Daniel Santos, Founder, Gamepay & Chickey Chik
Daniel Santos is hatching a plan to bring games and NFTs to underprivileged communities. The Brazilian-born entrepreneur now based in Singapore has a vision for a new economic model enabling self-sustaining and evolving ‘digital societies’ to create value via minting, trading and exchanging digital assets. The concept centers around making games and tokenized winnings accessible to the unbanked through his platform, Gamepay. Gamepay provides the infrastructure, tools and community for developers to access untapped, low-income markets as well as gamers. The tools and infrastructure will be used to build metaverses, or virtual worlds focused on social connection, with opportunities to carry out tasks and activities, including games and in-game tokens that can be converted into Fiat (government issued paper currency) or used as crypto assets to pay for goods or services as it becomes more mainstream.
Amy Guttman: What is your first product and when is it coming to market?
Daniel Santos: Chickey Chik is the inaugural game on the platform and it will play a critical role in onboarding the next generation of gamers and game developers in this new paradigm. The platform is based on sound economic and financial models that have been validated over the past decade, in tokenized form. Chickey Chik will be available online on the web and mobile app (iOS and Android). Chickey Chik will also be available in seven languages (in addition to English) by mid-April 2022, covering the largest global populations of low-income demographics.
Guttman: What is the inspiration? Angry Birds?
Santos: The game IS inspired by Angry Birds and our passion to create games in tokenized form as a “gig” to anyone that wants to make money in the new tokenized gig economy; gaming being a vertical of that.
We want to tap into the unbanked; the overlooked consumers in developing markets and not leave anyone behind; we want to make crypto assets accessible and affordable to the masses and not just the rich elite. We believe in empowering our players and helping them make money, especially those who would like to earn and play as a profession. Most of all, we have a dream that battling and collecting cute Chickeys can change the world.
Guttman: Is Chickey Chik a game or an NFT?
Santos: Chickey Chik is a game inspired by the co-founder’s 9-year old child’s obsession with “Chick” cartoon & Pokemon-inspired universe. Anyone of any age can play Chickey Chik and earn money. Chickey Chik will adopt the Play-to-Earn (P2E) model where users can earn money by playing. The goal is to give players the opportunity to earn double the local minimum wage (e.g. in the Philippines ) through in-game rewards and winningss. Players utilize their Chickey Chiks to compete against other users, breed better and more rare Chickey Chiks, acquire flocks of Chickey Chiks, develop and nurture young Chickey Chiks, and build an Empire.
Players can digitize and sell their Chickey Chiks and many other in-game assets in the form of NFTs. Community developers access the data generated by the game to develop the Chickey Chik ecosystem, which is a socially-driven community.
The future is where work and play become one. We believe in empowering our players and helping them make money, especially those who would like to earn and play as a profession. Most of all, we have a dream that battling and collecting cute Chickeys can change the world.
Guttman: What is your background?
Santos: I was raised in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), chasing chicks around; the ones in feathered form, as a way to become faster with my legs and be a better footballer; every Brazilian dreams to be a football player but sadly, I was really bad at football and chasing chicks didn’t help .
When I was 14 years old, I moved to England for school and went into finance, having worked at tier one banks in London, Moscow and Asia. As an early adopter of bitcoin, I created a company called Blockchain Labs in 2016 in Singapore and have been in crypto ever since. In 2021, we formed Chickey Chicks, powered by Gamepay which is partially owned by Blockchain Labs.
Guttman: What’s a Brazilian doing in Singapore?
Santos: After spending five years in Moscow, I decided to move to the tropics. I want to be able to walk around in shorts and wear panama hats. I am a panama hat collector. I also believe that the future is in Asia and Singapore is the best base to access the Asian market and be the bridge between East and West.
Guttman: What are your biggest challenges at this stage?
Santos: biggest challenge is recruiting the right people as we scale. They need to fit into our culture, have the right work ethic, innovative mindset, attention to detail, communication and coding skills to keep up.
Guttman: What advice do you have for entrepreneurs?
Santos: No one is an island, so find the right team to work with, be it at school, university or along the way in your career and start on small projects with them. Build trust, learn about one another and once you are confident about an idea, make sure you work with that team and focus on execution.
It can take a lifetime to find the right core team to work with and it’s via small projects, trials and errors and solving difficult problems that you crystallize the relationships that will stand the test of time and ultimately create successful businesses. An imperfect action is better than no action at all, as long as you can perfect the action iteratively as a team.
Santos and his team will begin NFT sales of Chickey Chick in February. The game will be fully baked when it launches in mid-April.
