Games

DAO Maker founder builds game based on abandoned Logan Paul project in just 30 days

“Degen Zoo” has seen more than 115,000 wallets register to join the game, pledging over $700 million.

Degen Zoo, an NFT game inspired by YouTuber Logan Paul’s controversial Crypto Zoo concept, has seen more than 115,000 wallets register to join the game, with pledges of over $700 million. DAO Maker founder Christoph Zaknun took on the challenge of building his variant of the shelved zoo-themed game in just 30 days.

In August 2021, Logan Paul announced a project called Crypto Zoo, which involved buying nonfungible token eggs that would supposedly hatch into animals, allowing owners to earn passive income through zoo tokens. The project reportedly raised over $3 million in NFT sales and tens of millions in zoo tokens. However, the project failed to deliver as promised, leaving many participants feeling that they had been rug pulled by the influencer.

Inspired by Paul’s Crypto Zoo game, which critics have called a “scam,” Christoph Zaknun’s “Degen Zoo” game simulates the impact of capitalism on animal extinction, featuring a deflationary token and an NFT collection of 120 endangered species. Players are motivated to “kill” their NFT, driving the collection to extinction and raising awareness of the devastating effects of human greed on wildlife. Zaknun has pledged to donate all profits from Degen Zoo to charity.

Zaknun’s decision to broadcast daily updates of his progress has garnered interest from over 250,000 people, with more than 30,000 testnet transactions initiated by 3,000 players within days of the first testnet release.

Logan Paul reportedly released a video stating that Christoph Zaknun had no right to dictate the required development timeline, following criticisms that Paul had done nothing for a year after raising funds for his own Crypto Zoo project.

Two months ago, self-proclaimed “internet detective exposing scams” Coffeezilla published a series of exposés investigating and exposing Logan Paul’s NFT project that never was.

In the YouTube videos, investors in the game claimed to have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. After Coffeezilla’s video was released, Logan Paul threatened to sue Coffeezilla for defamation after he accused Paul’s CryptoZoo nonfungible token project of being a “scam.” However, shortly after, Paul deleted his response video aimed at Coffeezilla, apologized and promised to drop his threats of filing a defamation lawsuit over the videos, saying:

“It was rash and misaligned with the trust issue at hand, so I called him today and apologized.”

As Cointelegraph reported on Feb. 3, Logan Paul and CryptoZoo were hit with a lawsuit last month alleging the YouTube influencer’s “fraudulent venture” executed a “rug pull.”

The class-action lawsuit accuses Paul and Crypto Zoo executives of stealing millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from purchasers through a fraudulent scheme. The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 2 in the Western District of Texas, with the plaintiff Don Holland alleging that Paul and Crypto Zoo executives promised exclusive access to crypto assets and other benefits but instead absconded with the funds.

We have officially filed a class action lawsuit in the Western District of Texas against Logan Paul et al. for the CryptoZoo fiasco. (This is in addition to the numerous cases heading to arbitration on the matter.) pic.twitter.com/BIC5v63TGZ

— AttorneyTom (@attorney_tom) February 2, 2023

Cointelegraph reached out to Logan Paul for comment but had not received one at time of publication.

GameFi analytics help blockchain gamers sift through crypto games

How and where to get analytics on the emerging projects in the GameFi space.

From the massive fall of Bitcoin’s (BTC) price to the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, 2022 was full of upheaval for the blockchain industry. But the blockchain community has always been resilient, finding new ways to develop in the most challenging times.

A striking example of optimism and growth is the development of the GameFi industry, which combines gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse.

In 2021, GameFi became a growth leader in the crypto space, with successful projects like Gala Games, Decentraland, The Sandbox and Axie Infinity.

The GameFi sector has continued to develop, attracting more and more investment. In 2022, the volume of venture investments in Web3 games and the metaverse amounted to $7.6 billion. Some analysts predict a valuation of $2.8 billion for the GameFi sector by 2028.

However, a sudden influx of investors in this growing sector has also resulted in many low-quality games suffering from poor in-game economics, as well as monotonous and underdeveloped gameplay.

How can a gamer looking for a good project find the right one? Cointelegraph has found several GameFi analytics resources to help potential gamers weigh the pros and cons of each platform.

