Aftermath NFT AMM: Infrastructure to drive Sui GameFi

Aftermath Finance
6 min readApr 15, 2024

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Part of the calculus which led Aftermath to build on Sui was how well-suited it is for GameFi. Beyond speed, scalability, and low-cost, Sui has many native features which lend themselves well both to game builders and to onboarding new users to Web3. From Sui Move itself, to programmable and sponsored transactions, zkLogin, to Kiosks and Token standards, there are a plethora of tools in the builder’s kit to create truly enjoyable blockchain games.

We have always desired to build products which cater to this sector of the Sui ecosystem. For one thing, NFTs and GameFi are great demonstrators of Sui’s tech and of what makes Sui stand out from other blockchains. As a team that has been building on Sui for two years now, we feel Aftermath has a role to play in providing GameFi infrastructure that newcomers can quickly pick up and use. That way, teams coming over to Sui who don’t know the tech inside and out, but know games, have a variety of tools to choose from to quickly bring their vision to life.

We have also come to realize that the community around NFTs and gaming are a lot of fun to interact with. Whether it was our Sui Frens Capy staking vaults we deployed on testnet a year ago, or more recently with our Eggs, it has been enjoyable to build things which cater to a different crowd than our core DeFi products typically do. We are excited to present the NFT AMM and the many ways it can be used and to hear the ideas the community has for it that even we haven’t thought of yet.

Architecture

What we call the NFT AMM for the sake of brevity is really two core pieces of infrastructure which can be used either in tandem or separately dependending upon the intended application. While NFT AMMs have existed before, primarily in the EVM world, these examples are a specific and fairly narrow implementation of how the infrastructure we have built can be used. Like our Pools and Farms, the NFT AMM will be permissionless, allowing anyone to create and deploy NFT vaults and pools however they see fit. We do not anticipate the primary use of this infrastructure to be to fractionalize and trade existing or future NFT collections however. Rather, we see NFT fractionalization, pools, farms, NFT and Token transfer rules being used together to drive the supply and demand mechanics of complex game economies.

Fission Vaults

Fractionalization of NFTs into coins or tokens, and redemption of coins for NFTs is handled by Fission vaults. These vaults are highly customizable to allow them to serve whatever use case NFT and game builders have in mind for their project. Vault attributes which can be custom-tailored include:

Kiosk compliance: Kiosks allow creators of digital assets to set and enforce certain rules about how their assets can be used. Creators can leverage Kiosks in numerous ways to set parameters regarding how, when, and according to what conditions objects may be transferred. By adhering to the rules of the Kiosk, Fission vaults allow their full functionality to be available for use in game design.

Coins and Tokens: The Coin and Token standards on Sui allow further specification of how fractionalized NFTs can be used. An NFT can be fractionalized into Coins which are freely tradeable and fungible, providing freedom to their holders to do with them as they please. For certain use cases, it may be desirable to limit where and how fractionalized NFTs can be used. For these purposes, creators can use the Token standard to ensure the rules they desire are followed.

Fractionalization into multiple tokens: NFTs can have a wide range of attributes, from rarity tiers to how they appear or potentially how they can be used. Rather than limit all NFTs from a collection to being fractionalized into a specific number of a certain coin, it is possible to specify that a NFT with attributes A, B, and C gets fractionalized into arbitrary amounts of tokens X, Y, and Z. Likewise, it can be specified that an NFT requires certain amounts of numerous tokens to be redeemed from the vault. Game and NFT creators can set up Fission vaults however they wish in order to implement a system which works for their project.

Farming: A Fission vault can also behave similarly to our Afterburner vaults currently in use as farms for our AMM pools. Rather than depositing an NFT and instantly receiving some amount of fractionalized NFT coins, NFTs can be staked into the vault, which will then allow users to claim some amount of coins according to a specified emissions rate.

Depreciation: The inverse of farming. An NFT staked into a Fission vault may initially be worth some amount of fractionalized tokens, which decreases over time. The vault can simultaneously emit other tokens, allowing the spending of one token in order to farm another. This also allows for the use and repair of NFTs over time.

Gated vaults: Requires a user to hold a specific asset in order to access the vault. Vaults can also only be available at specific times, for example only during a particular season.

Minting and Burning: It may be desired for an asset to be able to be utilized one time and then destroyed, rather than leaving it staked in the vault to be redeemed or purchased. For these purposes, Fission vaults can mint and burn NFTs, coins, or tokens as specified by the vault creator.

Depositing to the AMM: Fission vaults also can determine whether fractionalized NFTs are deposited directly into the AMM for trading, or if the user has the option to instead receive the coins to their wallet, or perform some other operation with them.

We are excited to see the creative ways builders come up with to utilize Fission vaults. One of the reasons we wanted to build them is to spread awareness about the various tools Game and NFT creators have at their disposal on Sui. By supplying the infrastructure, Aftermath can allow creators to do what they do best, which is to invent immersive experiences with the building blocks available to them.

NFT AMM

The second core component of our GameFi infrastructure is the NFT AMM itself. A modification of our existing Pools architecture, it inherits many of its unique features which provide even more freedom for builders. Key attributes of the NFT AMM pools include:

Pools of up to 8 assets: Unlike most AMM pools which can only trade pairs, our AMM supports up to 8 assets in a single pool. This is particularly interesting for gaming, as pooling multiple assets together will directly affect their relative values, creating interesting supply and demand effects within the game.

Arbitrary weights: Each asset within the pool can have any weight so long as they all add up to 100. A pool with two assets at equal weights, or up to 8 all at different weights, is possible.

LP Tokens: NFT AMM pools may emit an LP token if desired. These LP tokens can be freely traded, staked into a farm, or used in whatever way the pool creator wishes to allow them to be used.

Price discovery: The NFT AMM provides an alternative method of price discovery for NFTs beyond the typical marketplace model. Like any standard AMM for coins, these pools can be used to swap from one asset to another, and also allow anyone to speculate on a collection and earn fees from trading activity by providing liquidity.

Permissionless creation: Anyone can create an NFT AMM pool for any collection they wish.

Invitation to Builders

We are excited to offer this new GameFi infrastructure to the Sui community, and look forward to speaking with any teams who are intrigued by the possibilities it presents. There is so much untapped potential for NFT collections to issue tokens which can be used in innovative ways, and for games to fully integrate tradeable digital assets which truly add to the experience.

Be sure to check out our documents for tutorials on how to try out the NFT AMM on testnet. We will be offering a bounty and technical support to participants of the Sui Overflow hackathon who build with our NFT AMM, so please reach out to us if you have any questions!

Originally published at https://medium.com on April 15, 2024.

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