Meet the Demon’s Den Contestants: Part 1
by: ZeHI
A fleet of courageous founders dared to enter the lair of Neo Tokyo’s Dark Lord and submit their applications for the inaugural Demon’s Den event. Only 16 of those bold buildooors made the cut. They will now have the distinctive opportunity to showcase their passion projects before an audience of Web3 enthusiasts in the upcoming Pitch Night events. Those who are deemed worthy will move on to the next phase — the Grand Accelerator — and fight for the opportunity to receive valuable support and funding.
To get ready for this big event, let’s take a look at these inspired innovators and their passion projects. All of these founders were required to be doxxed in order to participate in this event. This week, we’ll check out the eight projects / founders that will be appearing in the first two Pitch Nights, on (15 Feb 15 & 1 March).
Pitch Night One — 15 February
Founder: ThePeoplesDegen, Project: Smashverse
Smashverse is a next-generation battle-royale game and esports brand at the intersection of melee combat, social media, and art. Smashverse offers kick-ass, up-close combat, epic clan fights, and dynamic gameplay for casual gamers and pros. Smashverse is built by a 40-person, fully-doxxed AAA team responsible for over 44 games with over 75 million downloads, generating a cumulative revenue of over $15 billion. They’ve created epic titles including Star Wars Battlefront and the Battlefield series. Our lead dev wrote the engine code that runs CS:GO. Yes, the CS:GO!
ThePeoplesDegen, aka River Tamoor Baig, built a community of world-leading rail innovators, and he is now building what he calls “the EA of Web3.” He’s a community builder at heart, having launched and scaled several communities across tech, rail, and education
Team Rep: Bob Dobelina, Project: Layer One X
Layer One X allows all chains to work interoperably to help make them accessible to everyone. It allows trustless chains & protocols to work together with an innovative hybrid Proof-of-Participation-based consensus mechanism, a combination of Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Validation that focuses on security and decentralization at the same time. Our layer-one infrastructure platform values decentralization, security, scalability & interoperability. They’re focused on scalability, aiming for a transaction speed of 100k/sec & block creation in under 500 milliseconds with extremely low fees. Decentralized Interoperability Consensus Protocol (DICP) is a significant feature of the L1X Protocol. Seamless interoperability through decentralized consensus will unlock huge opportunities to allow Web3 projects to unlock the power of everyday use cases for blockchain.
Beyond working with Layer One X, Bob is a finance (retail) and fitness professional, a crypto / NFT investor, and a casual futurist.
Founder: Román aka Arty, Project: MechaChain
MechaChain is a Web3 TPS mobile game. The game is 14 months into development with a demo coming out in 2 months. It allows players to equip their mecha and fight in teams to earn $mecha!
Arty says he’s been married to entrepreneurship since 2017, yet he describes himself as “just a random guy in the metaverse.” Along with MechaChain, he’s CEO of 2219 project.
Founder: Jake Gross, Project: ENGAG3.xyz
ENGAG3.xyz is an NFT marketing agency that guarantees 100% mint-outs. Their system uses programmatic ads and a coaching program to help projects mint-out NFT and Web3 projects using Twitter Ads.
Some may remember Jake from his role leading WaifuHouseDAO. Jake says It took him years of time and a half-million dollars in testing to develop this system. ENGAG3 is his third Web3 agency after years of agency work (Google me), and it’s the culmination of a hundred founders’ trial-and-error to make the ultimate NFT launchpad.
Pitch Night Two — 1 March
Founder: Nikolas, Project: UTILITI
UTILITI provides enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure and analytics. They bill themselves as the most evolved Web3 development platform, providing everything you need to build and scale decentralized applications and games with ease.
Prior to founding UTILITI, Nikolas Moore led digital native go-to-market operations at Amazon Web Services. He has deep experience in software-as-a-service business strategy, sales, and business development.
Founder: Radical/Living, Project: The Scrapyard
The Scrapyard is a vehicular battle game, much like Twisted Metal, with various additional features and game modes. We have already used the alpha version of Scrapyard to host competitions for WL spots of other projects, and we also allow other projects to have a community game night. Scrapyard incorporates strong PFP projects and communities by giving players special abilities to use during the game based on the NFTs they hold. Additionally, they can level up their personal NFTs to gain greater effects for the abilities they grant. Players can battle over $SCRAP (our token) or battle over $BYTES, $APE, or $BANANA during special events. The Scrapyard Gang (guild) system will allow players to work alongside each other to unlock ever-increasing perks and battle other Gangs.
Radical/Living is an OG citizen, NFT and gaming degen that took zssbecker’s instructions to go and build to heart.
Founder: Sinjin, Project: MAYG: My Angry Yakuza Girlfriend
MAYG is a new Web3 game being developed by a team of veterans from SEGA, EA, Namco Bandai, and PokerStars. The team has the guidance of executive advisor Ken Cron, former CEO of Blizzard and Chairman of Cool Cats. MAYG will introduce gamers to a Win-To-Earn, 3D, multiplayer, turn-based tactical luxury shooter game themed in ’90s Tokyo, Japan. MAYG is a live 3-to-5-player Free-For-All (FFA) game, with each player armed to the teeth with killer luxury designer items as their weapons of choice.
Sinjin is Lead Game Designer at Peeking Duck Studios. He’s also the former Regional Director of PokerStars Asia and an advisor for Team Liquid.
Founder: TheRareBird, Project: iDog
idDOG NFT VAULT™ is a revolutionary way to keep dog health records secure and accessible — 24/7. By investing in this digital blockchain system, veterinarians will be able to reduce labor costs, improve dog healthcare quality, enjoy additional revenue, and give dog owners peace of mind that their furry family members are getting the best care. With idDOG NFT VAULT™, both dog service providers of all kinds and dog owners can benefit from a secure record-keeping system built for the future of dog health. They also have another product patented that will come out over the next 18 months, the idDOG Collar.
TheRareBird, aka Anahata Graceland, has been an entrepreneur her entire life and a lover of all things dog. She is a supporter of interspecies relationships in the wonder of diversity discovering intelligence. She is dedicated to helping American culture expand its recognition and available spaces for human / dog relationships in this busy world. She has over 50 years in the dog breeding business and created the Royal Frenchel Bulldog breed.
Panelist / Judges
The expert panel of judges includes prominent members of the Neo Tokyo and Citizen Capital communities including: fauve, Jameson Mah, Warren Woodard (BleedKale), Neil, bings, DamonNeedsToCreate, Mr. Blank, Felix Norden, CONNECTED, BlockChainMeta
Tune in via
- Twitch: https://twitch.tv/neotokyo
