Shrapnel is a innovative FPS game developed by NEON, a estudio with some very talented people that worked creating games during several years, they worked on titles like Halo, Call of Duty, Bioshock, Destiny or Crackdown among others. There are also several blockchain experts that will definitely improve the overall quality of the project.

The team is trying a new approach with the game including a similar experience that we saw in The Division where players have to make a critical decision to either extract their loot or keep fighting and obtain even higher rewards.

Crafting will be another crucial point in the game where players will be able to create not only customized weapons and armors but even build entire maps from the scratch and creating a Map NFT in the process that can be sold to other players on the marketplace.

The game is getting built in Unreal Engine 5 and the first trailers including a short gameplay video look really amazing and promising.

The team released a extensive whitepaper as well as economy paper which provides very detailed info about how the economy in Shrapnel will work and although we do appreciate the level of detail provided, in our opinion the tokenomics are poorly designed due to the distribution and vesting schedules of the token and it’s definitely the weakest point of the project right now.

Interestingly there will be a reputation system and the players with the highest scores will earn rewards and will promote the player’s discoverability on the Shrapnel internal marketplace making it easier to sell your loot or created maps. This is something that we didn’t saw in any other game and it’ll be really interesting to see how till the team implement that option in the game.

Overall in our opinion the project looks very good and promising, it has some really interesting and intriguing ideas but only time will tell if they’ll work as intended once the game launches. It also remains to be seen if the spectacular graphics will be on pair with the gameplay and how will the tokenomics affect the project in the long run

19 Dec 2022 – 20 Dec 2022

• Impressive Unreal Engine 5 graphics
• Very talented team
• Innovative ideas
• Very good community engagement
• $18 million raised

19 Dec 2022

• Tokenomics
• Risky ideas
• Economy can result too complicated for some players

19 Dec 2022

Shrapnel has a great opportunity of becoming a top tier FPS if they manage to deliver all the amazing things the team promised.

Innovative ideas and skill based game modes that will require a lot of decision making from the players could definitely attract a lot of new gamers to the project, including traditional gamers.

The graphics shown in the trailers are more than amazing, if the game really works as shown there it would probably become one of the Top3 best looking blockchain games and having so many talented and experienced team members should make it possible.

The game will launch on a subnet on top of Avalanche and although it still needs more testing and improve many things, if the Avalanche team manages to deliver and subnets will work as intended it could the first AAA game on this blockchain solution opening the door for more projects in the future.

The community engagement is really good and the team is very active on their social media making it easier to attract more users and potential new partners and investors to their project

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel is a really promising game although it has several threats that could have a big impact on the success of the project.

The main threat in our opinion is their tokenomics and although the token is not live yet we think that the tokeomics could play a mejor role in the future especially due to very short vesting schedule and cliffs as well as team and investors allocations that are really high.

Another threat is that the game’s economy although it’s very detailed it could be overcomplicated for average users with too many things to consider and it’ll be especially difficult if the team plans to attract traditional gamers that are not used to crypto.

The team has several very interesting and unique ideas although it can also be a weak point for them if those ideas won’t work as intended and at the end the players will have the last word after the game is released and it’ll be definitely interesting to see the outcome

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel team is creating the game while implementing some unique ideas and very interesting game modes that will require a lot of skills from the players.

The principal game mode will be the extraction, it will consist in playing against other players and choosing when to extract your actual loot or keep fighting to earn even higher rewards, although by doing that you could risk losing everytihng you earned until that moment. It’s definitely a very smart idea and adds a lot of excitement to every match.

The implementation of reputation system is really interesting and it’ll encourage the players to play without toxic behaviour and at the same time it’ll give you the opportunity to earn more rewards as well as promote your profile on their future marketplace where your listed items would be on top of the list.

The graphics are definitely impressive, the game is getting build with Unreal Engine 5 and if the team manages to deliver smooth gameplay and good controls it’ll most likely help them attract a lot of new gamers.

The team developing Shrapnel is one of the most talented ones you can find in any crypto game, there are experts in many different fields among the team members, some of them worked creating videogames for more than 20 years at companies like Xbox Studios, Irrational Games or Treyarch, there are several blockchain experts as well

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel is a shooter game and although at the moment of writing there aren’t too many games in this genre available, there are some really interesting projects and more are getting built and will become their direct competitors, here are some of the most notable ones:

• Mini Royale Nations
• Arsenal
• Last Expedition
• MetalCore
• Undead Blocks

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel P2E system is really complex with several ways in which players can earn rewards in form of $SHRAP token, in the next sections you can check the overview and our thoughts with some potential best strategies to earn the most

20 Dec 2022 – 21 Dec 2022

There are several different ways in which you can earn in Shrapnel, in this section you’ll find some potential strategies depending on your play style.