DappRadar

DappRadar is one of the most popular decentralized application (DApp) analytics services. Founded in 2018, it provides statistics on DeFi, GameFi and NFTs. The platform has data for over 2,000 NFT games.

Pros

One of the most popular features of DappRadar is located in the “rankings” tab, which allows users to rank several DApps related to GameFi, DeFi projects, gambling, exchanges, NFT collections, marketplaces, social networks and different blockchains. DApps are ranked according to criteria such as the number of unique active wallets (UAW), number of transactions, transaction volume and the total balance of funds in the smart contract.

The page of an individual project contains its rating, tags and links to social networks, as well as its description. In the middle of the page, standard indicators (UAW, number of transactions, volume, balance) are displayed in addition to a graph of changes for different periods.

General statistics on DApps can be obtained in the “Industry Overview” tab after selecting the period, category and protocol. DappRadar also periodically publishes analytical notes, which are located in the “Reports” and “Blog” sections.

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There are two additional options for NFTs. First is the NFT Explorer, in which users can sort not only the general list of collections, but also the NFTs of an individual collection and even a general gallery of NFTs from different collections. The page for an individual NFT shows its name, owner, minimum price, last sale price, blockchain, NFT metadata and trading history. A second option is the NFT Value Estimator, which displays the expected price of an NFT based on current and past price performance.

For game developers, DappRadar has a “Developers” section where game founders can promote a new product through advertising campaigns and other marketing techniques.

Cons

The wealth of information provided for each project could prove difficult to navigate for newcomers who may only want basic information about a project.

Another disadvantage of the platform is that, for a long time, the selection of NFT games was limited to those on the Ethereum blockchain, while projects on other blockchains were not taken into account.

The situation improved this year when the site increased the number of monitored blockchains from three to 48. Considerable funds have also been allocated for the development of new technical solutions.

Dapp.com

Dapp.com is the world’s largest DApp distribution platform. Dapp.com lists over 8,000 DApps built on more than 20 blockchains like Ethereum, EOS, TRON, Steem, TomoChain, IOST, Stacks and others. The platform showcases DApps based on data analytics, community feedback and user comments.

Pros

The platform has a built-in wallet called DappStoreWallet so that users can easily access and use DApps associated with various blockchains.

The ecosystem of the project is powered by Dapp Token (DAPPT). Token holders are able to participate in voting on the platform, launch projects on the platform through staking, and more.

The platform has a “Market Report” section where users can view quarterly reports in various areas, including games.

The advantages of the platform include a simple interface and navigation, where users can view game ratings according to various criteria — for example, by increasing or decreasing prices for tokens, by user reviews, or by level of risk.

Users of the platform can not only see the ratings of NFT projects themselves, but also read general news about NFT projects.

Cons

For an inexperienced user, it is almost impossible to find the quarterly analytical reports section. The link to the page with reports is at the very bottom of the page and represented by small text.

At the same time, the reports themselves clearly stalled for a couple of years, with the most recent appearing for Q2 of 2020. At the same time, the quality and depth of analytics is almost on par with that of DappRadar.

The project listings are not informative and contain only a brief description of the project in a couple of sentences without the current price of the token or the number of active users. Such information must be viewed in the overall rating of projects, which is inconvenient. The majority of the page for each project is occupied by user comments, which are very important, but it seems that Dapp.com is primarily aimed at creating a community and not at providing analytics.

CryptoSlam

CryptoSlam is an NFT market data aggregator. The platform can be used to analyze trading volumes in the NFT market, identify the most popular collections of digital assets, and track release dates for new tokens.

The CryptoSlam team has included various information about the projects on the pages of the collections and the individual NFTs themselves. The project description has a section on online sales statistics, which the system updates as owners change. The platform can also be used to collect data on NFTs of interest.

Pros

The main feature of the platform is its real-time data showing movement in the NFT industry. Featured data includes the volume of sales of NFT tokens, the number of token holders, on which blockchain an NFT resides, and the number of holders.

It is convenient that users can sort NFT projects in several tables on one web page by various parameters like sales volume within a particular game, or by the price of tokens.

One unique feature of the platform is its live sales section, where one can see which user sold an NFT token and at what price, including from which address and to which address. This parameter is constantly updated automatically.

