We are hosting our First Solana Chess Tournament!

When: Sept 23, 6 pm-8 pm UTC
Entrance: FREE
Game mode: Rapid, 10 min.

Prize pool:
1st - 3 SOL
2nd - 2 SOL
3rd - 1 SOL
4th-6th - 100 BEAK
7th-10th - Danger Valley Dialect Sticker Pack

Register: https://xchess.io/events/650b45ee29a1098682821e4a

Register

What we built:

• Play Chess with your friend.
  Share the game URL with your friend, and he can join.

• Play with AI.
  We integrated the most powerful AI into xChess. Try to beat it!

• Play with random people.
  You can play chess even with someone from another continent.

• Different game modes.
  Classic, rapid, bullet, etc.

• Hints from AI.
  You can buy them for SOL / USDC / BEAK.

• Arena.
  24/7 rated tournament.

• Team Tournaments.
  We’ll host team tournaments for the most active OG communities on Solana. NFT-gated participation.

• Rating & ranks.

• Chat with your opponent.

• Viewer mode.
  You can view someone’s game.

What’s coming

• NFT skins.

• Daily missions.

• Team tournaments with OG communities.

• Leaderboards.

If you are a project founder or community moderator and want to host a chess tournament for your community or compete with any other project/DAO - fill out this form, and let’s get in touch!

Play Chess Now

Today, I will tell you my plan how to build the next unicorn.

Math

Let’s do simple math. We have 7777 ducks and 2222 pigeons, so total 10k NFTs. What floor price do we need for a $1B market cap?

I expect SOL to go to $300-500 on the next bull run, so let’s imagine it hits at least $200. That’s the minimum, for sure. So we need 500 SOL floor price.

Strategy

We are trying different ways to increase the value of the Ducks. Some people could say that we don’t have a strict roadmap and that we don’t follow what we planned at the beginning. But that is our strategy - to try different things until we find our blue-chip project.

We created non-custodial NFT Staking when every project used escrow-based staking.

We built a casino-based gaming platform with a bunch of cool in-house-built games.

We created a raffle platform where every project can host their raffle with any SPL token absolutely for free.

And now, we are building xChess - a web3 chess platform, and Laboratory - the place where all Ducks will find what to do.

I talked to a few VC investors, and all of told me that move valuable in their decisions is the team, but not a product. We have the vision what we want to achieve for Danger Valley, and we are building it step by step.

How far do we plan?

Well, we have two different types of planning: long-term and short-term.

Long-term plan is for 1+ year. We are going to start the Season II in August, but we already write the roadmap for Season III. We already write down our ideas for Season III, and I know what’s gonna happen with Ducks on Spring-Summer 2024.

Short-team plan is usually for 2-3 months. Because most project can be built for more or less 2-3 months.

Marketing plan

We stopped building the casino, so we are opened for the usual web2 marketing, of course with the elements of web3.

Our current main project is xChess, and it’s not yeat launched, but we have already started to market it. We’ve launched Google Ads and Facebook Ads, and testing creatives. People subscribe to our waitlist, and we already have a bunch of emails of chess-lovers outside of the Danger Valley community.

Second part of the marketing plan is to partner with a lot of Solana communities to host Team Tournaments. That’s how we call this unique tournaments feature. Nobody has it yet, no chess.com, no lichess, no any other chess platform. I am pretty sure there is a bunch of chess lovers in the Solana communities, and we are going to unite all of them.

What else are you building?

I do really want to win one of the Solana hackatons. To do that, we need to build not just a cool consumer product, but also innovate the tech. You’ll see one of these innovations on xChess. But that’s just a start.

I want to help other developers and founders to build and market their product on Solana. So most likely Danger Valley will launch a few dev-tools later this year. We are going to try them for Danger Valley first, and if we see the good traction, we’ll allow other communities to use them.

So, what about $1B?

There are a few steps how we are going to reach 500 SOL FP.

1. We will continue building consumer products and going to bring as many web2 users to Solana as we can.

2. We will increase the benefits from holding a Duck.

3. We will increase the value of $BEAK by giving it more utility in xChess, Laboratory, and our upcoming products. By the way, $BEAK will be renamed in the Season III.

4. We need more visibility for Danger Valley inside the Solana community. From the team side - we’ll partner with other Solana projects, take part in Hackathons, visit Solana Breakpoint, etc. But we also need help of you, our holders. Show your Ducks, set it as your pfp in Twitter, Threads, Instagram, Discord, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. Be proud of the community where you are a part of.

That’s just the beginning.

To be continued…

Hey, friends!

I am stoked to announce that our first 3D Duck Toy is available now!

This bad boy is the perfect combo of quality and fun, and it's sure to provide hours of entertainment for kids and adults. We're not trying to break the bank so you can snag one for just 100 USDC, paid in SOL.

