Blockchain and play-to-earn games are rapidly becoming some of the most lucrative aspects of the crypto world. Players of these games get rewarded for partaking in their favorite activities while contributing to the platform’s success story. For instance, Sky Mavis – the team behind Axie Infinity – had generated over $400 million from the game by August 2021. According to Newswagg’s research, the crypto gaming industry’s revenue hit $321 million in 2020.
Notwithstanding the play-to-earn industry’s impressive numbers, there is an ongoing shift from play-to-earn to the new move-to-earn. Sometimes considered an upgrade to the former, move-to-earn also offers rewards to players with more focus on fitness. Move-to-earn games help improve player well-being by introducing physical movement and general fitness into gameplay. The move-to-earn concept is fantastic for people who are more fitness-focused and are not as ardent as the average video gamer.
One such example is dotmoovs ($MOOV), where active participants can easily monetize their time and gameplay. To take part, players only need a smartphone camera to display their sports skills and compete with other players.
What is dotmoovs ($MOOV)?
dotmoovs is a blockchain-based competitive sports platform in the metaverse. It is a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence system that analyzes videos of players performing sporting activities and rewards winners using its proprietary MOOV tokens.
dotmoovs has incorporated blockchain tech, decentralized finance (DeFi), and AI technology into one platform through its peer-to-peer and AI-driven features. In the dotmoovs metaverse, two people can compete regardless of location, receive unbiased judgment, and earn rewards. The platform decides scores using an AI-driven arbitration engine that detects the positions of each player’s body and limbs, along with a scoring algorithm that measures the player’s skill. According to a recent metaverse ranking, dotmoovs is one of 10 metaverse platforms most likely to explode in 2022. The list also features popular names like Decentraland ($MANA) and Axie Infinity ($AXS).
The More You Move, The More You Earn
dotmoovs features a freestyle football section that is already live. Players must use the platform’s mobile application to capture physical body movements. The application uses advanced computer vision algorithms and AI-driven limb tracking to accurately capture and store movements. The player with the highest score wins the round and receives $MOOV tokens and other in-game rewards.
One of the main attractions of dotmoovs is its AI-powered and unbiased scoring system. In many cases, scores and ratings are usually prone to subjective appraisals and human biases. However, each dotmoovs player gets a fair chance to participate and receive objective scores and judgment. The more skilful a player is, the more their earning power.
How Does dotmoovs Scoring Work?
Participants trying out the freestyle football section should note the following factors considered for scoring players:
Number of ball juggles for different body parts according to difficulty
Creativity applied to ball juggles
Speed
Rhythm
Ball height in each juggle
Originality (compared to previous attempts)
Absence of handball or ground touch fouls
dotmoovs Growth and Adoption for Blockchain
The dotmoovs platform contributes to the general growth and development of the blockchain and crypto ecosystem via its AI-based infrastructure. The blockchain industry is currently enjoying increased adoption, especially with decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens (NFT). dotmoovs is pooling all parts of the ecosystem for its unique product, and crowning its creation with artificial intelligence. The platform is now set to partake in the global NFT market that generated $23 billion in trading volume in 2021.
Another major dotmoovs contribution is its attraction to the sports community. Through the platform, sports lovers, players and spectators alike, can join the blockchain ecosystem and earn on dotmoovs by simply participating in their preferred and natural habitat.
Several factors serve as catalysts to increased adoption of move-to-earn platforms. For instance, people now have a stronger need for physical activities as worldwide lockdowns are ending. As winter wraps up and the weather becomes warmer, dotmoovs provides the perfect platform for users to get fit, enjoy the weather, and also earn.
Investors are also recognizing the potential impact of move-to-earn platforms and are buying in. In the past few months, a few projects have raised funds from investors who have identified these trends and want a piece of the action before adoption skyrockets.
Another factor in favor of dotmoovs and move-to-earn is the low entry barrier. Users find move-to-earn platforms easier to navigate than play-to-earn for multiple reasons. Firstly, effective participation on play-to-earn platforms requires knowledge of the game. There is also the financial barrier as many of these games charge an entry or starting fee. On dotmoovs, all you need is to know how to move.
$MOOV Utility Token
The $MOOV token is dotmoovs’ native utility asset. The platform uses this asset to create an environment free from currency value constraints, democratizing access by providing all players with a level playing field. All dotmoovs transactions require $MOOV tokens.
$MOOV Token Use Cases
Players can use $MOOV to:
Buy dotmoovs NFTs
Players who own dotmoovs NFTs can participate in challenges to earn $MOOV and rent the NFTs to other players. Players can also earn $MOOV tokens on challenges won with rented NFTs.
Access-Challenge Mode
Users need $MOOV tokens to play in the platform’s Challenge Mode. Players who win 1 vs. 1 games or tournament challenges will also earn more tokens.
Stake In Sports Mining
Users can multiply their tokens and earn rewardsby staking $MOOV using the dotmoovs Sports Mining staking feature.
dotmoovs is set to capture interested sportsmen and sportswomen by introducing them to the growing blockchain ecosystem. Since people only need a camera to participate, players all over the world can enjoy simple dancing and sporting activities and easily earn while at it.
Dotmoovs exclusive models
Dotmoovs creates exclusive models for their app, and have so far already created models for names such as Snoop Dogg, Floyd Mayweather, and Neymar. Now, Dotmoovs will be partnering with Leandro Lopes, an internationally successful handmade footwear and apparel designer from Portugal, to design an exclusive NFT sneaker for use in the app.
Dance to Earn
dootmoovs has recently launched their Dance to Earn feature on their app. Players can have a maximum of 3 free practices of the dance moves per day to get themselves ready for peer-to-peer and challenge mode! In these modes, you can either challenge your friends or find a random challenger across the globe to see who is the better dancer. To join, you will need to choose how much $MOOV you would like to invest (up to 500 $MOOV per challenge). Win the challenge and you will win more $MOOV.
It is anticipated that more types of dance challenges would be available soon, as well as a tournament mode.
dotmoovs is a sports application with incredible competitions held in the metaverse. Currently, there are football competitions with dance competitions in the works.
Where can I download dotmoovs?
The dotmoovs application is available for download on both the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store
What is the dootmoovs token?
dotmoovs has its own native token- $MOOV. All transactions inside the app happen in $MOOV. For example, you would need $MOOV to participate in peer-to-peer or tournament challenges. Winners of these challenges can earn more $MOOV.
Can you rent NFTs in dotmoovs?
dotmoovs has an NFT rental program so you can try out and participate in dotmoovs with minimal initial cost.
One major question all new cryptocurrency investors ask is how to actually spend their cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately, cryptocurrency is just not as widely accepted as fiat currencies. Cryptocurrencies are also subject to huge price fluctuations and volatility. Therefore, to “lock in” the price of your cryptocurrencies and as a springboard to cashing out crypto to fiat, many have converted their cryptocurrencies to stablecoins instead. This allows one to keep their dollar-pegged coins in exchanges or cold/hot wallets, so when the moment to jump back into the bull run comes, they can do so within minutes without having to deal with fiat on-ramps. Alternatively, to easily convert their stablecoins to fiat currencies for spending.
Most have considered stablecoins to be a safe means of preserving their capital without experiencing volatility and having to leave the crypto ecosystem. After all, they’re… stable, right?
In most cases, they have been, but the most recent collapse of one of the largest and well-respected stablecoins, terraUSD (UST), and other less known ones, like neutrino USD (USDN) and DEI, has led people to question the stability of all stablecoins. But is this warranted? Isn’t there a bit more nuance to the mechanisms by which a coin retains its dollar or other fiat currency peg, each with their own risks and advantages?
Although a seemingly straightforward idea, stablecoins can be quite tricky to unpack and analyze, especially when talking about non-collateralized algorithmic stablecoins, which sound too good to be true, and in some cases, are. With this in mind, let’s take a look at stablecoins, what kinds are out there, how well they are doing, and what makes them tick.
Check out our latest video- Stablecoins: Are they safe? ($UST, $USDT, $USDC, $BUSD)
Stablecoins: Are they safe? ($UST, $USDT, $USDC, $BUSD)
Stablecoins – What Are They and How Are They Different?
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged 1:1 to the value of a fiat currency, meaning that, for example, every 1 USDT (USD Tether, the biggest market cap stablecoin) is worth 1 US Dollar. There are numerous stablecoins in circulation, with different coins having different mechanisms for collateralizing their stablecoins.
The most commonly used feature to categorize stablecoins is by looking at how each of them backs their tokens, e.g. their collateral/reserves. By doing that, we can focus on using more narrow criteria for evaluating and comparing stablecoins based on the risks and advantages that stem from the chosen collateralization mechanism. Broadly speaking, there are three main types of stablecoins: Fiat-collaterized stablecoins, crypto-collaterized stablecoins and algorithmic stablecoins.
Fiat-collateralized Stablecoins
By far the most popular type, fiat-collateralized stablecoins occupy the top 3 spots (USDT, USDC, BUSD) among stablecoins by market cap, accounting for roughly 94% of the total ~$155 billion stablecoin supply.
Their working principle is the most straightforward to understand. Each of these coins is backed by a combination of real USD cash reserves, US Treasury Bills, and commercial papers (liquid short-term debt issued by companies).
Crypto-collateralized Stablecoins
Similar to fiat-backed stablecoins, crypto-backed stablecoins use cryptocurrencies as collateral, and smart contracts and, typically, governance tokens to monitor price stability. Due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, crypto-backed stablecoins are over-collateralized (150% for DAI, for example) to account for periods in the market when prices of the collateral assets keep going down. Learn more about DAI.
Compared to fiat-backed stablecoins, they’ve witnessed a much slower rate of adoption. However, based on data, it does seem that they are slowly starting to gain momentum and dominance over the past years, as people begin to develop trust in the previously experimental mechanisms, which is to be expected.
There are also hybrid collateral tokens such as Reserve Tokens (RSV) that are backed by both digital and fiat assets.
