Earn money just by taking pictures! The Potential of “SNPIT,” Developed by a Japanese, “Will Change the World of Web3-Based Games

Have you ever heard of a game where you can earn money just by using your smartphone and taking pictures as you have in the past?

This year, GALLUSYS (based in Shinjuku-ku (Tokyo), Japan, President Toshiyuki Otsuka) developed a Web3-based game called “SNPIT (Snap-it),” a type of NFT game (blockchain game) in which users take pictures using an NFT camera, a chargeable item in the game, and then compete with other users to take the pictures. The game allows users to earn tokens (virtual currency) by competing against each other to take photos with the NFT camera, which is a charged item in the game.

The NFT game is called ‘Play to Earn’ and is an application that ‘earns by playing,’ but ‘SNPIT’ is called ‘Snap to Earn’ and is a new application that ‘earns by taking pictures. In other words, even people who are not good at games and the elderly can participate.

Japan has lost out to the rest of the world in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, but with the advent of “SNPIT,” Japan is now on the verge of becoming a W eb3 Web1.0 and Web2.0, but with the advent of SNPIT, Japan may be able to lead the world in Web3.0. It is no exaggeration to say that it is such a groundbreaking invention.

This may not sound like much to the average reader, but it seems that users are very excited about it.

In October, the company started selling NFT cameras for approximately 15,000 yen each in a limited quantity of 10,000 units, which sold out in just 20 hours. Since they can only be obtained through secondary distribution from now on, they have released a free test version, and the number of users is increasing rapidly. So what exactly is the game?

To begin with, you purchase one NFT camera for 15,000 yen, and the performance of this camera is also a gacha, which is hit or miss. Most cameras start out with a poor lens and no ability to focus. However, if you are lucky, there is a 3% chance that you will get a high performance camera. So there will be users who purchase two or three cameras from the beginning. Currently, there are about 2,000 regular users,” said Otsuka, the developer’s president.

Even if you get a camera, you cannot suddenly join the game. First, they need to take many pictures to earn tokens and acquire items such as a high-performance lens and focusing function.

Once you get to a certain point in your camera’s performance, you can participate in games (battles). When you upload your own photos to the game screen, they will be matched on their own, and users who have purchased an NFT camera can vote on which photo they like better on a one-on-one basis. The first person to get 10 votes wins and gets a token. The more consecutive wins, the more tokens you can earn at one time.

The photos cannot have account names, titles, or comments. They cannot be edited or manipulated in any way. What is the reason for this?

“The account name makes the game more about the photographer and his/her ‘guess’ rather than the photo, so we wanted to make it a simpler game where players compete purely on the basis of the ‘photo’. However, in order to start this game, there are some complicated procedures unique to NFT games, such as creating a dedicated account, wallet, and installing an application, but the game itself is just “take a picture and submit it to the battle. That’s all there is to it. With just this one thing, you can safely increase your assets,” says President Otsuka.

In fact, President Otsuka is also the developer of “pictier,” a non-verbal photo application released in March 2009.

Pictier” is a photo-sharing application that can be enjoyed without language. When a photo taken in a city is tagged and posted on the pictier map, another person can take a photo at a later date with the same angle of view using the previous photo’s transparency feature.

The concept of this application is to “weave time together with various users” by overlapping photos with photos taken in the same place and at the same angle of view, but by overlapping photos taken by different people, at different times, and with different thoughts.

Piktia has been a big hit, with more than 200,000 downloads to date. SNPIT” can be considered a derivative game app of “Piktia. We asked the company about the purpose of development.

Web 1.0 was a read-only world, where anyone in the world could access and pick up information from anywhere in the world, while Web 2.0 is a read-write world, where anyone can become a transmitter, such as on TikTok and YouTube. However, despite the fact that the originator is the user and is adding value, all profits and data ownership are held by a central administrator. The center has been in the grip of the center, and the center has been monopolizing the profits.

In contrast, Web3 is a counterculture to those, a world where ‘you know who owns the data = you can transfer the data’. In other words, a world where data is managed and held by individuals, not by the center. You can own your own valuable data. If you use that valuable data and use SNPIT, you are the one who is increasing its value, and you will be rewarded for your contribution. That’s the kind of system I wanted to create.”

Even so, there is a strong image that there are a lot of problems, such as “Are virtual currencies such as Bitcoin really safe?” and the NFT game “STEPN,” which became very popular last year, in which you could earn money just by walking, eventually faded away.

Certainly, when there was a boom in blockchain, bitcoin and other virtual currency became an excellent material for scammers. There are many people who have been victimized. As a result, people decided to stay out of the dubiousness and complications, and the pie is still not expanding.

And one of the problems is that we have yet to find a sustainable system. In “STEPN,” the users were turning over money to each other, so there was a noticeable difference between those who earned money and those who didn’t, and it didn’t work out. Therefore, I think that “SNPIT” can break the situation of users turning money over to each other by bringing in money from outside through advertisements and other means. We believe that this is the best way to break the situation where users are spending money on each other.

The most important thing is how to guarantee the safety and security of the tokens, and next year we will list the tokens on overseas markets. This will create market value for the tokens. We never want a bubble. But I hope that by using it, users will be able to earn even a few tens of thousands of yen a month. I hope it will enrich people’s lives just a little bit.”

I wonder if it is really possible to earn money just by casually taking a picture of a walking dog taken by a child or an elderly person’s carefully nurtured garden plants and trees with a smartphone and participating in a game. …… If such a world becomes a reality, it would certainly change not only Web3 but also our lives.