BTSE AMA Highlights: A Conversation with Gary Wu, CM of LootexIO, on February 17, 2022

14 min readMay 20, 2022

On February 17, 2022, the BTSE Telegram Community invited Gary Wu, CM of LootexIO, for an AMA.

Lootex is agamer-centric, in-game asset marketplace where players can easily browse and trade the most popular game assets. This is when delivering the message of owning your own game asset in blockchain games became Lootex’s mission.

Here are the consolidated and edited highlights of the AMA.

• • •

Introduction

BTSE Moderator:
Great to have you with us. 👋
First thing first.
Why is it called Lootex? Lootex = Loot + Exchange?
Please share with us if there’s any background story to the name!

Gary Wu:
Sure!
The origin of the company’s name, Lootex, was #Loot #Exchange
— a cross-chain game item shop for the Metaverse.

Our CEO and Co-founder, Justine Lu, has been an avid fan of gaming and a long time game industry veteran. She understands the sentiments of losing a game’s value and accomplishment when the game publisher no longer supports the games.

Together, Justine and David Tseng (Co-founder) decided to take a rebellious approach and formed Lootex as a gamer-centric, in-game asset marketplace where players can easily browse and trade the most popular game assets. This is when delivering the message of owning your own game asset in blockchain games became Lootex’s mission.

BTSE Moderator:
Great to have you with us. 👋
First thing first.
Why is it called Lootex? Lootex = Loot + Exchange?
Please share with us if there’s any background story to the name!

Gary Wu:
Sure!
The origin of the company’s name, Lootex, was #Loot #Exchange
— a cross-chain game item shop for the Metaverse.

BTSE Moderator:
Awesome! Thank you for sharing that background story.
We'd like to know a little more about you and your team.
Could you give us a brief introduction?

Gary Wu:

Ok, so before I joined Lootex, I was running a social marketing startup in the old Web2.0 for 4 years starting in 2017.

In 2021, I learned about NFT and crypto and I instantly got addicted to it to the point that I decided to end my startup job for the sake of learning more on blockchain, crypto, NFTs, and as a result I found Lootex and joined as community manager.

One of our core team members, TengYing Yu, has been a die hard gamer since his teenage years.

With over 15 years worth of experience coming from #Blizzard Entertainment, he was able to work on well-known projects like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, and many more as a #producer and regional project manager.

BTSE Moderator:
How many investors or partners do you have on your team?
Do you have an interest in forming ties with other organizations?If so, who and why?

Gary Wu:
We are proud partners of Infinity Ventures Crypto, YGG SEA, Avocado Guild, The Sandbox, and many more.

The mentioned partnerships will help strengthen our existing communities. Our role will be to provide all the resources they will need in order to achieve our common goal – which is to unify everyone in the Metaverse.

We might work together in providing a system that will be introduced in the near future. If you are a good gamer who traded or shared a lot on Lootex, we might refer / introduce you to our partnered guilds.

We are also interested in forming new partnerships with other gaming projects as long as we have aligned vision with them.

• • •

Project Overview

BTSE Moderator:
I see that your project have partnership with quite big names out there, nice.
I would like to learn a bit more about Lootex. What is the main problem that the core team is targeting to solve with your platform?
In other words, what is the core team's main goal, and how will it be accomplished?

Gary Wu:

A brief introduction of Lootex:

Lootex is a decentralized NFT marketplace. Users can buy / sell NFTs on any of the supported blockchains (ETH/BSC/Polygon).

Our marketplace focuses on the NFT trading of play-to-earn game assets. We are actively building a player-centric NFT trading platform, and our ultimate goal is to establish a LootexDAO with a complete ecosystem.

And in the last quarter of 2021, we have 80K+ monthly active users and we have garnered a total of 3 million USD trading volume on our marketplace. We are looking forward to achieving more this year!

Due to the hype of using blockchain technology – NFTs in general. We were able to garner massive amounts of followers / community members. We are currently working on how to maintain the growth we received, hence we are looking for ways on how to improve our products and services.