You can earn rewards doing the following:

• Playing the game
• Creating unique gear and maps that can be sold on a marketplace
• Curating creations of other players
• Land owners will earn fees generated on it

Probably the best strategy is to play the game and extract loot, although you have to be a skillful player in order to win high rewards and you have to be well prepared. Having high tier gear and choosing the best moment to extract your rewards will be crucial in order for you to succeed.

In the default mode you’ll be able to extract only standard gear but there will be a special hardcore mode where the players will put their Vanity items at stake that include refined and perfected gear allowing you to win huge rewards in a very short period of time but also risking your own high tier NFTs.

There will a Free to Play option in Shrapnel where you’ll be able to use a free operator although you won’t be able to extract valuable loot that way but it’ll be a great way to learn how to play and prepare yourself for competitive game modes. There will be only a limited number of free operators available at once and there will be a cooldown period meaning that you won’t be able to play for free at any given time and most likely there will be a queue time.

Being a creator in probably the second best strategy in Shrapnel, you’ll be able to create unique items like weapons and maps. It’ll require a lot of time from the creators and although there will be no risk involved, you’ll need to pay a certain fee and use classified materials that can be found while playing the game or bought on Shrapnel marketplace. There will be 5 material classes and each one of them will represent different raritiy and of course the price will vary depending on which one you choose.

The team announced that there will be a renting system available although they didn’t released too much info about how will it work, there is a mention in their whitepaper about high skilled players getting sponsored and using other players gear

21 Dec 2022

As we mentioned before, the overall economy in Shrapnel is really complex and it’s very easy to get lost while reading their official economy paper (It has 48 pages!) due to the amount of info it contains, in this section we’ll try to make your life easier by explaining the utilities of the main items and currencies included in the game:

• Operator NFT is the main playable character in Shrapnel, there are 3 different classes with different abilities and special perks. Right now you can buy one of 10.000 NFTs on Opensea and you’ll receive some advantages like early access to play the game, future airdrops, access to whitelists or special in-game items. There is a possibility to play as non-NFT operator without risking your gear but in exchange the potential rewards are very basic
• Weapons – You’ll be able to dissasemble non-NFT ones in order to receive parts that can be used for crafting custom and high tier weapons which can be sold in the marketplace after. There will be several types and classes of weapons in Shrapnel
• Vanity items are items created by the players and there will be a limited number of vanity materials in Shrapnel that are necessary to create them, those items will be very rare and will have some unique features
• Maps will be a very important item in the game, players will be able to create maps by paying a fee in $SHRAP, you can speed up the process by acquiring special items from the marketplace. Maps allow players to stake tokens on them in order to earn rewards based on the performance of said map
• $SHRAP token is the main tokens in Shrapnel and it has several use cases and it’ll be the main earnable item (Check “coin info” section for more info)
• Gear items that include weapons, helmets, melee weapons etc. will have 3 different tiers, higher tier gear offers some attributes boost as well as offering the possibility to craft better attachments and components that could have an impact in PvP modes and you could argue that it’ll be some kind of Pay to Win option which you definitely don’t want to see in a competitive game, hopefully the team changes their mind and eliminate this option

It’s important to note that almost every item listed above has a lot of extra info that can be found in the economy paper that has 48 pages and you really need to read carefully in order to learn the exact procedures and several use cases when using these item, here are some examples although there are a lot more:

• The attachements rules for each kind of gear
• Use cases of certain player crafted items
• Gear deflation
• Free operator limitations
• Crafting balances
• Classified materials use case
• Map curations and different Lands where your map is hosted
• Different rewards from staking on different maps or vanity items
• Vanity items rarities and classes explanation

20 Dec 2022

At the moment of writing you can buy Shrapnel NFTs only on Opensea, the main collection is based on ETH blockchain but there are also 2 secondary collections based on Avalanche blockchain. The first collection mint had a cost of 0.05 ETH and by holding Operator NFT you’ll be granted a whitelist spot for future mints that will be completely free according to the team. You can also participate in several giveaways on their Twitter and Discord where you can also win a WL spot.

