Planet IX is a popular free to play blockchain game on mobile and desktop allowing gamers to earn passive income. As in most blockchain games, the more time and/or money you invest into this play to earn game, the bigger the rewards become.
This is possible because the developers added a large variation DeFi and staking components with diverse tokenomics. As well as in-game incentives to gather various assets and ‘upgrade’ your inventory. Whether you’re a big or small fish, everyone can earn while playing a game packed with lore they love.
Meet the team behind Planet IX.
Before investing time and money, always beware that there is risk involved. And no returns are ever guaranteed. Stay clear from obvious scams and pump and dump projects and do your own research. Planet IX has launched during the bear market by a software team (Nibiru) based in Sweden, consisting of over 50 employees (including global moderators and community managers). On the day of writing they have published their updated roadmap for 2023 which ensures development is ongoing. On top of that Planet IX is consistently ranking top of the charts on Dappradar in various metrics. This includes active wallets, social rankings, and more.
Types of Players
There are several types of players interested in Planet IX. In this article I’ll try to make it easy for different types of players to get started in the best way possible. This prevents most of the beginners mistakes and the need to ‘start all over’ from scratch.
- Gamers who just want to play blockchain games and learn more about entering the web3 space, such as using Polygon (Ethereum layer 2), setting up a wallet, etc. This article might not be suitable for you, it’s better to start with the basic explainer resources on official Planet IX website and social media pages such as their YouTube channel with tutorials.
- Gamers who mainly want to invest their time without spending much crypto, and try to make a living or side income through web3 blockchain gaming. Earning passive income this way requires you to spend time playing this game daily consistently, so you have to enjoy playing games in general otherwise you might end up getting disappointed.
- Gamers who are willing to invest medium to large amounts of crypto to yield as much staking rewards as possible from a variety of reward pools with $IXT. As they often say; ‘The rich get richer’. You could get started with a couple hundred dollars, but in all honesty this is more targeted towards people who have at least $5K — $10K up to $50K — $100K to freely invest. This is to spread out the investment over various staking and DeFi components in the game, as well as acquiring the ‘holy grail’ in-game assets for max passive income potential. (Never invest more than you can afford to lose)
Minimum Requirements
To get started making passive income with Planet IX, everyone needs some basics set up first. Remember Planet IX is a free to play game, so the following steps are only meant for more advanced players and web3 / crypto enthusiasts who are not new to crypto.
- Set up a fresh wallet in Metamask and create your account on Planet IX. If you are the type of player to invest more time than money, you might want to consider playing with multiple wallets/accounts, however one account is fine as a starter point.
- Send yourself some Matic on the Polygon network (not Ethereum mainnet). You need very little Matic because the fees are so low compared to Ethereum. Also send yourself about $50 worth of ETH or stable coin such as USDT.
- Swap some crypto for $IXT on Quickswap. For now this is the most used exchange as IXT is not listed on Kucoin or Binance. Start with something small, for example $50 worth of IXT. If you want to invest larger amounts later for more passive income just keep following the steps.
Time Extensive Method
Continue following the steps below if you are the type of player who wants to spend time on actually playing the game and following the gameplay as intended. If you want to skip the time intensive ‘labor’, and buy your way in, I’d still recommend reading this to learn about the game. But, you can also skip to ‘The Investor / Degen Method’ down below.
- IXT is the internal token used to purchase and sell PIX. You can either bid on PIX or buy them straight away if someone listed them for sale. There are also regular starter pack sales or cargo drop sales that contain not only PIX, but also in-game assets needed to create facilities. Yes, this is starting to get a bit more complex already. But let’s prevent some beginner mistakes!
- As you can see, there are different tiers of PIX on the map. Legendary PIX are the most expensive, especially if you want to buy a lot of them. So don’t buy PIX randomly on the map. First pick a location on the map where it’s not so crowded with other players. (Go to NetEmpire on the Planet IX website and scroll/zoom on the global map) Once you found a spot, make sure to buy PIX close to each other, and preferably connected to each other. You can buy a Loot Crate on OpenSea that contains 111 PIX for only $4 right now, but those will be spread all over the world. Side benefit however is that loot crates also contain other in-game assets such as bio-mods, so it’s always worth it to buy some. Newly minted PIX will take 1–2 weeks to be generated though, so you won’t be able to put these loot crate PIX on your tiles in Mission Control right away.
- 50 connected PIX form an area which can be staked. However, 10 connected areas form a domain. Legendary domains can be staked for the highest passive income, but you can go for rare, uncommon, common, or outlier too if you wish. This is a bit of a time consuming process, but if you have the money to invest you can also buy territories directly from the marketplace and save you a lot of time.