And we're keepin' it exclusive with only 333 of each of the four ducks available. So, don't wait too long to grab yours! I hope this new toy will make our current holders happy and bring in some new ones.

You can mint the 3D Duck Toy NFT today on the Metaplex Studio website.

MINT NOW

Oh, and if you're a collector, you can get free delivery if you collect all four toys. How cool is that? Get ready to quack up with the 3D Duck Toy!

March 2023 has been a crazy month for me, both positively and negatively. Here’s a recap:

• I moved to another city.

• I launched Crash, and it… crashed.

• I have some great plans for the upcoming few months.

Let’s go into the details!

I relocated to Lviv for 1-2 months.

At the beginning of March, I moved to Lviv and lived there for a month. I’ll be here for one more month, I guess, and then move further. That’s such exciting to relocate somewhere. You take all your needed clothes, get into your car, and drive. Rent a new apartment, find new cafes, restaurants, gas stations, etc.

I would recommend everyone to try that. It changes your life from upside down.

I don’t even know if I will return to Dnipro one day. Nobody knows.

Crash Crashed

I’ve been developing Crash for three months now. I did not 100% of my time because I also worked on adding new partners to Quackpot, migrating Ducks to pNFT, etc. But anyway, I work on it most of the time.

And finally, it’s ready to launch (as I thought 😂).

But my MongoDB architecture was not ready for that. It started to glitchy right after migrating to production and making the announcement in Discord and Twitter. So I had to freeze it until I understood the issue and how to fix it.

It took three days, and now it seems to be ok and live.

What’s next?

We started to work on a Quackpot re-design. Yes, way new, fresh UI. And it should be launched in April.

Also, we are working on the Quackpot Events. Not IRL events. That’s a new mechanic called Events 😂. To be launched in April too.

I also miss my “weekend” projects. Something that could be developed during the weekend or no more than within a week. In my experience, such projects are the most successful for me. So going to build something new soon. Have a few ideas.

That’s all for now!

I am sitting in a new cafe and writing this newsletter. And enjoy it so much. So I will definitely continue to write on Substack.

If you like it, please share it with your friends! 😄

Thank you for your help!

See you next time 👊

- Mike

January

• AMA with IntegrityDAO (0xBrando)

• Playing Portals with Ducks

• Quackpot free spins giveaway

• ICED joins Danger Valley

• 40k SOL trading volume

• The Morning Mint

• A poker tournament with Degenerate Ape Academy

• Roadmap 2.0

• McDuck giveaway

• TOP 10 most popular collections on MagicEden

• Staking with SOL revenue share

February

• 200% of the royalty paid to holders via staking

• 50k SOL trading volume

• Big update of mobile apps

• Partnership with Metavillage

• FBC tournament

• 4 SOL FP

• Quackpot launch is planned for February 25th

• Russia had started a war with Ukraine, and our plans changed from upside down

March

• Bomb shelter

• Bomb shelter

• Working in a bomb shelter

• Bomb shelter every day

• 450 SOL payment for holders via staking

• Quackpot v1 launch

• 700 SOL Quackpot volume during the first two days

• Ukraine Defender Duck auction on MagicEden

• Duck 3D toys test samples creation

• Listing Ducks on OpenSea

April

• Development in the bomb shelter

• Rocket Quest launch (+tournament)

• Rocket Quest launch (+tournament)

• Tokenomics

• Partnership with Hyperspace

May

• Staking in mobile app

• Partnership with DTH

• Working on Pigeons

• Alpha Art governance

June

• Rocket Quest mobile app

• Rebranding and the new website

• AMA with MagicDAO

• Pigeons mint on MagicEden Launchpad

• BEAK launch

• Staking for Pigeons

• Ducks staking for BEAK

July

• 100 days of code

• Trade your Ducks and Pigeons in our mobile app

• More poker

• Building in public

• ArtRaffle development

August

• ArtRaffle launch

• A lot of raffles for SOL and BEAK

• Vacation

September

• Referral program for ArtRaffle

• Ability to host raffles for Danger Valley Whales

• Roadmap 3.0

• Thread contest

October

• Development of the Quackpot v3

• My Birthday 🥳

November

• De-rug protocol

• Quackpot beta test

December

• Quackpot v3 launch

• Three mechanics: slot machine, loot boxes, and coin flip

• Daily rewards

• Referral program for Quackpot

• Weekly Jackpot. Hosted it three times: 40 SOL, 30 SOL, and 35 SOL

• New tokens added: $BOKU, $FORGE, $BOO, $JELLY

• Beakpot

• Christmas Meme Campaign

• New Year Presents

Never stopped building. And never give up.