Our main goal is to have a community-driven economy #DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Where players have the opportunity to decide which product would best suit their wants and needs. We want to do everything as one. Everything that we are building now is for the foundation of our community. We believe that having this strong community backing us will help us pave the way to the top of the blockchain gaming ecosystem.

BTSE Moderator:

What makes you feel confident about the survival & sustainable success of your project in the near future?

Gary Wu:

Believing in what you are doing is something that not everyone is able to do. Luckily, we were able to survive this far throughout because our vision aligned with some well-known investors and we secured good comfortable funding rounds. We can see everything unfold before our eyes and we are making great progress along our Q1 2022 roadmap and there is so much to look forward to in the near future.

• • •

Tokenomics

BTSE Moderator:

Nice, it’s always good to have strong belief in the project that you are working on.

Let’s switch the topic to cover a bit of tokenomics. Tell us more about the token the project created - $LOOT token. Why is it named LOOT?

Gary Wu:

It was named $LOOT for the reason that we see it as the heart of Lootex.

Everyone who holds $LOOT means they hold us closer to them and vice versa.

BTSE Moderator:

I see, the ❤️ of Lootex

What is the function of the $LOOT token?

Gary Wu:

The Lootex platform is governed by $LOOT token holders. Smart contracts allow the gamer community to propose and vote on strategies and spotlights. The benefits from the platform like early minting or limited whitelisting will deploy to the gamers by GP ranking and the badges they owned.

So, if you own more $LOOT, you get giveaways and exclusive game item packs whitelists on the #Launchpad.

BTSE Moderator:

Will there be any listings on exchanges in the future?

Gary Wu:

We certainly are looking forward to getting $LOOT in as many exchanges as possible. There will be more announcements in the coming weeks. Our business development team is currently working on this as this will help us boost awareness for our token which in result can lead to more trading volume.

BTSE Moderator:

Let’s do a bit of product comparison

How does Lootex compare to other NFT marketplaces?

Gary Wu:

Compared with other NFT marketplace, Lootex is more focused on the trading experience of GameFi NFTs. And with the help of our upcoming features like #Lootpedia📚, #Lootswap🔄, #CrossChainExchange🏦, customized gaming user interface. – Users can have the most efficient, “cost-friendly💰” NFT trading experience using our platform.

We take pride in promoting early entrants where their NFT projects can be featured on top of our marketplace giving them an opportunity to have exposure – this is the unique business model that we have established. Unlike big platforms, there are various projects being featured on top of their marketplace, and the chances of having exposure to newcomers are close to 0.

BTSE Moderator:

What are the major benefits of using Lootex as an average user?

Gary Wu:

We offer Cross-Chain Payments

One of the great things about Lootex is its cross-chain functionality. This means that players with tokens on one blockchain can purchase in-game assets used in games that run on other networks.

For example, players who store assets on Ethereum will be able to purchase game assets on the Solana blockchain through Lootex. We will achieve this by aggregating different DeFi Protocols using bridge solutions, such as xy.finance or Anyswap.

We also have the upcoming #LootSwap feature

It is based on a peer-to-peer exchange. It helps users by minimizing gas fees when they swap in-game items. For instance, the current system requires 2 transactions for a swap to be completed. And per transaction made, the user gets charged with a gas fee (transaction fee for using a blockchain).

With #Lootswap we can complete the transfer with 1 transaction which gives users a swift, cheaper transaction.

• • •

Twitter Questions

BTSE Moderator:
Great, thank you for the info that you’ve shared so far.
I would like to use this time to post 5 Twitter questions that were selected.
Folks, if you want a chance to win prizes, please follow the BTSE’s Twitter and pay attention to our posts.

Question 1:

@AlexaBaluran

As far as I can see, NFT and BSC are the next trend of new projects. As I know there are a lot of very good development projects on this platform, what do Lootex think about this development

Gary Wu:

We are currently using #BSC for our NFT listings and aside from this is that our platform supports NFTs from #Ethereum and #Polygon as well.