This platform is a very convenient service for the continuous tracking of the work of an NFT project, within which real transactions can be traced.

Another plus of the platform is that it is developing. In January 2023, the Forkast.News company and CryptoSlam teamed up to create the Forkast Labs project. The product could offer users a new media analytics platform for the digital economy. According to the team, the decision to create Forkast Labs was made due to the lack of a standard methodology for determining the true value of digital assets, which is mainly measured by current prices for cryptocurrencies. The timing of the launch of the project is still unknown.

Cons

One con is that the platform doesn’t have any analytical reports. The service only allows for the monitoring of NFT projects, albeit in real time, but does not evaluate activities for a particular period. Perhaps this defect will be corrected after the launch of the Forkast Labs project.

Another downside is the inability to separate NFT projects by indstury — gaming, gambling or finance, for example. If the user wants to see only NFT gaming projects and allocate them to a separate slot or table, then they will not be able to do this since the service does not have such a function.

Just like Dapp.com, this platform contains a lack of detailed information about projects, such as creators, at what stage of development the project is, news about collaborations, etc.

Conclusion

The main reason for using NFT analytics tools is to help limit the amount of fraud in the major marketplaces. Investing in NFTs can be time consuming, somewhat risky and nearly impossible unless users spend hours on social media platforms and NFT trading platforms looking through the myriad NFTs available.

As can be seen from the description of the most popular analytics platforms, there is no perfect one that contains all relevant information in one place, but such projects are critical for crypto enthusiasts.

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Sebastien Borget, president of the Blockchain Game Alliance, told Cointelegraph that he believes that analytics platforms should pay more attention not only to numbers, but to players and users:

“NFT games analytics platforms should expand beyond just the on-chain transaction data to reflect what’s happening in a game or how popular it actually it, and work on broadening to all the activities games have to offer to players — to show that games are first and foremost fun entertainment products where people spend time, and transactions are not the only gameplay in them.”

MatchBoxDAO launches esports experience for Web3 developers

The tournament, “0xMonaco: Battle of Titans,” is scheduled to kick off on Jan. 29 and will bring together developers from around the blockchain space.

MatchBoxDAO — a collective of developers, artists and designers building on-chain gaming infrastructure with StarkNet — has announced the launch of MatchBox Arena, an esports experience specifically designed for developer participation. Dubbing it the “World Cup of the Web3 companies,” the team said the gaming tournament is designed to find out which company has the best technical team.

We are finally launching: “Matchbox Arena”✨

With the “Battle of Titans” as the first CTF competition released on the platform, we’ll officially release “Matchbox Arena” tomorrow where the players will be able to upload their code.https://t.co/vGbEuyzus0

More info below

— MatchboxDAO (@matchbox_dao) January 17, 2023

The tournament, titled “0xMonaco: Battle of Titans,” will bring together Web3 developers from companies such as Uniswap, Ledger, Polygon, Chainlink and Near. The team said it will be livestreamed and feature esports commentators.

On-chain games for developers take a unique approach, focusing on strategy games in which players use smart contracts to code their strategies. 0xMonaco and future games of its kind will require high technical skills, creativity and quick adaptability to win. MatchBoxDAO promised to create an enjoyable experience for developers and entertain viewers, through video simulations that depict the actual code logic during the round.

MatchBox Arena plans to host closed tournaments for the best teams in Web3 and open challenges for everyone to participate in. Players can enter the arena, upload their code strategy and participate in rounds with other players. Additionally, players and viewers will be able to track their favorite team’s progress on a leaderboard and watch video replays of the matches.

The Web3 ecosystem continues to influence and evolve the gaming landscape, and game developers are now looking beyond play-to-earn and focusing more on the gaming aspect of their platforms.

On Jan. 7, Cointelegraph reported that artificial intelligence could also influence Web3-based gaming. OpenAI could potentially allow developers to create better art, more challenging encounters, and superior narration, leading to a more immersive and rich experience for players.

Polygon enlists Xternity to migrate multiplayer Web3 game from Solana

To help transfer Synergy Land’s resources onto the EVM chain, Xternity proposed a process — via its network migration tool — that can be used to migrate games or projects across chains.

