Dear Community and Gaming Community,
Throughout 2021, the world has noticed the sudden rise of public blockchain technology, primarily through Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Both have shown us that they are here to stay and can provide greater functionality than Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), the first killer use case of DeFi, and digital artwork auctions, the first killer use case of NFTs.
The APIS has taken a keen interest in the ability of gaming applications to leverage public blockchain technology to create new user experiences. These experiences will epitomize the games of the past as outdated and noninteractive.
Right now, game developers can immediately increase their market share by 1) minting in-game items NFTs to revolutionize how we interact with single or cross-platform gaming applications; and 2) distributing game revenue and tokens to their users, an entirely new business model for their users known as play-to-earn (P2E). Both of these novel use cases can be utilized in tandem with traditional business models of the past, such as paid advertising and freemium servicing, to accrue the highest number of users possible and engagement.
What is an NFT?
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital assets stored on public blockchains (such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, or Solana), which represent real-world objects — both physical and digital — such as game cards, additional game items, music, art, and social media posts. For most game developers, digital assets are all that matter.
What’s so special about NFTs?
Before NFTs, all digital assets suffered from counterfeiting. They ultimately held no value, as files could be easily and perpetually duplicated (the same goes for specific physical art — counterfeit is Supreme’s most challenging business obstacle). Artists were putting up their creations for free and receiving likes and comments from enthusiasts, but the artwork was limited to a hobby or pastime. There was no way to earn any income from them.
The rise of NFTs flipped this narrative for the better. NFTs provide assets with a unique digital certificate of ownership, the digital equivalent of an artist signing a painting, but with assurances of authenticity guaranteed by the blockchain instead of a forgery expert. NFTs representing digital objects have become probably the most scarce assets anywhere, physical or digital. NFTs have already incorporated almost every type of digital file or item, from game skins to real estate deeds.
Blockchain Gaming
The games that leverage public blockchain technology will become the biggest games of tomorrow, simply because they offer the best user experiences, and the gaming experience remains the most important metric.
As many centralized gaming providers are adapting their marketplaces and engines toward blockchain capabilities, there is a substantial call for all gaming developers to adopt the new technology more quickly. None have answered this call better than Axie Infinity, which leveraged not only NFTs but also the play-to-earn (P2E) business model, which will forever change the dynamics of game revenue distribution.
The play-to-earn (P2E) has introduced another incentive for gamers to play. This new model allows players to earn revenue, akin to equity in the game itself, simply by playing. Let’s take a closer look into this with Axie Infinity, the #1 Ethereum game by daily, weekly, and monthly users. With almost 2 million daily users, Axie Infinity allows players to take control of Axies, Pokemon-like characters, and battle other players in order to acquire Smooth Love Potions (SLP) and Axie Infinity Shards (AXS). SLP can only be used to make your characters better; AXS is the equivalent of equity in the Axie Infinity universe. While the Axie Infinite Ecosystem is on pace to generate over $2.2bn in annualized revenue this year (it’s full-year since inception), 95% of it has gone back to the players of the game, with the Axie Community Treasury only keeping about 5% of it. Axie Infinity was the first mover in the P2E ecosystem but there will be many similar gaming platforms over time.
The APIS <> Blockchain Gaming
As Blockchain gaming gains traction, The APIS serves as your one-stop-shop for deploying your next record-breaking decentralized gaming experience.
Complete Node Services
One of the biggest pains of interacting with public blockchain is maintaining a dynamic set of full nodes that both read chain data and write new transactions to the chain. The APIS gives you the opportunity to integrate your gaming experience into the most performant public blockchain protocols, without you needing to maintain any infrastructure yourself.
The APIS also maintains internal databases based on off-blockchain data stored by our nodes (which already exceeds 10TB), which you would need to do internally otherwise to update your user’s interface as quickly as possible (i.e. how fast does your user’s interface change after they earn a new token or mint an NFT). Currently, most gaming development efforts are found on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, and we support both fully!
Each game has its own unique value, and there is no one size fits all protocol or layer-two scaling solution. Thus, with your interests in mind and tracking which public blockchains protocols are at the top (most performant, in terms of speed and community), The APIS will either integrate or direct you to the best protocol for your game!
Minting your NFTs
After integration with the best protocol for you, The APIS also provides you with the functionality of minting digital assets, the first of our many low-code solutions. Here are the turnkey solution guides to create your ERC20, ERC721, or ERC1155 tokens to power your gaming platform. Tokens are to public blockchains as websites are to the internet: everyone will use them. We allow you to do so with no knowledge of public blockchain architecture.
In-Game Economies
Play-to-earn (P2E) will become the leading business model for blockchain gaming. The Play-to-earn model will be a disruption to the global gaming industry, as in comparison to current models, P2E can potentially decrease the take rate of traditional video games from 100% to about 5%.
Steam has a standard take rate of 30%, which declines as sales increase, which they continued to do. For example, Steam’s take rate falls to 20% after the first $50 million in a game’s sales (Global X — Video Games & Esports: Building on 2020’s Rapid Growth).
Developers have opportunities to generate more revenue and gamer engagement, as the P2E model can significantly increase higher user traffic (Axie grew from $0 to $1bn in annualized revenue in less than a year). So gaming entrepreneurs have an immense opportunity to become one of the first to adopt the P2E business model to increase user engagement tremendously. For example, having a take rate of 5% of a pie is much larger than 20 times the current gaming structure percentage which means you have a larger slice of user adoption, revenue and gaming experience.
The APIS can integrate complete P2E functionality into your game!
In addition to distributing to your users based on their usage, the general structure for a complete P2E token economy boils down to three main token utilities: payment, governance, and ownership.
Payment:
Your token serves as the accepted currency in your NFT marketplace and game. As users create value and upgrade their assets, they need a way to exchange assets with other users and also an underlying valuation metric to help them make informed decisions. Your token serves as the nuclear unit of the market and powers the transactions between users.
Governance:
Owners of the token have the opportunity to participate in governance voting and make an impact on their beloved game. This allows for the game to appropriately reflect the users, aficionados, and overall community who are powering it. They can vote on the percentage of revenue distributed to token holders, the future of the game itself, adjacent games to better complete the game’s universe, et cetera. Tokens turn users into stakeholders.
Ownership:
A token economy is an ownership economy, meaning that token holders have rights to the game’s treasury. All the fees and revenue generated in-game are placed in the Community Treasury which is governed by the token holders. Holding the token provides users with a stake in the game and thus allows them to share the economic success of the game. The ownership economy allows for the game to progressively decentralize, with their users also contributing to development. Increased decentralization leads to more free marketing: friends tell their friends, without you needing to pay a dime.
Token Custody
Tokens are secured by public/private key cryptography, a tricky process that can result in user fund losses if done insecurely. The APIS has developed numerous distributed key management systems (DKMS), which allow you to customize your users’ custody experience such that their tokens remain safe while their user experience remains unmatched. We tailor the custody of your tokens to the state of your project.
The APIS provides all the tools that you need to create the future of gaming, other than the game itself. We’re not game development visionaries, and we never will be, but working with those that have already been a thrill and passion for us. If you want to build the future of gaming, we hope to work with you as soon as possible, as together we can disrupt incumbent development platforms that have time and time again attempted to make it implausible to be an independent game creator.
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👋 About THE APIS:
The APIS is an indexing protocol for reading and writing to open networks. Making APIs open and accessible to power a decentralized world.