By far the most technically complex and technologically least mature, algorithmic stablecoins rely on on-chain algorithms to handle changes in supply and demand between the stablecoins and their sister tokens that back them by burning and minting them in both directions through a process called seigniorage, to maintain a dollar peg. This, however, only works while there isn’t a strong downward pressure on the peg that keeps stressing the mechanism, which can lead to a downward death spiral during which both tokens keep losing value as users keep panic selling at the same time as the algorithm tries to stabilize the price. Although not fully collapsed, neutrinoUSD and its Waves protocol have been experiencing extreme turbulence for the better part of two months, making users lose confidence in its stability, especially as its working mechanism is very similar to that of UST.
On the less extreme side of algo-stables lie hybrid stablecoins, or fractional-algorithmic stablecoins, such as FRAX, which is partly backed by collateral, and partly algorithmically by adjusting the collateral based on the deviation of FRAX from the $1 peg.
Learn more with our Ultimate Guide to Algorithmic Stablecoins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdmotWPNVdQ
Criteria for Comparing Stablecoins
Decentralization
The impact of regional regulations can be a risk many would not find appealing. It’s completely reasonable to expect that the industry would be capable of creating largely decentralized stablecoins that are collateralized by one or more decentralized cryptocurrencies, and governed by a DAO. Such is the nature of MakerDAO and its DAI stablecoin, which has shown its peg strength throughout this year and especially during the most recent catastrophic UST collapse. There is a small caveat, however.
The largest crypto-asset backed stablecoin with a $6.5 billion market cap, DAI, is still heavily backed by the second largest market cap stablecoin, USDC, which itself is backed by fiat reserves, calling into question whether it truly is as decentralized as it purports itself to be. The reality is not as grim as it might seem. Even though USDC and USDP (another fiat-backed stablecoin) comprise 28.1% of the total DAI collateral, ETH and WBTC (Wrapped BTC) boast an impressive 58.6% collateral, tipping the collateralization balance in favour of decentralized digital currencies instead of centralized stablecoins. In addition, the Maker platform with the MKR and DAI tokens, together with all of its smart contracts, lives on the Ethereum blockchain, making it truly trustless and decentralized, even if a good portion of the collateral is not.
On the other hand, the decentralization of all stablecoins might not be necessary, or even desirable, as properly regulated stablecoins almost by definition require a legal entity or a consortium of entities with exposure to major governmental bodies (especially in the US) to be behind the stablecoins, so that there is little doubt about who is responsible for ensuring a full fiat backing of their stablecoins. However, this would imply heavy centralization of control over the stablecoin supply and the general mechanisms for issuance, governance, and, crucially, potential censorship.
A centralized stablecoin is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it gives unprecedented power over a vast supply of stablecoins that a decentralization-focused industry heavily relies on to do daily business. On the other hand, it allows for companies like Binance, who are behind the popular BUSD stablecoin, to prioritize user safety and regulatory compliance, giving users peace of mind about the safety of their assets.
Thus, a strong argument can be made to safely onboard millions of new users through reasonably regulated stablecoins. It’s important for this industry to appreciate the need to offer a wide range of stablecoin alternatives, from centralized to decentralized, for users with different risk appetites and technical competencies in order to accelerate crypto adoption worldwide.
Compliance & Transparency
Closely tied with the level of decentralization of a stablecoin, regulatory compliance and transparency are absolutely crucial for companies who are backing their coins with cash reserves, and who desire to find strong and growing support by institutions, companies, and investors looking to enter the space, but who have been apprehensive to do so due to concerns about a potential inability to redeem their tokens for dollars.
It’s important to note that regulatory compliance is largely a concern for stablecoins operated by corporations, as they are the ones operating mostly behind closed doors, with most of the details about their inner workings, decisions, and collateralization mechanisms being hidden from the end-users and legislators. In such situations, it is more than reasonable to expect a regulatory body to force at least some oversight over how exactly these companies are operating their stablecoins and whether they do possess the collateral they claim to have.
The same can’t be said about open-source, decentralized governance-powered, blockchain-native, crypto asset-backed, and over-collateralized stablecoins that are being operated completely out in the open, with every decision, piece of code, and capital relocation in smart contract escrow accounts being registered on-chain. For coins such as DAI, compliance and transparency are baked into the protocol, and it can be reasonably argued that the necessity for any kind of regulatory oversight is moot, as the community and the free market cryptoeconomic pressures have organically grown a robust and freely auditable stablecoin that’s fully backed by digital currencies.
For fiat-backed currencies, the two large-cap extremes in the range of transparency and compliance are BUSD and USDT. While BUSD has been extensively cooperating with the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYFDS), and showing that every BUSD is backed by an equivalent amount of cash, USDT has been under significant scrutiny over the past years regarding its executives and the USDT backing. These allegations, combined with the lack of transparency by Tether, have made many worry whether USDT is a house of cards about to crumble as the Chinese real estate bubble begins to pop.
Financial Sustainability
In addition to the existential risks posed by the type of collateral chosen for stablecoin reserves, another source of risk that can be analyzed for a project is its cashflow. Changes in the cashflow of a protocol can offer clues about the health of the ecosystem and its ability to withstand market shocks.
Understanding how a stablecoin protocol spends and, most importantly, earns its money, is key to making predictions about the long term sustainability of such projects. Without proper long term revenue models, protocols are left to come up with highly appealing but unsustainable practices such as incredibly high yields on stablecoin deposits (such as UST had) or very low to non-existent trading fees to make it appealing for users to use that stablecoin as their dominant medium of exchange. These kinds of practices sooner or later come back to bite them in the ass, as there is a very high probability that the high yields and low fees are paid for not from organic revenues, but rather from alternative revenue sources (as is the case for Binance), or from project’s treasury/VC investment money, in hopes that they would be able to subsidize the attractive rates for long enough to reach a critical mass of users to then eventually either lower the yields and increase the fees, or simply keep running a ponzi-like operation for as long as possible.
Risks are High, always DYOR (Do Your Own Research)
If something in crypto sounds too good to be true, it very likely is. The most recent example of this was the Anchor Protocol’s 19.5% yield for UST deposits, which should’ve been a huge red flag, and yet many, many individuals chose to deposit their life savings into a supposedly stable UST in hopes of an unsustainably high APY.
For a $50 billion project to go down to virtually nothing in a matter of weeks is nothing short of astonishing, and should serve us all as a warning to do our due diligence thoroughly, and ask uncomfortable questions, even if the whole market seems to be fully on-board with a project.
As the saying goes, “Follow the money.” If a protocol is promising unbelievable returns, if the company behind a stablecoin year after year refuses to prove their fiat reserves, and if a algorithmic stablecoin seems to have a fishy peg stabilizing mechanism that can only work in an up-only environment, then you should exercise caution. And as with everything, whether it be cryptocurrencies or stocks etc, ask yourself if you have really fully done your research and never put in more money than you can afford to lose.
The NFT industry has become one of the most exciting spaces amongst emerging blockchain and crypto trends. With many related projects and startups launching, the sector is becoming more popular and has provided creators with significant earning opportunities.
NFT creators constantly seek more accessible ways to publish and market their assets to varied audiences while also maximizing potential returns on their art. Buyers who like to collect NFTs also look for the best marketplace that curates these assets and facilitates easy access to purchases and rewards. The Starly platform provides all these and more to both categories of stakeholders.
Starly is an NFT-focused launchpad and marketplace where users can create, buy, and sell gamified NFT collectables. The platform aims to make creating, selling and collecting NFTs as seamless as possible. Starly offers complete creative control to NFT minters, allowing them to set prices, rarity ratings, and decide preferred launch dates.
Each Starly NFT collection consists of 21 unique NFTs (or NFT cards) divided into three packs for ease of valuation. The packs are composed of 11 common cards, 6 rare cards, and 4 legendary cards. Members of the Starly community can purchase and sell NFT cards on the secondary market, or buy all the cards in a collection to receive special rewards reserved for buyers who acquire complete collections.
NFT Staking on Starly
Collectors can stake their NFT cards for Starly token rewards based on the value and rarity of the NFT. Each NFT card in a collection has a Card Score determined by its pack (common, rare, or legendary) and price. Stakers can earn rewards in $STARLY- the project’s native token. The total $STARLY staking reward for each NFT card is equal to its Card Score and gets distributed daily for over a year. This means that it would take 365 days to accrue the total $STARLY staking reward.
Although users can claim a limited number of token rewards, these rewards depend on the user’s Starly token tier. Starly uses the following formula for reward distribution:
Card Score/365 = Token Amount Distributed for 24h.
For instance, if a user stakes an NFT with a Card Score of 15,000, the available token staking reward for that card is 15,000 $STARLY. The user can claim up to 41 $STARLY (15,000/365) daily depending on the membership tier until the user exhausts 15,000 $STARLY.
Starly Token Staking Tiers
Token holders staking $STARLY are categorized into reward tiers curated according to the number of staked tokens. The tiers include the Silver, Gold, and Platinum memberships, with the following required token amounts:
Silver Tier: a minimum of 1000 $STARLY staked
Gold Tier: a minimum of 10,000 $STARLY staked
Platinum Tier: a minimum of 50,000 $STARLY staked
These tiers come with varying benefits, including the ability to claim more daily NFT staking rewards. Members of the Starly community who stake their NFTs but have no staked Starly tokens are not placed in any of the three tiers and can claim only 2 of the available daily token rewards. Silver, Gold, and Platinum tier members can claim 10, 100, and 500, respectively.
Furthermore, if an NFT card is unstaked, all unclaimed rewards of the staked card remain locked on the card till the user stakes it again. Additionally, if the unstaked NFT card gets sold, the new owner gets all unclaimed staking rewards locked in the card and can stake the card again for token rewards.
