Coinfectionary: Developing the GAMM-plan for User-Friendlier DeFi Yield Farming on the Solana Ecosystem

TL;DR: What is Coinfectionary GAMM?

Coinfectionary is the world’s first GAMM (Gamified Automated Market Maker) on the Solana ecosystem under the guise of a sim game which is a low-barrier gateway for just about anyone with a smartphone and wallet to yield farm and make smart, informed decisions in the world of DeFi.

Why GAMM? What DeFi Issues Are We Trying to Solve?

Coinfectionary is a gamified yield farming decentralized finance (DeFi) experience that puts players in the shoes of a bakery owner.

> Low barrier, low stress

Just another tycoon/sim game? Nope. Coinfectionary allows just about anyone with a smartphone and wallet to safely yield farm as a market maker. In short, Coinfectionary is a low-barrier gateway into the world of cryptocurrency, and DeFi. We created Coinfectionary to be more gaming-centric, to benefit the cryptocurrency community by removing/reducing intimidation and exploitative aspects within a low-stress game ecosystem.

> User Experience FTW

Before the idea of Coinfectionary was conceived, we set out to target pinch points in the DeFi sector. What came out of this was the realization that there are currently no DeFi platforms that properly educates its investors on how to safely invest in DeFi platforms. The dizzying amount of DeFi platforms mushrooming in the current market made it so that anyone can make a deposit and yield farm with just a few clicks. And that ends there. Investors will not be educated with the workings of DeFi, the risks involved, or how to optimize their gains.

Here’s where Coinfectionary GAMM comes in. We know that there is room for DeFi adoption to grow beyond its current players. In short, we aim to make DeFi more accessible to end users, including ‘normies’ who may have found cryptocurrency to be intimidating or even exploitative (“Hey, here’s a bunch of numbers, APY, go on, ape in!”)

Polygon recently launched a $100M fund to support DeFi adoption. According to its announcement:

With mounting gas fees on Ethereum, Polygon’s #DeFiforAll Fund hopes to attract more casual users who have been priced out of participating in DeFi so far.

This sounds good. Brilliant, even. High gas fees? Let’s reduce it! Security and fraud concerns? We’re on it!

But where does that leave user experience? How can we better educate ‘normies’ what DeFi is so that they can make informed decisions without apeing into the next DeFi project blindly just because some stranger on Reddit or TikTok shills a particular DeFi project? The answer: DeFi education FIRST, then yield, through the Coinfectionary GAMM ecosystem.

Under the Hood

Coinfectionary operates an asset pool where liquidity providers (“makers”) earn a yield by depositing their LPs. Wrapped with the idea of running your own bakery as a Coinfectionaire, Coinfectionary is a sim GAMM that allows users to learn what DeFi is, ultimately helping them to make INFORMED DECISIONS as they grow their gains through the various yield generation mechanics.

Game Premise — Skinner’s Box and Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs

What drives the gamification factor in Coinfectionary GAMM is Skinner’s Box. Skinner’s Box was created by Burrhus Frederic Skinner, also known as “America’s most influential behavioral scientist,” who believes in teaching through positive reinforcement and in the most humane way possible.

In the 1930s, behavioral psychologist, B.F. Skinner, constructed such a box and tested his theory of operant conditioning on rats.

Skinner’s hypothesis was that he could influence the rats’ behavior by providing positive reinforcement — in the form of more food — whenever the rats’ actions were positive. Or, by giving negative reinforcement in the form of a shock, when the action was negative. Skinner hoped this would encourage the rats’ association of a particular behavior to a consequence, either more food or a shock.

There are, however, some concerns with Skinner Boxes.

• First, for moral and ethical reasons, games should be fun and not be viewed as a machine to reproduce certain behaviors for a quick buck. This does not apply to Coinfectionary — in fact, it is quite the opposite. The platform aims to educate players so that they would make informed decisions instead of apeing in for a quick buck.
• Second, Skinner’s Boxes have been successfully applied to animals — not humans. Human psychology is far more complex. We agree, which is why Coinfectionary is being built upon a hybrid of psychological frameworks using both Skinner’s Boxes and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow sought to humanize behaviorism through his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” where his infamous Pyramid of Needs (also known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) was established. With the hierarchical pyramid, Maslow iterated that all humans required satisfaction from a variety of needs and that these needs must be achieved from the pyramid’s baseline going up.

In short: You cannot focus on your higher needs if the most fundamental ones are not met.

We were inspired by a GDC talk by Ethan Levy where he proposed his theory, the Tower of Want, which essentially is an escalating series of short and long term goals, each of which feeds into the next goal.

We then applied this thought process to developing Coinfectionary GAMM which will motivate players from one goal to the next. According to Levy:

Real life, like a well-designed game, reveals itself to you over time. So as you achieve each goal, you discover a new goal that builds on your previous knowledge and skills.

With this, our goal is to build the Coinfectionary GAMM platform as a user-friendlier DeFi education platform which will turn players into informed investors, allowing them to safely yield farm and perform a series of gains-generating actions.

Diving into Coinfectionary: A Brief Sneak Peek into the Ecosystem

Beyond the education and simulation aspects, Coinfectionary is divided into several sections:

• Kitchen: Yield farming (players can deposit LPs and earn rewards, gain boost and autocompound feature when paired with Coinfectionary’s token, CFC) and Recipe Lego (players can create their own money legos giving themselves the best yield).
• DeFi Bank: Access collateralized DeFi borrowing/lending, allowing players to loan out or borrow coins whereby both borrowers and lenders will earn CFC.
• CoinFungibles: NFT Marketplace where users can buy, sell and trade in-game NFTs. Players can also mint their own RFTs (re-fungible tokens) and offer fractional ownerships as a market maker — NFTs can be put up as collateral.
• Arcade: Mini games like scavenger hunts allow players to battle against others to gain CFC.

In the next article, we will show you what happens in a typical Coinfectionary GAMM user journey. Stay tuned!