Nimiq 2048 — Wallet Onboarding Game (Launch & Operations Grant)

Proposals and Bounties
#1

Nimiq 2048 — Wallet Onboarding Game (Lean Launch Grant)

Author: Maestro — long-time Nimiq community member, moderator, and former Community Funding Board member.

Track record in the Nimiq ecosystem:

  • acestaking.com — Nimiq staking pool (operator/owner)

  • nimiqscan.com — independent Nimiq block explorer (operator/owner)

  • @nimiq_notifier_bot (Telegram) — community-run on-chain notifier bot

  • Long-running community moderation and ecosystem support

This proposal is for a lean launch grant for Nimiq 2048, a browser-based skill game built around Nimiq wallet onboarding. The product is largely built and the domain is already live. This grant funds the public launch, the on-chain reward pool, basic infrastructure, and light maintenance for 12 months. Tournaments and additional events are kept optional, on-demand — run only if player traffic justifies them.

1. Project Description

Nimiq 2048 is a modern browser implementation of the classic 2048 puzzle, designed from day one as a wallet-onboarding tool for the Nimiq ecosystem. It runs in any browser, requires no install, and turns casual gameplay into measurable on-chain wallet activations.

The problem it solves. Most “try crypto” funnels die at the exchange / KYC step. Nimiq is one of the very few chains that can credibly say “open a browser tab, get a wallet, do something useful with it in 60 seconds.” Nimiq 2048 is a small, fun, sticky use case that lets the Foundation’s UX thesis demonstrate itself in front of a real user.

Two-mode design (low friction, real conversion).

  • Guest mode — play instantly, no wallet needed; assigned an anonymous handle (e.g. SilentFox42); no NIM rewards.

  • Wallet mode — connect via Nimiq Hub (ED25519 challenge/response). Unlocks NIM rewards, an optional unique alias, cosmetics, power-ups, and tournament eligibility.

The wallet is the in-game identity. Every wallet-connected player is a verifiable, on-chain Nimiq wallet activation — exportable for Council/Foundation reporting.

Tech stack. Vue.js frontend, Go backend, SQLite, WebSocket-driven real-time leaderboards. All NIM amounts are stored in Luna (smallest unit) and paid on-chain.

Status. The game is built and the public domain is already active. The remaining work is final QA, on-chain reward go-live, light promotion, and minimal ongoing operations.

2. Project Goal

  • Drive verifiable wallet activations. Each wallet-connected player is on-chain proof of a real new Nimiq user. Activation counts are exportable for Council/Foundation reporting.

  • Showcase Nimiq’s browser-first UX. “Open tab → play → connect wallet → get paid” is a much stronger demo of Nimiq than any landing page.

  • Run lean. This grant covers a low-overhead launch and ~6 months of player rewards. If traction is real, a follow-up proposal can fund an event series and a refilled pool. If traction is not real, the cost stays small.

  • Establish a reusable template. The auth, anti-cheat, and on-chain payout stack becomes a base for future Nimiq game proposals.

3. Anti-cheat & payout safety (high-level summary)

A “play to earn NIM” game lives or dies on cheat resistance. The project already ships a production-grade, multi-layer anti-cheat and anti-Sybil pipeline, fully implemented and unit-tested. This is the single biggest reason the reward pool can be released safely without heavy ongoing supervision.

High-level capabilities:

  • Server-side per-game bot scoring combining multiple weighted behavioral signals (timing, move-speed, session pattern, transition matrix, score consistency, behavioral posture, tier-proximity, Sybil).

  • Tiered enforcement with the option to deny rewards, exclude from leaderboard, or auto-shadow-ban above thresholds.

  • HMAC-signed WebSocket move tokens with server-side throttling — replay and headless scripted flooding are blocked at the API layer.

  • Sybil resistance via privacy-preserving client fingerprinting, IPv4 /24 correlation, and on-chain funding-graph clustering (groups reward wallets by shared funder, catches farms even when fingerprints/IPs rotate).

  • Pending-balance accrual — rewards never land in user balance until post-game analysis clears the game; flagged games void the pending row.

  • Per-user payout caps (rolling 24h and 7d) and a pool-burn monitor with ok | warn | critical alerts.

  • Human review queue for borderline scores, plus hard / shadow / payout ban types with a full audit trail.

  • Privacy-conscious — header-hash prefix and IPv4 /24 only, no PII beyond wallet address and optional alias, with a 30-day retention policy and account-deletion cascade.

A note on disclosure. Specific signal weights, thresholds, and tuning parameters are deliberately not published, since publishing them gives farms a roadmap for staying just under detection. Full technical specification, operator runbooks, and source review are available to the Council and any designated reviewer on request under reasonable confidentiality.

Why this matters for a lean grant: the system is largely self-policing. Daily/weekly per-user caps + the pool-burn monitor mean the operator does not need to babysit payouts in real time, which keeps ongoing time commitment low.

4. Budget Request

Total requested: 3,500 USD equivalent in NIM — 3.5% of the Council’s annual 100k USD budget. Paid in three tranches against milestones below. NIM is converted at the rate at the time of each tranche release.