$STARLY Token
$STARLY is the platform’s native token, helping creators earn from their NFT assets. On the Starly marketplace, creators can monetize their NFT collectibles and receive rewards for their effort via $STARLY tokens. The platform has a total supply of 100 million tokens allocated for different uses. For instance, the largest allocation is for the Product and Ecosystem Development Fund at 31.25% or 31,250,000 tokens. Others include 22% for the Team and Advisors, 20% for the private sale, and 0.75% for the public sale. Furthermore, Starly allocated 5% each for token liquidity and staking payouts, while reserving 16% for the community.
Benefits Of Starly NFT Staking
All NFTs have inherent value that provides some aspect of collectibility or utility to collectors. However, collectors can derive additional value by staking these NFTs on Starly. The primary benefit of staking owned NFTs is that users can accrue more $STARLY and then re-stake for added rewards. As users collect more tokens, their designated membership tier moves from Silver to Gold or Gold to Platinum. New tiers furnish users with additional Starly benefits, such as voting rights and exclusive NFT drops from selected artists.
Staking has become a significant way of contributing to projects across the blockchain and crypto space, with billions of tokens and coins locked on many platforms. NFT staking is no different and is an excellent way for users to earn passive income from idle NFT collections. Although the concept is still relatively in its infancy, Starly opens users to more NFT staking opportunities with the possibility of progressive rewards.
Whether a blockchain project lives or dies depends on its capability toattract and grow its user base, and projects that are unable to gather or maintain their clientele eventually fold. To kickstart or encourage engagement within the community, these projects often find themselves doing token airdrops, using them to raise awareness and value for their products while also incentivizing new and existing customers.
A crypto airdrop is a method used to distribute cryptocurrencies to a project’s community of users for free, usually in exchange for participating in a campaign or owning other related assets. Airdrops are typically used as a marketing and awareness strategy to draw attention to a product or event. These projects may share tokens to existing users’ crypto wallets or encourage prospective users to register accounts to receive assets.
Types of Airdrops
Over the years, the airdrop marketing strategy has taken many different forms. Several projects have used airdrops to create awareness, promote features, and attract users. For instance, gaming metaverse ArcadeLand launched an airdrop in March where 850 participants shared a 2,000 USDT prize pool. Eligibility required simple tasks, including social media activity such as following ArcadeLand’s Twitter and participating in the project’s announcement channel on Telegram.
There also was a MetaGods airdrop in November for 800 winners, including bonuses for the top 50 referrers. Participants also qualified for a $2,000 prize pool by completing tasks on Twitter and Telegram.
The Sukhavati Network also launched an airdrop of 10,000 $SKT worth 6000 USDT to celebrate achievements, including an official startup sale on Gate.io and a MEXC listing. The prize pool was for a total of 1050 winners, with 1000 $SKT reserved for the top 50 referrers. Although projects use different types of airdrops depending on their aim for each one, the most common types include:
Standard Airdrops
During a standard airdrop, wallet holders receive small amounts of the new cryptocurrency in return for completing tasks, such as signing up for a newsletter or creating an account with the crypto project. Some projects require participants to complete a KYC (Know Your Customer) verification or provide their email and wallet addresses before receiving the tokens.
Standard airdrops often serve as a good preface for projects to introduce themselves to the public. New projects, such as this recent airdrop hosted by Questian, attempts to pull in more attention by asking their community to complete tasks for USDT.
Bounty Airdrops
Projects that use bounty airdrops distribute their tokens among users who help to create awareness – usually across social media platforms. To be eligible for these airdrops, participants must perform simple tasks such as retweeting an official tweet, sharing a Facebook post, or creating Instagram media. Participants may also earn by referring new users. Although this type is similar to standard airdrops, the main difference is that crypto projects usually reserve bounty airdrops for people who help create public awareness. Standard airdrops are simply open to anyone who joins the project’s community via accounts, newsletters, or other similar channels.
Exclusive Airdrops
Blockchain projects usually reserve exclusive airdrops for loyal followers. In many cases, these airdrops automatically go to early adopters or users who are frequently active on the platform. Eligible members of the community receive these exclusive airdrops with no strings attached.
Examples include a recent sudden airdrop hosted by MetaGods, which asks their community to simply drop their wallet address for an exclusive prize. The method was also utilized by AkiralGal, whose tweet asked their followers to screenshot their brand new AkiraGal wallpaper for more rewards.
Holder Airdrops
These are airdrops for users who already hold specific cryptocurrencies or tokens. So, to be eligible for these holder airdrops, users need to be holding a specified type and/or amount of a particular token by a specified date. For instance, a new Ethereum-based project may offer free tokens to the Ethereum blockchain community, or a new exchange may offer its tokens to holders who own the native cryptocurrency of a competing exchange.
Hard Fork Airdrops
This type of airdrop occurs when a permanent blockchain split creates the need for a new token to go with the new chain. While the previous blockchain still exists along with old tokens, users may receive tokens from the new blockchain via an airdrop. However, this does not happen with every fork, only with hard forks. A hard fork occurs when the community cannot decide how to move forward, and a new chain must be created via a split.
Growth and Popularity of Airdrops
Since the inception of cryptocurrencies, people have used digital assets to move finance to decentralized platforms. Several decentralized cryptocurrency projects have also emerged to satisfy the global need for decentralized finance, with many of them using airdrops to attract users. These projects usually airdrop a percentage of their total token supply shortly before or after an official launch. A recent example is the Looks Rare airdrop, distributing 12% of the total $LOOKS token supply to anyone in the OpenSea community that spent more than 3 ETH on the NFT exchange.
Another example of the popularity of airdrops was the recent MetaWars Alliance Gleam Campaign which features an extensive collaboration between multiple projects. Running from April 17 to April 22, the campaign had a prize pool of more than $20,000 open to 100 winners. The MetaWars Alliance Campaign had 9 partners, including Souls of Meta, MetaLand, Battle Saga, The Three Kingdoms (TTK), Bit Hotel, Age of Tanks, Mouse Hunt, MechaChain, and FitEvo. The initiative was yet another prime example of how multiple projects can use airdrops for cross-promotion that can help all involved projects gain much-needed traction. MetaWars successfully achieved this aim as the campaign saw nearly 232,000 different entries.
The Dark Side of Crypto Airdrops: Scams and Controversies
The need for blockchain projects to launch airdrops spurred the creation of several platforms that aggregate airdrops from promising projects. These platforms made airdrops a lot more popular, increasing the number of people who consider the method a channel for passive income and an opportunity to earn new crypto assets.
(Beware of scams! This recent ApeCoin attack stole $1 million through hacked verified accounts)
Unfortunately, the airdrop method has suffered its fair share of scams and controversies. As with anything tagged “free,” illicit players exploit community members’ innocence and use deceptive means to obtain funds from unsuspecting people. In March, a Twitter phishing scam pretending to airdrop ApeCoin tokens successfully stole $1 million from unsuspecting users. The Ape Coin scam promised users a rare NFT airdrop which can only be received after paying an ETH gas fee. The scammers then not only made off with the ETH fee, but because users had to approve and sign the transaction with their cryptocurrency wallets, the scammers were able to take the rare and often valuable NFTs contained in those wallets. Some notable NFTs stolen in this scam included Jay Chou’s Phantabears, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Doodles.
There was also a fake Azuki NFT airdrop where self-proclaimed Azuki affiliates hijacked verified user handles, got users to connect their Ethereum wallets, and made away with their highly valuable NFTs.
How to Protect Yourself Against Airdrop Scams
In light of these scams, members of the crypto community should adhere to certain precautions when participating in airdrops. The most important is the DYOR (Do Your Own Research) rule, which requires people to do extensive research on projects advertising airdrops before buying in.
However, scammers are keeping ahead of the game. For example in the ApeCoin airdrop scam, the scammers hacked into and hijacked the Discord servers for Doodle and BAYC, posting the faked website on the server to make it look like a legitimate announcement. The scammers also used faked Twitter accounts (including some from verified Twitter handles) to spread the fake links.
The following are other steps that help avoid airdrop scams:
Never pay for airdrops;
Check multiple sources and social media accounts belonging to the project to see if the airdrop is legitimate. For example, if a projects’ Discord server is being compromised they may make an announcement on their official Twitter or Telegram;
Never participate in an airdrop that requires user private keys or mnemonic phrases;
Protect personal identity and data as much as possible;
Avoid KYC airdrops if possible (although not always the case); and
Most airdrops require an email address. Users should create a new ‘burner’ email address to use only for airdrops.
It might be impossible to create an exhaustive list of steps required to avoid scams because fraudsters get more creative with their illicit activities, but participants should always be on the lookout for airdrops that do not tick security boxes or have little to no information obtainable from research.
Airdrops have many benefits in the blockchain space, such as marketing, building communities, and providing additional value to loyal users of crypto assets. Authentic airdrops help people earn extra income and provide additional utility with little to no effort. However, airdrops may be harmful to people who do inadequate due diligence or personal research. If an airdrop seems too good to be true, there’s a good chance it is.
The gaming market has seen impressive growth over the last few years and is still set for more expansion. According to a 2021 report, the gaming market’s valuation for the year hit $198.4 billion. The same report states that the market will register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.94% from 2022 to 2027. By 2027, the valuation could jump 71.3% to $339.95 billion.
Several factors contribute to the gaming market’s popularity, attracting more people to the sector. Game developers are continually improving options and general gameplay, a factor that keeps existing gamers interested enough to stay. In addition to improved features, there is also increased advancement in technology.
The introduction of blockchain technology to the gaming sector is easily the market’s most significant advancement. Apart from the immutability and security of the gaming infrastructure and assets stored, blockchain also provides players with an opportunity to earn while enjoying their gameplay. Platforms like Colizeum are taking this further by stretching blockchain gameplay features past earning rewards.
Colizeum is an ecosystem bridging the gap between the blockchain and traditional gaming worlds. It is a play-to-earn platform that connects several games and related applications from multiple developers, providing a shared marketplace for developers and gamers alike.
Colizeum continuously closes the traditional and blockchain gaming gap through its Colizeum Software Development Kit (SDK). Conventional game developers can use the Colizeum SDK to effortlessly build blockchain games without the expected technicalities from decentralized applications. The kit also provides a cost-effective way for creators to design and publish games since there is no need for blockchain developer teams.