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon, joined hands with Xternity, a Web3 gaming development platform, to migrate and onboard a multiplayer Web3 game — Synergy Land — to the Polygon network from Solana.

As blockchain platforms, Solana focuses primarily on scalability and cost-cutting, while Polygon allows for seamless interaction with the Ethereum ecosystem. To help transfer Synergy Land’s resources onto the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain, Xternity proposed a process — via its network migration tool — that can be used to migrate games or projects across chains.

Speaking about Xternity’s goal to accelerate Web3 game development, co-founder and CEO Sagi Maman, stated that both players and developers should have the option to choose their own blockchain ecosystems.

For users, the migration process involves linking their Solana-compatible wallets, such as Phantom and MetaMask, burning their assets on Solana and recreating them on Polygon. With its migration to Polygon, Synergy Land aims to onboard Web2 users into Web3 without compromising the community hosted over the older blockchain.

Web3 projects that opt for EVM migration often seek a more extensive user base, greater functionality and credibility of the Ethereum blockchain.

On Jan. 17, the Polygon proof-of-stake chain was scheduled for a hard fork. Speaking to Cointelegraph, a Polygon spokesperson shared minute details about the upgrade:

“The hard fork is coded for the Block >= 38,189,056. No centralized, single actor is going to initiate it. Validators of the network have to update their nodes prior to the indicated block and they are already doing so.”

The upgrade, approved by 87% of the 15 voters of the Polygon Governance Team, aims to reduce gas fee spikes and fix the chain reorganization problem.

OpenAI will lead to better art and narration in Web3 games — Immutable exec

Alex Connelly says the technology provides “very cool storytelling opportunities.”

The creation of smart contracts and Web3 interfaces has led to an entirely new play-to-earn or nonfungible token (NFT) genre of video games. But during the 2021 crypto bull market and subsequent crash of 2022, many of the games in this niche went through incredible ups and downs in terms of player count and transaction volume.

Despite this volatility, one Web3 gaming executive who spoke to Cointelegraph says that new innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) will make the genre better than it has ever been.

Alex Connelly is the chief technology officer of Immutable, developer of the Gods Unchained digital collectible trading card game and Immutable X NFT platform. He told Cointelegraph that OpenAI, an AI-focused American research laboratory dedicated to developing friendly AI applications that can assist with a variety of tasks, software will allow new possibilities for Web3 games, letting developers create better art, more challenging encounters and superior narration, leading to a more immersive and rich experience for players.

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Connelly said that the area his team is looking at the most for OpenAI applications is art. In the past, video game artists often had to create multiple versions of the same images. For example, there often needed to be multiple sizes of the same images or slightly different versions that emphasized different parts of a piece of art. This sometimes led to a lack of efficiency. But with OpenAI software, artists are now able to experiment with letting AI create different versions of a piece of art, freeing up the artists to spend more time creating original work.

Challenging players… but not too much

Beyond the immediate benefit of creating better art, Connolly said that there were other areas where OpenAI may improve gaming further into the future. One subject that the team has been discussing is the creation of AI that can dynamically adjust to players’ skill levels, creating encounters that are just difficult enough to be fun, without becoming overwhelming. Connelly stated:

“I think we are really excited about the potential for this technology to create more meaningful counter-play for opponents, so one challenging thing in things like trading card games or things like RPGs is building an AI that is the right degree of difficulty for and is tailored somewhat to the needs of the players. I think we think we can create really deep and immersive, ongoing learning curves for players that sort of match up to where they’re at in the games.”

“I think that’s a really important thing for making sure that you don’t have something that’s so easy that no one plays against it or so hard that it’s just not fun to play against, finding that nice curve and making that player customized. That’s an awesome use of this technology,” he added.

Immutable’s collectible trading card NFT game, Gods Unchained

Of course, video game developers have always attempted to make AI programs for computer opponents that would provide the right difficulty for players. But the Immutable exec says that OpenAI provides a better approach when compared to the strategies used by developers in the past:

“I think a lot of what’s been built previously in games has been what I call ‘manually written’ AIs where the opponent in the game is basing their decisions on a bunch of programmed rules that a programmer has introduced there.”

