Be The House: An Interview with Miles Anthony of Decentral Games ($DG)
Decentral Games runs compliant casinos in Decentraland, where players (via their virtual avatars) socialize and compete directly as they play games. At DCG, we invest in projects that can grow Decentraland’s ecosystem by bringing the best of the real world — memorable sights, new friends, fun experiences — into the virtual realm. With its interactive, UX-friendly games, Decentral Games delivers on the massive opportunity in metaverse gaming.
With the launch of its native token, $DG, and its DAO, Decentral Games has become a poster child for decentralized governance: it’s the first DAO to own, govern, and monetize virtual land, making Decentral Games a truly user-owned casino. Since its public launch on December 1st, $DG has appreciated more than 1500% and the DAO’s treasury is worth more than $6.2M. Most of all, owners make for engaged players: casino activity has accelerated and Decentral Games targets over a hundred thousand players by the end of the year.
In this feature, we bring you an interview with Decentral Games’ Founder & Project Lead, Miles Anthony.
Can you tell me a little about your background and what led you to founding Decentral Games?
I started my first venture when I was studying at UCLA in 2015. It was an ecommerce company that I launched and ran for two years. When I graduated, in 2017, I was deep into crypto, and became most interested in Ethereum, because of the potential to develop DApps on top of it. I was also actively investing in crypto projects and Decentraland was one of my favorites.
By 2019, I realized no one was addressing this obvious metaverse use case of multi-player wager-based games. We started Decentral Games with simple games like slots and roulette, and have progressively developed more complex offerings, with blackjack and texas holdem poker. With each game interaction, we create more engaging multiplayer experiences in the metaverse.
In contrast to traditional gambling where the house is pinned against the player, our model aligns all parties through the distribution and appreciation of the $DG token that governs the DAO treasury.
Tell us about the Decentral Games community.
Our community has a self-proclaimed “degen” identity. There is a crossover between the traditional crypto-native “degen” scene, NFT enthusiasts, general gamers or gamblers and our early token holders. As a whole, it’s a really fun atmosphere and that’s why people love socializing at our events.
How did the thinking start around launching a native $DG token?
The idea started to form last summer, after we raised our seed (equity) investment round in July 2020. We were inspired by DeFi projects that pioneered the concept of a community-governed DAO treasury that accrues value from a protocol’s fee generation. I thought it would be interesting to apply this model to a blockchain-based casino, combining it with a novel new play-to-earn model.
Casinos are highly profitable businesses, and with this token model structure, everyone involved in the ecosystem can benefit from the upside of the platform. As you play games, you are rewarded with tokens. In contrast to traditional gambling, where the house is pinned against the player, our model aligns all parties through the distribution and appreciation of the $DG token that governs the DAO treasury.
How did different $DG stakeholders react to the token launch?
Everyone reacted positively. $DG token aligns early investors, later round investors, the team, and players — and welcomes new community members to join us and become a part of the project. It allows more and more people to be invested, not just financially, but with their thought processes and ideas, in influencing the DAO.
Our narrative from Day 1 has been “Be the House.” The DAO makes that possible!
Are gamers more enthusiastic when they own tokens?
Definitely. To encourage players to hodl their tokens and keep the value in the ecosystem, we have been especially proactive in engaging the community. We now have over 1000 “hodlers”, so I feel that it’s my responsibility to update them. I push out a weekly newsletter to update everyone on our progress and get them excited about our events and development updates.
What are the defining features of the governance model?
Our narrative from Day 1 has been “Be the House.” The DAO makes that possible! Its focus so far has been on the management of the treasury funds generated by game fees. We have seen much higher governance participation rates than other DAOs. I attribute that to the financial aspect; people identify with the idea of Being the House and managing the house funds.
We have had different debates and proposals around economic policy, on topics like rewards rates for liquidity farming and gameplay mining. The DAO has only been active for 10 weeks and we have already had 25 proposals. There are people who came out of nowhere, bought up a lot of $DG and are highly active in rallying people behind proposals and getting them passed.
In the future, LAND management will be a key priority of the DAO. We put all our LAND (403 parcels) into it. The community will vote on new venues, games, and casino partnerships on the land. We also put the DG wearables into the DAO, so oversight and distribution of the wearables will be an important aspect. The DAO controls the entire digital asset ecosystem of $DG.
Has the DG team taken firm positions on votes?
Thus far, every team-submitted proposal has received a nearly unanimous vote. We haven’t submitted a proposal yet that received less than 95% yays. I guess the community trusts us to make good decisions!
We got to know every large $DG hodler who is active in governance, so, even before a proposal is submitted, there is open debate to incorporate feedback and make any necessary changes to get everyone on board.
