Merit Circle is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that’s building the metaverse, funding play-to-earn games, and helping players and contributors across the world earn as they play.
What is Merit Circle?
Merit Circle is a play-to-earn gaming guild that follows a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance structure. Its goal is to create new opportunities for crypto and gaming enthusiasts to earn as they play and build the metaverse together.
It accomplishes this through making investments in play-to-earn games and by distributing the DAO’s game assets to its global community of players, developers, and contributors. The platform the team is constructing offers guild gaming opportunities, educational content, and many other resources that a player could require to start their career in the play-to-earn gaming sector.
How does Merit Circle work?
The Merit Circle DAO is made up of a primary DAO that oversees multiple subDAOs that act as pieces of the larger gaming ecosystem puzzle and extend over the play-to-earn industry. The DAO is maintained by several independent individuals and organizations through DAO governance, giving $MC token holders influence over decision-making.
The DAO is vertically-integrated and consists of four verticals – Merit Circle Investments, Studios, Gaming, and Marketplace. Each vertical can exist alone with its own line of products and goals, but when joined together, they create an ecosystem that makes the Merit Circle DAO a powerful influence over the entire play-to-earn industry.
The Merit Circle DAO has worked hard to build a durable treasury made up of venture, token, NFT, and yield-farm operations ever since its creation. It has made several investments in different initiatives throughout the sector.
All of this with the goal of creating opportunities for players, developers, and contributors to earn rewards and work together to build the metaverse.
Merit Circle scholarships
As part of a rewards-sharing scheme, Merit Circle offers scholarships to new players. The DAO buys non-fungible token (NFT) assets and leases them to new players so they may begin playing and earning in-game tokens without having to invest any money.
In Merit Circle, players can become scholars by either (1) going through an application process or (2) waiting for a Merit Circle event or giveaway to be announced and for new slots to be opened.
How to make money as a scholar
Merit Circle awards scholarships to engaged community members which allow new play-to-earn players to get started playing games that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. In return, Merit Circle takes a cut of the earnings of these players. For games like Axie Infinity, the percentage distributions are 30% for the guild and 70% for the player. For other games on their roster, it’s 30% for the player and 70% for the guild.
*Please note that due to the dynamic nature of scholarship programs, the below instructions are current as of the time of this writing but are subject to change often. For more support with the process, join Merit Circle’s official Discord and Telegram groups.
To get access to Merit Circle’s application process, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Join Merit Circle’s Discord server
Step 2: Read & accept the terms of the server by using the dialogue prompt in the bottom. Click the blue “Complete” button to start.
Step 3: In the pop-up, select the “I have read and agree to the rules” checkbox and click the green “Submit” button.
Step 4: Click the blue “Start Verification” button to verify your profile and enter the Discord.
Step 5: Once you complete your verification, more channels will become available to you. Navigate to the #claim-roles channel and select the “Gaming and Scholarship Interests” button under that channel’s message to get access to the scholar portion of the server.
Step 6: You can now view the “Scholarships” sub-group of channels. The #scholarship-announcements channel in particular will display info about upcoming scholarships.
Most scholarships in Merit Circle are given away through Discord events. These events are posted in the #scholarship-announcements channel and usually have nothing to do with the actual scholarships themselves. They’re normally community nights where members of Merit Circle play games, sing karaoke, and watch movies among other bonding activities. Regularly joining and being active during these nights is how you get the attention of the DAO leaders, who will reach out to you with scholarship opportunities.
Merit Circle also has a more straightforward process for applying to scholarships in games that have more demand. Currently, these games include Axie Infinity, VulcanVerse, and WonderHero. To apply for a scholarship to these games, send a message in the #scholarship-chat channel @’ing any of the Game Managers or Community Leaders (whose profiles are listed on the right hand side of your Discord app)
How to make money as a manager
In play-to-earn guilds, managers earn rewards by taking a percentage of what the players earn from playing the game. In Merit Circle, the role of the manager is taken by the DAO itself. The DAO owns all gaming NFTs.
Merit Circle also has an exclusive group of managers picked out from the community leaders of the DAO. According to the leadership team, community members who are active in producing content such as streaming the play-to-earn games they’re playing or teaching others how to play will get noticed and given leadership roles. From there, these community members must apply through Merit Circle’s job board to interview for the manager role.
Manager responsibilities include communicating game updates to scholars, managing game assets, addressing game-related concerns, as well as developing educational content and providing analytics for the games. Merit Circle only has one manager per play-to-earn game so it’s a competitive position that requires managing hundreds of scholars at one time.
Pros and cons of Merit Circle
Pros
- SubDAOs
- Scholarship program
- DAO Governance
Cons
- Limited scholarship slots
- Potential volatility of NFTs
- Limited profitability in downward trending markets
Pros
SubDAOs
There are various SubDAOs inside the main DAO. This implies that Merit Circle’s Axie Infinity subDAO allows it to solely keep Axie digital assets. Other games won’t be impacted in the event that one of the subDAOs is compromised.
