Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight – Pod Town

We love playing blockchain games that enable users to own in-game assets. We also love decentralized finance for how it opens earning opportunities to everyone.

This means that we get really excited when innovative projects on the Fantom ecosystem build across gaming and DeFi.

Meet Pod Town. Driven by a friendly, engaged, and skilled group of developers and artists, Pod Town is pioneering gamified DeFi with cool and adorable NFTs and an upcoming Metaverse platform.

1. What is Pod Town?

Pod Town is a MetaFi project where DeFi meets Metaverse. It’s a modern, vibrant, Cyber World and Zootopia-themed community, with Cyber Neko NFTs as its first-gen citizens.

Through gamification, we make it possible for its citizens ‒ the Podians, to engage in a virtual world, interact with others, and participate in DeFi activities via their NFT PFP.

2. How do you introduce Pod Town to a novice or someone who knows relatively little about DeFi?

NFT/Metaverse and DeFiare two interconnected parts of Pod Town.

Within the NFT space, we created Cyber Neko as one of the first NFT collections with value derived from both scarcity and utility. Now, we are building a world around it where you can own land, build a house, showcase your NFT collections, etc.

We partner with other projects to integrate their products and make them accessible within our metaverse. We aim to set up a one-stop shop for Fantom where our users have everything they need on Web3.

Most other NFT projects are created purely for collecting and flipping purposes. But that’s not all we do here. For every product we build at Pod Town, a percentage of its profits are shared with our current Neko holders.

The bigger we grow, the more profit will be shared. So, in short, Neko owners can make money just by holding the NFTs.

When yield farming on Pod Town, the typical scenario is to deposit tokens and watch them grow at a somewhat expected rate, claim rewards, and repeat.

We add an extra gamification layer to our Pod Together product, where users who deposit and yield farm have a chance to win big money prizes from our lottery without having to buy tickets.

Pod Town is built to create value for users who, by depositing even a small amount of money, have the opportunity to gain exponential returns at no loss.

This is an example of how we integrate gamification and DeFi. We want to bring an element of fun into DeFi earnings opportunities.

3. Can you give us a quick rundown of what Pod Town offers?

Pod Town currently offers several core products built around the Pod Town Metaverse and DeFi offerings. We currently feature:

• Cyber Neko NFT collections: 6,666 uniquely generated, cute, and collectible Cyber Neko with proof of ownership stored on the Fantom blockchain. These first-gen citizens are the entry ticket to the Pod Town metaverse.
• Pod Together: A DeFi-saving game that lets you win big prizes by farming with your favorite tokens.
• Pod Auction House: A unique auction house where bidders can find their most exclusive NFT and get rewarded with other benefits to use in Pod Town's ecosystem ‒ whether they win the bid or not.

There’s a lot more coming in 2022!

4. How did you come up with Pod Town/what inspired you?

We have been working in tech and building products for the last 10 years; we’ve focused on crypto for the last 5.

As early entrants to DeFi, we identified many gaps in the market. Pod Town was born out of the ambition to address needs across Web3 and improve the DeFi experience.

As momentum and interest in our project increase, we set higher goals.

Our team member Heyun Le has played an important role in our development and merits special mention. She is well-known in the underground Fantom artist community. Her artwork is fire!

Combining her phenomenal art and our technical expertise was a huge step forward for us and was crucial to building the Cyber Neko collection on Pod Town.

5. What is your background?

The group behind Pod Town is Console Labs, a blockchain company that builds professional tools and services on the decentralized web.

We offer end-to-end DeFi product services and have worked with projects of all sizes, from tiny startups to companies in the Fortune 500.

Since our team is distributed, we work around the clock. There’s always someone there to be with the community 24/7.

6. Why did you decide to build on Fantom?

Fantom offers many benefits that we appreciate:

• High-speed consensus mechanism that makes performance unbeatable. This gives us the ability to operate at an impressive scale. dApps on Fantom feel smoother and faster than on other networks. The fact that security is a priority is also a big plus.
• Every transaction is cheap. It feels so good to take it for granted that we can approve any transaction without minding the gas.

As soon as we started building on Fantom, we received immediate support from the community. That was a blessing.

7. How did you learn about Fantom?

We like to play with new technology all the time, and we are always on the lookout for breakthrough projects. Following some exciting conversations on Twitter, our eyes settled on Fantom.

8. What has your experience been like building on Fantom?

First of all, its community. We’ve been in various network communities, and Fantom has the kindest, most supportive, and helpful community so far.

Everyone is nice and friendly, and hey, if you need a hand, all you need to do is ask. Chances are, people are more willing to help than you expect.

Last Thanksgiving, we managed to pull off a huge giveaway event joined by nearly 30 projects in the Fantom ecosystem to celebrate #builtonFantom.

As part of the game, we asked people what makes them love Fantom. It’s not a surprise that more than 90% of the answers were about the fantastic community.

Everything is growing fast. We all know that Fantom is the fastest-growing chain this year. Rising TVL and Market Cap bring attention as more teams build on Fantom every day.

9. What brings you to DeFi, and what excites you most about the space?

Traditional financial systems are slow and inefficient. We believe that gamification and DeFi will open opportunities for broader publics and spur further growth.

Pod Town Metaverse is built with a cross-chain mechanism at its core, created with top-notch tooling utilities for DeFi users. Permissionless, decentralized and open-source, Pod Town is a multipurpose, multi-asset hub.

Earning opportunities should be accessible to everyone.

10. How did the community receive Pod Town? What should we know about your community?

We are lucky to have such an engaged, strong community. Cyber Neko is the icon of the Pod Town ecosystem, and those cute cats drew a lot of excitement.

Our community inspires us and gives us energy. Podians have supported us with every product release, and we’re lucky to have them behind us.

Apart from the product release, we try to host event-based activities simply because we want the Podians to have fun with the Nekos. So far, these include:

• Xmas Neko and Lunar Neko: Get those cutie cats dressed up with Xmas traits with snow and Santa vibe, or tiger theme and red envelopes.
• Pod Town Ampawssador: A monthly race to recognize the most supportive Podians.
• Pod Town Art Contest: Our Podians are free to create art inspired by the Nekos. We’re honestly surprised by the volume of talented artists in the town. It’s becoming a monthly thing now.
• Pod Town Neko Story: Where Neko owners craft up the stories of their Nekos and make ‘em unique.

11. What’s coming up for Pod Town? Free alpha!

Our roadmap is fully public. A few notable items that are current in WIP mode:

• Pod Land ‒ where Podians can use Cyber Neko to socialize and build their home.
• Pod Arena ‒ physical card game to play with each other based on Poker’s rules
• Pod Marketplace ‒ where the community can surf and pick up their favorite NFT items.
• Pod Wallet ‒ built and tailored for Podians, Pod Wallet serves as a personal crypto wallet to keep track of crypto activities.

Here are some advance images of Pod Land:

12. What would you like to say to fellow developers who haven’t yet started building on Fantom?

Just do it.

When in doubt, scroll back to questions 6,7, and 8!!

13. Is there anything you would like to add, about which we haven’t asked?

First, bookmark these:

• Adopt a Neko from the Secondary Market Paintswap
• Deposit into Pod Together and wait for your big prize to come
• Win your first bid at Pod Auction Center
• Save your FTM for our upcoming IDO

We move fast, so try to keep updated by joining our Discord/Twitter.

If you are interested in building with us and integrating your projects into the Pod Town metaverse, send us a DM on Twitter.

Engage with Pod Town:

Website | Twitter | Discord | Console Labs