The Neo Tokyo Meta Tournament: Round 2 streamed on the TwitchTV homepage on February 5th, 2022. Qualifiers were held on Feb 4th, reducing the field of thousands down to 100 players for the finals. The Meta Tournament’s second of three rounds featured the popular battle royal game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and was exclusively for Neo Tokyo S2 holders.
See also: What is the Neo Tokyo Meta Tournament?
User NTouter2033 claimed the grand prize by cumulative score over four matches of combat.
All Neo Tokyo S2 holders are strongly incentivized to compete. Their placement in the tournament affects the rarity of their NFTs; noncompetitors are limited to the 0th to 50th rarity percentiles. Rarity in the Neo Tokyo ecosystem does not just mean fancier art traits – the rarity of the Citizen set affects its yield of BYTES, the project’s native token. Some high-rarity sets generate enough BYTES to replace a white-collar worker’s yearly salary.
What is Neo Tokyo?
The Neo Tokyo NFT project defies categorization in some ways. Is it a blue chip NFT? Is it a premium alpha discord? Is it the future of crypto gaming? The project is surrounded by a swirling cloud of FOMO, secrecy, hype, and a heavy dash of its founder Alex Becker’s egomaniacal grandstanding. Whatever you want to call it, it remains a case study in forging a community and creating emergent value for holders.
Why is it so valuable? The project minting mechanics strongly reward holding all your NFTs, and the complete set grants access to a valuable community. As a result, users are fiercely holding onto their codes. At time of writing, only 18 Identities are for sale on OpenSea, at a floor price of 22 ETH.
The demand for entry is intense. Floor sets of Neo Tokyo NFTs are commanding combined prices on par with or exceeding famous NFTs like Crypto Punks. Access to Neo Tokyo, especially the 500 Elite spots, has become a digital country club or crypto Illuminati of sorts.
Top talent, bright minds, and deep pockets are all coming together in Neo Tokyo to work on blockchain gaming – and some pay large sums for the privilege. At least two venture capital funds have acquired Citizens from the marketplace purely to gain access to the holder-exclusive zones.
Season 1 – Inner Citizens
- The Neo Tokyo project began with Neo Tokyo Identities, a gas-only free mint of 2,000 NFTs. Users trying to whitelist had to solve riddles and pass various tests to gain access.
- ID holders then played a minigame called Kong Klimb to determine the attributes of their Vault, the second piece of the Neo Tokyo set. The vault contained BYTES, the project’s native token.
- Vault holders then played another minigame to determine the rarity of the third set piece, Item Caches. Each Item Cache held items to influence the appearance of their citizen.
- Users who held all three parts of the set could then claim Land Deeds, the fourth and final part of the Neo Tokyo set.
- Holders of all four pieces of the set can then upload their codes to claim a Citizen. Those with enough high-tier pieces in their set claim one of 500 prestigious Elite Citizens.
Season 2 – Outer Citizens
- Users who were closely watching Becker’s Twitter were able to whitelist for an Outer Identity mint. The whitelist filled minutes after Becker posted.
- After the whitelist closed, users had one hour to compete to burn the Neo Tokyo native token, BYTES. The more BYTES a user burned, the rarer their Outer Identity. Collectively, users burned 251,000 BYTES, representing $30+ million USD.
- Further pieces in the Outer Citizen set will be Land, Vaults, and Items, similarly to Season 1. The team has confirmed that the NFT rarities and BYTES allocations will be strongly tied to the Meta Tournament.
What’s Next?
The Neo Tokyo Meta Tournament Round 2 coverage will be updated as it unfolds. After this private holders-only round is concluded, Alex Becker will soon announce the final round. Round 3 will likely be open to the public again, but who knows what surprises will be in store? We can’t wait to find out!