There are lots of good projects in these chains mentioned since gas fees are cheaper whether it is minting, trading, listing NFTs.

But we are planning to expand more blockchains supported like #Avalanche, #Moonbeam, #FTM, and many more.

We are already aggregating different DeFi Protocols using bridge solutions, such as xy.finance or Anyswap.

BTSE Moderator:

Question 2:

@Tomie_chana

Can you list 1-3 killer features of Your Project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?

Gary Wu:

We focus on promoting early entrants

NFT projects can be featured on top of our marketplace giving them an opportunity to have exposure – this is the unique business model that we have established. Unlike big platforms, there are various projects being featured on top of their marketplace, and the chances of having exposure to newcomers are close to 0.

We offer Cross-Chain Payments

One of the great things about Lootex is its cross-chain functionality. This means that players with tokens on one blockchain can purchase in-game assets used in games that run on other networks. For example, players who store assets on Ethereum will be able to purchase game assets on the Solana blockchain through Lootex. We will achieve this by aggregating different DeFi Protocols using bridge solutions, such as xy.finance or Anyswap.

We also have the upcoming LootSwap feature

BTSE Moderator:

Question 3:

@hauhau1166

You will agree with me that ADOPTION and UTILITY is very key to project survival and success, what's being done to drive global adoption of Lootex amidst crypto regulations, legislation and competition

Gary Wu:

For Lootex as long as we are following the rules of the crypto world then we don’t see this affecting us. And yes we agree with you regarding adoption and utility is key not only for survival but also for success.

The crypto world moves at a fast pace and we see to it that we keep innovating new products and be on time with the progress of our roadmap for 2022.

Providing people more of what they want / need rather than what we need is what we want to focus on. Our community’s voice is very important for our structuring since they will be the one leading the whole Lootex ecosystem in the future.

BTSE Moderator:

Question 4:

@yaroslava_borz

What are Lootex plans for global expansion, what are your currently focusing on, expanding or listing more exchanges, or building your ecosystem or marketing and partnerships?

Gary Wu:

We are focused more on our tokenomics given that $LOOT token is still new to the eyes of people. We have received a lot of good feedback from the people but we think that our product isn’t at its 100% yet. We want to make it close to perfect as our community imagined it. $LOOT token is a way we can #empower our community to impact the outcome of this project, and we do use our Discord very often. https://lihi1.cc/wjOyF

We are trying to balance everything as we speak. However, product is the foremost important part too. We can’t get players to come if the product isn’t functional 100% of the time or has major UI/UX issues. So we are focusing on developing all the features said on the roadmap, and also work on smaller UX improvements.

BTSE Moderator:

Last one from Twitter.

Question 5:

@RSituo

Winning is the most interesting part of the NFT gaming industry. "Lootexlo" allows players to not only have fun playing, but also invest their time and money to get a great return as profit. So, What are the different ways to earn income that you offers to its users?

Gary Wu:

What we offer is connecting gamers and game creators through the use of our marketplace and game launchpad. We take our launchpad seriously, and we carefully select the project that looks promising. We have an application form for the project to fill out, and we do evaluation internally. So far we put some of the projects we know them personally on launchpad, since we know they won’t rug.

So far we have done fair and open launch for the launchpad projects, there’s no whitelist to purchase from launchpad at the moment, but we will learn from existing examples of good practice to ensure early Lootex adapters can enjoy the benefit of participating in launchpad mintings.

In the play-to-earn industry, being one of the early adapters will give huge potential to grow your investment as you get genesis items based on their floor price. And if the game launches and it goes well, then we can assume that the floor price of all items minted from pre-sale events will eventually double.

BTSE Moderator:

Next up, I will be opening the floor for the audience to ask their questions.

The floor will be opening in 10 seconds for about 30seconds.

Gary, please pick 5 questions to reply to.

John Lexx ( @Johnlexxx ):

Every successful enterprise, as we all know, has a few stories behind the scenes; what is the story behind LOOTEX's success? What was that vision when it was initially conceived? Do you have any special prototypes or impending LOOTEXIO updates you'd like to show/share with us?

