Windfall has taken the concept of "lowering the threshold" to a new level.
Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
Recently, the Solana ecosystem has regained attention, primarily due to the endless stream of memes.
Beyond memes, some existing tracks and narratives have begun to evolve on their own, such as the often-discussed LST (Liquid Staking Tokens).
The logic of LST has always been straightforward: you deposit, you stake, you earn rewards; but this directness is primarily for veterans in the DeFi space. However, Solana is known as a retail chain, allowing more retail investors from outside the circle to participate in LST without necessarily exposing the underlying logic of LST to them.
Recently, a project on Solana called Windfall has creatively played with the idea of "lowering the threshold" — making users unaware that they are participating in DeFi, instead feeling like they are playing a game.
I looked into the project, and the logic seems to be that players earn rewards by playing games, with rewards coming from LST/LRT staking yields.
When new narratives are hard to emerge, making slight adjustments to old narratives to align with the new trend of "consumer-grade crypto applications" is also something worth noting.
Front Store, Back Factory
If you are a complete novice in crypto and DeFi, understanding LST involves a key gap:
You might not even know why you should stake, let alone grasp the hardcore reasoning behind staking to protect a PoS network. In simple terms, the long-standing gameplay of LST has never considered the perspective of mass adoption; it has always been a somewhat exclusive carnival for degens and large holders directly facing profits.
Honestly, even for insiders, if they don't frequently engage with DeFi, it can be quite challenging to understand a series of yield stacking, asset nesting, and lending leverage designs that carry financial implications.
Thus, Windfall has simply changed its approach: If you don't understand something, it's better not to see it.
From the user's perspective, what you see on Windfall are just different mini-game interfaces, which are relatively simple in terms of gameplay and understanding, and may include some reward gradients, lucky draws, and prize pool designs.
So, throughout the process, you are essentially playing some mini-games, and based on different rules, you can earn rewards within the game.
The rewards from these games actually come from various LST/LRT protocols on Solana:
- Staking rewards: Players deposit SOL into Windfall, which looks like spending money to play a lottery game; but in reality, the deposited SOL is converted into windSOL through the liquid staking protocol Sanctum, generating basic staking rewards.
- Re-staking rewards: Similarly, the staked LST token (windSOL) is re-staked through the fragmetric re-staking protocol supported by Jito, gaining compound interest from re-staking.
- The staking/re-staking rewards generated from all users' deposited SOL are pooled together and distributed to game participants according to the game rules.
This is a typical "front store, back factory" model: what is sold to consumers is food, while behind it is a complex food processing factory.
For retail investors, the game is a reward-based experience, while behind it is a nested mechanism generating yields from liquid staking and re-staking.
People don't need to understand the production mechanisms in the factory; they just need to play.
Clearly, this front store, back factory model is much easier to grasp than trying to understand the complex yield generation mechanisms in the factory, and it is more likely to attract users from outside the circle.
Collaborative Efforts
A gamified LST cannot be achieved solely by Windfall; the project has also smartly chosen to collaborate with other projects in the ecosystem, with the core goal of attracting more users.
From an operational perspective, how do you think these types of games can attract more players?
The general ideas boil down to two:
First, make the game itself more appealing; second, allow people holding different assets to participate.
Following these two lines of thought, Windfall is actively increasing its partnerships:
First, to enhance the game's appeal, it maximizes the IP value of various memes. The various casual and fun luck-based mini-games offered by Windfall will collaborate with Solana NFTs, memes, and other IPs (such as @bonk_inu and @MadLads), like the Bonk block mining mini-game mentioned earlier.
Secondly, to expand the asset selection, Windfall has integrated more DeFi options, allowing the assets used to play games to no longer be limited to SOL. For example, deposits in stablecoins can be used through @KaminoFinance; Ethereum deposits can be used through @EclipseFND; Bitcoin deposits can be used through @ZeusNetworkHQ.
Additionally, regarding the fairness of the games themselves, since they are essentially luck-based mini-games, the randomness, transparency, and efficiency of the draws become even more important. Windfall's official Twitter indicates that the project is also collaborating with magicblock and Light Protocol to use ZK compression technology to handle the large volume of lottery rewards generated by the game mechanisms more efficiently.
This approach of collaborating to fill gaps and meet demands around its core business KPIs may increasingly appear in new projects within old narratives.
For new projects, leveraging the existing functionalities of old projects to develop their business avoids reinventing the wheel; for old projects, providing some capabilities to share in future expected profits is also beneficial.
However, currently, Windfall has not fully disclosed its official website and product details and is still in the stage of building momentum and preheating on social media.
For early-bird degens, what can be done now is to fill in their SOL address to join the official waiting list for a chance to participate in early trials and gain more benefits.
While the grand narrative has yet to emerge, small optimizations continue unabated.
The current crypto market may still be waiting for a ray of hope.
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