At four in the morning, in an apartment in Istanbul, former International Relations student Aiden is not studying the UN Charter, but staring at a continuously refreshing digital map — instead of national borders, it shows a fragile alliance network composed of four hundred player kingdoms. His cursor hovers over the border of an alliance called 'Dragon's Covenant', and he lightly taps the table with his finger: 'If they ally with the 'Iron-Blooded Crusaders' to the north, our western defense line will face three times the pressure.'
Aiden is not a professional player, nor a military strategist. He is an analyst for Yield Guild Games' 'Geostrategy Sub-DAO'. What he is monitoring is a virtual war in League of Kingdoms (LoK) that has lasted for three weeks — the outcome of this war will determine the ownership of digital territory worth over $200,000.
This is the reality of the blockchain strategy game: every piece of land is an NFT, every alliance is a DAO, and every war is an on-chain event executed by smart contracts. YGG, initially just a guild that lent money to players to buy gaming assets, is experimenting with their most complex project in LoK: establishing a digital kingdom federation with autonomous economics, military, and diplomatic capabilities across multiple servers.
When (civilization) meets blockchain: land is power
LoK's core innovation is simple: turning 'virtual land ownership' in traditional strategy games into 'real blockchain asset ownership.'
Every piece of land in the game is an NFT on Ethereum. Owning land means:
· Extract resources (wood, stone, gold, etc., which are also NFTs)
· Build buildings (castles, barracks, markets)
· Collect taxes (from other players passing through)
· Participate in governance (vote on the rules of the continent they are on)
"This sounds like real estate in reality," explained Lina, YGG's territory management director, "but there is one key difference: in LoK, the 'geographical location' of land itself is value. Land located at the intersection of trade routes, even if small in area, can be worth ten times that of remote large plots."
YGG made a classic mistake early on: in 2021, they spent a large sum to buy 12 connected plots of land in the central plains on server 7, intending to establish the 'YGG Core Area.' They found that although the land was fertile, it was surrounded by enemies and had to defend against invasions almost every day.
"We are like historical Poland," Lina said with a wry smile, "the land is fertile, but lacks natural barriers. We paid an expensive tuition fee to understand that in LoK, the value of terrain is more important than the value of resources."
Free players and NFT holders: YGG's 'social contract' experiment
One of LoK's cleverest designs is balance: free players can build kingdoms, develop armies, and participate in battles; NFT holders own land and resources but need free players to provide labor and military strength.
This has caused inherent class contradictions. Early servers often saw: NFT landlords exploiting free players → free players collectively defecting → landlord lands becoming isolated → a vicious cycle of value collapse.
YGG's solution is not 'fairer exploitation,' but rather redesigning the 'digital feudal contract.'
They established a 'co-governance alliance' on server 23, with core rules:
1. Land revenue sharing: resources produced by NFT land, 50% goes to the landlord, 30% is allocated to free players working on that land, and 20% enters the alliance treasury
2. Promotion pathway: outstanding free players can gain 'land lease rights' provided by the alliance (use of land without purchasing NFTs)
3. Collective defense obligations: all members must respond to the alliance's collective defense call
4. Governance participation rights: free players can earn governance points through contributions, allowing them to participate in votes on internal alliance matters
"The results were unexpected," alliance operations officer Marcus said, "our land productivity is 40% higher than the pure landlord model, member retention rate is 2.3 times the server average, and more importantly—when other alliances experience internal turmoil, our free players actively organize defenses to protect 'their' land."
Once this model succeeds, YGG will open-source it as 'Co-Governance Protocol 1.0,' adopted by the other seven alliances. The LoK development team even invited YGG to participate in designing the official 'Alliance Standard Contract Template.'
Dual-layer NFT economy: YGG's 'resource arbitrage network'
LoK's assets are divided into two layers:
· Land NFT: permanent ownership, fixed location, can generate resources
· Resource NFTs: wood, stone, gold, etc., can be traded across continents
Most players focus on land value. YGG's economic team discovered opportunities for resource arbitrage.
They established a cross-server monitoring system to track:
· Resource price differences across different servers (affected by war, development phase, player numbers)
· Seasonal fluctuations (real-world holidays lead to changes in player activity)
· 'Major event' impact (e.g., new continents opening causes old continent resource prices to drop)
"The most successful operation occurred last December," recalled resource trade manager Chen Tao, "we detected that server 15 was about to break out into large-scale war, while server 9 had just finished a war and entered a rebuilding phase."
Their operations:
1. Acquire stone and wood at low prices on server 9 (reconstruction demand is high, but supply is surplus)
2. Transfer resources to server 15 through the cross-server market
3. Sell at a 187% premium one week before the outbreak of war
4. A portion of the profits is used to purchase undervalued war-damaged land on server 15
"This is not simple low buy-high sell," Chen Tao emphasized, "this is cross-temporal arbitrage based on geopolitical analysis. We need to predict when wars will break out, how long they will last, how much destruction they will cause, and what reconstruction will require. This requires knowledge from multiple disciplines: military, economics, and psychology."
This operation brought YGG returns equivalent to three times the initial investment, and more importantly, they gained strategic land on server 15—these lands doubled in value during post-war reconstruction.
That governance proposal that changed the game
Each continent in LoK has its own autonomous DAO: landholders vote to decide the continent's tax rates, war rules, trade policies, etc.
Last August, YGG initiated a radical proposal on server 31: "Reduce the tax in the central continental region from 20% to 5%, but increase the tax in the border regions from 10% to 25%."
The reason is straightforward:
· The central region is a trade hub; low tax rates can attract more players to gather
· Border areas require more defense spending, so high tax rates are reasonable
· Overall tax revenue remains unchanged, but economic activity will increase
The proposal faced strong opposition from border landlords. The voting was at an impasse.