Why Colizeum?
There are several features the Colizeum ecosystem offers the gaming public. In addition to the ease of creating exciting play-to-earn games, here are a few points to note:
Earnings for All: The Colizeum ecosystem maintains an equal focus on gamer and developer earnings. As players accumulate rewards by participating in their favorite play-to-earn games, developers also earn from gamers and the entire Colizeum community.
In-Game NFTs: Colizeum supports low-cost NFT minting while checking other related boxes, including demand programming and multilayering.
Tournaments-as-a-Service: The Colizeum SDK allows developers to create multiplayer games in different modes and designs. Depending on game specifics, players can enjoy tournaments and earn by winning or simply participating.
Colizeum is a fully-decentralized, anonymous, on-chain, and community-focused ecosystem. The platform also features an Attention Marketplace – a tokenized product that allows the direct monetization of gamers’ attention. Instead of going through Ad Exchanges that charge excessive fees and still keep a large portion of generated revenues, the Attention Marketplace enables transparent user acquisition and monetization via $ZEUM staking. Colizeum already has an exciting list of partners, including the Israeli Blockchain Association, IHODL, and Cex.io.
Benefits to Game Developers
The SDK provides quick and inexpensive game development that can shorten developer timelines by up to 1 year
Creators can introduce a play-to-earn feature to any mobile game, attracting more players and allowing gamers to earn during gameplay
Colizeum is a cross-chain and cross-platform ecosystem that enables gamers and developers to enjoy the best of multiple games regardless of their host platform
In-game assets can be easily converted to NFTs
Since there are no middlemen on the platform, all processes are cheaper and faster
Benefits to Gamers
Colizeum allows players to use one token across all games hosted in the ecosystem
In-game assets are tradeable as NFTs. This will enable players to earn more in addition to direct gameplay. Trading NFTs also serves as passive income for gamers
Enjoy earnings from any of the games hosted by Colizeum
Tokenomics
The Colizeum ecosystem has a total supply of 1 billion $ZEUM tokens available for different purposes. The seed round featured 6% or 60 million tokens, while 13% or 130 million tokens were available at the private round – both with 18-month vesting periods. There also is another 19% allocated to the Colizeum team, 5% to the DAO fund, 15% for strategic partnerships, and 8.650% for its in-game reward program. As a community-focused platform, Colizeum also allotted 10% (100 million tokens) to community incentives.
Colizeum is set to be one of the largest play-to-earn platforms in the blockchain sector as it leverages flexibility and interoperability. Creators will be able to develop games that easily interact with each other, thereby adding to Colizeum’s credibility as the go-to play-to-earn host platform. Furthermore, the earning opportunities available to players across all games will attract more users and also appeal to game developers.
Play-to-Earn experienced a massive wave of adoption during 2021, as crypto-friendly gamers jumped on the opportunity to earn money while playing games. P2E games such as Axie Infinity, Star Atlas, and others saw a dramatic increase in user and revenue growth. However, after the initial hype wave over P2E games settled, what was left was a realization that many of these games lacked truly engaging gameplay, social features, and sustainable tokenomics.
Fast forward to late 2021/early 2022, we witnessed a significant pivot in the blockchain gaming space: Move-to-Earn. M2E has taken the world by storm, with numerous projects popping up and their valuations skyrocketing. Among the younger generations, there is a trend towards self-care and maintaining a more healthy lifestyle as we continuously get reminded of just how much time we end up spending indoors. Covid lockdowns took this lifestyle to the extreme and forced everyone to spend time at home longer than many felt comfortable. Now there is a thirst for a more active, healthier life.
P2E games have had (and continue to have) a good run, but M2E has managed to capture the interest of not only gamers, but also those blockchain enthusiasts who might not be fully on board with just spending time tapping away at their phone screen to earn their P2E tokens. However, every project comes with its own shortcomings. Let’s take a look at these shortcomings and how an emerging project – FitEvo has transformed its platform amidst this trend with a new edge.
With popular M2E games such as STEPN, Genopets, and STEP, you’ll find that they share a common gameplay model in which the user acquires an in-game asset, be it a sneaker or a pet animal, and upgrades it further as they keep on exercising.
But these features on their own are not enough to make an M2E game successful. The focus should be just as much on the social aspects and community engagement opportunities around a user’s physical activities, as it is on the earning and NFT upgrading experiences. And many of the games in this space seem to have forgotten what the most popular traditional social fitness apps such as Strava, FitBit, and MyFitnessPal have already done in order to expand their user base, and keep it engaged.
Strava, one of the pioneers in the social fitness app space, has achieved an enormous global user adoption, boasting nearly 100 million users. Much of this growth can be attributed to the app offering not only a feed of activities of their friends, but also other social features that are geography-centric and community engagement focused.
This precedent for a successful M2E game is exactly the reason why FitEvo is so appealing in terms of fundamentals. FitEvo, an M2E dragon breeding NFT game, has the makings of an incredibly successful blockchain-based game, as they have incorporated many of the social features that people know and love.
FitEvo: Focusing on the Interaction Between Individuals
FitEvo aims to engage the masses through a powerful combination of NFT dragon breeding (evolving together with a dragon companion), and social features that gamify physical activity and human competitiveness, and bring friends and communities closer together.
An engaging and fun dragon breeding game, FitEvo has been inspired by the greats, like Tamagotchi and Pokemon, taking it to the next level by syncing the user’s movements with the development of their very own dragon. In FitEvo, the dragon co-evolves with the user, creating a bond between the two. The hatching of eggs, breeding and evolving of dragons, will be intimately linked to the physical movements of their masters.
And here is where FitEvo will really shine – the social and gamification features. For those familiar with the M2E STEP game, FitEvo will be like a new and improved Step 2.0, incorporating all the crucial engagement mechanisms that have made traditional social fitness apps so popular. If you’re one of those who didn’t manage to get in on STEP early on, it might be worth your while to pay close attention to FitEvo.
The multiplayer feature alone will offer an enormous amount of value to the users, FitEvo allows FITamins(as the FitEvo community calls itself) to meet other like-minded and even geographically adjacent individuals by organizing group runs or other group exercises. Anyone who has ever tried getting back in shape with their friends cheering them up or even being right next to them, sweating off their own dietary sins, knows how much it helps to have someone give you motivation and some peer pressure at your lowest moments. This type of community support will be possible, with FITamins helping each other become their better selves.
Of course, what would a fitness app be without some healthy competition? FitEvo will offer many opportunities to challenge others and stimulate their competitive neurons through classical challenges, as well as user-created routes with leaderboards.
In addition to earning $FIVO tokens through movement, FitEvo has made sure that attention is paid to incentivizing more extensive user engagement beyond exercising and dragon breeding. Users will be able to collect Active Points through interactions, referral count, daily sign-ins, missions completed, community contributions, and more. The Points will significantly influence users’ earnings to the upside, so it will be in everyone’s best interest if they try to make the best of their experiences on the FitEvo app – and why shouldn’t they?
Another interesting feature that we are yet to hear more about is the training programme, which will offer inexperienced users the opportunity to learn from the community and follow pre-planned exercise curricula without having to design them themselves.
Incorporating all of these features will be no small feat for FitEvo, and it will be interesting to see how the project progresses forward. With such a clear edge over their competitors defined, it’s now up to the FitEvo team to deliver on these ambitions and rise through the ranks of the M2E space.
A recent uptick in projects combining the concepts of move-to-play and play-to-earn into what is known as move-to-earn have started gaining traction, with more and more people trying out this new play-to-earn paradigm. Players are rewarded proportional to their physical activity, incentivizing an active lifestyle all the while generating a passive income. This article looks at 5 reasons why move-to-earn might become the hottest crypto trend of 2022.
And check out our predictions and analysis on whether move to earn has potential to become a BILLION dollar industry:
Move to Earn: BILLION dollar potential in 2022? Predictions and Analysis (StepN $GMT)
What Is Move-To-Earn?
Move-to-earn is a fast developing component of Web3, enabling individuals to own and monetize their personal data. M2E’s mission is to scale the blockchain-based incentives system for healthy lifestyle promotion. The increased use of fitness trackers and employer-sponsored wellness programs that reward employees for boosting their physical activity might result in the global fitness tracker market growing from $36.34 billion in 2020 to $114.36 billion in 2028. Employee absenteeism due to illness can be reduced with fitness-based M2E. In this aspect, M2E applications have a far wider audience reach than P2E applications.
5 Reasons Move-To-Earn NFT Games Will Be the Hottest Trend of 2022
1. Investors are Flocking towards Move to Earn Projects
Investors make it their job to identify trends, and seeing the amount of investments in play-to-earn gaming projects, it’s easy to see how the recent influx of cash into projects (such as STEPN and Genopets) in the past months foreshadow the upcoming success of move-to-earn. In their January seed round, STEPN raised $5 million, and, back in October 2021, Genopets raised a whopping $8.3 million in their seed round.
We’re likely to see more projects and investments by way of SAFTs, and retail-focused IGOs (Initial Game Offerings) to pop up this year, each attempting their own take on monetizing the intersection of blockchain and physical activity.
2. People want to be Active Post-lockdown (Whilst Earning Passive Income)!
With Covid lockdowns mostly fading away and warm weather (in the Northern hemisphere) knocking on the door, life will return from the drab cold days of the winter, forcing everyone outdoors. The pandemic showed us that better physical health can keep us from experiencing severe effects of disease, as is the case with Covid-19, and many will try to improve their health as a result.
Combined with a desire to socialize and finding the next thing to get addicted to (aside from social media and binging Netflix), an app that aligns an active lifestyle, passive income, collectibles, and mobile video games in a fun and engaging way can be a very powerful combo that launches some move-to-earn projects into our daily lives this year.
Looks like move-to-earn gaming will contribute to a planet-wide increase in human health by combining the two things people love to do, whether they admit it or not, making money and playing games!
