Where NFTs meet DeFi: An Interview with Zendor, Founder of Zendodo Party
We catch up with this passionate community partisan to discuss blockchain games, Animal Crossing, and the swashbuckling Zolaterranean Seas!
OCTOBER 8, 2021. INTERVIEWS. WRITTEN BY HYDRO.
Blockchain games are taking off, and they’re taking off fast.
From Axie Infinity and ZED Run to the slew of upcoming titles from Gala Games, in the space of a year, a hearty mix of titles have spawned from the aether, all espousing the holy grail of crypto-enabled games – play-to-earn mechanics.
DeFi – decentralised finance – has also seen a meteoric rise this year, with a variety of altcoins and homebrew tokens finding their home in an ever-wider wallet pool.
One WAX project aims to blend blockchain gaming, DeFi and their ever-so-cute collection of NFT characters – Zendodo Party.
With three major features on the horizon – enhanced crafting, missions and combat, now was the perfect time to sit down with their project lead to find out more!
Read to the end of the interview for our Zendodo Interview Card!
Pssst… there’s three hidden claim links within this article. Happy hunting!
Hydro: Hi! Could you tell me a bit about yourself, your background and how you got into NFTs?
Zendor: Hello everyone, I’m Zendor (a.k.a. Nicholas) and I’m a devoted believer of blockchain technology, dabbling in the crypto space since 2016. Furthering my bachelor studies with a primary major in Business Administration (Finance) and secondary major in Real Estate Finance, it’s always been my dream to start a company that dabbles in asset management.
The opportunity to do so came about when I began exploring NFTs, specifically NFTs with passive-income utilities such as Upland, Alien Worlds and R-Planet! I’ve been a blockchain gamer for 18 months now, and it has been a blessing to earn a passive income just from gaming. I wanted to share this possibility with others by creating my own NFT-fi project – Zendodo Party!
Tell us about the Zendodo collection – what is it, and how did it come about?
Zendodo Party’s tagline is “Where NFTs meet DeFi”. We wanted our Heroes (players) to have the opportunity to earn a passive income through participating in our gamified NFT-fi project.
The collection revolves around the Zendodos – cute, cartoonish characters that are the cornerstone of the project. Since our launch in June, we have released 25 unique Zendodos for Heroes to collect, both through purchase, and through evolution and morphing (blends). Each of these Zendodos has a power figure tagged to it, allowing Heroes to participate in our staking pools and weekly rewards lotteries.
In four months, we’ve distributed over 37,000 WAX and 2,300 Zendodos through this system! We’ve also laid out our Roadmap, with Mission Crafts and Faction Wars next on the block – you can read more about these in our Whitepaper.
How did you get into crypto? Has there been any changes in what you’re holding now vs then?
As a younger individual in 2014, I wanted to earn another source of income through using the internet, so I went to Google and searched “How to make money online”. Back then, there was little clout over crypto, but I did find articles on mining Bitcoin, so I started using my computer’s graphics card to mine $1 worth of BTC a day.
I didn’t invest additional money into crypto until 2016, when I started to have a stronger belief in blockchain technology. I began seriously researching cryptocurrency projects and invested part of my monthly income into a variety of cryptos. When I found blockchain games in late 2019 however, I was blown away by their play-to-earn potential!
Currently, I would say 80% of my crypto portfolio is in NFTs with income-earning utility!
Has your experience with previous blockchain games influenced any part of Zendodo Party?
Indeed it has!
A huge number of projects have influenced Zendodo Party, both the good and the bad.
The good projects demonstrated that it’s paramount to have NFTs that provide their owners with utility and income-making potential to generate interest. It also taught us that it’s important to be transparent with the community, and to always put them first.
The bad projects taught us that nothing is more crucial than balancing the supply and demand of NFTs in the project. With a healthy supply of NFTs, the value of assets in our player’s accounts will steadily rise. When your community wins, you win!
Your Zendodos are beautifully designed – and so cute! Who designs them, and how long do they take to create?
Yes, they’re absolutely adorable, especially our animated Limited Edition Zendodos! They’re the end-result of the blood, sweat and tears sacrificed by our talented graphic designer, Nad!
There are 3 stages when we create a Zendodo – concept, drafting and creation.
When we’re at the concept stage, we begin to ideate on the specific visuals of this new Zendodo, and if its look matches its power and rarity.
When drafting, Nad will produce the line art of the Zendodo, and we continually think of little improvements to make here and there. At the same time, I’ll draft the lore behind the Zendodo – each one has a unique story behind it!
Wrapping up with creation, the Zendodo is coloured in, animated if required, and the lore is placed on the card back. Static Base Zendodos take a couple of hours to complete, whilst Limited Edition Zendodos can take up to 2 days!
How important do you think staking and other utilities are to the success of an NFT project?
From our perspective, NFTs with utilities are more useful, and therefore more valuable to holders.
Our NFTs present holders with the opportunity to; earn a passive income (our staking pools), participate in whitelisted drops (our Morphing Potion sales), participate in reward schemes (our weekly rewards), and enjoy reserved gameplay features (our evolution and morphing mechanisms, and our future Mission Crafts).
