The Beacon—if you're a seasoned player, you're likely no stranger to this breakout blockchain game from late 2022. Yet for players who haven't kept up with blockchain gaming, their first reaction to this old project might be, "It's still alive?"
After all, even the platform where this game once lived, Treasure DAO, announced in April last year that it would completely shut down its game publishing stack and game publishing operations to pivot toward AI. The last blockchain game to capture market attention was still Nexon’s blockchain version of MapleStory, released a year ago.
But this classic game is finally launching its token after four years. In the first week of its final event, "Season 1," before the token launch, it received over $460,000 in player deposits.
In the current sluggish market environment, where blockchain games have almost lost all attention, how did The Beacon achieve this?
As before, one of the core gameplay elements of The Beacon is still "dungeon crawling," but the mechanics have changed.
First, entering the "Dungeon" each day consumes stamina, with a minimum of 20 points and a maximum of 1000 points per run. If you consume 1000 points in a single run, the reward obtained upon completion is 50 times the reward for consuming 20 points. Additionally, successfully completing the dungeon grants an extra 1.5x bonus reward. However, if you fail to complete it and perish in the dungeon, you will only receive the rewards accumulated up to the point of your defeat.
Each round consumes 1,000 stamina points, which requires spending $19.99 to upgrade to a Premium membership. Players can purchase in-game items to increase their stamina cap; buying the top-tier package for $499.99 is sufficient to raise the stamina cap above 4,000 points. Without a Premium membership, players can only consume 20 stamina points per round, requiring them to play 200 rounds per day. For players with average skill, completing one round may take about 10 minutes—leading to extreme fatigue.
Therefore, upgrading to a Premium membership is the basic requirement to participate in Season 1 and earn $BCN tokens. In addition to saving time by consuming more stamina per round, clearing dungeons does not directly yield $BCN tokens—it produces "Shadow Fragments" instead.
Zero-effort earning is not impossible—the game store offers a basic chest redeemable for 1,000 Shadow Fragments, but the tokens obtained from this chest are extremely minimal, nearly negligible.
To earn more coins, you must exchange "Shadow Fragments" for "Chips" and participate in the "Wheel Game."
This roulette game is similar to a slot machine. Players place bets by predicting which segment the wheel will land on after the countdown ends, earning corresponding multipliers as rewards.
You can't avoid playing, because the chips you receive are locked and can only be unlocked by winning them back in the "Wheel Game." Only then can you exchange them for the primary treasure chests, "Kraken Chests," which produce $BCN.
So, to summarize the current mechanics of this game:
The entire Season 1 event is essentially a race to acquire tokens before the TGE.
The token acquisition pathway is: "Dungeon Run" → obtain "Shadow Fragments" → exchange for tokens to participate in the roulette game → convert roulette tokens into the highest-tier chest → open the chest to receive tokens pending TGE.
You can earn without investment, but it offers almost no value for effort—the project team has already taken this into account.
The $19.99 Premium membership is almost a hard requirement, as the highest-tier treasure chests, "Premium Kraken Chests," are exclusively available to Premium members.
Due to the randomness of the roulette game and the variable number of tokens awarded from opening chests, even if everyone deposits the same amount, the total number of tokens they ultimately receive will vary.
Although the final number of tokens received may vary, depositing more always provides a greater advantage.
After understanding the game mechanics and the nature of Season 1, we can look at how to anticipate the upcoming TGE token.
Previously, we explained why Premium membership is a hard requirement. Therefore, Premium members are essentially users who believe the game token is worth farming.
According to @ClaeysXBT's statistics, as of yesterday, a total of 4,333 addresses have activated Premium membership, with daily changes shown in the chart below:
On the game's web store, five tiers of bundles are available for purchase, priced at $9.99, $19.99, $59.99, $99.99, and $499.99.
Purchasing these bundles grants you "Glint," which most players use to increase their stamina cap in-game, boosting daily production of "Shadow Fragments" and "Chips." For example, buying a $499.99 bundle plus activating a Premium membership can raise your daily stamina cap above 4,000, yielding approximately 150,000 Shadow Fragments—enough to exchange for nearly 5,000 Chips.
Additionally, for every $1 spent on a bundle, you receive approximately 2.33 $BCN (current stage). As players increase their deposits, the amount of $BCN received per $1 spent decreases with each stage; in the previous stage, it was approximately 2.67 $BCN per $1.
Currently, revenue from Premium membership subscriptions amounts to $86,660, and revenue from bundle sales is approximately $378,000, totaling approximately $465,000.
Taken as a whole, Season 1 can be understood as a gamified token fundraising. The sale of bundles constitutes a phased token sale: although the bundle price remains constant, the number of tokens directly provided decreases as sales volume increases. For example, with a $499.99 bundle, purchasing one day later could result in receiving 20 fewer top-tier treasure chests, known as "Premium Kraken Chests," within the game.
The total supply of $BCN is 100 million:
- Season 1 Reward: 10.2%, with 25% released at TGE and the remaining amount linearly unlocked over 9 months
- Past activity reward: 1%, TGE release of 15%, with the remaining amount linearly unlocked over 12 months
- NFT holders: 19%, TGE release: 15%, remaining portion linearly unlocked over 18 months
- Liquidity and Market Makers: 7%, fully released at TGE
- Future Community Reward: 22.3%, not released at TGE
- Team: 15%, not released at TGE, cliff vesting after 24 months, fully vested after 36 months
- Ecosystem Fund: 25.5%, with 15% released at TGE and the remaining portion linearly unlocked over 36 months
The portion available at launch accounts for 16.375% of the total supply. The market capitalization at launch is $16.375 million at a price of 1U, and $8.1875 million at a price of 0.5U.
The recent popularity of The Beacon is mainly due to its built-in roulette game, which players jokingly call a "slot machine." In busy channels, it's common to see messages on the public chat complaining or celebrating big wins.
In the future, this game plan will evolve into a comprehensive system featuring slot machines, MMORPG elements (such as cooperative dungeons), resource gathering (including item enhancement), and PVP, with AI elements also planned for integration. However, the timeline for this development is currently unclear.
However, it’s truly difficult for a crypto-native blockchain game project to sustain itself for four years and then reignite market interest again after that time.
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