The final phase of Quest 3 wraps up today, with rewards going to 164,000 participants. People who engaged with Quest 3 chose from nine games on the Sui network and also took advantage of a special promotion to register a domain with SuiNS. The total prize pool amounted to 5 million SUI.

Focused on Sui games, Quest 3 ran from October 12 to November 9, with nine apps participating:

• Arcade Champion: A mobile-first, hybrid casual game pitting hero-based NFTs in epic battles.
  Panzerdogs: An online PvP tank brawler featuring customizable characters and tanks and tradeable items.

• Run Legends: A mobile co-op fitness RPG where players advance by exercising

• The Collection: An AI art platform where players display their best generated art and the community supports their favorites.

• Poetry in Motion: A poetry platform challenging players to assemble a limited set of words into an evocative ode.

• Suilette: A social prediction roulette game combining chance and trends into a rewarding experience.

• DeSui Coin Flip: A deceptively simple coin flip game adding the dimension of wagers to keep it interesting.

• Worlds Beyond: A social creator platform similar to Minecraft and Roblox where players build in an open world.

• Bushi: An action-packed third-person competitive shooter built in Unreal Engine and playable on PC. 

As one of the perks for being a SuiFren holder, Quest 3 also introduced the biggest SuiNS promotion ever. During the first week of Quest 3 alone, over 200,000 .sui names were successfully registered by Questers. For the first time ever, your registered .sui name is shown on the leaderboard.

Highlights

Quest 3 celebrated gaming prowess. Thanks to the community's efforts, gameplay and engagement surged across all the games:

• Arcade Champion: 7.3 million games played

• Panzerdogs: 1.5 million matches battled

• The Collection: 42,000 unique artworks created

• Poetry in Motion: 33,000 poems written

• Run Legends: 57,000 Peak Daily Concurrent Workouts

During this period, Sui reached an impressive 453,000 daily active users (DAU) at peak. Despite traffic growth, the gas price for transactions remained stable at between 750 to 825 MIST, which is evidence that gas fees are highly predictable on the Sui network and not impacted by spikes in demand.

For a more detailed look into the data, check out the Sui Foundation article: Games on Sui Handle Millions of Transactions During Quest 3.

Bonus SUI rewards

As a surprise reward for honest and dedicated players, some Questers will find they received a bigger prize than expected. Bonus rewards were programmatically given to players, showing our appreciation for their participation.  

Of course, rankings are preserved, such that players with better ranks will always be given more tokens than players with lower ranks. Fairness, after all, remains an important component of the Quest ethos.

Maintaining integrity and fairness 

As we conclude Quest 3, it's crucial to address the integrity of the competition. To ensure fairness, we made the difficult decision to disqualify a portion of the reward-eligible wallets due to farming-like behaviors.

Quests are created to distribute rewards fairly as we incentivize interacting with Sui apps and stress testing the network. Farming undermines not just the integrity of the contest but also demoralizes the honest efforts of other participants.

We understand that this decision may be disappointing to some, and it was not made lightly. Our approach was thorough and careful, ensuring that we only took action where there was clear evidence of farming behavior and Sybil wallet creation.

After exploring a wide variety of metrics, we landed on the following violations:

1. Referrals after closing the user interface: On November 5, the user interface to the Quest referrals program was closed. However, a handful of wallets continued to utilize the now-inaccessible referrals program by directly interacting with the smart contract, which is evidence of inorganic activity and violating the rules of Quest 3. We excluded any wallet that utilized the program to be referred after the user interface was closed, as well as any wallet that referred five or more wallets during this period. This action identified 2,359 wallets.

2. Members of massive referral networks: Although we encouraged an active referrals program, some referral networks were just too large to be plausible. For instance, we found a user had likely used a network to refer clones of themselves over 160,000 times. More generally, we looked for referral networks that were over 1,000 members large, where all wallets other than the original  wallet were freshly-created. We believe it is unlikely that such networks grew organically, especially since we conservatively excluded wallets in the top 50 from the analysis (the highly public nature of those wallet addresses may have led to them unwittingly participating in referrals). This action identified 3,105 wallets.

3. Members of a 35-wallet network: Separately, while combing through the data of referral networks, we found one particular irregularity. While most referral networks were small (wallet A refers wallet B) and a handful were huge (wallet A refers B, C, D; and B refers E, F, G; etc), there was one pattern that was uncommonly frequent: a single wallet referring 34 other freshly-created wallets in very rapid succession (often in just a few minutes). This appears to be highly inorganic, given how few referral networks involve a wallet referring 33 or 35 other wallets.

4. Referrers that pay referees: The most traditional form of farming activity is when a wallet pays a set of freshly-created wallets that all then engage in activities. We look for two different types of behaviors. First, we look for cases where a wallet transfers tokens to fifty or more freshly-created wallets that all subsequently get on the leaderboard. Second, we look for cases where a wallet’s referral network sends over one hundred intra-network transfers, again always destined to freshly-created wallets. The former identified 10,964 wallets and the latter identified 9,166 wallets.

5. Cheaters caught by games: Working closely with participating games, we identified with strong certainty the following cheaters:

   • Arcade Champion: 5,248 wallets used cheating software.

   • Run Legends: 5,226 wallets used GPS spoofers.

   • Bushi: 1,746 wallets caught with scripted kill patterns.

   • Worlds Beyond: 702 wallets banned for using cheating software.

   • Additionally, after previously announced penalties were implemented for 100 percent idle sessions, approximately 21,000 wallets dropped below 2,500 points and lost eligibility.

After accounting for these violations, the final number of winners came in at just over 164,000. This number, and the general participation in Quest 3, showed the value and enjoyment provided by Sui games, and gave project builders insight into player patterns and behaviors. 

To claim your rewards, head to the Quests Portal before 11:59 p.m. PT on December 30.

Looking forward to more Quests

As we move forward, we remain dedicated to creating and upholding an environment where all participants can earn SUI prizes in a manner that is respectful, fair, and in line with the values of our community. As stated before, we are committed to continuing Quests and other engagement incentives into the new year. 

Keen eyes may notice some SUI left over from the 5 million Quest 3 pool. Keep a look out this holiday season for more fun to come.  Meanwhile, check out SuiFrens for more fun things to do. Dress up your SuiFrens, find new accessories, and start a family! And if you enjoyed playing any of the games participating in Quest 3, show your support by continuing to play!

Congratulations to all the winners! To those who upheld the spirit of fair play, we extend our deepest gratitude. Your integrity and passion make Quests worthwhile to the entire community. We're excited for future Quests and expanding our contest offerings. Stay tuned to Mysten Labs for more opportunities to engage, compete, and win together.