Introduction

Parallel is a P2E trading card game (TCG) set in a universe where five warring factions of the human race divergently evolve under adverse conditions. The game was officially announced last year and has since raised more than $50M in funding, with their NFTs doing over $225M in volume on secondary markets. You can learn more about the game mechanics and the story here and here.

The subject of this post is to peek under the hood of both Parallel’s PRIME token and NFT ecosystems and how they are interlinked while examining different strategies for players, investors, and speculators to interact with the economy.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

First and foremost, Parallel has a single token circular economy. This deviates from the P2E norm of the two (or more) token economies, consisting of governance and utility tokens. Parallel’s singular token, PRIME, supports both governance and value transfer while also facilitating gameplay and play-to-earn mechanisms. Unlike other P2E economies, there are no burning mechanisms; a fixed supply of 111,111,111,111 tokens are redistributed through participation in the ecosystem, staking, and gameplay.

Layered throughout this circular economy are Parallel NFTs, which serve as conduits for token redistribution mechanisms, token allocation, and ecosystem functionality. The PRIME token is currently being distributed but is non-transferrable. Holders of Parallel NFTs benefit from an initial allocation and can cache (stake) their NFTs to capitalize on continuous emissions. We can broadly separate these assets into four different categories:

Prime Keys: Central to the ecosystem, these keys received a significant amount of allocation in the initial distribution phase. Currently, they can be cached to earn PRIME.
Other Keys: Surge, Manifold, Overclock, and Galaxy keys ha