Are there any voting guidelines?
A holder needs to have 1% of circulating token supply to issue a proposal. Each resolution must have more than 15% of the circulating supply voting “yes” to pass. So, even if a majority of voters approve a proposal, it won’t pass if it doesn’t reach the minimum engagement threshold.
What were the first governance votes?
The earliest votes were around liquidity rewards. For context, when we wrote the white paper in the summer, we were very generous with airdrops and rewards for the Balancer pool liquidity farming. We ran 98%/2% pools; so 98% was $MANA and 2% $DG, and 98% $DAI, 2% $DG. That meant people didn’t need to lock up as much $DG to get all these rewards. Running these for two weeks to spark interest would have been fine, but we were planning on 40 weeks! The community saw immediately that it was causing too much inflation, so we acted fast to change it. We were able to shift the pools to Uniswap, which was 50/50–50%$ DG, 50% $ETH, which meant people were much more invested and aligned with the success of Decentral Games. That first proposal passed with 99% voting yes.
The DAO is essentially acting as an asset management entity, with the casino feeding the DAO’s balance sheet.
What was the most significant vote?
The first time we allocated funds from the game play treasury was a milestone. It was activated once the treasury hit $1M, which we achieved within the first two months, beating our initial expectations! The first proposal to allocate funds designated 22.5% for Uniswap LPs, so the DAO moved 150K DAI into ETH, paired it with $DG and provided liquidity into our Uniswap pool. The idea was that, over time, people could decrease rewards for the Uniswap pool and make the DAO the main LP in the Uniswap pool, thereby reducing inflation.
What’s on the docket now?
Right now, the DAO is deciding what we want to do for DAI yield, as we allocated another 150K DAI for yield generation. There’s a debate on whether we want to use Aave or a Curve pool.
The DAO is essentially acting as an asset management entity, with the casino feeding the DAO’s balance sheet. As it expands, we hope to direct the pool of funds towards metaverse expansion and development.
I believe that any DAO built around a product that generates money will engage people…people like to be looped into decisions around making money!
Have there been any significant votes on casino development?
Not really, because our focus has been on optimizing our current casinos. In the future, there will be votes around new venues and casinos.
At a high level, why is DG’s governance project so monumental? Are other founders coming to you for advice on DAO structures?
Since the $DG token launch, we have seen a massive increase in participation, showing that offering users ownership in the network drives up engagement. I believe a lot of other projects will explore this model, and I have been approached by other founders.
Our DAO is monumental in being the first to monetize land, and NFTs more broadly. I believe that any DAO built around a product that generates money will engage people…people like to be looped into decisions around money!
What is your biggest fear from a governance standpoint?
An initial concern was that someone could buy up $DG and assert their dominance in the governance realm, but our large holders have been very good community members — each bringing a varied, valuable perspective. We’re fortunate. Even though everyone may not agree on certain proposals and ways to manage the protocol, they are united in wanting to strengthen $DG and the ecosystem.
How much of your time is spent on DAO-related matters?
80% of my time is the core business — developing the product and events. The other 20% is on the DAO. I would expect that to go down as it matures, and I’d love for it to eventually be fully autonomous, and I would just be like any other token holder who gets to vote.
Are there any noteworthy governance tools or services?
Snapshot is a great tool that we and many other leading projects use for off-chain voting, but there are so many tools that could help us. We would love to have a dependable tool for reporting, templates for proposals, and standard guidelines for voting. Right now, we are building a lot of things from scratch, so better governance tools would save us time and resources.
What does Decentral Games need to get right in the next 3–6 months?
Our focus is two-fold. First, we will keep scaling the games and events that have a winning formula — profitable for DG and fun for users. Our events are always a hit; we have live DJ performances and the community loves socializing. We are also working closely with Decentraland to increase capacity, so more users can be packed into one space.
On the gaming side, our objective is to keep players in the casino for longer. Right now, the median playing time per session is 15–20 minutes. We’re hopeful that poker will make an impact here; after 15 minutes, roulette and blackjack become repetitive if you’re playing alone. Poker is player-versus-player and there is generally a much more social and competitive atmosphere. Our goal is for the average session to last 1–2 hours, so the casino will stay full — which will also create a flywheel effect in keeping players engaged.
You became the first metaverse employer recently!
Yes — we have 15 casino hosts that take shifts in the casinos playing with newcomers and answering any questions they have. We’re still hiring!
If you are interested in becoming a $DG host, get in touch on Discord.
Want to learn more about Decentral Games? Subscribe to receive their weekly community newsletter and follow them on Twitter at @DecentralGames.
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