Blockchain video games – having fun and making money

gadudi — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 16:23:24 +0000

Blockchain has revolutionized money, but its work isn’t finished yet. One of the many applications of the technology is turning the virtual world of gaming into a very real economy that anyone can take part in. DeFi has enabled creative developers to do the impossible – build projects that make trading and investment fun. How? By integrating gaming. After all, what better way is there to make finance instinctive? Human beings have been playing games for as long as there have been human beings, and video gaming is a global industry worth more than $170 billion. Crypto gaming is a bit different to regular video games though. In this article we’ll explain why, identify a few interesting ways to get involved, and explain what an NFT is.

What does NFT mean?

Crypto gaming is strongly connected with NFTs, which stands for non-fungible tokens. NFTs have been in the news a lot lately because people are buying them for huge amounts of money. They are basically a kind of cryptocurrency, but each token is unique. You could call them collector’s items. Imagine if the US mint made a clerical error one day and printed a $10 bill with a picture of Godzilla instead of Alexander Hamilton. But only one. Whoever ended up with it would sell it for a lot more than $10, I’m sure you’d agree. NFTs can be pure tokens, and they can also encode a piece of digital art for whoever holds it to view. Back in March, a digital artist by the name of Beeple (A.K.A. Mike Winkelmann) hit the headlines for selling a piece of digital art for $69 million.

“TORTOR2”, Mike Winklemann. Source: Wikipedia Commons

It may seem strange to some that people pay money to own digital items, but it is a logical progression in the world we live in. Consider that most people in the developed world maintain a digital identity – social media usage figures are in the billions – and spend ever-increasing amounts of time online. The digital world is important to people. So why shouldn’t the satisfaction of ownership that people feel in the physical world not also translate to the digital? When it comes to video games, where collecting items and customizing characters is a principal activity, NFTs allow people to take even more pride in their digital characters, knowing that they are truly unique. More importantly, they also give people a way to make money. Before cryptocurrency, the only real way to make money from gaming was by winning a video game competition or by inventing one. But now, you can sell stuff that you’ve collected! Let’s look at some specific examples.

Axie Infinity

This is a Pokémon-style combat card game with cute, simplistic animations. Each character is unique and accessorized.

Axie Infinity gameplay. Source: youtube.com

It’s created an ecosystem which is not only competitive, but that also rewards users for participating, as well as providing a marketplace where people can buy and sell items and characters. These commodities are actually used in gameplay, which provides even more of an incentive to be involved. Another exciting thing is that the in-game currency (AXIE) can be traded on decentralized exchanges and swapped, another avenue for profit. The game has been going since 2018 and each AXIE is (at the time of writing) worth around $118. The total market cap is over $7 billion.

ENJIN

Enjin – a blockchain gaming platform that works with Atari, Samsung, BMW, Microsoft…need we say more? This is another gaming platform that combines fun with real economics, moving beyond pre-crypto in-game purchases to NFT-based real digital ownership and profit-making opportunities.

“Lost Relics” gameplay. Source: youtube.com

Apart from hosting around 60 games, the platform features protocols that allow you to lend your ENJ tokens and earn interest – smart contracts making foul play impossible – and others that let users create characters and sell them. People buy these things because they are unique, and truly belong to them. Which means, just like in the physical world, that they can get sold on too. As testament to the real value of this digital world, ENJ has been whitelisted by the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association and approved by Samsung for use on its Galaxy 210 smartphone. It even has its own wallet. At the time of writing, ENJ tokens were worth around $1.60, with a market cap of over $92 million.

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Decentraland

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” These words are from the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, written by John Perry Barlow in 1996 and displayed prominently on a sign in the center of Decentraland. Decentraland is perhaps the most ambitious of the three platforms in this article. You enter Decentraland by connecting a crypto wallet and creating a character. You don’t have to pay initially – you can just wander around as a guest. It’s a Minecraft-like digital world, huge and full of things to see and do. The most important thing to note here is that these things are built by other users. So what kind of things can you do in Decentraland?

Explore. Source: youtube.com

Race. Source: youtube.com

Gamble. Source: youtube.com

Mine for gems. Source: youtube.com

These activities cost you MANA (the in-game currency). But you can also buy your own land (parcels of digital space called, quite simply, LAND) and make your own business. You can design your own scene, game, market, and even host a concert.

The crowd is jumpin’. Source: youtube.com

The less entrepreneurial can stake tokens in someone else’s business for a share of their profit. And if you have a successful business, you can offer staking to people to attract footfall. By providing a real economic benefit to people, Decentraland has recreated the physical world in a very profound way, and the proof is in the pudding: real estate in Decentraland is selling for thousands of dollars. At the time of writing, MANA tokens are worth around 70 cents each, with a total value of over $1.4 billion.