Connelly continued, “You’re having to tell it what to do, as opposed to just saying ‘Hey, we’re an AI that plays the game. The goal of the AI is, is it to win all the time? Is it to win about 50% of the time? Is it to win about 50% of the time against this player?’ […] There’s a lot of fuzziness and black box in the middle of that model, […] with this new technology putting people in a position to actually create more customized experiences for games.”

Connelly said that this new technology will not only make creating AIs for computer-controlled opponents easier; it will also lead to a “more tailored, personalized content, full single-player experience.”

ChatGPT and GPT3 storytelling

One of the newest pieces of OpenAI software is Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, also known as ChatGPT, which has already been used to create trading bots, blogs and even crypto songs.

In response to a question about whether Immutable is planning to use ChatGPT in its games, Connelly said that the team is only in the very early stages of considering it, given that it is so new. However, he did say that the team has been using a previous incarnation, GPT-3, to experiment with ways to create an AI narrator that will tell stories based on the plays that occur within a card game, as he explained:

“We think there are very cool storytelling opportunities with this technology. We’ve explored ideas such as, let’s say, you’re in a card game and you’re playing cards getting GPT-3 to stitch that together into a story. […] No human could ever go along and write down a story that ties together the input for a whole game. It would just be impossible when we’re talking about millions of games here, right?”

Despite this optimism, he warned that the team has run into some kinks when trying to implement this story narrator idea. Initial tests have resulted in “spam” narration that distracts from the game instead of adding to it, so the team is still trying to figure out how to put the right amount of narration into a card game.

Guild of Guardians, Immutable’s upcoming Web3 dungeon-crawler. Source: Guild of Guardians YouTube channel

“We did this thing that sounded cool. But, when we actually play, it confuses them [players] or it doesn’t resonate directly with them. We’re still finding the right balance between, how do we make sure that if we do this, it doesn’t just create a lot of spam content? I think that’s one thing where NFTs and gaming, there are some potential uses for reducing the amount of spam that gets produced or in introducing some costs there so that people are still able to have […] richer experiences,” he stated.

Web3 game developers embracing OpenAI

Connelly said that it’s not only Immutable that is looking to use this technology to improve games. He also sees partner developers that are releasing items on Immutable X becoming increasingly interested in experimenting with OpenAI.

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In his opinion, Web3 studios tend to be the most enthusiastic about using these new technologies when compared to other studios. Although all game studios want to use OpenAI to improve their games, he says large studios face an “innovator’s dilemma” that makes it more costly for them to take the risks of implementing OpenAI features. For that reason, he expects that Web3 and NFT games will lead the way with these technologies in the future.

Final Fantasy creator reveals ‘aggressive investment’ in blockchain games

The company behind the Final Fantasy franchise says blockchain games will be a major focus of its strategy going forward.

Final Fantasy creator Square Enix is set to double down on blockchain game development despite turbulence in the crypto market, according to a Jan. 1 letter from the Japanese company’s president, Yosuke Matsuda.

The letter, titled “A New Year’s Letter from the President,” aimed to recap the company’s major accomplishments in 2022 and explain its plans for 2023. Out of 15 paragraphs, seven were about blockchain gaming, showing that blockchain gaming is a major focus of the company’s investing strategy going forward.

⚔An introduction to SYMBIOGENESIS ①⚔

Starting from today we’ll begin introducing Symbiogenesis, starting from the concept✨

Symbiogenesis is a new franchise by SQUARE ENIX, which brings real game utility ⚔ to 10000 collectible NFT artworks #symgeNFT #NFT pic.twitter.com/1ukBEgOmfv

— SYMBIOGENESIS (@symbiogenesisPR) December 21, 2022

Matsuda stated that “blockchain entertainment” is the investment field his team will be most focused on in the medium term, to which they have devoted “aggressive investment and business development efforts.”

After summarizing the ups and downs of the crypto market in 2021 and 2022, Matsuda sought to make sense of its decline. He said that new technologies often cause “confusion” but eventually become accepted as a normal part of everyday life. So if there is turmoil in the crypto market, this shouldn’t necessarily cause investors to doubt its potential, he stated, adding:

“New technologies and frameworks lead to innovation, but they also create considerable confusion.”

Matsuda added that any technology that is able to ride out “societal tides” will gradually become part of people’s lives and eventually give rise to new businesses and growth.