Of course, there’s also various other facets that can determine the success of a NFT project, such as quality of art and their story & symbolism. As an example, we celebrated the International Day of Peace on 21st September, dropping our Season 1 Zendodos dressed as a peace advocate, a peace medic and showcasing our lead Zendodo Alfie as the King of Peace!
Zendodo has a rather unique art style. What informed the design of your Zendodos? Did you take inspiration from a particular artist, or piece of media?
The art style of Zendodo Party is an original concept that tooks us several weeks of brainstorming. We thought to ourselves, “What would the WAX community like to collect?”, and so we decided on using personified characters based off animals and mythical creatures. For example, Feti-Yeti is… a Yeti!
Some might argue that our art style has taken inspiration from Animal Crossing and well, we can’t deny that our Zendodos have certainly taken some style cues from them!
By the end of the year, where would you like to see Zendodo?
That’s a good question- we’d love to share our aspirations!
By the end of the year, we’d like to push out at least 75% of the features promised in our Whitepaper. This includes features such as Mission Crafts, where Heroes are able to send their Zendodos out on missions, and Faction Wars, where a sole Faction Leader will assemble other Heroes to spank each other with deadly weapons like French Baguettes & your Grandmother’s Pillow!
We hope that with our current and upcoming features, we will be one of the more popular collections on the WAX blockchain, and a prominent play-to-earn project in the crypto sphere.
What’s your favourite Zendodo in the collection so far?
My favourite Zendodo to date is Cap’n McKraken – our very first Limited Edition Zendodo! Although he’s not as detailed or as animated as our Season 1 LE Zendodos, I really do love the whole piece and all the little accents, like the cool Kraken tattoo on his tummy.
What’s even better is the lore behind the character! Cap’n McKraken has solemnly sworn to conquer the Zolaterranean Seas after taking the helm of a pirate ship from his father, Cap’n Furryboots!
I don’t think I’m the only one that feels this way about Cap’n McKraken – out of the 50 available mints, only 2 are on sale, and both at almost 5x its original cost!
How can we discover more of the lore behind your Zendodos?
The lore and story behind each of our beautifully created Zendodos can be found on the back of each of the cards
Fun fact; the immutable attribute we use to store the card back IPFS hash of our Zendodo cards is named “butt_img”. Check it out if you don’t believe me!
What hopes do you have for the future of Zendodo Party?
I hope that Zendodo Party can be a pioneer in the NFT-fi space, allowing Heroes to confidently hold NFTs from our collection, seeing their value rise and being able to generate a passive income through our casual gameplay.
In future, once all of our promised milestones are achieved, the team hopes to create another, more active blockchain game – with a storyline and characters inspired by the Zendodo Party universe!
Are there any NFT artists or collections that you admire, WAX or otherwise?
I definitely admire Beeple, the most prominent figure in the NFT space. He has an incredible story, he’s devoted to creating art, and he lives by his word. His art is super-high quality, and he presents his work in a great way with his community. Team Zendodo wishes to learn from his work ethic and the way he carries himself; always humble and unpretentious!
Anything you’d like to add? Would you like to say anything to the reader?
On behalf of Team Zendodo, I would like to thank the Heroes who have been with us since Day 1 in June – the support we have received is completely unimaginable! The team promises to work hard and continue delivering quality Zendodos and updates for the project!
As for the readers who have taken time to read this interview, we are thoroughly grateful – we hope you’re able to join us in benefitting from our weekly rewards and reward pools!
It was a blast to have this interview with Hydro and I would like to thank him for giving us this opportunity.
See you in Dodoland!
Quick-fire questions!
What fuels you?
Our community of Heroes who enjoy collecting Zendodos fuels me forward. Nothing beats Heroes sharing the Zendodos they’ve collected, and their pack results, with us on social media – it makes the work of the team so much more purposeful!
Prediction time! What will the value of $WAXP be on 1st January, 2022?
$0.58 USD! Let’s introduce WAX to many more cryptoheads!
One unusual fact about you?
When I’m not exploring the crypto space, I’m at the golf course working on my game, and of course, enjoying an ice-cold beer!
You can invite three people, real or fictional, to dinner. Who do you choose and why?
Vitalik Buterin, Justin Sun & Charles Hoskinson. These are all pioneers of blockchain technology, and it would be invaluable to get some insights from these forefathers regarding their views on crypto from a utility, investment and regulatory standpoint!
What is your purpose in life?
Well, it’s simply to love the people around me, including family, friends and the community we’ve created! To me, I get joy and happiness from blessing the people around me with both material and immaterial things!
How can we follow you and your work?
You can follow our work through the Zendodo Twitter, and you can also follow my personal Twitter!
Zendor’s experience in blockchain gaming has given him a laser-focused vision on what he wants his NFT-meets-DeFi solution to look like, and over the past several months, he’s been able to craft some very strong foundations for the future.
The decision to focus on lore and world-building in equal measure to their artistic direction and gameplay elements gives Zendodo Party a particular well-rounded, polished feel, and should they keep on this path, we can expect big things!
To celebrate this interview, we have our Zendodo Interview Card, dropping tomorrow at 22 UTC!
The Zendodo Zealot
Collection: nftinsiderio
Max mint: 150 (1 reserved, 89 public, 30 OGs, 30 Promo Holders)
Drop price: Free!
Dropping 09/10 19:30 UTC!