Formalization of Karate Combat Member Benefits

General
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Thank you to the many that helped set the vision, clarify the objectives and proofread the below!

BACKGROUND

Back when crypto’s one and only Frank Chaparro was still at Business Insider, he wrote an article about why billionaires buy sports teams. According to the UBS report Frank reviewed, billionaires owned 109 of the top 140 sports properties. They buy them to “connect with communities they have an interest in… establish a legacy…open the door to other business opportunities […and] amazing people – you sit at the table with 'stars, sheikhs, famous businessmen and regular guys from around the world, all in the same room.”

Unlike the other top 140 sports properties, the Karate Combat league is not owned by any individual or family. Rather, it is controlled by an ownerless foundation that is committed to supporting and advancing decisions made by $KARATE token holders. Unlike participation in traditional sports leagues, the price of entry is free. Anyone can receive 88 tokens by downloading the Karate Combat mobile app. The perks of sports property ownership that normally only accrue to a couple hundred of the richest people on the planet, should be distributed to Karate Combat’s community.

KARATE COMBAT MEMBER BENEFITS

To date the league has experimented with token-gated experiences in a manual fashion. See efforts KC43 and KC Kickback 1. In advance of the one year anniversary of the $KARATE token (a league holiday tentatively named KARATE de MAYO), KC intends to formalize and begin to productize member benefits.

Ideally, all league benefits would be seamlessly delivered through the league’s fast-growing apps. Initially member benefits will likely also use claim codes & email as delivery mechanisms. In 2024 tickets will be non-transferrable, but by sometime in 2025 they should be issued as tradable NFTs. Product work has already kicked off.

Before the first year’s member benefits can be decided upon, they must be discussed at length. The range of potential benefits is broad:

  • Event ticketing
  • VIP packages
  • Afterparties
  • Honorary NFTs
  • Physical, collectible passes
  • Travel compensation
  • Meet + greets & dinners with talent
  • Limited edition merchandise
  • Appearances on televised broadcasts
  • Token-gated servers & channels
  • Memorabilia from historic KC moments

PROPOSED ANNUAL MEMBER BENEFIT DISTRIBUTION RANGES

We propose that annual member benefits are locked in on each KARATE de MAYO. The benefit levels would be determined by players’ positions on a new, annual leaderboard of the biggest Up Only Gaming earners since the previous May 12th. Leaderboards are based on participation & amounts won, not just a rich list of $KARATE holders. You need to play to get on.

For some context, in rough numbers, at the last event

  • The player with the most votes used ~100,000,000 $KARATE, currently worth about $500,000.
  • The top 10 voters used at least 25,000,000 $KARATE, currently worth about $125,000.
  • The top 100 voters used at least 2,500,000 $KARATE, currently worth about $12,500.
  • The top 250 voters used at least 750,000 $KARATE, currently worth about $3,750.
  • The top 1,000 voters used at least 100,000 $KARATE, currently worth about $500.

In our opinion, while these levels are by no means cheap, some are currently attainable for a large portion of the league’s most committed community members. Further, many community members have been participating for over half a year, when $KARATE was trading at 10-15% of current levels. The earliest participants arguably deserve an outsized share of benefits. For those without the means, avenues for attending events should be open through community participation, discounted tickets, raffles and alternate leaderboards.

We’ve limited the number of tickets per level to discourage players from claiming tickets to events they cannot attend. To date we have solved this by offering a $KARATE token bonus in lieu of a ticket, but we don’t believe that is a long term strategy.

We imagine the levels and benefits will reset every year on KARATE de MAYO, but the initial proposal for year 1 is below. Each year in the KC Calendar should be a competition amongst token holders to move up in the rankings, and more importantly, to avoid being relegated.