“Following the excitement and exhilaration that surrounded NFTs and the metaverse in 2021, 2022 was a year of great volatility in the blockchain-related space,” he noted.

“However, if this proves to have been a step in a process that leads to the creation of rules and a more transparent business environment, it will definitely have been for the good of the growth of blockchain entertainment.”

It’s been an amazing year of games and 2023 is looking even better!❄️

Here’s a message from all of us at Square Enix wishing you a Happy New Year!

️ https://t.co/C9hdvi1GwZ pic.twitter.com/AOSRXdjizg

— Square Enix (@SquareEnix) December 31, 2022

Matsuda finished off the letter by stating that Square Enix has multiple blockchain games under development and will be announcing more over the course of 2023.

Square Enix made multiple moves in the blockchain gaming space throughout 2022. In July, it announced that it would release Final Fantasy collectibles on the Enjin platform. In September, it joined Oasys blockchain as a node validator. In December, Square Enix invested 7 billion yen ($52.7 million) into mobile game developer Gumi Games, to help develop mobile play-to-earn titles.

This recent letter implies that the company has no plans to slow down its investments in the space in 2023, despite the turbulence of 2022.

2023 will see the death of play-to-earn gaming

Developers have been focusing more on tokens than on making fun games. As a result, GameFi has been dying.

Play-to-earn gaming enabled by blockchain technology has grown exponentially over the few years.

Gamers have embraced the opportunity to collect cryptocurrencies or nonfungible tokens (NFTs) that have been produced in blockchain-based games.

Through the advent of this new technology, players have been able to generate income by selling in-game NFTs or earning cryptocurrency rewards, both of which can be exchanged for fiat cash.

Because of this, according to data from Absolute Reports, the estimated value of the GameFi industry will grow to $2.8 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.4% over the same period. But such predictions may well prove to be unfounded.

Given the rate of exponential growth over recent years, one might think that there was absolutely no reason to believe the trend would not continue well into 2023 and beyond. Right? Wrong.

As we have seen with the ignominious case of former crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried and the implosion of FTX, a castle built on a flimsy foundation of sand can be easily washed away when the tide comes in and goes back out again.

Or, as legendary investor Warren Buffett liked to put it: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

We may be about to learn who these people are. The fact of the matter is the play-to-earn gaming industry is not built on firm foundations. The foundations are fragile and flimsy, and this could well spell trouble in 2023. The whole edifice looks set to come crashing down.

The structure of the current GameFi market is token-centric and this can create a number of issues. Project owners issue their tokens which are listed on exchanges first before they announce that they are going to build games. Games are a utility of tokens they issue. So tokens come first, and contents later. This is why the quality and design of games in the blockchain space are so underrated.

*Unique active wallets (UAWs) that used decentralized applications (DApps) in 2022. Source: DappRadar*

An environment has been created in which the players are not all that interested in games themselves, which is a strange state of affairs for a gaming industry to find itself in. More and more of the players are, in reality, investors who want returns on investment.

The current structure creates the wrong kind of incentives and this is one of the reasons why the system is not working as it should. I would argue that DeFi Kingdoms, which is one of the better-known play-to-earn blockchain games out there, has been screwing with its tokenomics relentlessly by creating perverse incentives.

By now, generally speaking, the token market is in a downtrend and the speculative trading market is dead. An industry can survive for a certain amount of time on promise, expectation and unjustified hype. But, it can only do so for so long. Eventually, people begin to notice that they haven’t received what they have been promised. Patience starts to wear thin. They get angry, they get frustrated and they begin to withdraw. This begins as a trickle of the savviest players, but that can soon become a flood.

Those who have planned to secure funds by listing their tokens will have to reassess. Many will be forced to close their projects due to insufficient funds. The situation is becoming so acute that even hitherto bullish crypto venture capitalists (VCs) are also pausing new investments.

So, who is going to survive this investment drought? It looks unlikely that GameFi will. However, other blockchain gamings might do so.

One example is the Ethereum-powered, NFT-based fantasy football league operator Sorare has become a Web3 unicorn. While many of its competitors struggle, Sorare keeps on increasing its users and revenue during the darkest period. Their daily auction volume is impressive, at around 300-400 Ether (ETH), and the number of users keeps increasing.