1. Reward pool seed (~6 months of player rewards, on-chain, capped per-user) — 1,700 USD eq.

Funds the actual NIM going to players. Includes the prize for an optional kickoff tournament if one is run. At current NIM price (~$0.0005), this is ~3.4M NIM — enough for thousands of capped player payouts plus an event prize.

2. Setup & launch fee (one-time) — 800 USD eq.

Reward schedule design and Council-review submission, launch creative, on-chain payout dry-runs, public dashboard, launch announcement.

3. Light maintenance stipend (12 months total) — 600 USD eq.

Light-touch monitoring (anti-cheat queue spot-checks, payout review), one mid-period transparency post (~Month 6), and one final 12-month wrap-up report. Not a full-time operations role.

4. Hosting & infrastructure + AI tooling subscriptions (12 months, paid upfront) — 400 USD eq.

VPS, database, monitoring, backups, domain, plus Claude / coding-assistant subscriptions for occasional iteration.

Total: 3,500 USD eq.

5. Optional events (on-demand)

Tournaments and similar events are not locked into this grant. The intent is:

  • If real player traffic appears after launch, one Council-sponsored free-entry tournament can be run, with the prize drawn from the reward pool.

  • If traffic does not justify it, no event runs and the reward pool continues to fund regular play.

  • Any larger event series, if warranted, would be a separate, follow-up proposal.

This keeps the grant light and outcome-driven instead of pre-committing to event work that may not be useful.

6. Timeline

  • Start: immediately upon Council approval.

  • Reward schedule published for Council review: start + ~1 week.

  • Public launch (mainnet rewards live): start + ~2 weeks.

  • Mid-period transparency post: Month 6.

  • Final 12-month report: Month 12.

7. Terms of Completion

The grant is considered fulfilled when all of the following are demonstrably true:

  1. Public reward schedule (prize tiers, per-game caps, per-user caps) published for Council review before any mainnet payouts begin.

  2. Public game live at the project domain with Nimiq Hub wallet login working in production.

  3. Public dashboard showing wallet activations, total NIM distributed, and current pool balance.

  4. One mid-period transparency post (Month 6) and one final 12-month wrap-up report posted on this forum.

  5. If a tournament is run, prize payouts are visible on-chain.

Verification is by on-chain transaction history + the public dashboard — both independently auditable by the Council. No trust in the team is required.

8. Milestones

Each tranche is released on confirmed milestone delivery.

M1 — Launch (Weeks 1–4): 3,000 USD eq.

  • Reward schedule published for Council review

  • On-chain payout dry-runs completed

  • Hosting and AI tooling provisioned for the year (400)

  • Setup & launch fee (800)

  • Reward pool seeded into pool wallet (1,700)

  • First-quarter portion of maintenance stipend (100)

M2 — Mid-period transparency post (Month 6): 250 USD eq.

  • Mid-period transparency post: activations, NIM distributed, pool balance, anti-cheat summary, whether an event has been or will be run

  • Maintenance stipend (250)

M3 — 12-month final report (Month 12): 250 USD eq.

  • Final 12-month wrap-up: outcomes vs goals, sustainability assessment, recommendation on whether a follow-up proposal is warranted

  • Maintenance stipend (250)

Unused reward pool funds at M3 are returned to the Council or rolled into a continuation period at the Council’s discretion. Setup, hosting, AI, and maintenance stipend tranches are not returnable.

9. Legal & Ethical Compliance

This proposal complies with the Nimiq Community Council Legal & Ethical Guideline Framework (paragraphs 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11):

  • Not gambling. All rewards are skill-based. Tournaments disable power-ups to keep ranked play fair. Guests cannot earn NIM at all. No randomized loot boxes, no chance-based payouts.

  • Minimal data. Only the wallet address and optional alias are stored long-term. Guests have no PII whatsoever. Fingerprint data is a header-hash prefix and an IPv4 /24, retained 30 days, used solely for Sybil detection. Account deletion cascades all related rows.

  • Full transparency on funds. Every grant-funded NIM movement (player rewards, tournament prizes) is on-chain. A public dashboard plus mid-period and final reports keep the Council and community informed.

  • Source available to the Council on request for review.

  • Funds used only for declared budget categories. Unused reward pool funds returned.

  • Conflict of interest. Author previously served on the Community Funding Board but is not currently a member, and has no decision-making role in the evaluation of this proposal.

10. Why fund this

  • It directly serves the Council’s mission — measurable, on-chain, verifiable wallet activations.

  • It is a small, low-risk ask — 3.5% of the annual budget. Most of the money goes directly to players via the on-chain reward pool.

  • It is low-overhead operationally — production-grade anti-cheat, per-user payout caps, and pool-burn alerts make the system largely self-policing.

  • It is built by a known operator — Maestro has been running Nimiq community infrastructure (acestaking.com, nimiqscan.com, @nimiq_notifier_bot) for years.

  • It is outcome-driven — events are optional and only run if traffic justifies them. Larger ongoing commitments would be a separate, evidence-backed follow-up proposal.

Happy to answer any questions from the Council in this thread, and to share full technical detail (anti-cheat spec, source, operator runbooks) with any designated reviewer.

— Maestro