#1 Annual Leaderboard

  • Honorary NFT
  • Physical edition of honorary NFT
  • PFP/username visible on every broadcast via top 10 leaderboard
  • Physical edition commemorative Karate Combat Pitside pass
  • Limited edition hoodie
  • Limited edition hat
  • Limited edition tshirt
  • 2 non-transferrable* Pitside tickets to each event
  • Access to private, ceremonial weigh-ins at each event you attend
  • 2 invites to any official or unofficial afterparty at an event you attend
  • Paid flight & hotel 3x per year, at fighter/production hotel
  • Appearance on one live broadcast
  • Discord role & access to member’s only Discord channel

#2 - 10 Annual Leaderboard

  • Honorary NFT
  • Physical edition of honorary NFT
  • PFP/username visible on every broadcast via top 10 leaderboard
  • Physical edition commemorative Karate Combat Pitside pass
  • Limited edition hoodie
  • Limited edition hat
  • Limited edition tshirt
  • 2 non-transferrable* Pitside tickets to up to 3 events
  • 2 non-transferrable* VIP tickets to up to 3 events
  • Access to private, ceremonial weigh-ins at each event you attend
  • 2 invites to any official or unofficial afterparty at an event you attend
  • Paid flight & hotel 1x per year, at fighter/production hotel
  • Discord role & access to member’s only Discord channel

#11-100 Annual Leaderboard

  • Honorary NFT
  • Physical edition commemorative Karate Combat VIP pass
  • Limited edition hoodie
  • Limited edition hat
  • Limited edition tshirt
  • 2 non-transferrable* VIP tickets to up to 5 events
  • Access to private, ceremonial weigh-ins at each event you attend
  • 2 invites to any official afterparty at an event you attend
  • 3 entries per event for raffle for paid flight & hotel at fighter/production hotel
  • Discord role & access to member’s only Discord channel

#101 - 250 Annual Leaderboard

  • Honorary NFT
  • Limited edition hat
  • Limited edition tshirt
  • 2 non-transferrable* VIP tickets to 2 events
  • 2 non-transferrable* General Admission tickets to up to 2 events
  • Access to private, ceremonial weigh-ins at each event
  • 2 entries per event for raffle for paid flight & hotel at fighter/production hotel
  • Discord role & access to member’s only Discord channel

#251 - 1,000 Annual Leaderboard

  • Honorary NFT
  • Limited edition tshirt
  • 2 non-transferrable* General Admission tickets to up to 4 events
  • 1 entry per event for raffle for paid flight & hotel at fighter/production hotel
  • Discord role & access to member’s only Discord channel

PROPOSED PER EVENT MEMBER BENEFITS

Beyond the annual member benefits, it’s also important that new players that enter between KARATE de MAYOs have chances to immediately start winning member benefits.

Further, not all benefits should go to larger owners of $KARATE. Participants have suggested that prizes go to players with the highest win % or highest win amount as weighted by $KARATE. However, we learned in our Kanpai Pandas contest that these rule sets encourage users to make fewer picks and/or to put all their tokens on the biggest underdogs. These contests also end with a large number of ties.

To address those problems we built a gini-coefficient** that penalizes players that deviate most from evenly allocating their tokens across the fights of the night. Users with the most tokens don’t have an advantage, and if you pick 10/10 fights with the same amount of tokens on each, you’ll get the highest score. We propose using this approach to award per-event winners based on a highest score. This approach has some risks around multi-accounting, so a minimum threshold of tokens might eventually be required.

#1 High Score per event

  • 2 non-transferrable* Pitside tickets
  • Limited edition hat
  • Limited edition tshirt

#2-10 High Score per event

  • 2 non-transferrable* VIP tickets
  • Limited edition tshirt

#1 Earner per event

  • 2 non-transferrable* Pitside tickets to the next event
  • Discord role & access to member’s only Discord channel

#2-10 Earners per event

  • 2 non-transferrable* VIP tickets to the next event
  • Discord role & access to member’s only Discord channel

THE FUTURE

The intent is for Karate Combat member benefits to evolve over time. The first year’s levels & benefits probably won’t make sense for the second or third. Therefore they will need to be re-evaluated, at least on an annual basis.