Though its back end relies on blockchain, users do not perceive it as a GameFi project. They do not provide their native tokens, but they do provide their content first on Ethereum, which very much looks like the way to go for the industry at large.

So GameFi may well die in 2023, but that does not mean that all is lost. Death is a necessary part of evolution. From it, new life may already be beginning to emerge.

Shinnosuke “Shin” Murata is the founder of blockchain games developer Murasaki. He joined Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co. in 2014, doing automotive finance and trading in Malaysia, Venezuela and Bolivia. He left Mitsui to join a second-year startup called Jiraffe as the company’s first sales representative and later joined STVV, a Belgian football club, as its chief operating officer and assisted the club with creating a community token. He founded Murasaki in the Netherlands in 2019.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Big Time and other Web3 games take home the gold at the inaugural GAM3 awards

The 16 prize winners will share over $1M worth of prizes sponsored by companies such as Immutable X, the Blockchain Game Alliance, Machinations and many more.

Web3 gaming awards event the GAM3 Awards, hosted by Polkastarter Gaming, announced 16 winners at a live event on December 15.

According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, prize winners will share over $1 million in prizes sponsored by companies such as Immutable X, Blockchain Game Alliance, Machinations, Ultra, Naavik, Galxe, Hacken, Venly, HackenProof, Shorooq, Elixir, Arcade and MetaCon.

congratulations to all the winners in our inaugural 2022 #GAM3Awards ✨

we can’t wait to see what’s in store for you, and the entire industry in 2023.

for more information & a recap of the awards, visit ➡️ https://t.co/uK4Ymsc65d pic.twitter.com/PjFYliUwMz

— GAM3 AWARDS | 15th Dec (@PolkastarterGG) December 15, 2022

Games were judged based on a range of criteria, such as core loop, graphics, accessibility, replayability factor, fun elements, and overall playing experience. Although the focus was on playability, eligibility for awards largely depended on whether the nominated games used blockchain technology in some form.

An international jury made up of gaming, media and web3 outlets was responsible for selecting the nominees.

Award winners included Big Time, which won both Game of the Year and Best Adventure Game; Shrapnel, which was awarded the Most Anticipated Game; Star Atlas, which won the Best Graphics category, and Thetan Arena, which was named the Best Mobile Game. The winners for other categories included Blankos Block Party, Illuvium, Superior, MetalCore, Gods Unchained, EV.io, Brycent, League of Kingdoms and The Harvest.

Despite the sudden implosion of FTX and its cascading effects on the entire web3 ecosystem, the blockchain gaming niche still appears to be thriving.

According to analytics service DappRadar, “In October and November, gaming activity accounted for almost half of all blockchain activity” tracked across 50 networks, “with 800,875 daily Unique Active Wallets (UAW) interacting with games’ smart contracts in November.”

The report also revealed that blockchain games raised over $320 million in November, indicating excitement and potential growth of the Web3 gaming industry.

Anonymous crypto developers belong in prison — and will be there soon

Users are interested in knowing the identities of developers behind the games they play. And soon, lawmakers are likely to write such disclosures into law.

In the months following the announcement of my company’s first experimental title, Cyberstella, visits to my personal LinkedIn profile increased by an astonishing 300%. What does this tell us about the rising trend of anonymous developers popping up in every Web3 community to spam users with investment opportunities and then disappear from the face of the Earth?

Well, it spells out trouble for anonymous crypto developers who think they can get away with never putting their face where the money is, so to speak.

The fundamental principle behind crypto investing is a two-step process: Issue your project’s native token, leverage it for profit, and re-invest what you made into the project’s development itself. It’s an easy and straightforward way for builders to raise funds and keep their work up, while supporters can benefit from a token with a fluid environment and from feeling like they’re a part of the developer community, as well as a part of what makes the project a success. Of course, this model presents quite the scarcity of substance and opportunity for growth, which means that the macro crypto trend can leverage the price of native tokens.

When Murasaki, the game studio building decentralized titles on the blockchain that I co-founded, announced its first project, I decided not to be one of those GameFi developers. I was going to put my face and my name out there, right next to Murasaki’s and Cyberstella’s, because I believe in the future of what we’re building, and I believe that anonymity almost always spells out signs of trouble.