3. Move-to-Earn Gets People Earning Faster and Easier than Play-to-Earn Games
With play-to-earn games having laid the practical and conceptual foundations of NFT-based gaming, move-to-earn NFT games are set to see a rapid rise in popularity this year. Games like Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, and many more, have exploded in the past years, amassing a large user base and catalyzing the creation of gaming guilds that bring like-minded gamers together. Now, the crypto community is ready for a new evolution of Play-to-Earn.
The biggest advantage of move-to-earn games is the low barrier of entry. Contrary to traditional character-based games with narratives and gameplay that require time, dedication and effort to understand, move-to-earn games leverage actions that every human is very familiar with – movement! This means that a player has practically no learning curve before they can start playing and earning, completely eliminating barriers to entry for anyone. Simply open the app and start earning!
4. Move-to-Earn Builds on the Proven success of Social Fitness Apps
Anyone who’s actively used fitness apps like Strava, Fitbit, or PlayFitt will know how addictive their gamification aspects can be, be it trying to set a route record, trying to keep up with the physical activity of your friends (and get more likes), or even competing against yourself as you see your progress in the app.
These social fitness apps do something magical – they bring out our competitive side, forcing us to push further than we’ve ever pushed, either against ourselves or others. And the amazing thing is that, aside from improved physical health, there is no additional reward that would merit such dedication. If peer pressure and social clout is enough to cause us to do things we normally wouldn’t happily do – exercise – what will the promise of earning a buck or two as you exercise do to us?
Move-to-earn games seek to answer the question: “What if you added a financial layer and further gamification to a social fitness app, and built it on robust decentralized technologies to ensure fairness and true ownership?”
5. Move-to-earn Might be the NFT Play Many Retail Investors are Waiting for
Though some metaverse coins like Axie Infinity’s $AXS have gone parabolic since last year, the bigger Metaverse & GameFi narrative plays are yet to fully take off. This leaves plenty of options to choose from from an investment/bag holding perspective, with many potential “up-only” plays looming around the corner.
In addition, many retail investors missed the insane gains of last summer’s NFT craze, either due to not fully understanding how to take advantage of the NFT hype train, or simply not wanting to be bothered with having to immerse themselves into the culture of the NFTs to anticipate the highest ROI plays. Flipping NFTs is more difficult than simply buying a coin that goes up.
Luckily for these people, move-to-earn projects might offer just the solution. In addition to having NFTs, which can be traded as normal, these games also incorporate in-game utility and governance tokens, which can be easily purchased on exchanges, and grow as the value and popularity of the game grows.
STEPN and Dotmoovs have both made a very smart decision by integrating an NFT marketplace with its own Rental System, allowing players to borrow sneakers/ footballs and start earning quickly and seamlessly, without having to join a gaming guild and apply for a scholarship. Click here to learn more about the controversial practice of NFT Scholarships.
Not only is this more beneficial for players, but also for NFT owners who don’t want to earn by moving, but through lending them to someone else and collecting a percentage of the fruits of their labor.
By reducing the friction of lending their sneaker NFTs to scholars, all owners need to do is to simply place their NFTs on the in-game marketplace, and reap the rewards. This approach to NFT staking will likely gain popularity due to the ease of use and low barriers of entry for hobbyist NFT owners.
Conclusion
2022 is looking ripe for move-to-earn games, as GameFi, active lifestyle, and SocialFi narratives take root, eventually culminating in a hype train that might even overshadow previous parabolic narrative-driven runs!
The vast amount of innovations and creativity happening within the crypto space is overwhelming. Countless projects, protocols, apps, tokens, and communities are launching, layering, merging, forking and growing every day. It can be a lot to keep up with.
Fortunately, blockchains are public data sources, and the historical ledger of addresses and transactions is a treasure trove of data, just waiting to be unpacked and explored. Anyone can view the transactions that are occurring in real time and interpret what is happening on the blockchain. However, in its raw form, blockchain data is kind of like binary code: great for machines but tough for humans. What is needed is not only a data platform that can convert it to a more useful form, but also a community of analysts that can give it meaning.
Enter blockchain analytics. Blockchain analytics is the act of inspecting, identifying, understanding, and visualizing data on a blockchain. Doing so allows users to gain valuable insights that would otherwise be hidden in traditional systems. Just as Google organized the internet of information for consumers and commerce by indexing the World Wide Web, making it accessible without requiring any knowledge about the underlying TCP/IP protocol, blockchain analytics technology is building the pathway for an easy-to-navigate internet of value as well as the emerging data economy.
What Is Blockchain Analytics?
Blockchain analytics is the process of analyzing, identifying and clustering data on the blockchain. Blockchain analytics also models and visually represents data in order to identify key information about users and transactions.
More and more companies operating with cryptocurrencies are using blockchain analytics tools to analyze transactions and assess the level of risks to meet regulatory requirements worldwide. This is done to help stop illicit transactions such as money laundering and fraud from being carried out.
Crypto asset transactions carried out are inherently anonymous so blockchain analytics providers help to provide the data needed to match a transaction with a person or company. This helps to keep cryptocurrency markets and transactions safer for everyone. Blockchain analytics can achieve this by scraping blockchain data, which is all public.
How Does It Work?
Blockchain analytics providers scrape publicly-available transactional data to tie crypto wallets back to illicit or criminal behavior. Data scraping is the act of collecting and structurally storing and updating data in real-time. This data includes information on which cryptocurrency wallets the cryptocurrency were sent to and from, the type of cryptocurrency, the amount, and the time of the transaction. As for cryptocurrency wallets, they are digital wallets that can send and receive payments. And specifically for those wallets maintained by cryptocurrency exchanges, users must first go through a Know Your Customer (KYC) onboarding processes whereby the personal details of the crypto wallet’s owner are recorded and stored.
When a crypto wallet transaction is made, that data is forever on the blockchain. It cannot be altered or erased. Through the scraping of these blockchains, blockchain analytics ties crypto transactions to illicit activity through certain signifiers such as a crypto wallet previously linked to illicit transactions like drug smuggling or terrorist financing. Through that, a wallet or transaction is flagged and given a risk score. When a crypto business or a financial institution works with a blockchain analytics provider, any transaction they undertake can be screened to provide a risk score for the crypto wallet in question.
If further investigation is needed, a blockchain analytics provider can forward this type of information and analysis to the relevant law enforcement authorities, who can match an identity with an anonymous wallet, via a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR). Because the transactional data in the wallet represents all transactions that the specific cryptocurrency has been used in, an end-to-end trail is thus created.
The wallet is tagged with a typology by the analytics provider, which ties it to a certain illicit activity that will be flagged in future transactions. The provider will also create a heuristic which clusters transactional wallet data with similar typologies. (Ultram) When multiple wallets are owned by the same person, blockchain analytics can help to determine if transactions carried out by different wallets are actually coming from the same place.
Collecting data on the identifiers of illicit transactions is a continuous process. Blockchain analytics is a key line of defense for creating fair and legal crypto environments, helping to discover the source and destination of illicit funds.
Why Is Blockchain Analytics Important?
Often hackers and web criminals use cryptocurrency due to its pseudonymous nature. Thanks to blockchain analytics, we now have access to specialized analytics tools that can scan otherwise hard to track the trail of transactional data on public blockchains. Blockchain analytics makes it possible to follow who is buying what and paying for which product and services utilizing cryptocurrency.
Many blockchain analytics providers help to create these insights by turning blockchain raw data into searchable and executable data that individuals and businesses can easily search and build services on top of. This has tremendous value to regulators, law enforcement, companies and users within the crypto space.
Regulators and law enforcement can have full visibility on illicit transactions and track the movement, allowing them to uncover the identities of the criminals over time. Companies are able to have full visibility over transactions made by vendors or third parties and ensure legitimacy of those claims. Users such as traders are able to have visibility on what smart money is doing and make better informed decisions, leveling the playing field. Smart money in crypto represents a new type of economy where knowledge is open and powerful actors’ behavior is revealed.
All organizations who work within the crypto asset market, whether it be crypto businesses or financial institutions, also need to remain compliant. Blockchain analytics providers can help these financial institutions pursue their compliance efforts. Through blockchain analytics, compliance departments can identify fraudulent or illicit activity, protect themselves from risk and work to create increased trust and transparency within the system and thus maximizing opportunities for growth and profitability.
Blockchain Analytics Providers
Let us take a look at some of the most popular blockchain analytics providers that are developing new insights from raw blockchain data to make it accessible to users of all levels.
1- Dune
Dune, formerly known as Dune Analytics, is a powerful tool for blockchain research. It can be used to query, extract, and visualize vast amounts of data on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can simply query the database to extract almost any information that resides on the blockchain. Dune released its free version in 2019. Since that release, Dune has grown exponentially with users from all around the world joining in to leverage the on-chain analytics it provides.
Example of a graph visualization from a popular query dashboard
Dune’s strengths are in its open data source. Analysts, traders, and number crunching data enthusiasts make up the community. They create and openly share their queries which can then be forked and remixed in a multitude of ways by others. That is why Dune has been described as the “Github for on-chain analysis.” The secret sauce is the collaborative effort that is built-in to the Dune platform. So instead of dealing with the status quo, siloed sets of dashboards, the queries on Dune Analytics are open source, creating a revolutionary way for their community to harvest and remix blockchain data.
Dashboard page on Dune Analytics
The community version of Dune allows users to conduct any kind of on-chain analysis. Dune converts the raw blockchain data into a readable format, and queries can be completed with SQL. Dune gives its users access to datasets and they can create their charts and dashboards. Users can then share what they are working on. And working with Dune provides one with good education and powerful insights into how on-chain analytics systems work in general.
With Dune, users can explore the dashboards and queries of others in the community. It is similar to sharing dashboards on Google Analytics. And by researching the work of others, users can find inspiration to come up with even more queries to find deeper insights.
It is not much of a stretch to say that Dune is fast becoming the default platform for Ethereum data seekers.