Attracting customers. Source: youtube.com

Kirobo and gaming

Kirobo is designing the ultimate DeFi platform, and as such we couldn’t fail to support these exciting tokens. They power real, user-based economies. With the Kirobo P2P Swap Button you can trade ENJ, MANA and AXIE – and your unique NFTs – with other people at your own set prices. With our Undo Button, you can transfer valuable assets with no risk of making a mistake and sending to the wrong address (and a lot of money has been lost this way). You can even swap your tokens for KIRO and earn money passively by staking. To learn more about the tokens we support, and how you can get involved in this brave new world, visit our P2P platform.

הפוסט Blockchain video games – having fun and making money הופיע לראשונה ב-Kirobo - The freedom to control your crypto.

Gaming and crypto: the case of Decentraland

gadudi — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 16:15:23 +0000

Blockchain technology is really versatile. Bitcoin showcased the use of decentralized ledgers as a payment method, and soon other crypto platforms explored further possibilities. Ethereum introduced smart contracts, which allow developers to build almost anything online. All kinds of industries have leveraged the endless potential of this technology to extend their reach. The gaming industry, comprising mostly young, tech-savvy users, thrives in the crypto ecosystem. Although online gaming is seen as a recreational activity, rather than a job, this has been changing in the last few years. Now, games aren’t just games. E-sports are on the rise and becoming well-positioned in the general markets. Paired with crypto, the gaming industry gets an interesting twist. While digital assets from video games have been traded for a long time, crypto has given users access to tokens that they can easily trade for cash in legitimate exchanges. Blockchain offers gaming the same advantages it gives finance: decentralization, ubiquity, and anonymity. Players can be anywhere and trade their tokens anywhere. There is not a central company saying what they can and can’t do or where they can or can’t operate.

Decentraland

Crypto games are in the spotlight now thanks to Axie Infinity, an MMORPG-like game where players breed and battle little monsters called Axies. But one of the first protocols to open the crypto space for gaming was Decentraland, a virtual universe where users own, build, and interact with one another. Decentraland is a sandbox where participants are given full autonomy over their plots. They can host events and parties, build in-site minigames, and charge other users for admission. Users’ characters are fully customizable, which offers another potential source of income – the Decentraland team recently announced that users can now create and sell wearables (items used to customize characters) and graphic designers saw a big opportunity. An artist called Hiroto Kai created garments for Decentraland and made around $20,000 in a few weeks. Crypto fashion, as shown by Kai, can be as profitable as real-world fashion. Big traditional companies, like Coca-Cola, have also joined the ecosystem and sell digital items within it. Atari, the renowned gaming titan, even built a casino in the “Vegas District”, an area dedicated to gambling sites.

MANA token

All these spaces are marketed and users must pay to join, like in any real-world counterpart. The transactions are conducted using MANA, the ERC-20 token used for in-site purchases. On August 23, the Decentraland team announced the launch of Quests, a tool that enables users to set tasks for participants. This offers a lot more options to make revenue. Shortly after, on August 29, on the occasion of Gamer Day, the price of MANA experienced a quick surge and reached $1.08. The price of the token, after a dramatic fall in June, is recovering.

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Kirobo supports MANA

Crypto gaming has become an alternative form of employment, useful for people who, say, live in developing countries, or simply don’t want to hold an office job. Blockchain games are decentralizing access to capital and offering it to people who would otherwise have a hard time earning money. Kirobo understands this, and has integrated MANA into its ecosystem. Users of Decentraland can swap their earnings for other tokens with the P2P Swap Button. This service allows anyone to trade between any of the supported tokens while setting their own token prices. Transactions via the P2P Swap Button are protected using the Undo Button. With this, all your transactions can be reversed in the event that you make a mistake and send the transaction to the wrong address. To make a transaction you must create a password and communicate it to the recipient, or second party. They must then enter the password and only then will the transaction be executed. This means that if you try to send money to the wrong address, the counterparty won’t be able to release the funds, and the transaction can be reversed. Another interesting kind of token are fan tokens. These are cryptocurrencies created by organizations such as football clubs that afford membership perks like discounts and voting rights. We’ll talk about these in more detail in upcoming articles, so stay tuned!

Content retrieved from: https://www.kirobo.io/gaming-and-crypto-the-case-of-decentraland/.

הפוסט Gaming and crypto: the case of Decentraland הופיע לראשונה ב-Kirobo - The freedom to control your crypto.

Gaming - Kirobo - The freedom to control your crypto

Blockchain video games – having fun and making money

What does NFT mean?

Axie Infinity

ENJIN

Try P2P Swap Button

Decentraland

Kirobo and gaming

Gaming and crypto: the case of Decentraland

Decentraland

MANA token

Join Kirobo community chat

Kirobo supports MANA