By looking at the LinkedIn data, I was right.

People do care about finding out more about the identity of a founder or developer before they sign over their money. However, scammers have managed to successfully convince a portion of the GameFi community to act against their own best interest, contrary to how they would behave in almost every other scenario. And when they’re done scamming one community, they move on to the next — after all, no one knows who they are, so it’s easy for them to start over with a new audience. The cycle repeats itself over and over again, and the space’s reputation keeps getting worse because of it. It’s a true lose-lose situation for everyone involved, except the anonymous scammers.

In poker, blind betting refers to the cards you are required to put down “blindly” before you have had a chance to see what they are, after which each player will do the same and either fold, call or raise without knowing what they are betting on or how it might turn out. In such a scenario, everyone is aware of the rules and circumstances, which means they trust that no other player will grab everything on the table and run. In GameFi, that’s often what happens.

I believe that anyone who boldly lies their way to full funding belongs in prison. Here’s why their moment of reckoning is closer than we might think: It’s actually not that hard to spot a scammer in action.

If they don’t display their real name, their face and their identity in verifiable ways, that’s always going to be your first red flag. Next, look for a lengthy and detailed roadmap. It shouldn’t entail a crazy amount of moving parts, nor should it be unintelligible and jargon-filled, but instead, it should just be a very clear and compelling explanation of what the project is about and what it aims to achieve in the next few months and years. If you can’t find a roadmap, that’s another major red flag. What about smart contracts? You need to be deploying smart contracts in order to deliver what you actually promise; otherwise, that’s strike three.

Community is a huge factor for any Web3 project and anyone who’s serious about building and evolving in the space. If your potential scammer project proudly shows off 50,000 members on Telegram and Discord, but only five or 10 people seem to be online at any given time, you might have another, huge, clear-as-day red flag staring right at you.

Lastly, overpromising is a big sign that somewhere along the line, something will not quite check out the way it should. How can a project owner publicize a super high-quality AAA title they’re in the process of building while also not doing much fundraising and constantly pushing back roadmap deadline after deadline? It’s probably the easiest way to spot a scammer, and the one you should be most afraid of.

The truth is, chances are that most anonymous builders are ready to run away with the money once they raise enough, as they don’t need to try and actually turn the project into a success. They can just buy bots to increase their profile and social media standing, pay pennies to shillers who will keep up the appearance of an active community on Telegram and Discord, and be done with their job.

Here’s the good news: Only in the last few years, crypto scammers have faced 18 months in prison, 15 years, 115 years — and even 40,000 years. Yes, really, 40,000. When it’s so easy to spot a scammer and the sentences they face should they get caught so high, here’s hoping that people will wise up to the reality of GameFi scams, and anonymous developers will realize nothing could be worth 40,000 years in prison.

May 2023 be the year that we put anonymous crypto scammers where they belong — far, far away from the community we’re proud of and even further away from eager investors’ money.

Web3 game DOGAMÍ secures $14M total funding

DOGAMÍ’s team says it hopes to develop the first Web3 mobile game for mainstream audiences.

DOGAMÍ, an augmented reality mobile game involving nonfungible token (NFT) pet companions, has completed a $14 million seed funding round, according to a Dec. 12 press release provided to Cointelegraph. The Web3 mobile gaming company raised $7 million led by VC firm XAnge after initially securing $6 million from industry leaders in January 2022.

DOGAMÍ, with community members in over 80+ countries, indicated that it has already sold 12,000 NFTs of dog avatars and 12,000 NFTs of canine accessories through a collaboration with omni-channel clothing retailer GAP.

The company has also launched its first mobile application, “DOGA House”, which allows users to discover and interact with their “NFT puppies” in the “DOGAMÍ universe” while earning DOGA cryptocurrency.

Despite the continuing bear market, Web3 and blockchain-based games continue to score funding for their projects. Analytical service DappRadar shared that despite the sudden collapse of FTX and its negative cascading effect on the Web3 ecosystem, “blockchain games raised over $320 million in November.”

On Nov. 27, Cointelegraph reported that Web3 game publisher Fenix Games raised $150 million in funding to acquire, invest and distribute blockchain games.