4. Forming a complete area, zone, or even domain is not necessary from the start. ‘Mission Control’ is where te magic happens! This used to be working with 6 tiles, but the new Tile Contract allows for an additional 12 tiles in Mission Control to be utilized simultaneously. In short it means owning 18 PIX is enough to get started with the basics of the game. On each tile you can place one PIX and it will start generating waste.
5. On each PIX you put on a tile, you can also add additional technology or structures. For example drones increase efficiency and harvesting of waste, and facilities produce Energy.
6. The waste needs to be collected and can be used to burn for other in-game assets such as bio-mods and blueprints or even some easter eggs with more luck. These in-game assets are needed to create facilities and start generating Energy. The more legendary bio-mods you add in the proces of creating a facility, the more chance you have of minting a legendary facility. (Which you need to have if you collect legendary PIX)
7. Not to worry, cause as explained, you can buy your way in. Instead of spending the time on going through all these steps, you can also just purchase legendary facilities on OpenSea directly. At the moment the cheapest Legendary Fusion Core Facility is listed for .13 ETH ($188) each. The lower tier facilities of course sell for much less. So as a player or investor, depending on your time and budget, decide for yourself which tiers make the most sense to work with.
8. Energy can be staked to earn passive income from the largest pool of IXT available. So obviously, the more Energy you can produce with your account(s), the more passive income you’ll make. This isn’t the only way of earning passive income through Planet IX though, so continue reading.
9. Raiding other players will become possible in the near future and adds another fun gaming component, potentially very rewarding.
Following these steps you have a great start in this versatile game. Of course, there’s not one single winning strategy. People have different tactics, preferences, and ways to play the game. Through experience you’ll gain knowledge, and with knowledge comes power. If you’re really keen on getting familiar with all the in-game assets, technology, tokenomics, and other relevant information be sure to read the extensive whitepaper.
The Investor / Degen Method
Now here’s the shortcut for investors with bigger budgets to work with. There’s essential NFTs and in-game assets to purchase for different reasons. The holy grail pieces are so called ‘genesis’ NFTs. These consist of 9 different corporations inside the Planet IX ecosystem. Not all of them are out yet. For example this week there was a new Genesis mint for the Global Waste System (GWS) corporation. Genesis pieces get lifetime airdrops related both to their corporation, as well as in-game assets relevant to every player. The y_ genesis corporation owners all got airdropped a Night Drone which is the rarest drone at the moment with only a 1,001 supply whereas the Genesis Drone has a supply of 10,000 total. It almost pays itself back to purchase the y_ genesis with just one airdrop so far. (Though costs to acquire Genesis NFTs may go up in price drastically as adoption of the game grows)
Airdrops can vary from free $IXT, raffle tickets for landmarks (we’ll cover landmarks in a bit), blueprints, bio-mods, and more. Lucky Cat Genesis was the first Genesis to be released, but the Pinball Genesis is the most rare one with a supply of 501. All other genesis pieces have a supply of 1,001 pieces. Depending on budget, get at least one of each Genesis.
Genesis and Corporation NFTs.
Pinball Genesis currently sell for a little over 1 ETH ($1400), whereas Lucky Cat Genesis sells for about .19 ETH. The Y_ Genesis (.078 ETH) and Newlands Genesis (.049 ETH) go a bit cheaper for now. The reason Pinball Genesis are the most desirable is because of their limited supply and superior airdrops and in-game benefits, since the pinballs originate from Planet IX merging with Arcade NFTs which was a separate successful NFT project.
Expect to spent around 2 ETH (at the time of writing) to acquire all the different Genesis Pieces and benefit from ongoing free airdrops and claims. For example the Pinballs are eligible to claim 500 IXT each for the next 3 upcoming quarters, as well as free claims for all the upcoming Genesis corporation NFTs that have not been released yet.
Gold Badge
Another important asset if you don’t purchase a pinball is the Gold Badge NFT. These usually guarantee whitelist for new Genesis NFTs, along with other benefits. The cheapest Gold Badge currently available sells for $400 in Matic. Do note, you don’t really need this asset if you go for the Pinball instead.
Blueprints, Bio-mods, etc.
If you prefer to create your own facilities instead of purchasing them directly from the Planet IX — Assets collection on OpenSea, you will need to buy blueprints, bio-mods, and generate waste through Mission Control. Do note that this is a luck based strategy, because only around 1% of facilities created will be Legendary.
Facilities
As mentioned before, facilities generate Energy if you stake them on your tiles in Mission Control. The highest tier generates energy more efficiently, which is the Legendary Fusion Core. A single Legendary Facility currently sells for 0.135 ETH ($189). You could stake up to 18 facilities with one account in Mission Control with 18 tiles occupied. So this would be another 2 ETH-ish investment, if you want to save time and bypass the creation of your own facilities. Since there’s only a 1% drop chance for Legendary, it makes sense.