However, we’re optimistic that the baseline structure - benefits flowing to Up Only Gaming’s top earners and high scores - can serve as a steady mechanism to allocate rewards for years to come. Promotion and relegation serve as core narratives in many sports leagues. We think they can also provide avenues for sustainable, life-long competition amongst $KARATE token holders for attaining levels of league benefits that transcend monetary considerations.

NOTES

*In 2024 tickets will be non-transferrable, but by sometime in 2025 they should be issued as tradable NFTs.

**The Gini Coefficient is a statistical measure used to express the distribution of a set of values, in this case, your picks across different fighters. It ranges from 0 to 1, where 0 signifies perfect equality (all bets are evenly distributed), and 1 indicates maximal inequality (all picks placed on a single fighter). The goal for this contest is to have a lower Gini Coefficient by distributing your $KARATE tokens as evenly as possible across various fighters. The more evenly you spread your bets, the higher your multiplier, enhancing your overall score and potential to get the highest score.

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@onlylarping This is a phenomenal base to start with. Having the leaderboard reset each year ensures that other participants have a better chance to advance, and using the dual sided scoring method for both top earners as well as top scores really provides a nice balance. The reward tiers for the annual leaderboard are more than generous, especially at this early stage, and having the earlier available benefits on a fight per fight basis will really encourage participation from the start.

I will read through this a few more times to see if there is anything else that could be suggested, but from my first reading I think it’s solid, and makes the ecosystem more incentivizing as well as engaging.

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Fantastic work! I have a couple of questions. As there will be a lot of competition for the top ten, is there a way to assure that employees or contracted agents aren’t awarded the prizes for the top 10? Larger organizations that I’ve worked for in the past have excluded those people, as it can be an unfair advantage.
Second question, Can you post the current leaderboard to date? Not for each event, but a cumulative total.
Again, this fantastic! Thanks so much to you and the team.

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good point.

we’re workin on the annual leaderboard asap!

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I somewhat disagree with the Gini Coefficient method. I think that one of the coolest parts about uponlygaming is that it rewards fighters who attract the most betting $. This would incentivize players to instead even out betting versus betting on their favorite fighters.

I also like adding a min threshold so that Karate supporters are more likely to be rewarded versus someone with 88 tokens.

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yea we could def modify the gini so it’s not so extreme, but if we exclude entirely it produces a pretty weird result where everyone’s just putting all their tokens on some of the biggest underdogs.

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Great idea for annual and “per event” benefits. My only thoughts are
1: International holders don’t really benefit from event tickets until they are transferable NFTs. Until then is there an alternative NFTs, $karate, merch etc
2: Definitely need a minimum threshold for holders, encouraging purchases rathe than the free 88. Could set it at a USD value rather than $karate amount.
3: The coefficient should go and just keep it at a straight up % based. If you want to bet heavy on the underdogs that’s the risk you take to win big. Maybe make it a minimum number of fights per event, rather than going heavy on 2/3 fights you have to at least place bets on 6 to qualify.

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With the gini coefficient it’s still proportional to how many tokens you play with

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Love the direction this is headed - v1.0 feels nice :slight_smile:

A few more brainstorming ideas:

  • top tiers on leaderboard gain boost in governance voting power of 1.5, 1.25, 1.1, etc
  • top tiers on leaderboard gain VIP account invitations at Binance, Kucoin, etc — inspired by how season ticket holders in NBA are invited to AMEX Platinum program; can be a way for KC to build closer relationships with these top tier exchanges too (eg, KC could ask them to assign some concentrated liquidity to the $karate trading pair in return for referring it’s VIPs)
  • top 100 on leaderboard every year gain a special limited edition NFT that they can use as their PFP, called a “karate kid”, this would really be meaningful if the artist who created the bad kids series would agree to create the karate kid series and rarity traits could be tied to position on leadeboard — maybe he could make 1000 of them and the program would run for 10 years? I’ll ping him and see if he’d be into it & report back :slight_smile:
  • top 100 on leaderboard gain facilitated access to an OTC concierge desk (we want bigger accounts to be able to invest more $$$$ frictionlessly & not worry about liquidity if / as they need to move bags around)