The team is building their own marketplace where $SHRAP will be the main currency and you’ll be able to buy items created by other players. It’ll be used not only for trading your assets but also for minting future collections, according to the team their marketplace will use a P2P (Peer to Peer) trading method, it’ll be interesting to see it in action

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel uses only one token called $SHRAP in their economy and it has a lot of different in-game utilities and although the tokenomics are really poorly designed we do like that the token will be used for so many different things in the game, lets take a look at its use cases:

• DAO and governance votes
• Payment for validators
• Staking
• Main currency on the internal marketplace
• Paying crafting fees
• Minting map NFTs

As you can see the team added some interesting mechanics that’ll require the usage of the token and they also announced that there will be more use cases for it in the future

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel will have one token in their economy called $SHRAP, there is some very detailed info about it in their economy paper but sadly the tokenomics aren’t well designed, you can check the exact info and our thoughts and concerns in the next sections

20 Dec 2022

At the moment of writing the token hasn’t launched yet, once it goes live we’ll update this section and check if everything is legit

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel main token $SHRAP will go live very soon according to the roadmap but you can already check the tokenomics with all the details thanks to their whitepaper and economy paper and sadly the info provided reveals some really poor decisions made by the team. Let’s take a closer look:

• Team and Advisors tokens (27% of total supply) will have a 6 months cliff and 24 months vesting after
• Seed sale tokens (20% of total supply) will have a 6 months cliff and 6 months vesting after
• Strategic sale tokens (7% of total supply) will have a 6 months cliff and 12 months vesting after
• Public sale tokens (5% of total supply) will be completely unlocked and available for trading from day 1
• Liquidity tokens (3% of total supply) will be completely unlocked and available for trading from day 1
• Ecosystem fund tokens (5% of total supply) will have a 6 months cliff and 36 months vesting after
• Community rewards tokens (33% of total supply) will have a 12 months cliff and 48 months vesting after

As you can see team, advisors and presale tokens allocation is extremely high with very short cliffs and vesting schedule.

It’s especially concerning that the seed sale tokens that represent 20% of the total supply will be completely unlocked in only 12 months and if you take all the presale tokens into consideration, they will be unlocked in just 18 months (32% of supply).

Most of allocations have very short cliffs and according to the roadmap the token will launch during phase 1 but the playable version of the game is scheduled for phase 4 so it’s very likely that all the investors will be able to sell all of their tokens before the game is even launched which is actually the opposite of the team’s initial claims about building a long term project.

It’s also confusing that the community rewards tokens will be locked for 12 months and although there is a disclaimer on their whitepaper with some vague explanations and that those tokens cliffs and vesting shcedule are subject to change, it’s still very confusing and doesn’t make too much sense, we’ll definitely try to contact the team about this issue and hopefully get some proper answers

20 Dec 2022

• Why the team and advisors cliffs are so short
• Why is the allocation for pre sales so high
• Why the cliffs are so short for pre sale tokens
• Why are the community rewards tokens locked and what does the disclaimer below the graphic mean exactly

20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel doesn’t have too many social media channels but it’s not necessarily a bad thing as the channels they use have pretty good engagement and the team is quite active on them being Discord their main community platform, in the next sections you can check all their numbers

16 Dec 2022

Shrapnel has good community engagement across their social media platforms with some small exceptions, let’s take a closer look at them:

• Twitter was created in April 2021 and has 51.600 followers, the team is very active here posting several times every day, they also host several Twitter spaces, AMAs etc. and in our opinion they’re doing a great job here. The engagement is not incredible but at least it’s decent and there is no sign of fake followers, likes or retweets. They also host several giveaways and you can get a WL (Whitelist) spot from time to time for their upcoming mints
• Discord has 38.700 members and very good engagement, you can check more info about their Discord server in the next section
• Telegram is only used for announcements but the activity here is very low with only 600 subscribers
• Youtube has 1.360 subscribers and although they started uploading their videos just few months ago they do receive a lot of views and comments
• Medium is the team’s main announcements channel but they post only the most important announcements here

16 Dec 2022 – 20 Dec 2022

Shrapnel Discord has almost 39.000 members with around 10% of active users on average and very good engagement.

There are 10 info and announcements channels where the team posts the latest news about the game as well as some leaked screenshots of the actual gameplay, it’s also a great place to find all of their official links and to learn more about the game thanks to the FAQ channel.

There are 10 general channels but most of them don’t have too much utility, the “community chat” channel is the most used one by the players and the engagement is very during all day, the overall mood is nice with no discussions or misbehaviors, mods are doing a great job keeping it clean and they actively participate in the discussions with their community.

There are several voice channels but it seems that no one uses them, in our opinion the team could clean up their Discord by removing some of those channels as well the off-topic ones to improve the overall experience and making it easier to find what you’re looking for.