Use Case: Dune has more than 22,000 different dashboards, a method of discovery. Given that the queries within the dashboards are user-generated, the quality varies. Some may be professional-grade and easy to scan, while others result from a SQL student’s early lessons. These are searchable by name or tags.
PARSIQ is the next-generation monitoring and intelligence platform for various blockchains, successfully connecting legal systems and off-chain applications to precious blockchain-based data. PARSIQ’s platform provides a suite of products that handle everything from database querying to instant notifications. The use case of PARSIQ extends not only to the on-chain blockchain but also to the off-chain universe.
Transaction tracking for compliance purposes, financial accounting, or building insights on the different properties of competing blockchains are some of the jobs that PARSIQ’s applications perform as off-chain jobs. PARSIQ also provides a tool that monitors and processes blockchain data. Every single blockchain activity that occurs on the platform results in a massive amount of information. All of this circulates through the PARSIQ platform and activates various parts of it. Every product that belongs to the ecosystem has a particular processing subsystem of the platform standing behind it.
Smart Triggers on PARSIQ
With Smart Triggers, users can create “if-this-then-that” workflows, allowing users to watch for a specific on-chain event and initiate downstream actions when they occur. PARSIQ’s Trigger Wizard is a no-code editor that allows users to create Smart Triggers for the most common use cases in just minutes. Smart Triggers can be used for a variety of use cases:
Build user notifications — PARSIQ delivers real-time alerts to users when relevant activities occur
Expand product functionality — users are able to build capabilities on top of blockchain data without writing custom code
In order to solve actual problems and meet the demands of business use cases, PARSIQ introduces the possibility of using various on-demand services and data delivered by third party providers integrated to the PARSIQ platform. Smart Triggers are deployed to the PARSIQ system and continue to circulate the on-chain data. External Data Providers (EDP) are the source of external off-chain or even on-chain data that can be plugged in and additionally combined with Smart Trigger data. With this feature, it is possible to combine the on-chain data with off-chain data, such as market data, risk scoring, forensics information, and more
Use Case: PARSIQ’s wallet surveillance tools notify wallet holders on every inflow and outflow of funds. Any alert sent by PARSIQ’s transports informs users who are at risk with a potentially exploited wallet in their possession.
Whitelisting is another useful tool to preserve users’ trigger count. It gives the user control of what they deem trigger worthy transactions. Making frequent transactions & interactions with certain addresses or addresses they are familiar with would be acceptable without triggers, but addresses not whitelisted will trigger alerts.
To set up wallet surveillance with PARSIQ, you can refer to this tutorial video.
3- Elementus
Elementus is the first universal blockchain search engine and institutional-grade crypto forensic solution. They are building the next generation “Who’s Who” of crypto entities on the blockchain with the best-in-class search and analytics capabilities. Their compliance solution and data analytics platform are being used by key U.S. governmental agencies to solve some of the most high-profile cyber investigations and by financial institutions to build the future of finance and commerce on the bedrock of blockchain and digital currencies.
Elementus applies data science to restructure underlying blockchain data into a schema optimized around the relationships between blockchain activity, providing valuable context far beyond manual investigations on individual transaction level. The Elementus view provides a powerful clustering and confident entity attribution based on insights that exist tens or even thousands of transactions away.
A visualization of token sales created using Elementus
As the use of cryptocurrency increases, so does the complexity of investigations. Elementus’s Intelligent Network Expansion technology allows users to generate a network in seconds based on custom parameters relevant to their investigation.
Elementus offers several products dedicated to different solutions within its ecosystem:
Radar — for compliance solutions. Users are able to extract risk scores for any public blockchain address, consumable via API, real-time alert, or via the Radar user interface.
Echo — for custom analytics. Users are able to harness the power of Elementus Analytics paired with the versatility of Palantir Foundry, accessing custom data analysis applications for any use case.
Pulse — for investigations. Pulse provides almost instantaneous tracing of funds from source to destination with multi-level entity attribution, powered by proprietary RapidTrace™ and EntityIndex™ technology
Use Case: Elementus was used to track down billions of stolen bitcoin in a fraud investigation of a YouTube rapper named Razzlekhan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein. The couple was arrested on federal charges of conspiring to launder a multibillion-dollar trove of bitcoins stolen from cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016. The couple was not accused of the theft itself.
Analysis provided by Elementus has found that the pair were able to shield the unseized money through a complex series of crypto transfers. Max Galka, the CEO of Elementus, said the bitcoins were moved across more than 20,000 transactions, indicating that some form of automation software was used.
According to Galka, some of the unseized bitcoins were transferred through the Russia-based darknet market Hydra. “It’s the largest darknet market in existence,” Galka says. “It is highly unlikely law enforcement has the ability to trace these funds further.” According to Elementus, the last known movement of the unseized cache occurred on January 25th 2022, shortly before the couple’s arrests at their Wall Street apartment.
4- AllianceBlock
AllianceBlock is building a globally compliant decentralized capital market by providing a bridge between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi), unlocking trillions of dollars in capital. The AllianceBlock Protocol is a decentralized, blockchain-agnostic layer 2 that automates the process of converting any digital or crypto asset into a bankable product, simplifying the capital transfer process between regulated and opaque markets.
The protocol has three main pillars, focusing on compliance and regulation, data, and DeFi technology. The AllianceBlock Data Tunnel is a key component of the data element, and it leverages their partner Ocean Protocol’s technology, as well as partnerships with Parsiq, API3, Covalent, DIA and Chainlink. The Data Tunnel is a data marketplace that makes data accessible to all through a monetized marketplace, while ensuring traceability, transparency, and trust. Data providers and consumers will benefit from increased access to one another, driven through a secure and easy-to-use solution.
The Data Tunnel dashboard
The AllianceBlock Data Tunnel makes it possible to publish data in a decentralized and simplified manner, without needing to be proficient in DeFi, MetaMask, or private keys. This is crucial to attracting a wider, more mainstream audience. In line with this, the Data Tunnel also simplifies usability for data consumers and developers through a standardized output format. This is in contrast to current offerings, with datasets found in a wide range of formats, making it more difficult for consumers.
Ultimately, the Data Tunnel aims to become the oracle of oracles, being able to take data from oracles to the Data Tunnel, enhancing this data, and then feeding it back to the oracle providers. The Data Tunnel is chain-agnostic, in line with AllianceBlock’s wider vision, to allow for the greatest access and breadth to both datasets and consumers and to ensure as wide adoption as possible. The AllianceBlock Data Tunnel aims to incentivize data providers to share more data, acting as the conduit through which both DeFi and TradFi users can access and take advantage of increased data opportunities.
Use Case: Financial institutions are largely excluded from offering investors access to DeFi. Fund distribution is one of the issues. AllianceBlock provides a solution to these issues by offering access to Open Finance that allows all market entities to participate. It is an end-to-end regulatory compliance framework that serves as a bridge between stakeholders and all actors within the capital markets chain.
In a traditional fund distribution model, all intermediaries between the investor and fund manager can operate independently. Many may only communicate with the next chain in the link. When they do communicate, it is likely through email correspondence, or, for certain operations, even fax or post. This creates inefficiencies.
Traditional fund distribution model
AllianceBlock seeks to create a fund protocol which hosts all of the required activities on one platform. This allows for greater operational transparency and efficiency.
The AllianceBlock fund distribution model
Learn more here about AllianceBlock’s solution to fund distribution, and to explore more use cases for the platform.
5- HUBX
HUBX elevates private placement and loan syndication deal distribution for banks, exchanges, and brokerage firms by connecting into core systems to deliver dynamic data insights and a richer customer experience. In the world of syndicated lending, accessing accurate and timely data is critical for origination and distribution teams to make meaningful and effective decisions. The way data is captured and interpreted constitutes the single most important success criteria to protect and scale capital raising operations. HUBX brings together all relevant data from across an organization to deliver a single source of truth for all participants.
Founded in 2015, HUBX platforms facilitate collaboration between banks and their institutional clients, connect syndicate desks with the rest of the organization, and simplify execution. Each network hub is private, ensuring that the clients’ data is always protected. HUBX strives to help banks adapt quickly and seamlessly to the rapid digital transformation that is driving private capital markets today.
By connecting all participants on their own terms, HUBX will help accelerate deal execution, reduce costs, and introduce standardization and automation into the market. By offering unrivaled customer experience and dynamic insights and tools to their clients, banks are able to harness the true potential of their data and the network effect.
Use Case: HUBX has partnered with financial software solution developer Finastra to help corporate lenders during the loan syndication process by reducing manual workloads. As a first step, this deal sees HUBX Arranger integrated with Finastra’s back-office loan software Fusion Loan IQ, which is used by 90% of the world’s top 100 banks to process over 70% of global syndicated loans. While the market is worth around $4.5trn annually, much like in private equity, the majority of work is manual and disconnected.
According to Axel Coustere, HUBX co-founder, “HUBX Arranger provides a key missing link for Finastra’s clients. The ability to digitally scale the arduous syndication process by tackling the lack of end-to-end execution. There are many manual, time consuming steps and a lack of real -time visibility currently associated with this piece of a bank’s business. Not doing this well limits the banks’ ability to manage and improve risk and ultimately reputation.”
Conclusion: The Rise of Data Analytics
Modern businesses have been benefiting from data analytics for several years now. According to Forbes, data analytics adoption in enterprises increased from 17% in 2015 to 59% in 2018. Now, only 10% of businesses have refused to utilize big data. One category of data analytics that is poised to change and transform the industry is predictive analytics. It is focused on making predictions about future outcomes based on a massive amount of historical data as well as techniques like machine learning. With this type of technology, enterprises will be able to forecast trends and behaviors.
The current state of predictive analytics is hardly perfect. A huge obstacle to overcome is getting quality data from different sources and correlating them. Digital agencies and IT firms have their own silos of data and use different tools in obtaining them. There is also the issue of whether there is enough of the right data. When there is not enough for the system to make conclusions from, the results of predictions may be biased and untrustworthy. Blockchain technology might be able to fill the gap in this space.
