BirthdayBoi@BirthdayBoi
The best proof that an ecosystem works isn't the current metrics - it's what people actually ship around it.
@Starknet just launched a $3k grant for building with Starkzap SDK - and I think many of the submissions will/should be connected to the Beasts NFT, which are one of the best collectibles I've seen in years.
But first: why are Beasts NFTs from @LootSurvivor the perfect primitive to build around?
Recently we had great convo with @aloothero on LS2 discord and my take is clear: community-built projects aren't just a nice bonus, they're the foundation of how the ecosystem expands. Loot Survivor onboards new players. The Summit sustains them for now, but the long-term growth? That in my opinion comes from builders taking Beasts NFT and doing unexpected things with them (and there is like 10? at least already).
LS2 onboards new players → they get Beasts from the dungeon → new games and tools built on top of Beasts give them utility → more people play LS2 to get Beasts → ticket prices go up -> economy is healthy.
Fixed supply of 93,225 (which is imo perfect supply lowering the entry barrier - they are just cheap) unique Beasts across 75 species. Fully onchain, born through verifiable randomness in the dungeon. Every Beast carries standardized metadata - tier (T1 Legendary to T5 Common), type, combat stats, provenance, collectible factors (animated, shiny). They're composable across games by design. That's the kind of things that makes it great asset to build products in the centre of them.
It's only a matter of time before we see a Pokemon Red-style RPG with staked Beast battles - considering it would take like a week for experienced vibecoder to build (yes, take this idea and i guarantee you'll succeed if well designed - people want it, people need it), and even I think about building myself one even tho I know nothing about building products with crypto integration, but... the tooling just got a lot better.
Starkzap SDK is a TypeScript SDK that brings wallets, gasless transactions, swaps, lending, bridging and more into any app in minutes. One SDK, one wallet, one transaction surface. You integrate wallet connect and suddenly have access to the entire DeFi stack on Starknet.
What did @Calcutat build with it? Survivor Beasts Cards in just 1 week - a project that takes Beast NFTs and expands them into a full card system. Each Beast NFT becomes a Beast Card, paired with a unique Tamer Card. Cards carry 5 metadata pieces: canonical data (type, class, tier) + expanded (Card Grade and Card Rarity). Pretty clear he wants to expand it to some kind of bigger game - maybe TCG?
The twist: none of this is deterministic. Each card is generated via a custom AI flow based on your wallet and your onchain identity. Free cards are still available - I suggest you to grab it (and share it!), since it's limited time event. Since yesterday, people revealed 150 cards so far, which is huge number for one man army and a few days of work.
If you're looking for where to start with Starkzap - Beasts NFTs might be the most natural entry point in the whole ecosystem. @Starknet has been backing it with grants consistently and you get immediate exposure to an active, growing user base from day one, battle-tested onchain infrastructure ready to plug into, and a community genuinely hungry for new things to build with their assets. And as a person with 10+ experience in marketing - distribution is one of the core problems for early stage projects.
