XR One Hero Node Sale Opens October 9th on Samurai Starter

es, the developer of officially-licensed web2 games such as Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom, and Doctor Who: The Edge of Time, is opening up an XR One Hero Node sale on October 9th at 12:00 UTC for its gaming-centric, Arbitrum-powered layer 3 Orbit network on the Samurai Starter launchpad.

Saltwater Games, the studio behind officially-licensed web2 games such as Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom, and Doctor Who: The Edge of Time, is kicking off an XR One Hero Node sale on October 9th at 12:00 UTC for its gaming-centric, Arbitrum-powered layer 3 Orbit network on the Samurai Starter launchpad.

Announced in June this year, XR One is a network that aims to provide a decentralized infrastructure for web3 games, boasting a high throughput of 4000 transactions per second (TPS) and a low latency of 60 milliseconds (ms). Animoca Brands notably participated in the network’s seed SAFT round, and the network’s core token $XR is set to airdrop to node owners and participants.

What Are XR One Hero Nodes?

Hero Nodes are validators designed to passively reward you with $XR tokens for securing the XR One network by verifying transactions. By running this node, you will earn a share of the tokens from prize pools for each epoch, with 15% of the token’s total supply reserved for these reward pools. Next to that allocation, node operators also earn from transaction fees generated from activity on dApps and web3 games on the network. There is a possibility that you will gain governance rights as your reputation grows in the network thanks to continuously operating a node. Holders can also look forward to “constant airdrops” from various projects that build on this network, according to official documentation.

Becoming a node owner will also provide you access to the upcoming $XR airdrop, the network’s core token that Animoca Brands invested in through a seed SAFT round in June this year. The airdrop is planned for Q4 this year, with node owners set to get a 25% share alongside a rewards multiplier you can get by doing campaign quests on the official website. Signing up now with your email address will let you complete a wide variety of social and gameplay-based quests to earn TXR that will be converted into $XR this Q4. Some of the available missions revolve around downloading and playing the Steam demo of free to play aerial motorsports game Celeros.

Node Utility

Next to securing the network that is focused on web3 PvP games, node operators can expect to have more roles they can take on in the future for even more rewards. These include providing computational power for GPU and AI processing to make it possible to deliver advanced graphics rendering and complex AI behaviors. By doing so, you get demand-driven rewards, meaning that the more power is demanded and the more resources you can provide to help fulfill that demand, the bigger your earnings could be. Offering these services will make blockchain games on this network more accessible to a wider gaming audience while also potentially making it easier for developers to deliver more intricate, high-quality web3 gaming experiences with on-chain transactions.

In order to place decentralization at the core of this node-based network, the team is adopting a fractionalized approach in which eligible participants can become owners of fractional nodes instead of whole nodes.

Fractionalized Node Distribution

Running a node will require owning a Hero Node License NFT. According to the roadmap, in order to make these NFTs more ‘affordable’ to gamers and not just whales, Saltwater Labs, the innovation division of Saltwater Games, is working with various gaming guilds to form a fractionalization solution, as instructed by the XR Foundation. Doing it this way will ensure decentralization of the network’s infrastructure layer as a diverse range of users get nodes distributed from Q4 2024 to mid-2025. Web3 gaming guilds, as well as communities and projects in general focused on gaming and AI can team up with XR One to become a part of this Node Distribution phase. Doing so means becoming eligible to receive whitelist access for buying nodes.

Fractionalized node distribution can come with a variety of benefits over owning whole nodes, according to this page in the official GitBook.

With fractional nodes, the team claims that there is a lower entry price point over whole nodes while still letting you get the same number of rewards as you would by owning a complete node. While whole nodes are focused on marketing towards investors, the studio claims that fractional nodes are designed with gaming guild members in mind, as well as for users in countries with lower incomes. Fractional nodes do come with a 10% fee though that is taken from rewards before they are distributed to operators. Operating a fractional node however is simple, as everything is said to be taken care of behind the scenes to ensure a seamless and accessible experience instead of having to locally run a full node license.

You can check out the prices across 21 tiers in the image below, which make up a total supply of 15,000. Whether these numbers represent a lower entry price point over other node sales, well, that’s up to you to decide. For comparison, Gala Games