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🚀 MintPlay

🗂️ Project Overview

  • Student ID: 20210751
  • Name: Olesia Bilyk
  • Project Title: MintPlay
  • Summary (3–4 sentences): MintPlay is a Web3-powered platform where players can buy and play board games with unique themes generated by AI. Each themed card set is minted as an NFT, making it more affordable, customizable, and instantly available than physical editions. By releasing games on-chain, developers can launch without upfront printing costs, reducing financial risk. AI ensures limitless, creative themes, while blockchain provides verifiable ownership, easy distribution, and a transparent market for popular designs.

1. 🧩 Problem: What Problem Are You Solving?

Board game creators face high upfront costs and financial risk when launching new titles or visual redesigns, as physical editions require expensive printing, storage, and distribution before gauging market interest. This makes it harder for small studios and indie designers to experiment with bold ideas or new artwork. Munchkin Codenames Monopoly

For players, existing digital board game platforms often lock access behind memberships or subscriptions, meaning you never truly own the games you play online. Visual variety is limited, custom themes are rare, and art styles are fixed for years. BGArena

The result is a market where creativity is constrained, players lack both ownership and personalization in their gaming experience, and developers have no fast, low-risk way to test demand before committing to costly print runs.

2. 💡 Solution: Your Proposed Approach

  • MintPlay is a Web3 platform where AI generates fully themed editions of board games, each minted as an NFT only when purchased by a player. By linking AI generation directly to blockchain minting, customized editions can be created “on the spot” once a player commits to buy—ensuring gas fees are only incurred when there’s guaranteed profit.
  • Players can browse standard themes or request personalized designs at an extra cost, making it affordable to try new visual styles while still generating revenue for creators. Because board games require only a redesign of existing card sets—not full-scale video game development—the creative turnaround is fast and low-cost.
  • This model lowers financial risk for developers by avoiding upfront printing, enables players to permanently own their themed and classical editions as NFTs, and provides a transparent on-chain record of which styles are most popular—guiding future physical edition production. diagram

3. 🔗 Why Blockchain (and Token)?

  • Why is blockchain necessary? Blockchain is necessary because it enables trustless, transparent ownership of unique digital assets—in this case, fully themed editions of board games minted as NFTs. By leveraging blockchain, MintPlay ensures each customized edition is provably owned, scarce, and transferable without relying on any central authority.
  • What problem does blockchain specifically solve? Blockchain solves the problem of verifying true ownership and provenance of digital board game editions. It prevents unauthorized copying or tampering by providing a tamper-proof, public ledger that records every minted edition and tracks which designs are popular on-chain. This transparency builds trust between creators and players and supports a secure marketplace for digital collectibles.
  • Briefly explain why token’s unnecessary. No separate fungible token is needed because MintPlay’s core value lies in the unique NFTs representing customized game editions. The platform’s model centers on on-demand NFT minting tied directly to purchases, which simplifies transactions and reduces complexity without requiring an additional token layer.

4. 🛠️ MVP or Prototype

  • Current status: ☐ Idea only
    ERC-1155 tokens Mint the token to certain wallet using thirdweb SDK: 
    import {
  prepareContractCall,
  sendTransaction,
} from "thirdweb";

const transaction = await prepareContractCall({
  contract,
  method:
    "function mintTo(address _to, uint256 _tokenId, string _uri, uint256 _amount)",
  params: [_to, _tokenId, _uri, _amount],
});
const { transactionHash } = await sendTransaction({
  transaction,
  account,
});
    Contract address of deployed NFT: 0xE5b46fcDDBC216524728b8c02f13DBB2D3f860Cd NFT in wallet

5. 📬 Submission to Hackathons or Grant Programs

  • Name of the program: Onchain Summer Awards
  • Submission link: URL
  • MintPlay is a Web3 platform where AI instantly generates custom-themed board game editions, minted as NFTs only after purchase. This on-demand model eliminates upfront production costs, ensures players truly own their editions, and provides creators with transparent sales data to guide future designs.
    submission

6. 🤔 Reflection & Future Work

  • What did you learn during this project? I gained a deeper understanding of how AI generation workflows can be directly tied to blockchain events. As a board gamer myself, I wanted to develop an idea relevant to the field since it is a popular form of entertainment that is much easier to implement on web3 than simplest of video games (board games being in their essence card and tile-placement games combined by fixed mechanics).
  • What were the biggest challenges? Since the main issue I wanted to address was owning board games onchain, I had to delve into the logistics of how and how many NFTs should be minted and distributed.
  • What would you improve or build next? I would mint NFTs of already existing decks for some fixed game and find AIs for 1. processing the NFT and creating a set with new theme 2. minting an NFT based on the new deck. I would also attempt to develop a way of making NFT serve as a key for playing the game onchain.

7. 📚 References