How to Play and Win: Benji Bananas

Benji Bananas first launched as a mobile game nearly ten years ago. This year, its creators added a blockchain-enabled play-to-earn element. This week, over 70,000 users connected to their dapp to reap their rewards from months of gameplay. Find out below how to play and win Benji Bananas so you can join in the fun.

• What is Benji Bananas?
• How to play Benji Bananas
• How does play-to-earn work in Benji Bananas?
• What is the PRIMATE token?
• What is the Benji Pass?
• Benji Bananas’ meteoric rise

The game is simple, and it’s simply addictive. Swing through trees and don’t touch the floor. Similar to last week’s Game of the Week, Benji Bananas is an “old-fashioned” mobile game with a Web3 facelift. And tens of thousands of players are enjoying it.

What is Benji Bananas?

Benji Bananas launched as a mobile game all the way back in 2013. It was a simple, addictive rope-swinging adventure that users could download to their phones and play for fun. In March 2022, the company behind the game, Animoca Brands, announced the introduction of a play-to-earn mechanic that would take Benji Bananas into the world of Web3.

Built on the Ethereum blockchain and the Polygon Layer-2 sidechain, users can still swing through trees and collect rewards. But now, those rewards are exchangeable for real-world money.

It’s still free to download and play, and users can still enjoy the game without engaging in the play-to-earn element at all. But by introducing a special NFT (more on that later), Animoca Brands has enabled those players who want to play for cryptocurrency to do so.

You can download the game from the Apple App Store or Google Play.

How to play Benji Bananas

It’s a simple game to set up and play. Go to the Benji Bananas site or click on one of the links above. Download the game, choose your character and start gaming.

You swing through the trees on vines and collect bananas along the way. To swing on a vine, you hold down your finger. When you release your finger, your monkey releases its grip and you swing through the air to the next vine. There’s not much more to it than that.

The longer you swing for, the more bananas you collect and the higher your score. As you go through the levels, they get progressively more difficult. It’s very straight-forward and not a game that anyone will get too emotionally invested in. But it is quite fun and it can be quite addictive.

While collecting fruit items from the trees is the main objective of Benji Bananas, players can also unlock upgrades. These include cosmetic items, such as new skins. You can also upgrade your character’s physical abilities and get power-ups such as jetpacks, speed boosts and eagle rides.

How does play-to-earn work in Benji Bananas?

To earn tokens that you can exchange for real money, you need to go through a KYC process that involves connecting to the platform with your Web3 wallet. You can do this from the front page of the website.

Once you’ve connected your wallet, you will then need to verify your membership pass. This is the Benji Pass NFT that enables you to earn PRIMATE tokens through gameplay. You will then need to link your Apple ID or Google Play account to your Web3 wallet.

After this, you need to complete the Blockpass KYC verification process. With everything complete, you’ll be ready to play Benji Bananas for real-life rewards. To earn 

Animoca Brands announced in March that a play-to-earn system was coming to Benji Bananas. Since then, players have accumulated PRIMATE tokens by playing the game with their Benji Pass enabled. Animoca Brands has also held seasonal reward campaigns, where Benji Pass holders receive PRIMATE tokens in airdrops.

Actual earnings through gameplay are based on five factors:

• Distance – this is the furthest single distance a player swings.
• Total Distance – this is the total accumulated distance during a certain timeframe.
• Total Bananas – how many bananas a player accumulates.
• Total Games – number of games played.
• World – this is the highest level a player reaches.

The good news for everyone who’s been building up their PRIMATE tokens during 2022 is that they can now unlock them.

Players need to visit the Claims page on the Benji Bananas website to get their rewards.

What is the PRIMATE token?

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the PRIMATE token launched in April 2022 and is at the core of the Benji Bananas play-to-earn system. It’s an ERC-20 token and is swappable for other fungible tokens in the Animoca Brands ecosystem. These are:

• SAND
• REVV
• TOWER
• GMEE
• QUIDD
• PROS
• BONDLY

There are 2.06 billion total PRIMATE tokens and there are 15 liquidity pool token pairings. The main token pairing is with Yuga Labs’ ApeCoin. ApeCoin, or APE, is issued by the ApeCoin DAO and acts as the main cryptocurrency of the Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse platform Otherside.

The decentralized exchange Sushi provides users with the chance to swap APE and PRIMATE or you can add liquidity to the pool and earn rewards. As always with these things, make sure you carry out research before parting with your cryptocurrency.

What is the Benji Pass?

The Benji Bananas Membership Pass, aka the Benji Pass, is an ERC-1155 token built on Ethereum. This means it is a non-fungible token, or an NFT. Only by holding a Benji Pass can users enjoy the play-to-earn functionality of Benji Bananas.

During the initial sale event, 5,000 first edition Benji Passes were available for purchase. And the only cryptocurrency denomination that buyers can purchase them with was ApeCoin. The accrued APE was then used to seed the liquidity pools that we have today.

You can buy them on the secondary marketplaces such as OpenSea, LooksRare or Rarible.

Benji Bananas’ meteoric rise

As we saw at the top of the article, Benji Bananas has enjoyed a 37,616% increase in users over the past week. This staggering rise results from users connecting their wallets to the Benji Bananas dapp to release their PRIMATE tokens.

Transaction numbers have also increased by 41,063%. Depending on how the Benji Bananas dapp counts on-chain activity, this jump is a result of people connecting to the dapp and confirming and signing smart contract processes. Or it’s the result of users extracting their accrued PRIMATE.   

If we take a look at all historical data for Benji Bananas, we can see one other similar spike in activity. It occurred on April 26th, when the PRIMATE token launched and was dropped to Benji Pass holders.