Energy Staking
Now what to do with all this Energy that is being generated? Stake it! The Energy Staking pool is the largest pool that Planet IX has available to their players. Through the staking dashboard you can see .0348 IXT is generated daily per Energy staked. It will take some time to generate enough Energy to see your rewards increase to levels you are satisfied with. Additionally you can also purchase Energy on OpenSea (.11 USDC per Energy) and speed up the process a bit. It’s simple to calculate how many weeks or months it would take to be profitable, given the market price of IXT is steady or increases. The pool size of IXT for staking Energy varies from time to time as well, depending on how many facilities players mint all combined.
Territory Staking
Just like other parts of the blockchain game, you can also bypass time consuming processes when it comes to staking territories. In the internal marketplace you can place offers on territories from other players, participate in auctions, or purchase for the price they are listed at. You can stake any type of territory in any tier and size. However, the Legendary Domains yield the most rewards and are therefor the hardest to create or purchase. By staking territories you will earn passive income in the form of IXT as well.
‘25% of all revenue generated from GG Pack & Cargo drop sales flows back into the Planet IX blockchain games economy in the form of Territory staking reward pools. The accumulated IXT will then be distributed to players who have staked their Territory NFTs. We recently announced that we will add 500k to the staking pool which will also follow the normal split’, — explained a Planet IX spokesperson.
Landmark Staking
Landmarks are another interesting aspect of the blockchain game. Each landmark has an earning diameter, and the stakers of the specific landmark shares will be awarded the full marketplace fee (5% of the value of each trade) that occurs within this radius. Below you see an example of 29 staked 501 Elite Gamer Hub Landmark (this was part of a free claim to Pinball holders as well). It’s the most rare landmark with a big earning radius, and the cheapest listed right now is .34 ETH. As you can see, the Genesis Pinballs truly get value for their money just like other Genesis pieces. But there are about 200 different Landmarks you can purchase directly on OpenSea if you don’t want to purchase the elite one. All with their own radius, locations, and other important metadata that determines their staking rewards. Another way to potentially get your hands on Landmarks is by participating in so called ‘Lucky Cat Raffles’ with raffle tickets from opening Loot Crates.
IXT Staking
If you’re intested in staking IXT, there’s a lot of APY waiting for you. You can choose to stake IXT for 12 months with the highest APY, 6 months, 3 months, and even 1 month. For reference; to purchase 100K of $IXT you’ll need about $30K in ETH/BTC or stables at the moment, as the current price of IXT sits around $0.30 with a marketcap of only $24mm and a total supply of 153,000,000. The token is ranked #579 on Coingecko, so if you believe in web3 gaming, in Planet IX, and the likelihood of the markets recovering as we get closer to the next Bitcoin halving and a new cycle, this might be a bet you’re willing to take.
Staking your IXT for 12 months will get you a current APY of 29.07%, meaning in the example of 100K IXT you’ll have around 130K IXT after 12 months with the current APY.
LP Staking
Liquidity providers play an important role in the availability and stability of IXT and the ecosystem. Hence, liquidity providers can stake their LP tokens for additional rewards in IXT as well. As you can see below, the APY for LP Staking is very high right now with 81% APY for the USDT/IXT pair. And 54% APY for the MATIC/IXT pair. As more liquidity gets added the APY will lower, so it seems first movers here willing to take the risk will reap the benefits. So whether you provide $1K, $100K, or $1MM in liquidity, there’s incentives for investors of all sizes to participate in LP Staking.
As always though, DYOR and don’t invest more than you can afford to lose. Nothing in this article is any form of investment advice, it’s only mentioning the possible ways of earning passive income through Planet IX.
Future Releases
There’s a lot of developments going on with Planet IX which is a positive and reassuring sign. In the upcoming quarters of 2023 the marketplace will be updated to a V2 and even V3 version. This will open up even more opportunities for players and investors of this popular blockchain game. For example it will be made easier to trade territories, PIX, and also external collections will be supported internally such as Arcade NFTs.
Besides marketplace improvements and support for multi-chain assets, Planet IX is also getting close to releasing their first ever avatar/PFP collection for players, according to their newly released roadmap today.
Esports in web3 gaming
Up next is new in-game esports gameplay allowing for PvP blockchain gaming, tournaments, instant payouts, and additional ways of passive income while playing games you love. They are starting with the Lucky Cat Classics, and more games will be developed over time. There’s not much information revealed yet, but it entails the Arena smart contract technology that is available to Planet IX now since the merge with Arcade NFTs.
Alongside with this merge and launching of arena esports games, all Arcade assets will become stakeable inside Planet IX too. This means all Pinballs, but also other Arcade NFT drops such as the classic arcades, ToadRunnerz, and MetaDragonz. (All on Ethereum mainnet and available on OpenSea) They will each earn passive IXT from various pool sizes, with the Pinballs most likely yielding by far the most.
