The problem House of the DragNs solves

House of the DragNs provides a social gaming experience on Farcaster and Base. Onchain assets include the ERC20 token $NOM and the ERC721 NFT collection DragN'Puff. The NFT collection was deployed to Base Mainnet in June 2024, during the Onchain Summer Buildathon hackathon. The high-resolution generative art was created by @nomadicframe and features 111 uniques trait with varying rarities spanning 7 categories. While DragNs can be used as PFPs, they act primarily as a game asset for House of the DragNs, a social game on Farcaster. Players pledge their DragNs to community-themes Houses (teams). Houses compete with each other through social engagement actions, including Farcaster frames, cast actions, casts, and reactions. A Leaderboard frame shows the current strength of the 7 Houses.

Farcaster Platform

The House of the DragNs game takes place on the Farcaster decentralized social platform, using social interactions including frames, cast actions, and more.

Frames

• Mint Frame. Join the game by using this frame to mint DragN'Puff game assets.
• Flex Frame. Used to flex (share) a player's DragN.
• Choose Frame. Players pledge allegiance to one of the 7 Houses of the DragN using this frame. All must choose.
• Leaderboard Frame. Lists the 7 Houses of the DragN with the strength scores for each.
• Houses Frames. Enable the players to flex/share their pledged House.
• Dragn x Pixel Frame. A limited time frame and mini affiliate program that rewarded DragN mint referrals with Pixel Nouns NFTs on Degen chain.
• Breathed Fire Frame. Players can flex/share when they "breathe fire" on another house (see cast action below)

Cast Actions

• Breath Fire. After installing this cast action, Farcaster users can use it on any cast of other players from opposing Houses, to "breathe fire" on the target house.

For more images & "how it was built" see the repo.

Challenges we ran into

While numerous technical challenges were overcome in the process generating the assets and coding the smart contracts, Farcaster frames, and web-based mint page, the biggest challenge has been to effectively communicate that House of the DragNs and the DragN'Puff NFTs are not just another PFP collection, but instead represent a community-based social gaming experience on the Farcaster platform. To date we have found the most effective way to help get past pre-conceived notions about NFT collections has be to "show" rather than "tell". By gradually introducing social game mechanics like "choose your House" and the "Breathe Fire" cast action, both players and prospective players are coming around to the notion that this is something different, an engaging community-based social gaming experience, built on Base and Farcaster.