So much can be done with this fan loyalty angle, $karate is going to have so much utility! :1st_place_medal::trophy::martial_arts_uniform:

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yea those are all cool ideas. we have had one or two conversations about some sort of Karate Combat credit card down the line. would just be nervous about including it in the benefits since execution is partially out of our hands and realistically would take some time.

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re:1 we do have a number of international events planned over the next 12 months.

re:3 the approaches you suggest were our first ideas to fix the emergent behavior with the kanpai panda contest, but they aren’t powerful enough. for instance, if you require at least 6 picks, someone could put one token on 5 and the rest on the biggest underdog. the gini coefficient accounts for that. as a reminder, this would just be for the highest score prizes, it would not affect UOG.

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Well hopefully if you come to Aus I can win some pit-side tickets :fire:

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Everything is awesome. Just wanted to add my comment here that instead of the leaderboard being comprised of wallet addresses they should be profiles with more functionality which could associate one or multiple wallets (eth, hbar) or modify n wallet add. in case of compromise or security issue.
Thanks

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Everything seems fair, by distributing all the voted players, instead of just one or a few to get more prizes… great :heart_eyes:

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Sorry if I got into this discussion so late. For those who don’t know I am one of the guys who was pushing for the KARATE prizes to be calculated and distributed according with the win %. Off course my idea was just for the extra rewards that so far were airdropped to the participants of UOG and was structured as a measure to level the field otherwise the rich participants would inevitably win always.

I’ve read this post, it’s filled of great propositions and I love the adoption of the Gini Coefficient. If it wasn’t for that I would have just said that bettors should have at least bet on 1/3 of the card. For example in the last card there were 13 fights so, rounding for excess, at least 5 fights. In any case your solution will probably work better.

The only thing that I don’t see in this proposal is about the airdropped extra tokens. KARATE is a fan token so the tokenomics part shouldn’t be forgotten. The physical prizes are certainly cool but KARATE must be part of the prizes. The reasons is that UOG is not really an award, it’s a substitution of a staking mechanism. As you might know a tons of coins and tokens have staking mechanisms, KARATE has the UOG which is very cool because awards the active users. On the other side the airdrops are the real prizes and in my opinion should keep existing at least until end of this year.

token distribution ← this chart shows the tokenomics of KARATE, I’m not sure from which slice the airdrops are taken but there should be an allocation for airdrops in my opinion

I follow many fighting promotions, personally think that because of how the KC promotion is being built it will keep growing as its token value. As a trader I’m more interested into the token rather than into physical prizes. Moreover having more tokens makes me feel more like part of the company (I know it’s not shares but it does).

Finally: I think that the free tickets idea is amazing, I’d love to win a couple of those and participate… just I don’t think it’d be doable from many people. Example: I live in Europe, let’s say I win the tickets for an event in Australia, even if I get everything for free I probably won’t go because you can’t just leave anything and go to the other side of the world for a couple of days. But maybe it’s my life… to me it would be complicated.

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it would be pretty cool to add some $KARATE prizes to the high score (gini coefficient calc) each event. i think it might be a bit redundant for the top earners leaderboard as those players already have & are already earning a lot of $KARATE.

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i think i really like the idea of the top earner at each event getting a spot on the mat or an interview at the next event. writing it here so we don’t forget!

https://x.com/onlylarping/status/1764307457025650942?s=20

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I agree here, there should be a $KARATE element to the prizes, not just physical/event based. While I’d love some Karate mech I don’t see the benefit in outside tickets until they become tradeable NFTs, which I know you are looking at in the future.

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