Scholarships
If you like playing video games and have the time to devote to playing play-to-earn games, joining a gaming guild might be a terrific way to make money while having fun.
DAO governance
No single entity has complete control over the DAO’s governance. The DAO is focused on encouraging development, decentralizing decision-making, and establishing a sustainable organization.
Cons
Limited scholarship slots
To become a scholar, you have to be on the lookout for an open scholarship slot. Scholarships for certain games are no longer given through rounds of interviews but instead become available through various events on the Merit Circle Discord.
Potential volatility of NFTs
The issue with owning gaming guild tokens is that their value is highly reliant on the yields that are produced from the NFT assets. This is because of the erratic nature of the crypto market, NFT prices, and the popularity of certain games.
Limited profitability in downward trending markets
As more and more players join and as crypto and NFT markets struggle to retain their previous highs, the profitability of gaming guilds periodically goes down.
Merit Circle history
Merit Circle Ltd. launched in September 2021 and quickly became one of the go-to gaming guilds for players and contributors around the world. It amassed a loyal following of contributors and a flexible workforce that pushes the project to success through its DAO governance model.
The DAO employs a large number of talent and developers, including a team of core contributors, as well as individuals and organizations taking the roles of seed investors and contributors for the project.
Merit Circle games
The guild continuously expands its list of supported guild games and partnerships. This makes it one of the go-to choices for players and members of the play-to-earn community.
Some of these guild games include:
- Axie Infinity
- Vulcan Verse
- WonderHero
- Sidus Heroes
- Heroes of Mavia
- Elfin Kingdom
Merit Circle tokens
The MC token is an ERC-20 token that is unique to the DAO. It serves as both a governance and utility token. It’s essential to the functionality of the Merit Circle DAO. The MC token has a total token supply of one billion tokens.
MC token distribution is as follows:
- 7.5% available for public distribution
- 20% reserved for the founding team and advisors
- 29% is allocated to community incentives
- 14% allocated to seed investment participants
- 14% focused on platform rewards
- 15% reserved for the Merit Circle DAO treasury.
- Merit Circle
(MC) - Price $2.74
- Market Cap
$65.23 M
Merit Circle staking
The Merit Circle DAO follows a structure of calculation for the liquidity mining rewards similar to that of Illuvium and its $ILV token. Because there is a time-weighted component in the calculation of the rewards, this model compensates long-term investors perfectly.
To earn staking rewards, you must visit the official staking portal of Merit Circle.
You can do this by visiting staking.meritcircle.io, where you can explore the “Overview” page. It will help you get acquainted with the essential details and data regarding the staking gateway.
Token holders have the option of deploying their MC tokens among the two primary staking pools offered by the Merit Circle DAO in an effort to enable them to support the Merit Circle crypto protocol and general ecosystem (and to get incentives for doing so).
How to buy Merit Circle (MC) tokens
Step 1: Find the MC token on a decentralized exchange (DEX.) Look for MC on a decentralized exchange and confirm that you can convert Merit Circle for ETH, which is Ethereum’s original currency. DEXs like Uniswap, SushiSwap, and 1INCH are the most popular options.
Step 2: Buy ETH to trade for MC. You can use any exchange or wallet to buy ETH. You will need to buy enough ETH to exchange for MC and ETH to cover Ethereum network transaction costs (known as gas).
Step 3: Transfer the ETH you purchased into a web 3.0 wallet like MetaMask to connect to the DEX. After purchasing ETH, send it over to your MetaMask wallet (or another web 3.0 wallet.) Wait for the transaction to be completed, and you’ll have available ETH that you can swap for MC.
Step 4: Trade ETH for MC on the DEX of your choice. The MC tokens will appear in your wallet as soon as the transaction is completed. Now you may either move the tokens to a hardware wallet or retain them in your web 3.0 wallet.
How to get started
Step 1: Join the Merit Circle discord and choose a role. Upon joining the Merit Circle Discord, you can choose a role depending on your interests. You can either claim a role as someone interested in the DAO or as someone wishing to proceed on the path to becoming a scholar/player/contributor.
Step 2: Apply for a Scholarship (or wait for a slot to be available.) For certain guild games, Merit Circle scholarships are no longer given through long exams and interviews. Instead, the slots are given away during events, giveaways, and Discord activities. To become a scholar, be on the lookout for an open slot on their Discord server or search if there’s an available application for your game of choice.
FAQs
How does Merit Circle work?
The DAO consists of four verticals – Investments, Studios, Gaming, and Marketplace – that work together to create a value-add ecosystem.
What is Merit Circle DAO?
The Merit Circle DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization whose goal is to create opportunities for crypto and gaming enthusiasts to earn as they play their favorite games.
What chain is Merit Circle on?
Merit Circle is built on the Ethereum blockchain.
What is the Merit Circle token?
MC is an ERC-20 token with both governance and utility capabilities.
How to buy MC tokens?
You can purchase MC tokens through a decentralized exchange like Uniswap.