Crypto Gaming Round-up #1
Over the last several months, we have been spending more and more time looking at crypto gaming. This has been driven by a few things, from performance and valuations to capital flows and usage. We thought it might be interesting to kick off a weekly (we will try) highlight reel for events in crypto gaming. Let us know what you think of the format!
Sky Mavis updates
Sky Mavis, the studio behind Axie Infinity, made a few announcements last week.
First, they kicked off the community builder program, designed to fund community projects building on top of Axie and Ronin. The minimum grant is $5,000, and the maximum is 5,000 AXS which, at current market prices, is around $250,000. Sky Mavis will also support engineering, game design, monetisation, etc. The projects can monetise but have to use SLP or AXS for in-game currency and either burn at least 10% of revenue or channel it to the AXS treasury. This is quite interesting, and we are excited to see Sky Mavis opening up the Axie ecosystem and allowing UGC.
Second, the team introduced the Axie release feature, available for 30 days. During this period, players can release their Axies and receive some land cosmetic items in return. To date, about 80,000 Axies have been released, temporarily driving floor price from 0.01E to 0.02E.
Mechanism Capital Launches $100m P2E Gaming Fund
Mechanism Capital is launching a $100 million play-to-earn fund, Mechanism Play. The fund will focus strictly on gaming investments and working with gaming studios on game development. The firm also announced that Steve Cho will lead the fund. Steve was previously a games business manager for Apple App Store. Mechanism previously invested in Star Atlas, Ember Sword and Yield Guild, among others.
M0x launches M0xchain Hackathon 2022
M0x is a new blockchain (a side chain, to be exact) built specifically for gaming. It aims to abstract the complexity of integrating blockchain technology by handling different aspects of the game economy. It will also offer a suite of tools for developers (wallet, etc.) and a full pack of SDKs and APIs.
The company’s hackathon will take place on February 18th, with applications open as of last week. The prize purse is unknown, but M0x promises a range of awards and benefits for the winners.
Metaverse Avenue: NFT-based Advertising Project
Metaverse Avenue is a project on Solana that allows you to buy advertising billboards as an NFT, which can then be rented out for income. The presale goes live on January 26th, with the public sale on January 27th.
NFT Gaming Sales are Holding Up
Weekly sales of gaming NFTs are holding up, despite the broader crypto sell-off. Data from the Block actually shows a pick up in activity last week.
A recent report from DappRadar also shows that China is now a leader in terms of traffic for gaming apps. At the end of December, China had 204,000 users, up 166% from November. The report contains a lot of interesting data showing a somewhat reduced sensitivity of NFTs and gaming (usage) to the price action.
Other news
Axie Infinity announces the second round of Axie Esports grants
Animoca Brands raised roughly $360m at over $5bn valuation
YGG’s Indian subDAO, IndiGG, raised $6M with participation from Sequoia India, Lightspeed, etc.
Microsoft buys game maker Activision Blizzard for about $70 billion
nCore Games raised $10 million led by Animoca Brands and Galaxy
Podcast of the week
Ryan “Fwiz” Wyatt, Head of Youtube Gaming, on Delphi Digital
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