Azu looked back at LOL Land and felt that this $LOL was actually quite 'counterintuitive'. It is neither a governance coin that pumps the market nor an inflationary mine that crashes every day in traditional P2E, but has been forcibly split into two halves: one half is the utility token that is actually used in the game, and the other half is distributed to real players and those who show up through Play-to-Airdrop and YGG Play Launchpad. Looking a bit further out, it has also been made DEX only, with no plans for a CEX listing, which is actually a counter-current thinking in the GameFi space where 'products are discussed after being listed'.
First, let's clarify the main body of $LOL. The official definition is very straightforward: $LOL is the utility and loyalty token for LOL Land, used to drive the VIP system, staking system, player growth, unlock items, and various premium game benefits. To put it simply, it's a glowing 'premium membership card' rather than just a simple airdrop token. More critically, the allocation structure: out of a total of 5 billion pieces, 10% goes to the development team Hype Reel, with a 6-month cliff period plus 18 months of linear unlocking, 10% for Play-to-Airdrop rewards, fully distributed over two seasons of P2A, 10% reserved for YGG Play Launchpad events, 10% for LOL liquidity pool support, and the remaining 60% left for future in-game rewards and emissions, with YGG Play not taking a penny of the quota. This structure effectively blocks half of the 'we cash out with this token' route, throwing the bulk of the chips back into the game loop, forcing everyone to find answers in gameplay and retention.
Why implement Play-to-Airdrop? Many people only see 'it's another airdrop event' without noticing the logical upgrade. LOL Land launched the P2A season on August 15, taking half of the 10% total, which is 5%, to reward Season 1 players through registration, gameplay, completing tasks, etc., and will distribute the remaining 5% in the second season. This is completely different from the traditional 'airdrop a bunch of governance tokens and wait for people to dump them'. It is more like using a reserved quota to label the earliest people who played the project, tried things out, and supported the active curve as 'loyalty chips'. In other words, P2A is not about giving away money but screening for a group of truly willing core users who will stay, and then this group will gain a more orderly subsequent distribution channel through YGG Play's Points and Launchpad mechanism.
Comparing with old-school P2E, you can see how significant the changes in LOL Land are this time. In the last cycle, many game token models were 'inflation upon launch', where the issuance side lacked rhythm, and the consumption side had no design. Players became miners, and miners dumped the tokens to the next batch of buyers. LOL Land's approach is to lock a few 'big pools' at the front end: 10% Launchpad enters through YGG Play's tasks and staking Points, emphasizing attendance and contribution ranking; 10% P2A is given to early players over two seasons, tied to the game's launch rhythm; 10% team extends the unlocking period to prevent founders from cashing out in the short term; the remaining 70% is more focused on 'in-game circulation', slowly releasing through long-term emissions and rewards. Under such a structure, if you just want to gamble on 'tenfold upon listing', the mindset itself is misaligned with the project's design direction.
Let's talk about DEX only, which is also an aspect many people easily overlook. Whether it's PANews or YGG Play's own announcements, they repeatedly emphasize that $LOL is a utility and loyalty token for the game, traded only on decentralized exchanges. There was no planning for a CEX route when the official launch occurred, and the trading starting point after the Launchpad contribution period ends is DEX. This implies two things. First, the project is strongly bound to the DeFi context from the start. If you want secondary trading, you must learn to use wallets, on-chain routing, and check pool depths. This is a barrier and a form of self-selection for users who only know how to operate on CEX and not DEX. Second, price discovery will be very 'live', without market makers to smooth out volatility, relying on liquidity pool depth, real trading volume, and market confidence in the game itself, rather than the announced pulse from exchanges. Platforms like MEXC now show LOL Land prices, FDV, circulating market cap, etc., which are more of an on-chain quote mirror rather than 'the project actively listing on CEX'.
Returning to the player's perspective, utility + P2A + DEX only will create a very different participation experience. If you only see LOL Land as a 'slightly engaging board game', you can focus solely on the in-game utility aspect: $LOL as VIP points, used to unlock privileges, unlock advanced content, and participate in staking gameplay, treating it as a type of membership points that will slowly depreciate, used to exchange for more in-game experiences rather than obsessively watching K-lines. If you are the kind of person who wants to play and also wants to accumulate more tokens, you can use P2A as a tool for 'natural accumulation', exchanging time and familiarity for tokens, ordering with YGG Play Points and Launchpad, turning 'I played early and deeply' into a better allocation right. As for those who only want to hit the secondary market, I can only remind you: thin pools, low FDV, small cap tokens, DEX only—these terms stacked together imply that price fluctuations may happen faster than your emotional changes.
If I had to discuss some practical insights from a 'strategy' perspective, I would reverse the order. First, use P2A and daily gameplay to establish your position in LOL Land, clearly understand the role of $LOL in the game economy, and then consider whether to build an additional position on DEX; first see clearly the token allocation and unlocking rhythm, understand when and with what intensity P2A's two seasons, Launchpad 10%, team 10%, pool 10%, and game rewards 60% will hit the market, and then decide whether your position can withstand these time windows. Finally, there are those minor on-chain operational details: use routing aggregators to find the deepest pools, set reasonable slippage limits, and try to avoid chasing up or down during unlocking and announcement nodes. You will find that once you clarify the order, what is called 'trading strategy' is actually just risk management and rhythm management.
For me, the biggest significance of LOL Land's economic design is not about a specific price but about giving players a new way to participate: you can first just be a player willing to play, willing to attend, and willing to take responsibility for your queue position, and then slowly decide whether to become a participant who is 'willing to share volatility with the project'. Utility and Play-to-Airdrop tie 'playing' and 'earning' together, while DEX only turns 'whether you really understand on-chain' into an entry threshold. Whether to dive deeper next is up to how much you are willing to read the white paper, look at the task panel, and think about risks for a few more minutes.