If you own some of the Shrapnel NFTs you can use Collab.Land to connect your wallet and it’ll grant you access to hidden chat channels for NFT holders

16 Dec 2022 – 21 Dec 2022

Shrapnel team has worked at some of the biggest and most important companies in the industry creating some of the most successful videogames like Call of Duty, Halo, Bioshock or Destiny among others, some of them worked for more than 20 years as developers and there are also several blockchain experts on board, although there is a small number of team members that don’t appear on their official Linkedin.

In our opinion the team is more than capable of delivering an amazing product, you can check more detailed info about them in the next sections

16 Dec 2022

Shrapnel is being developed by a studio called NEON with some very talented and experienced people on board, let’s take a look at the most notable members:

• Mark Long is the CEO, he was the CEO at companies like Zombie Studios and Meteror Entertainment where he worked on titles like Blacklight, Ghost Recon or HAWKEN. He also worked at Microsoft as Group Program Manager and as Director at HBO
• Calvin Zhou is the Co-founder & Head of Business Development, he founded and directed several tech companies like 4D Factory
• Don Norbury is the Studio Head and CTO, he worked as A.I Engineer and Senior Development Lead at companies like Microsoft, Irrational Games, EA or Lucas Arts where he worked several games like Madden NFL, Nascar, Bioshock, Sunset Overdrive or Crackdown
• Marc Mercuri is the Head of Blockchain, he has almost 30 years of experience as developer, he worked at companies like Microsoft or ConsenSys. Especially his experience at Microsoft is really impressive, he worked there for 18 years where he learnt blockchain engineering and was one of the Patent Leads of Azure
• Aaron Nonis is the COO, he worked as Lead Developer at Microsoft for 8 years and he was the VP of Interactive Application Engineering at HBO
• Jay Prochaska is the Art Director, he has more than 20 years of experience after working at companies like Microsoft, SandBlast Games or Hidden Path Entertainment
• Clint Bundrick is the Studio Creative Director, he worked as Design Director for 20 years at EA, Volition, Microsoft, Irrational Games and Turn 10 Studios
• Arun Gangadhar Rao is the Technical Director, he worked as Software Engineer at High Voltage Software, Irrational Games and Microsoft during 15 years
• John Noonan is the Director of Production, he worked Senior Producer at XBOX and Amazon Games with around 10 years of experience
• Dave Johnson is the Executive Producer, he worked as Software Developer at Microsoft for 4 years and as Art Director and Producer at XBOX
• Adrian Balanon is the Gameplay Lead, he has more than 15 years of experience working as Designer, Producer, Senior Sysytems Designer at companies like Treyarch, Activision, Microsoft, Irrational Games, 2K Games and Nvidia

Between all of them they worked on hundreds of titles like Halo, Call of Duty, Mafia 3, RYSE, Bioshock, Sunset Overdrive, Red Faction, Forza Motorsport or Crackdown

16 Dec 2022

Shrapnel marketing team is very talented with several years of experience:

• Mark Yeend is the Head of Marketing and Marketing Communication, he worked as Content Director and Product Director for almost 20 years at companies like Microsoft, Amaze Entertainment and HBO helping to deliver more than 70 games
• Tony Valcarcel manages the Web3 Marketing, he worked as Senior Marketing Manager for 10 years at companies like Convoy Inc, Electronic Arts, Amazon, Nintendo
• J. Mark Tanjutco is the Chief Performance Marketing Officer, he has a long experience working in Marketing at several companies like Meteor Entertainment, WildTangent, Amazon and Loaded

As you can see they managed to create a impressive team for their marketing, it’s definitely one of the best marketing teams you can find in any blockchain game, time will tell if they manage to live up to the hype

16 Dec 2022

Shrapnel community team consists of 2 people but we only found verified info about one of them (Mark Yeend), we’ll try to contact the team for more info

• Mark Yeend is the Head of Community, he worked as Content Director and Product Director for almost 20 years at companies like Microsoft, Amaze Entertainment and HBO helping to deliver more than 70 games. He is also the Head of Marketing of Shrapnel, in our opinion he doesn’t have too much experience leading a community team and only time will tell if he lives up to the expectations
• Daniel Bornemann is the Community Manager and there is only some vague info about him on the game’s website and although after being on their Discord you can tell that he’s doing a great job there, we couldn’t find his Linkedin page, we’ll update this info as soon as we receive a response from the team

16 Dec 2022

• Could you give us some more info about some team members that don’t appear on Linkedin

16 Dec 2022

Shrapnel team signed important partnerships and attracted several big investors to their project raising around $18 million which shows that they saw huge potential in the game and it’ll definitely help the team with the development in the upcoming months