YGG did not give up, but launched the 'Digital Lobbying Action':
1. Data argumentation: create visualization reports to show how low tax rates in the central region drive economic growth across the continent
2. Compensation plan: propose to use alliance funds to subsidize the defense spending of border landlords
3. Gradual experiment: propose a trial period of three months to let the data speak
"The most critical turning point," diplomat Aiden said, "was when we convinced several medium-sized border alliances. They realized that if the central area prospered, their border lands would appreciate in value due to being 'gateways to affluent areas,' not just 'dangerous frontiers.'"
The proposal ultimately passed with 58% support. Three months later, the data confirmed the predictions:
· Trading volume in the central region increased by 220%
· Player activity across the continent increases by 40%
· The average value of border land increases by 35% (due to increased strategic importance)
· Total tax revenue actually increased by 18% (due to expanded economic scale)
"This is not us winning," Lina said, "it's economic laws winning. We just saw the optimal solution earlier than others and were willing to put in the effort to persuade everyone."
YGG's 'Continental Federation' experiment
YGG's ultimate project in LoK is to establish a 'Continental Federation' across servers.
They have dominant alliances across three servers and are trying:
1. Economic integration: tax-exempt circulation of resources within the federation, unified external tariffs
2. Military mutual assistance: when one server is attacked, other servers provide resource assistance
3. Talent mobility: outstanding players can rotate between different servers within the federation
4. Joint research and development: concentrate resources to develop in-game technology (such as siege weapon improvements)
"This sounds like a digital version of the EU," admitted strategist Sophia, "but running on the blockchain, all protocols are smart contracts, all contributions are recorded, and all distributions are transparent and verifiable."
The biggest challenge facing the federation is not external enemies, but internal governance complexity. The three servers have different histories, cultures, and vested interests.
YGG's solution is 'layered governance':
· Daily affairs: each server is autonomous
· Economic policy: federal parliament voting (three votes per server)
· Military actions: require two-thirds approval
· Constitutional amendments: require three-quarters approval and majority support from each server
"The time we spend in governance meetings each week is longer than the time we spend playing games," Sophia laughed, "but it's worth it. If this federation model succeeds, it can be replicated in other games and may even become a governance experimental ground for real-world multinational organizations."
From game alliances to the prototype of a digital nation
Looking back, YGG's practice in LoK has already transcended the realm of 'playing games.' They are in:
Establishment of systems
· Design economic distribution rules for the digital society
· Experiment with multilayered democratic governance structures
· Establish a legal agreement framework across communities
Operate the economy
· Manage a digital asset portfolio worth tens of thousands of dollars
· Operate a cross-market arbitrage trading network
· Optimize the entire chain of production, distribution, and consumption of resources
Execute diplomacy
· Negotiate treaties with other alliances
· Form and maintain strategic alliances
· Handling conflicts and crises
Cultivate talents
· Train players to become economists, diplomats, and military strategists
· Establish career development pathways (from soldiers to generals, from farmers to governors)
· Create a skill certification system across games
"We are not playing a medieval game," said Victor, YGG's head of LoK, "We are experimenting with modern organizational theory in a medieval context. The blockchain provides the transparency and reliable execution needed for the experiment, while the game offers a low-cost trial-and-error environment."
Aiden's morning reflections
Back to Istanbul. Aiden just finished a secret meeting with representatives of the 'Dragon's Covenant.' The other party agreed to refrain from forming an alliance in exchange for YGG's concessions in future trade agreements.
He submitted the meeting minutes to the federation governance system, which automatically generated a draft of a smart contract: if YGG fails to provide the agreed trade concessions within 60 days, 'Dragon's Covenant' will automatically gain the right to ally with 'Ironblood Crusaders,' and YGG must pay a penalty for breach of contract.
Three years ago, Aiden studied the challenges of supervising the execution of international treaties at university. Now, he is designing self-executing digital treaties in LoK. The essential problem of both is the same: how to ensure compliance without relying on central authority?
"In the real world," Aiden said, "treaties rely on national credibility, international opinion, and potential sanctions. In LoK, treaties are just code, and defaults automatically trigger consequences. It's cleaner, but also harsher—there's no ambiguity, no diplomatic language, no 'consensus-based reinterpretation.'"
Outside, the morning light of the Bosphorus Strait begins to appear. But on the digital continent of LoK, night never falls, wars can break out at any time, diplomacy is always ongoing, and the economy is always flowing.
YGG's castles stand on multiple servers. They are not just game structures but also carriers of institutional experiments, nodes of economic networks, and centers of social organizations.
Within the walls built of pixelated bricks, under the laws written in code, and in a society driven by player consensus, a prototype of a digital civilization is forming. It may forever remain just a game, but the questions it raises are very real: when people can truly own property, establish systems, and form societies in the virtual world, what kind of new order will they create?
YGG is seeking answers, building piece by piece of land, negotiating treaty by treaty, making decisions vote by vote.
When you click 'Establish Kingdom' in LoK, you are entering not just a game. You are stepping into a social experiment, an economic laboratory, a political incubator. And the first large organization you encounter is likely YGG—the guild that is already learning how to govern the digital world.
The horn sounds, a new day begins. On the endless continent of League of Kingdoms, YGG's flag flies atop the castle. It is not just players but also a group of pioneers exploring the possibilities of new types of organizations in the digital age.
Their weapons are not swords and magic, but rather economic models, governance protocols, diplomatic strategies, and data analysis. What they conquer is not land, but the new frontier of human collaboration.
And you, will you join this kingdom? @Yield Guild Games #YGGPlay $YGG
