have their regular poker night events), there is no on-chain poker platform in existence gaining meaningful traction.

We believe that with the launch of zkHoldem, a large number of crypto communities will switch to zkHoldem from its centralized alternatives, and this will drive significant growth to both on-chain activities and community engagement for Optimism as a whole.

Has your project previously applied for an OP grant?: no

Number of OP tokens requested: 50,000

Did the project apply for or receive OP tokens through the Foundation Partner Fund?: No

If OP tokens were requested from the Foundation Partner Fund, what was the amount?: N/A

How much will your project match in co-incentives? (not required but recommended, when applicable): We can make to 2% of total supply will be incentive for OP users if there is grant support

How will the OP tokens be distributed? (please include % allocated to different initiatives such as user rewards/marketing/liquidity mining. Please also include a justification as to why each of these initiatives align with the problem statement this proposal is solving.): Pre-launch Marketing Campaign reward: 20%

- 20% of the grant token will be used to incentivize a series of marketing effort to attract the initial community for zkHoldem. By completing tasks of our marketing campaign, this group of people will be able to bring in significal exposure and create guerilla marketing effect and therefore help us find the initial user base.

Testnet Participant reward: 30%

- 30% of the grant token will be used to incentivize participation in our testnet version DApp, which will not only help us further improve the UX and find potential bugs for the DApp itself, but also create the hype needed for the final mainnet launch.

Mainnet Poker Mining: 50%

-50% of the grant token will be used to incentivize poker players after our mainnet launch. The mining program will be able to fully/partially compensate for the gas fee used during game play, making sure that the frequent users or users playing with large bankroll are properly incentivized to potentially become a regular user even after the reward stops.

Over what period of time will the tokens be distributed for each initiative? Shorter timelines are preferable to longer timelines. Shorter timelines (on the order of weeks) allow teams to quickly demonstrate achievement of milestones, better facilitating additional grants via subsequent proposals: Pre-launch Marketing Campaign reward: 1 month
Testnet Participant reward: 2 weeks
Mainnet Poker Mining: 3 months

Please clearly define the milestones you expect to achieve in order to receive milestone based installments. Please consider how each milestone relates to incentivizing sustainable usage and liquidity on Optimism. Progress towards each milestone must be trackable: Pre-launch:
25,000 followers for @zkHoldem twitter account;
5,000 community members for zkHoldem discord server

Testnet:
5,000 - 10,000 testers;
15,000 - 30,000 game played

Mainnet:
5,000 - 10,000 users and 20,000 - 40,000 game played within first 2 months

Why will incentivized users and liquidity on Optimism remain after incentives dry up?: zkHoldem is providing an online poker platform with incomparable safety and fairness guarantee. Given the large number of online poker players (100M active player worldwide), we believe the initial token incentive is merely to bootstrap our recognition with the space, and once people have formed their user habit, they will become loyal users as long as the fee remains competitive.

Please provide any additional information that will facilitate accountability (smart contracts addresses relevant to the proposal, relevant organizational wallet addresses, etc.): OP Goerli Contract:
0x11Bf2d31150a8eEd92C1d1B6F5D84B68dA4dBc83

Confirm you have read and agree to the Eligibility Restrictions (here): I have read the Eligibility Restrictions and agree to abide by their conditions

3 Likes

have you all considered submitting this for growth experiments? much of what you’re proposing is liq mining, which you wouldn’t be able to do for a year if you submit to builder grants

1 Like

Hey zkHoldem team,

This is a very interesting project. But there are a few things that we need to see in the application.

First, it is not exactly clear how the marketing campaign would function. It’s possible that what you are planning would violate the “no sale rule” that we have for growth experiments grants, but either way we would need some more details.

Second, because this is a new/experimental project, it would be great if you could go into more detail in your milestones and also tie those milestones to token distributions. For example, spelling out at what milestones tokens would be distributed.

Because we are already getting deeper into this voting cycle, I advise that you refine your application and re-apply for cycle 11 which would also be closer to your launch date.

Again, zkHoldem looks like a really cool project, I can’t wait to see what you build!

4 Likes