Portals is a place in the Metaverse where you can explore, build, invite players, chat and play games. The game’s central focus is to create a common ground for players to make a customizable world. Portals aim to develop a zero-friction user experience in a dense city center. Together with their community, Portals seeks to build the best city in the metaverse industry.
Meanwhile, Portals is not alone with such hopes. Most blockchain games, including leading play-to-earn platforms, are building virtual cities. Consequently, Portals needs to proffer top-tier ideas to get ahead in the metaverse industry. This article will discuss all you need to know about Portals’ ecosystem. Additionally, we will review Portals’ development and achievements since its launch in December 2021.
Portals is a browser-based metaverse platform. Player activities on Portals include exploring the social space and games, creating your world, and collaborating with others. At the start of their operation, the project’s emphasis was on user experience and providing an immersive city center for everyone to explore. Portals began to emphasize on building a community of builders and players moving forward. Thus, Portals gave their NFT holders early access to the downtown area.
Portals Downtown
Whether a crypto-native or a beginner in blockchain gaming, Portals Downtown is for everyone. Portals Downtown, the city’s center, will deliver an immersive social experience. Within the central downtown area, you can collect new items, visit Building One units, play games and take on quests.
Although Portals plan to open the Downtown area for everyone, the site is currently accessible only by Portals NFT holders. Therefore, to gain ownership of the estate units in Portals Downtown, you need to purchase either an Ivory, Onyx, or Vision Access Card. These NFTs are keys that give a player early access to the exclusive area. Players can buy these cards on NFT marketplaces like MagicEden and Opensea.
Audius, Binance.us, and FTX.US are part of the crypto brands that have secured a place in Portals Downtown.
Citizen Cards
The floor price of Portals Ivory and Onyx and Vision NFT collections is currently 44 SOL ($3600). Sometimes, they even sell for 70 SOL. Not many players can afford to buy these items and gain access to Portals Downtown. Consequently, Portals needed to design another means for players to join their ecosystem. In February 2022, Portals came up with a new way to expand the community of people in their metaverse city.
Players who do not own Portals real estate NFTs can now purchase Citizen cards. Citizen cards give access to a personal space called “Pod,”; just as Portals NFTs give access to Portals Downtown. Also, owners of Citizen Cards will have more future access to Portals’ discord server. Furthermore, whenever the Downtown area opens to everyone, players with Citizen Cards will have access to some exclusive benefits.
Citizen Cards are of three types – Genesis cards, Standard Cards, and Partner cards. Each type has its function and utility. Here are the features of the Citizen Cards:
- Genesis Cards: These are limited-edition Citizen Cards. There will only be 10,000 of them starting from number 1-10,000. Genesis cards give access to a unique pod and will be top-tier among Citizen Cards.
- Standard Cards: There are about 35,000 Standard cards are currently in supply. The Portals team has no definite supply of Standard Cards as of this writing.
- Partner cards: as its name suggests, partner cards will be helpful to players in need of collaboration. You can use partner cards to brand your agreement with other players you are working with on Portals.
Players holding Ivory, Onyx, and Vision cards received free Citizen cards. On the contrary, other players have to purchase the cards on an NFT marketplace. Citizen cards are available for sale on MagicEden – a Solana-based NFT marketplace.
You might wonder, what are Pods, and how do they benefit you?
A Pod is a player’s private room in the Portals Metaverse. You can unlock a Pod with Genesis and Standard Citizen cards. Players get to arrange their room and invite up to three people to their room. Further, you can have a voice chat with others and display NFTs within your space. Starting April 2022, players who own Citizen cards began gaining access to Pods.
The images below give a clear view of how Genesis and Standard Pods look.
Portals Blockchain Framework
Portals is a project on the Solana blockchain, and so are the game’s non-fungible tokens. Accordingly, most of Portals NFTs are available on MagicEden and Opensea. MagicEden is an NFT marketplace on Solana. MagicEden is home to famous art collections and gaming items within the Solana network. The platform also provides a launchpad where creators can unveil their artworks.
Solana blockchain offers a limitless advantage to Portals and other metaverse platforms on the network. The network can complete 2,000 transactions per second at an average cost of $0.00025. This scalability level gives Solana blockchain games an edge, among others.
Unlike Sandbox or Somnium Space, Portals players do not have to pay neck-pressing fees for NFT transactions. Additionally, exchange among players is faster on Portals.
Portals Timeline and Roadmap
In early 2021, Portals announced a seed round worth $5 million. One of the oldest venture capitalists, Greylock, was the leading investor in the round. Other participants of the initial funding include Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, SkyVision Capital, etc. The funding aims to grow a dedicated team that will design Portals Metaverse.
Portals plan to build an immersive social space where players can quickly become builders. The game will deliver a library of a drag-and-drop toolset for players to customize their estates. In the central downtown, players can use the drag-and-drop feature to build a supermarket, office, or any structure. This feature gave rise to institutional interest in Portals Downtown as Raydium, FTX.us, and Binance.us now own spaces in the area.
According to Portals roadmap 2.0, new updates coming to the platform will make the game more rewarding. Portals will be introducing chatbots and pets to make the game more interactive. Additionally, building blocks will allow players to build walls or an obstacle course. Furthermore, Portals will launch an arcade center in the city.
Soon, the game will be open for public access, hopefully making Portals a leading browser-based metaverse.