Blockchain’s computational power is gained from multiple connected computers, hence it is powerful enough to properly define the model to be analyzed based on a vast number of data sets. It would use its power to analyze the different stored datasets across computers and pull up the ones that can provide the answer. Furthermore, blockchain may be the cloud equivalent to one physical supercomputer, which makes it accessible to small businesses. Currently, companies that want to utilize predictive analytics have to rely on expensive super machines. With blockchain implemented, the costs to obtain such analytics tools will be greatly reduced.
As for potential applications, blockchain analytics could be used in marketing strategies. Marketers could be able to prepare for future marketing campaigns with the help of data gained from market realities. The system might be able to forecast price movements for financial markets, including cryptocurrencies.
The fusion of data and blockchain technology is poised to grow even more in the next couple of years. This could provide an opportunity for blockchain to display its potential as developers continue to experiment.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) made a huge splash in 2021, with sales of NFTs reaching $25 billion in the same year. NFTs are records on a blockchain that cannot be replaced with something else and retain its value. In that sense, they are different from fungible tokens like bitcoin, which can be traded for another bitcoin and retain the same value. NFTs are most popularly used to sell digital art, by uniquely associating digital assets such as images, videos, music or text to a blockchain record. It is with this association that NFTs promise art collectors to have something that cannot be copied or modified: ownership of the work.
Generative NFTs is a new art genre with a rapidly growing ecosystem within the crypto world that is poised to challenge the traditional art world. Generative art is developed through creative coding and this exciting medium is becoming increasingly popular within the art community, along with those interested in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and the metaverse. Using a digitally native medium, generative NFTs fundamentally challenge conceptions of what gives art its value and how society expresses its communal values through art.
What are Generative Art NFTs?
Generative art is an expression currently used a lot in the context of NFTs- as a means of ownership, and even a means to create pieces of generative art via smart contracts. The term generative art describes pieces of art that have gone through a generation process by a system that is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art. Thereby, generative art can be seen as a collaboration between an artist and an autonomous system. Under this definition, NFTs are not the origin of generative art.
The Origins of Generative Art
Instead, an early example of generative art, more specifically of generative music, is Mozart’s Musikalisches Würfelspiel published in the late eighteenth century. Musikalisches Würfelspiel (German for “musical dice game”) was a system for using dice to randomly generate music from precomposed options. While this is an example of an early piece of generative art, created in traditional manners, blockchain technology enables new opportunities for creation. Generative art can now be created by running a smart contract. A smart contract is code stored on a blockchain under a certain address. By sending crypto to this address, the smart contract is triggered, and the code stored under the address is executed automatically. A piece of generative art will then be created by the smart contract and stored on-chain in the form of an NFT directly owned by the wallet address that sends the crypto to run the smart contract.
Generative Art as NFTs
Today, the common process of creating generative art is by running a machine algorithm, no matter if it is created as an NFT or not. Minting a generative art NFT adds a level of uniqueness that could not have been reached before. This is achieved by including inputs to the piece of art such as wallet address, transaction ID or gas price. These parameters are then used to mint the NFT.
The resulting NFT piece of generative art differs from those art pieces created traditionally. There will always exist only one NFT with these exact parameters. Even if another art piece would be created that looks very similar, the parameters included in the NFT piece of generative art would always be different, and so each piece is truly unique. That said, it is valid to question how the created NFT can be something “special” if the same algorithm could be run millions of times and create NFTs that eventually all look similar, even if they are not identical. But this is an advantage of NFT generative art: a supply cap can be implemented right from the beginning.
Traditionally, the art market has evolved to be exclusive with high entry barriers due to the necessary knowledge and investment size required. The trend towards generative NFT art opens the art market and enables inclusion for people outside of the art scene and with lower investment budgets. This has also been recognized by big players of the art world and thus, auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s put NFTs on their agenda and started curated NFT auctions.
The value of generative art is based on an interplay between embedded attributes with varying degrees of programmatic rarity and how those elements come together in a way that is visually aesthetic and pleasing to the collector. Although the programmatic characteristics add quantifiable metrics that can be used to assist in the valuation of the NFT, generative art pieces still have an element of subjectivity driving demand.
AI-Generated NFTs
Art made entirely by artificial intelligence has been branded as the next big thing and is slowly grabbing the attention of art enthusiasts and NFT collectors all around the world. A collection of NFTs created by a robot artist named Botto sold for over $1.1 million in 2021 and projects like the AI Art House feature generative art NFTs that so closely resembles the likes of Monet, Mondrian and van Gogh that you would be forgiven to mistake them for long lost art pieces by past masters.
AI-generated art is able to produce one of a kind pieces that push the limits of exploration and creativity beyond human touch. Artificial intelligence is commonly understood to be the ability by a non-human model or machine to solve sophisticated tasks and perform human-like cognitive functions such as learning, problem solving, reasoning, and perceiving. When it comes to art, the concept is based on the idea that machine learning algorithms are capable of producing original images when adequately trained using a vast amount of image data using a technology called General Adversarial Networks (GANs). Similar to a painter who has taken years to perfect their craft, AI is also able to learn from endless hours of training and become able to generate images that have never been drawn before.
How this actually works in real life is simple: in order to create a new piece of art, a human artist can simply enter keywords or sentences into an artificially intelligent model that will then use algorithms to analyze millions of works of art and produce its own images as a visual interpretation or representation of the original text. That is the framework behind a tool called Eponym, developed by art platform Art AI, which leverages text-to-art in order to develop AI-generated NFTs. The developer has explained that its algorithms are inspired by “a vast collection of art from throughout history” and that the AI draws inspiration from being exposed to different art genres, periods, subjects and styles to create NFTs from scratch, each with their own distinct style. The result is, according to the developer, otherworldly images of novel styles and contents.
This way, users can easily create a new abstract art piece based on the text they choose and mint it directly to OpenSea. Moreover, single words can only be used once, meaning there will never be two NFTs based on the same text. Eponym allows human touch to be combined with AI algorithms, which has led to some mind-blowing art. And taking it even a step further, a Gen 2 collection of NFTs now allows minters to give sets of instructions to the AI system, including emotions, color schemes, visual styles, and more.
The adoption of AI generative features by artists has been hailed as a new era in art, where the combination of human imagination and AI art based on input text has extended the possibilities of art itself to unknown and yet exciting depths.
Top Generative Art NFT Projects
Developments in the medium and technology have allowed pieces to become more visually complex and appealing, while bringing to life new art genres that human artists have yet to imagine. As the saying goes, art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation, but here are some generative art NFT projects that may catch your eye:
1- Art Blocks
One of the most successful NFT projects on the Ethereum blockchain, Art Blocks is in a class of its own when it comes to active generative art projects. Founded by Snowfro, the platform is built around its Art Node smart contract that allows collectors to mint tokens containing a unique hash string. The thrill of the unknown is part of its appeal as collectors don’t know exactly what their piece will look like until after it has been minted. Art Blocks is the digital platform that produces, sells and stores on-demand generative art, though some people will refer to the art itself as Art Blocks.
Art Blocks incorporate an element of surprise where the end user never knows how their piece will turn out
You can browse the website exactly as though you were online shopping for a piece of art for your living room. If you find something you like, you can buy it, but instead of being sent a replica of what you chose, an algorithm goes to work making tweaks to the formula, and produces a one-of-a-kind piece in that style just for you. The result is a digital piece of art, which can be anything from an experience, 3-D rendering or cartoon, that can never be copied.
There are three categories of art on the Art Blocks platform: Curated, Playground, and Factory. The Curated section are works chosen by the Art Blocks team as an exemplification of the high level of creativity and execution possible in crypto art. Playground is a space for experimentation and for curated artists to explore what is next for their projects. Individual projects are not vetted by Art Blocks but the artists have been vetted to ensure high quality. The Factory is a sort of anything-goes space. Any artist can submit their pieces to be a part of the Factory and Art Blocks will check to make sure it is functional and not a copy before the piece is published.
Some notable Art Block projects and artists include:
Chromie Squiggles — by Snowfro
Chromie Squiggle #13
Chromie Squiggles was the first-ever collection to be published and minted on Art Blocks. The project is designed by platform founder Snowfro himself. He considers them to “embody the soul of the Art Blocks platform,” and claims they are each his “personal signature as an artist, developer, and tinkerer.” In 2021, a pair of pieces from this collection resold for $4 million.
Fidenza — by Tyler Hobbs
Fidenza #313
Tyler Hobbs’ colorful project Fidenza is impressive for its ability to generate individual pieces that look incredibly different from one another in color, texture, shape and more. In Hobbs’ own words: “Fidenza is by far my most versatile algorithm to date.” Work from this project has sold for more than $3 million.
Ringers — by Dmitri Cherniak
Ringers #109
Ringers features art based on the concept of wrapping a string around a set of pegs. The project uses few colors: black, white and yellow primarily. Cherniak describes the inspiration for his work as “an almost infinite number of ways to wrap a string around a set of pegs. On the surface it may seem like a simple concept but prepare to be surprised and delighted at the variety of combinations the algorithm can produce.” Ringer #109 sold for an astounding $7 million in 2021.
2 – Autoglyphs
Autoglyphs are created using generative algorithms and each artwork is wrapped as an NFT token that contains the original data of the work. The art is inside the smart contract and stored permanently on the Ethereum blockchain. This completely self-contained mechanism for the creation and ownership of artwork earned Autoglyphs recognition as the first “on-chain” generative art project.
Autoglyphs
Founded in 2019 by the same Larva Labs technologists behind CryptoPunks, the glyphs were originally minted by anyone who was willing to donate the creation fee of 0.2ETH (around $35 at the time) to 350.org, a charity that combats climate change and promotes clean and renewable energies. The creator of each glyph became the first owner of that glyph. After 512 glyphs were created, the generator shut itself off forever and the glyphs are now only available on the secondary market.