19 Dec 2022

Shrapnel team is focused on working with a guilds system once the game is launched and they already signed partnerships with some important guilds like:

• Ancient8
• Earn Guild
• YGG
• GuildFi

According to the team there will be some guild sponsored tournaments with the best players in Shrapnel. If you are one of the best content creators it’s also probable that you’ll receive offers from guilds to craft special items for them by receiving rare items and tokens from them

19 Dec 2022 – 21 Dec 2022

Shrapnel team signed some important partnerships with some of the biggest names in the industry that should improve their future development, here are some of the most notable names:

• Kapital DAO
• Ancient8
• Avalanche
• Neo Tokyo Code
• PerionDAO
• Polemos
• Snackclub
• BlackPoolHQ

Most of the partnerships happened thanks to Naomi Lackaff who is the Head of Partnerships, she worked at some important companies like HBO and Microsoft in the past and definitely knows what she’s doing. In October 2022 Hamed Qasem joined the team as Partnerships Coordinator, he is also pretty experienced in this field after working at companies like Apple and T-Mobile, he’ll definitely add even more quality to the team in the future and it’s very likely that you’ll see more partnerships coming to the project

19 Dec 2022

Shrapnel team raised around $18 million in 2 funding rounds from some major investors. During the first seed round in October 2021 they raised $10.5 million, the second funding came from a private token sale (ICO) in April 2022 where the total raised was $7.6 million.

Some big names participated in both funding rounds, here are some of their major investors:

• Griffin Gaming Partners (Lead investor)
• Polychain Capital
• Defiance Capital
• Mechanism Capital
• Spartan Group
• Overwolf
• Sfermion
• Stephen Lim
• Keith Nunziata

19 Dec 2022

Shrapnel is getting built on Avalanche Blockchain, there are several teams that already use it for their projects like Crabada or Defi Kingdoms.

Avalanche is a Proof of Stake (POS) Layer 1 blockchain meaning that users need to stake $AVAX tokens in order to be able to run a validator node and at the moment of writing you need to stake at least 2000 AVAX in order to do that, the fact that it’s a POS blockchain also means that it’s ECO friendly with very low energy consumption.

The cost of the transactions on Avalanche is very low and on average you’ll pay less than $1 for each transaction. In the past however there was a period of time where the transaction fees were very high due to high blockchain usage because of one game (Crabada) and it clearly showed that there was a lot of work needed to be done.

After those events Avalanche team found a potential solution in “Subnets” which allow projects to create their own blockchains (You could call them subnetworks) which then are secured by validators resulting in very low fees and more scalability and although it looks really promising there are some concerns like the security. It definitely is a very interesting approach from Avalanche team although only time wil tell if they’ll succeed.

19 Dec 2022 – 7 Feb 2023

Shrapnel team has pretty vague roadmap on their website with no exact dates, the project is pretty new and the team only met few targets to this date

19 Dec 2022

Shrapnel has 4 different phases on their roadmap for the upcoming months with no exact dates, here are the most notable milestones:

• $SHRAP token launch (Phase 1)
• Platform Features (Phase 1)
• Crafting (Phase 2)
• Maps hosting (Phase 2)
• Internal marketplace (Phase 3)
• Map tool (Phase 3)
• Playable version (Phase 4)
• Competitive game modes (Phase 4)
• Creator Rewards (Phase 4)

19 Dec 2022

Shrapnel is a fairly new project and at the moment of writing the team didn’t achieved too many milestones and according to their roadmap we are now in the Phase 0, here are some of the most notable targets they met:

• Built solid community on their social media
• VIP memberships for the OG members
• Community voting
• Important partnerships signed
• $18 million raised from their investors
• First gameplay video

19 Dec 2022 – 21 Dec 2022

At the moment of writing there 3 different NFT collections for Shrapnel although only one of them is a proper collection that’ll have a in-game utility in the future.

You can buy items from these 3 collections on Opensea with the following floor prices:

• Shrapnel Operators collection (0.074 ETH floor) is the main collection based on ETH blockchain and since its launch it had a very decent volume of 513 ETH
• Shrapnel Echo Company collection had no sales since its inception and there is almost no info about it at the moment
• Operators NFT Comic Books collection (0.19 AVAX floor) is the collection that was airdropped to Operator NFT holders and for now its utility is unknown

In the future there will be more NFT collections like weapons, maps and gear, most of them will be created by the players and will allow creators to earn rewards with each sale, there will exist a specific Shrapnel marketplace for all kind of NFTs where $SHRAP will be the main currency and all the fees collected will be sent to reward pools

19 Dec 2022 – 21 Dec 2022