Top 3 Metaverse Crypto Gaming Projects
My Top Pick: 3 Metaverse projects and where are they heading?
Facebook’s announcement of Metaverse has forced people to dive deep into the digital universe and the current market of NFTs. Blockchain gaming companies raised $476 million over the first half of 2021. Since this is a new industry, gaming coins could have serious growth potential. With Zen Z trying to put more money into the digital world, even in some cases gifting their dear ones NFTS and Virtual Lands (Source: CNBC) as Holiday gifts, it would be interesting to see where these projects are heading to.
Broadly the the Metaverse is a culmination of virtual reality, augmented reality and the internet. In essence, the concept is already introduced by popular video games like Roblox, Animal Crossing and Animal Crossing. Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash” first coined the name “Metaverse” where a pair of delivery drivers escape to the world of the metaverse to save themselves from a capitalist dystopia.
Disclaimer: Before I proceed further, please know that I am not a Financial Advisor. I am a tech curiosist (if there’s any title like that) who is generally interested about blockchain and enthusiastically follows latest happening in the crypto world.
The current state of crypto gaming
From sci-fi movies(Ready Player One) to games, players and enthusiasts have long portrayed Digital world or Metaverse as a crossroad of physical and virtual worlds, which is centered around a fully functioning economy, and allows users to travel through its different place and spaces with relative ease. By purchasing or collecting digital ammunitions and skins the avatars give wings to the imagination of the players to move or fly defying the physics.
In the games like Fortnite, thousands of people gather and interact with each other with no limits within the same digital universe at the same time. Crypto gaming is still at the nascent stage in terms of player’s involvement and spending. The play-to-learn model which is followed by almost all the games are typical of a nascent stage like apps for newbies. A very simple analogy in this case would be to check how our email systems are changing on a daily basis. There was a time when emails were used for communicating. Now that we are already in Web3.0, people’s expectations has gone beyond merely a sending email to managing different aspect of communications like organizing and setting up meeting with the same interface.
How much one can earn in crypto gaming (not by investing, just by playing)?
The very popular game AXS Infinity (which is one of the largest gaming cryptos to play, valued at $138 at the time of writing), which is also a Pokemon style game, to be able to earn in this game, you’ll need to earn SLPs(Smooth Love Potions, cool name, isn’t it!). Now, investment wise, the game’s objective is to build up a team of three Axies and use them in a battle against either computer-controlled enemies or other real-life players. Anyway, to earn the tokens, you can either complete your daily quest or participate in an Adventures or participate in an Arena battles, using your energy, which is minted daily. Since each Axie is a NFT, it can be bought and sold on the Axie Marketplace. So the more this game becomes popular, the more value it will generate in the marketplace (and for people who are not interested in the game but here, just to make money).
Often times the players start playing a game to have fun with it and make some money too but then they find it boring and move on. Often times the communities try to hack the system using home-made bots, creating duplicate accounts etc. thus making the counting of actual number of real users very difficult.
What to look for in a potential crypto gaming project?
According to Cryptorank, the average ROI, in USD, in GameFi and Seedify is 8900% and 7298%, respectively which is mind blowing. You will not find this kind of returns in any of the current financial ecosystem.
The rule of thumb is to have these 3 aspects in mind while investing:
- Ownership: Whether or not the crypto gaming project has proven history of ownership and players
- Security: Whether or not the assets secured with blockchain are immutable, and they cannot be edited or changed
- Decentralization: If the NFTs mined through the game are easily available to all players to view and use
3 projects I am excited about (And did some research too)
After doing research for a month or so, I found these 3 gaming projects that were respectable and could really benefit from the Metaverse effect.
Quick disclaimer again, that I’m not involved in any of these tokens or projects and you should do your own research too. I will just provide some info that if you do want to see:
- Engine Coin (ENJ): Enjin Coin is a different way of investing in gaming coins. It’s USP is, it’s not tied to one specific blockchain game. Instead, Enjin Coin is made to work with a variety of different games.
The company behind this cryptocurrency, Enjin, offers SDKs and the developers can use these kits to create digital assets, such as in-game currencies or special items, for their blockchain games. Players can use Enjin’s wallet to store their inventory for games connected to Enjin’s platform.
When developers make digital assets on Enjin, they must lock Enjin Coin into a smart contract. This ensures that assets on Enjin have real-world value. In 2020, it was announced that Minecraft servers and ENJ have an integration where you can create a Minecraft server that will deliver Ethereum based assets to the players through ENJ craft plug-in. So Minecraft can now actually support cryptocurrency where it couldn’t before.
2. SANDBOX (SAND): The Sandbox is a decentralized platform where players create their own digital universe using visual scripting tools (no prior coding knowledge required). Players make games and store assets on LAND, The Sandbox’s digital real estate.
The Sandbox is powered by SAND tokens. Players can use these tokens for in-game transactions, such as buying equipment and LAND. There are a limited number of LAND plots available. Only 166,464 will exist, and some have sold for more than $50,000.
Several celebrities, including Snoop Dogg and Deadmau5, have also gotten involved with The Sandbox and set up their own virtual estates.
DappRadar reports that more than 100,000 worlds are created on The Sandbox every day. This crypto game’s token has seen several large price movements in 2021, including gains of more than 3,000%.
3. Decentraland (MANA): Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Decentraland is one of the first fully decentralized virtual worlds where you can purchase virtual plots of land and build your own environments such as theme parks or casinos using NFTs.
Decentraland has already sold more than 28 million dollars worth of virtual land (an individual piece of land selling for a whopping $180000! ). In this game, the cheapest one that I could found was worth $10,000, phew!.
The team of Decentraland is comprised of co-founders such as Ariel Meilich who’s teamed up with biggies in the industries such as Sam Bankman (the founder of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange) and celebrities like Ashton Kutcher to raise funding and develop it even further.
So, that’s all folks for now! This is an exciting time to get into the world of Metaverse and Cryptos and NFTs. There are so many things to learn and research! If you are a creative person, this is your time to shine!
Disclaimer, once more: Although the title of this article is to get your attention, I highly recommend that you do your own research.
If you are already into crypto-gaming, I would like to listen to your take! If you like reading this article consider sharing this article! And if you just want to say hi, feel free to hit me on Linkedin.