Autoglyphs had no human interference in the generation of the artwork. Created entirely by the algorithm to produce ASCII artwork, the project supercharged the NFT industry by becoming the first-ever generative art project on the blockchain and paving the way for the generative art boom today.
3 – Eponym
Eponym is the world’s first and largest collectively created NFT art collection. Developed by Art AI which is the world’s largest gallery of AI generated art, this text-to-art generation relies on algorithms that personalize generative art and that assists users in creating NFTs based on phrases or words of their choice.
Generate personalized art based own your choice of phrases and words
Each submission to the minting site takes about a minute to load, but once the AI had completed, you are greeted by a new and unique work of art. Results range from highly abstract, to landscapes and portraits, all depending on the text prompts. Phrases of action creates chaotic representations, locations often produces landscapes with scenery similar to that of its real world appearance, and portraits are mainly born from names of people.
These machine-made artworks represented the project title well, as an eponym is a person for which something is named. In essence, what the team had created was a system where the collector provides the words, or eponym, and is returned a computer generated artistic interpretation bred directly from the AI’s general understanding of the phrase.
The most notable part of the project is that you are able to refresh the algorithm and ask for a new representation of the word or phrase that the creation was born from! This expands the possibilities from one single depiction of a prompt to an endless number, as you could keep rolling until you find the Eponym you want to mint. Once art is rerolled, it would never exist again. The simple permission to allow for a redo opened the door for the collector to have an equal role in the creation alongside the artificial intelligence.
Conclusion: Generating A New Era of Art Appreciation
The generative art NFT movement is leading to greater appreciation of art and inclusion on a global scale. The traditional art world has notoriously become an exclusive club and investment class for the ultra-wealthy to speculate on and flip for profit, or perhaps more nefariously, to launder money or engage in tax evasion.
Although the generative art NFT market may be flooded with euphoric sentiment, early adopters of the movement believe it is ushering in a new digital Renaissance that will enable artists and computer scientists to reach a global audience and experiment with a new medium that is engaging collectors on a deeply emotional level.
Ultimately, the forms and types of art that are produced and highly coveted signals the fundamental values of a society. This is apparent in the values of community-building, inclusion, and mimetic culture. Generative art NFTs have surpassed the traditional art market in its ability to draw attention and capture the imagination of a global audience. (vallartainfo.com) The NFT art community has accomplished this by building an internet-native global community of avid fans, creators, and collectors that do not take themselves too seriously and prioritize fun and connection over physical material possessions.
Axie Infinity ($AXS) is probably the first game everyone thinks of when talking about crypto gaming or GameFi. This is for a good reason too, it is hugely popular with millions of players worldwide and is well known for helping many earn a living (whilst playing the game) during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Recently, however, the game has been plagued by problems such as a multi-million dollar hack, and reports about shady practices by some Axie players. In this article, we look at the rise and fall(?) of Axie Infinity and how it can be a valuable case study for the future of other play to earn crypto games.
What is Axie Infinity ($AXS)?
Axie Infinity ($AXS) is a popular play-to-earn NFT blockchain-based game where players can earn by leveraging gameplay skills and contributing to the ecosystem. Partially inspired by the popular Pokémon video game series, Axie Infinity allows players to pit monsters called Axies against each other in battles. Gamers can also collect and raise their monster pets, and build land-based kingdoms for the pets as they progress through the game.
Axie Infinity is easily one of the most popular games in the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector. Launched by Vietnamese game-maker Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity concluded a $7.5 million funding round in May 2021, with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and billionaire Mark Cuban as investors. According to Bloomberg, the number of daily active users on Axie Infinity jumped from 30,000 to 1 million between April and August last year. Furthermore, from April 2018 to July 1st, 2021, Sky Mavis generated $21 million from Axie Infinity; by the end of August in the same year, that number jumped more than 2,200% to $485 million.
Yet despite its meteoric rise, Axie Infinity has seen a dramatic decline in daily revenue and general interest since its November 2021 peak, when its revenues reached an all-time high of $165 USD. To better understand the unraveling of one of the most popular blockchain games, let’s take a look at the recent issues and challenges Axie has faced in the past months.
Check out our video where we analyse the crypto gaming trend and where we think it’s headed.
My honest take on crypto gaming
Some Major Problems and Criticisms of Axie Infinity
The Axie Infinity universe has had its fair share of criticism. One of the most significant issues is the problematically high barrier of entry. Although Axie Infinity is free to download, players need at least three Axies to begin with, each costing a minimum of $29. This can be a costly initial investment for some and would deter them from even starting the game in the first place.
The expensive initial cost has created active Discord and Telegram groups where prospective players are consistently on the hunt for sponsors to help get their feet in the door. Unfortunately, sponsors sometimes make inappropriate requests before assisting players. Last year, Axie Infinity reacted to reports of sponsors requesting nude photos from players.
Other controversial practices, such as the “Scholarship” practice emerged whereby gamers lacking the initial capital (known as “Scholars”) would borrow Axies from “Managers” in return for a significant amount of in-game earnings. In some cases the split was as high as 50:50 between the Scholar and the Manager. In the Philippines, where it was well-known that locals quit their jobs in favour of playing Axie professionally due to its high returns, the practice was very widespread. During Axie’s heyday in 2021, many scholarship “guilds” were formed, some of which had over 3,000 players playing multiple games for their Managers. These Managers have even gone so far as to say that they may remove peoples’ scholarships if the scholars did not play to their satisfaction. Considering the average wage of a Filipino employee was only US$3,218, critics have accused Axie Infinity’s business model to “digital serfdom”– modern exploitation in the digital space.
In response to accusations of controversial practices by some Axie Infinity players, Sky Mavis Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Aleksander Leonard Larsen likened Axie Infinity to a digital nation, suggesting that there are criminals in any society. The COO admitted that the issue is an internal concern for the Company and that the platform has banned “several thousand” accounts so far.
Revenue Plunge
Axie Infinity’s revenue was already dropping since its peak in November 2021. According to an image from Token Terminal, Axie Infinity began October with $6 million in daily revenue. Between October 4th and early December, revenue spiked up to $10 million but also plunged to nearly $2 million. However, since December 12th, there has been a steady decline. In fact, Axie has not crossed $2 million since mid-December, even recording less than $21,000 as recently as March 30th. According to a recent report, Axie plunged 40% in September alone.
Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network Hack
By far, the biggest issue Axie has faced in its 4-year history is a US$625 million hack that took place on 23 March 2022. According to an official Substack post, hackers compromised Sky Mavis’ Ronin Network validator nodes and Axie DAO validators, which are used to power the game. As a result the hackers successfully made away with 25.5 million USDC and 173,600 Ether (ETH). The unknown hackers depleted funds from the Ronin bridge in two transactions.
Ronin explained that the chain currently has nine validator nodes to prevent illicit transactions, and requires five validatory signatures to recognize all withdrawals or deposits. In November, Ronin let Sky Mavis sign transactions to help with high demand from new Axie players. Although this only lasted till December, the allowlist access remained active, and the attacker was able to access Sky Mavis systems to get a signature from the Axie DAO validator through Ronin’s gas-free RPC node. By doing so, the hacker was able to gain validation access over this highly centralized network, controlling the majority of nodes, and thus, the decision-making power.
Analytics firm Chainalysis is currently helping Sky Mavis to track the stolen funds and has said the funds are still in the hacker’s wallet. Ronin has also said all stakeholders are now trying to ensure that users don’t lose any funds.
The Substack post also specifies several actions taken to curb further loss. For instance, withdrawal or deposit recognition now requires eight signatures instead of five. There is also a temporary pause on the Ronin Bridge in addition to Binance disabling their bridge to and from Ronin. The Katana DEX was also immediately suspended. Unfortunately, none of that has stopped prices of their AXS token from falling 25% since the hack occured.
Axie Infinity’s Future: is this the end?
Even with these evident drawbacks, several members of the gaming community believe that Axie Infinity has a bright future ahead of it. Some analysts think that the platform’s extensive and ever-increasing community can only spell long-term progress. Axie Infinity has enjoyed large-scale popularity and increased AXS token prices such that many believe that there is no worthy competitor. However, the recent hack might sway public opinions very fast.
Although Axie’s revenue has consistently dropped since late last year, The plunge has been even steeper in the last few days. Token Terminal data shows that Axie pulled in just $184,500 on March 1st, from $2.1 million on January 19th. Revenue on March 25th was less than $9,000.
Prices of the project’s native $AXS token have also taken a tumble, with prices reaching an all time high of $164.90 on 6th November 2021, and now down to around $38 in late April 2022. Check here for the latest prices for $AXS and data provided by CoinGecko.
Several competitors, such as Crypto Kitties, Decentraland and MetaGods, have been trying to give Axie Infinity a good run for its money. Now is finally the right time for these alternative play-to-earn ecosystems to steal Axie’s disgruntled customers. Popular options can leverage Axie Infinity’s current downtime to revamp their existing offerings or introduce new ones, making the features attractive enough for Axie players to cross over. In what may end up as the likely outcome, players may also be satisfied enough to consider keeping and using accounts across most of these popular play-to-earn games.
With all the fuss and mistrust currently circulating within the gamefi space, it might also be a good time for new games to launch, or at least begin to whet gamers’ appetites. Possible strategies could include specific advertisements targeted at security, more gaming options, more accessible play-to-earn services, and immersive gameplay that can rival Axie Infinity. If competitors offer little to no financial entry barriers, Axie Infinity could have a very challenging time getting back on its feet after it eventually opens the Ronin bridge.
Conclusion
Currently, the Ronin bridge remains closed, with all deposits and withdrawals halted pending a full investigation into the hack. It is expected that it may be another few weeks before the Ronin bridge is operational again. Most importantly, the team behind Axie Infinity has promised affected users that they will recover and reimburse the stolen funds. Despite this setback, Axie Infinity still has over 600,000 active daily users, demonstrating its popularity, and the game itself is not going away anytime soon.