Gary Wu:

Lootex has geared a great amount of success in Q4 with a couple top-selling gamefi projects onboard.

With that amount of transaction, the 2.5% platform fee is close to covering our cost (we had a small team at that point).

We saw the rise of gamefi and metaverse and had a bigger ambition to step into the gamefi ecosystem. Luckily, our vision aligned with well-known investors, and we are securing good comfortable fundings.

For the short term, Lootex is going to hire more talents to refine our product and services.

In the longer term, Lootex wants to bridge traditional game studios to blockchain space, and hopefully be a partner with an even stronger performing IPs.

Dinc ( @Dinc3 ):

Hi! Gary

Where did you get the inspiration of creating Lootex? How did you decide on this name? Can you please tell the story behind?

Gary Wu:

Our CEO and Co-founder, Justine Lu, has been an avid fan of gaming and a long time game industry veteran.

She understands the sentiments of losing a game’s value and accomplishment when the game publisher no longer supports the games. Together, Justine and David Tseng (Co-founder) decided to take a rebellious approach and formed Lootex as a gamer-centric, in-game asset marketplace where players can easily browse and trade the most popular game assets.

This is when delivering the message of owning your own game asset in blockchain games became Lootex’s mission.

Alikaa Azzahra ( @Alika061 ):

will lootex have NFT badge missions and where can i participate in lootex activities?

Gary Wu:

Yes, we are going to have another event on our Discord channel and we have given out a total of 500 Lootex badges specifically on Discord only.

Being a badge holder will give you certain benefits like: NFT airdrops, whitelist spot, discord private channel, and first hand news about Lootex.

We recently gave out 12,500 $LOOT tokens to 250 badge holders. This is to show our appreciation to our early supporters.

Join our Discord before too late!

Lootex Discord: https://lihi1.cc/VB0fY

xperia ( @xperia3 ):

Hi 💹

Do you plan to expand to the local communities where people do not speak English? How will you spread the knowledge of lootex into non English counties?

Gary Wu:

We want to be known as a global brand. For short term adaptation, we are hiring different people from different regions in order for us to be efficient in communicating using other languages. Right now we have non English community like: Koreans, Vietnamese, Spanish, and Chinese.

FATUR PATUE ( @TobiPorter ):

Can you explain how is your Tokenomics Distribution? How many tokens Will be minted ? And How many tokens Will be locked by the team?

Gary Wu:

This is a good question, let me share more about $LOOT, GP score & LootexDAO with you guys

$LOOT

#GP - Gamers Power Score

For gamers: By joining the staking & locking program, the system will calculate a gamer’s power (GP) score by the staked amount and the locking period. The GP will be used as a ranking system to get benefits from the platform. NFT Badges from guilds or partnerships will also increase the GP.

Staking & Locking mechanism: To incentivize long-term stakers, we will use a new distribution system that differentiates between locked and unlocked tokens. The calculated weight will be a key metrics for the staking reward.

For game projects, they can stake to bid for the launchpad or to be featured on top of our marketplace giving them an opportunity to have more exposure and sales.

The role of the Lootex treasury is to incentivize good behavior around game asset trading and collecting to maximize value. Revenue collected in the treasury will be returned to the LootexDAO over time.

Participants in the LootexDAO will be owners and managers of the entire ecosystem of the LootexDAO network. $LOOT token holders will be able to participate in the decision making process after they staked.

The staked tokens will represent voting rights in the DAO.

The matters that will be voted on include:

- Selection of projects to spotlight or featured

- Selection of projects to list on Lootex

- Selection of projects that applied for launchpad

https://medium.com/lootex/lootexs-tokenomics-the-benefits-utility-of-loot-627afeec8b86

Check out more about our tokenomics

BTSE Moderator:

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions from the community!

Gary Wu:

We mainly prioritize our Discord server as we use this platform as our main mode of communication.

We highly recommend users to join Lootex Discord: