May 3, 2022
Top GameFi Projects 2022
Top GameFi projects by OneArt
The gaming world has never been against experimenting. Moreover, games were the very basis for the crypto-theme development. Today, games for entertainment are moving into the format of games for making money.
GameFi is a new gaming concept that supports the “play-to-earn” strategy with crypto, metaverse, blockchain, and NFTs at the core. All to give players a new immersive experience with both creativity and monetization possibilities. What are the top GameFi projects today according to OneArt?
The Sandbox
The Sandbox is an example of the transformation from just a regular entertainment game to a blockchain-driven one that has quickly gained popularity in the metaverse world. Adhering to the concept of “play to earn”, the game allows participants to create, own, and trade in-game assets via NFTs and dive into a more immersive gaming experience.
The game history began in 2012 when a mobile version of the 2D pixel-art world game was officially released. In 2015, a PC version was launched. But a turning point is considered the year 2018, when Animoca Brands, a blockchain game development company, acquired the Sandbox and announced its plans to bring the game to the Ethereum blockchain.
Features
The Sandbox is a multiplayer Ethereum-based game where users can create their own worlds with unique objects. The game has its own token — SAND. Players can design their own assets and then place them on a marketplace and monetize them to earn a passive income. Everything created can be placed on pieces of virtual land called LANDs, where players are able to develop interactive levels for other players to pay admission and play them in terms of a free open market economy.
The Sandbox is considered one of the top NFT projects on OpenSea with the cheapest LAND for about $11,000.
The game has three main mechanisms to help manage the internal economy:
- VoxEdit
A software for voxel-based NFTs creation. In other words, this instrument helps creators generate the assets to use in the Sandbox ecosystem. Except for NFT generation, VoxEdit provides other features such as modeling and animation.
- Game Maker
An instrument for 3D-games creation without dipping into coding. In addition, the Game Maker feature enables users to place and use their assets on the LAND they already own within the Sandbox metaverse.
- NFT marketplace
It is a Sandbox-based platform where players can trade their digital in-game assets with other players.
It is worth mentioning another feature of the project: Incentive Programs. Although this is quite a common approach in the crypto world, the Sandbox offers its own perks. For example, Sandbox provides brand creators with 95% of revenue from items sold, and 50% of revenue from SAND tokens is used as a grant for developers, artists, and players.
Community and partnership
The project has already partnered with many Influencers (more than 200 affiliations), brands, and celebrities: Deadmau5, Richie Hawtin, Hell’s Kitchen, The Smurfs, Care Bears, Atari. Of course, the popularity of the project has increased many times over after collaborating with Snoop Dogg and Warner Music Group to create their own meta-worlds on the Sandbox LAND for hosting music events.
Sandbox strives to engage about 2.5 billion gamers and thus become one of the blockchain-based gaming sector leaders. The number of participants in the metaverse has already reached 2M, while the project continues to engage the community by hosting Alpha Season 2 and interacting with them via Telegram, Discord, and WeChat channels.
In addition, the platform has created a virtual community of educators where members can share and gain experience in game creation.
Roadmap and future prospects
The detailed roadmap shows serious intentions to make the project a leader in its field. Needless to add, it’s doing quite well. This year the platform plans to adapt the DAO system with staking and voting capabilities for those who own SAND, LAND, and AVATAR. The roadmap includes the release of the Walking Dead game, more virtual concerts, the launch of a mobile version, and the release of more NFTs. The update will also hit the main ecosystem engines previously mentioned: VoxEdit and Game Builder. Also, more LAND sales are planned.
As for the token state, Wallet Investor called the SAND price forecast an “excellent long-term investment”. But, of course, in the world of crypto future predictions are not 100%. Given today’s performance and user activity, DigitalCoinPrice states that now the Sandbox (SAND) is on rank #40 with a price of $2.72 in the entire cryptosystem. By 2031 it is expected to rise to $14.58.
Today the Sandbox is often compared to Decentraland. Although OneArt gives more preference to the former, the latter is no worse. Of course, there are more similarities between the two projects, because they have roughly the same goals, however, there are obvious differences.
Decentraland vs Sandbox
In short, they are both browser-based platforms with the ability to create 3D assets, their trading as NFT, and get an immersive experience. The distinct differences can be observed in the following:
- Decentraland has three types of tokens — MANA, WEAR and LAND, while the Sandbox has four — SAND, GAMES, LAND and ASSETS.
- the Sandbox is still in Alpha mode, while Decentraland has presented a functioning PoC.
- Decentraland users can buy land only on the platform’s marketplace, while the Sandbox users can purchase it on the OpenSea marketplace as well.
- The Decentaland platform can only be accessed via the wallet, while the Sandbox can also be accessed through an email account and social media.
To sum up
The Sandbox is a project with enduring popularity and ambitious plans for the future, allowing players to experience an immersive experience in the metaverse environment with its own financial system and free-standing economy. With a community built over the years and dozens of partnerships, this project has a solid foundation for further advancement.
Axie Infinity
If you are an avid crypto-driven game player, there’s no doubt that you’ve heard about a Vietnamese game — Axie Infinity. The buzz has left no one behind.
Launched by Sky Mavis studio in 2018, Axie Infinity is considered the largest and one of the fastest-growing GameFi decentralized games. In this game, users breed and collect “Axie” creatures. With breeding creatures as its main characters, the game resembles the similarly popular CryptoKitties among its audience. So, players can breed, collect, battle, and trade Axies. One of the inspirations for the project was the Pokémon franchise, but the card-based system in Axie Infinity is still different.
Features
Powered by Ethereum and Ronin blockchains, the game consists of three main elements:
- Creature breeding
- Battles with other players
- Axie trading.
Thus, players battle computer opponents or other players leveraging virtual Axie creatures. While fighting, a player can earn cryptocurrency called “Smooth Love Potion” (SLP), which can be sold for money or used to breed new Axies.
The game has its own internal currency and economy — Axienomics. In addition to SLP tokens, which are mainly intended to reward players and pay for Axie breeding, the game has another type of token — “Axie Infinity Shard” (AXS) tokens.
AXS tokens are used for:
- Governance
Their holders may vote on intra-platform governance.
- Steering
Owners can “steer” tokens with a profit of about 40% per year.
- Payments
Players can make in-game payments: the purchase of creatures, property, and in-game items. The in-game items (Axies) can be traded on the Axie Infinity marketplace in real time.
Also, the game offers such concepts as PvP Arena and PvE Adventures. PvP means combat with other players in the arena, while PvE Adventures offer combat with computer-based enemies outside of the PvP Arena.
Community and partnership
As with most games, Axie Infinity has its own community with more than 3 million members on Twitter, Discord, Reddit, Medium, and YouTube.
Game founders state: “We believe that equitable communities are the foundation of our gaming future, and we are aggressively moving towards demonstrating their potential with Axie Infinity. We believe that this is the path towards creating gaming that’s longer-lasting, more rewarding, and above all, more fun!” This policy of the game’s founders led to the creation of the Axie Community Treasury — “an asset pool that has grown tremendously thanks to the incredible growth of the Axie community over the past year. We’ve designed the treasury to be directly impacted by all AXS holders be it game designers, developers, or players”.
In addition to an inclusive “participation and involvement” policy, Axie Infinity opens up opportunities for community developers to contribute to the game through the Axie Infinity Builders Program, launched in January 2022, which provides interested developers with the necessary resources, tools, and support.
The project partners are Samsung, Ubisoft, Klaytn, and others. One of the most recent partnerships was concluded with Bit2Me, a Spanish B2M token development company recognized by the Bank of Spain as a virtual currency service provider. In cooperation with the company, Axie Infinity is aimed at increasing the game’s community.
Statistics and future prospects
Having a big surge in users and sales in mid-2021, the demand for the game today turned out to be less. Daily active game users peaked in November but dropped 45% to 1.48 million by March 28, 2022. Nevertheless, with its #12 position among the games on DappRadar, the project continues to encourage loyal and new users with updates, although such a detailed roadmap as the Sandbox project does not have.
The Origin update released on April 7, 2022, marked as one of the biggest updates to the game, expanding the gameplay experience and also providing free starter Axies for players who want to try the NFT-based gaming concept before starting to invest in the game itself. This policy is aimed at attracting players after a noticeable drop in-game activity.
According to Wallet Investor’s optimistic forecast, the coin’s long-term income capacity could reach $128.86 by the end of the year, while it could be worth $450 in five years.
Price Prediction estimated the token’s price growth to be $1,679 by 2030. At the same time, DigitalCoinPrice set the price forecast for the Axie Infinity coin at $58.01 by the end of 2022.
To sum up
Despite the recent decline in the game’s popularity, it has its own dedicated audience who are passionate about the Pokémon spirit. The release of updates, new features for players, and community engagement programs are bringing in new members who can benefit from breeding creatures.
Illuvium
A world with exotic and alien landscapes, where the IIIuvium creature is at the very epicenter of events. Gather the treasures, empower your character and make it stronger and better each time by defeating other IIIuvium in battle arenas. Of course, all this is not without earning in-game revenue. And that’s just a glimpse into the world of the Illuvium game.
Features
Positioning itself as an AAA game, it is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, interest in it is only growing. With Illuvium’s official release date moved to the first half of 2022, token sales began back in April 2021, which resulted in the game’s creators raising over $51 million with a price of $88 per ILV in-game token. A little later, Illuvium earned $5 million from investors.
Illuvium is another Ethereum-based game. It is an open-world RPG-based video game. The gameplay is automatic battles, as a result of which the winner receives a reward, or adventure mode, in which players can upgrade the skills of their characters — Illuvials which are NFTs.
While playing, the players earn in-game rewards in the form of ILV tokens. In this way, players can trade their collected resources, weapons, and equipment, or the Illuvials themselves to other players. All in-game transactions between players are made using the ILV token on the IlluviDEX NFT marketplace. In addition to the ILV token, there is also sILV (synthetic ILV token), which is used as a currency for capturing creatures, but not for trading them.
So there are three ways to use tokens in Illuvium:
- Earning ILV tokens for in-game achievements.
- Staking ILV tokens for passive rewards.
- Participation in the governance system.
The core game features are the following:
- Scaling and deep gameplay mechanics with advanced 3D immersive world experience.
- Extensive opportunities for spin-offs and further advancements.
- A combo of RPG-based and an NFT-driven game with an emphasis on a rich in-game plot.
- A limited number of playable NFT characters.
- Community and partnership
The game’s community began to form last year when the game’s release was announced. In six months of 2021, the game crossed the mark of 100,000 subscribers in Discord. Today lluvium, with over 300,000 subscribers on social media, is a fairly hyped project with an emphasis on a marketing campaign among other things. The promised delayed release of this talked-about and exciting game only fuels the interest of the audience.
Powerful partnerships (IOSG Ventures, YBB Foundation, Bitscale, and others) and big investors’ interest, as well as rewards marketing tactics, will only benefit a new, but already ambitious project. That’s why it’s more than likely that the audience growth will be significant.
Statistics and future predictions
According to Footprint Analytics, the price of the ILV coin began its rise in value last August and peaked on November 30 at $1,853.
However, the delayed Illuvium launch caused ILV to plummet. In addition, the theft of funds by hackers who exploited the vulnerability further contributed to the token’s decline. As a result, the price of ILV fell to $512. At the beginning of February 2022, the ILV was about $578.
According to the roadmap, a “Second Major Illuvium Title” and the mobile game version are expected to be released in 2023 and the PC version in late 2022.
As for the future, it’s not so easy to determine, since the game hasn’t even officially entered the mainstream yet. Nevertheless, given a well-thought-out marketing campaign, investors’ support, a growing community, and, of course, the content of the game itself — success is more than guaranteed.
To sum up
Illuvium, which has already made a lot of noise among the crypto and gaming communities, is about to be released. A relatively high token price and limited NFT-based Illuvials on the one hand, can discourage players, but on the other hand it can further fuel their desire to become the best at the game. So, we just have to wait for the predicted success of the game.
Splinterlands
Officially founded in 2018 and previously known as Steem Monsters, Splinterlands as a crypto-based card game is still engaging today among its dedicated fan base. Driving by the play-to-earn concept, players are able to make money by collecting and trading cards. But that’s not all the game has in store.
Features
The peculiarity of the game is that the duration of each game (or round) lasts several minutes, and each of them is exciting, intense, and strategy-thought-out. The entire game concept is tied to the cards, each of which has its own value and function, using which players can build their winning tactics.
The library of cards currently includes about 300 positions; there are 46+ unique abilities of the heroes. Cards have four types of rarity: Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. They are presented as NFTs and can be bought or sold for Splintershard (SPS) tokens on the marketplace.
In addition to SPS tokens, there are two other types of tokens in the game: DEC tokens and so-called Сredits. Credits can mainly be used to buy and rent cards. DEC tokens serve as rewards and allow you to buy rare sets and exclusive in-game items.
The main difference between Splinterlands and most crypto-based games is the possibility to play on mobiles.
Thus, the game allows you to not just play, but more: develop strategies, create powerful decks, add valuable cards to your collection and earn money by selling rare NFT cards.
Community and partnership
Like any game, Splinterlands also has its own community, whose members are not indifferent to the card type of game. A player can choose how to connect with other participants from the extensive list of options: Discord, Telegram, or Splintertalk. Additional information is also available on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and blog. In August 2021 the community numbered more than 297,000 people. Today, according to DappRadar, the number of users has reached 562,39k.
The Splinterlands team constantly maintains the level of audience engagement with extra features that help manage cards, delve more into the game, share stories or even NFTs with other players. Moreover, Splinterlands’ recent partnership with Warner Music Group has only increased the company’s influence in the international crypto arena.
Roadmap and future prospects
The project roadmap demonstrates the team’s serious intentions to make the game even richer in features and more useful in terms of earning for users. Here are a few of the items planned for this year:
- SPS Validator nodes and voting management
- Land expansion
- New market for non-card assets
- New reward pools to encourage gameplay.
According to CoinMarketCap statistics, the price of the SPS token has varied over the past month, peaking in the middle of April.
So, given the recent growth in the token value, the upcoming updates, gaining social acceptance, and game predictions for the next five years, today Splinterlands can be assessed as quite promising. Cryptofriends believes the future of the project is quite positive for both its founders and the community.
To sum up
Splinterlands is now widely known in the cryptocurrency world as one of the most promising cryptocurrency games in the card playing world with cross-platform access. On top of that, the project has a strong expert team, a dedicated community, and plans for attracting more users and encouraging existing ones.
Alien Worlds
Are you ready to dive into the world of the galaxy, or rather become an explorer of different planets on which you can discover lands with the possibility of making money from it? Then your choice may well fall on Alien Worlds — one of the most popular and widely recognized metaverse games with NFTs concept at the core.
Features
Driven by 3 blockchains, which are WAX, Ethereum, and the Binance Smart Chain, Alien Worlds is the metaverse where you can play with unique digital items (NFTs).
Customizable avatars, minions, weapons, instruments, and other NFT in-game artifacts are the main attributes of the huge metaverse, where players discover new lands and focus on the main thing — searching and mining to eventually earn the game’s own tokens called Trilium (TLM). There are 6 DAO planets in the game that compete with each other for TLM and thus encourage user cooperation. Besides, 5 billion tokens are distributed to users every day encouraging them to continue discovering new financial opportunities within the game.
Indeed, a TLM is a kind of game engine, which helps the further development of the game, as well as gives players the opportunity to participate in its control system. Here are some token use cases:
- Staking for participation in controlling planets and receiving rewards.
- Mining of TLMs and NFTs.
- Buying and improving items.
- Developing the in-game ecosystem and activities.
- Community and partnership
With over 7 million registered players and estimated 900,000 monthly active users according to DappRadar, Alien Worlds has reached the top of the rankings at #2 “in Games” and #3 “in General”.
The surge in the community has been underway since the game’s launch in 2020. According to the Alien Worlds team itself, “Over 3.6 million players have registered since its launch in December 2020”.
From October to December 2021, Alien Worlds made over 9.4 million transactions on Binance Smart Chain, achieving record volumes of tokens on the network. Moreover, Alien Worlds first appeared as one of the promoted projects on Binance Launchpad, which was an engine for increasing the game’s recognition and a “tidbit” for investors.
An extensive community can communicate through various platforms: Discord, Twitch, Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and others. The partnership with Moonwhale Ventures, OneBlock Capital, PlayToEarn, etc. expands the possibilities for the game to become truly large-scale, both in terms of the number of users and in terms of in-game features.
Statistics and future predictions
According to Crypto Politan analysis, on April 7, 2021, the TLM token reached an all-time peak of $7.19 in April 2021. But on July 9, 2021, it fell to a record low of $0.08169.
Today, the situation looks less optimistic, with the price rising in early April but falling on April 26, 2022.
Nevertheless, given the volatility characteristic of the crypto market, the situation may change. Wallet Investor predicts that the price of TLM at the end of 2023 will be $0.018. For its part, TechNewsLeader estimates that at the end of 2022, the maximum price of the token will reach $0.15. PricePrediction predicts a price hike of $3.22 in 2030.
To sum up
Given the upcoming updates that the team presented in its roadmap, optimistic forecasts for the TLM, as well as the already-earned global popularity, the foundation for a soon and quite successful game prosperity has already been built.
Aavegotchi
A virtual pet genre has become a pioneer in the crypto-game industry, generating a large number of games with a pet-oriented structure. Cryptokitties and the previously mentioned Axie Infinity as one of the leaders in this subject only confirm the hype for “cute and fluffy” games.
Singapore-based game — Aavegotchi — is one of the pet-oriented projects, but it has its own distinctive traits from hundreds of similar ones. Inspired by the spirit of Tamagotchi, equipped with interesting visuals and DAO-governed game mechanics, the game found its audience and attracted a lot of investors from the beginning of its mid-2020 release.
Features
Based on the Polygon blockchain, Aavegotchi is a DeFi and NFT-based game with a simple and entertaining process of making money with the help of…Aavegotchis or, in other words, pixel pet ghosts. They can easily help you collect income based on their rarity, but also expect you to treat them well and take care of them in return.
Buying ghosts, exploring portals, and taking care of a pet are just a few of the game’s internal mechanics at the center of which there is a token — GHST.
A GHST token gives players the possibility to generate money and maintain the internal game economy and governance. For example:
- It is necessary for trading ghosts, wearables, and all financial processes in the domestic “bazaar’.
- It is used for staking.
- It is required to participate in “bid-to earn” auctions.
- Having a GHST allows players to participate in the governance process within the Aavegotchi ecosystem.
- Community and partnership
Partnerships with major brands such as Chainlink, OKEx, and, of course, Aave also contributed to the project’s ongoing prosperity. As an Aave-approved project, it caught the eye of early investors, and a successful private sale took place shortly after its official release in August 2020. Interested potential users who make up the community today then joined the project. After the community was established, the launch of the GHST token followed in September 2020. Since then, the project has maintained a rather stable level in terms of the flow of community members.
Thus, the smooth launch of the project influenced the organic growth of the community scattered through different channels, with Discord, Reddit and Twitter being the most frequently used ones. In addition, Aavegotchi has recently introduced a new NFT gaming metaverse, which adds more buzz and thereby attracts more users to the “fluffy” game.
Future predictions
The interactive roadmap shows the game’s upcoming expansion plans. For example, some of the following updates are scheduled for 2022–2023:
- Aavegotchi mobile app alpha launch
- REALM public land sales
- More haunts (planned).
According to the report, after GHST tripled in value over the hype year of 2021 for the NFT, its value is up more than 200% as of Jan. 31, 2021. Today, the GHST coin itself has shown a drop in price at the end of April despite optimistic figures at the beginning of the month.
According to DappRadar, the game is ranked #39 “In General”, #22 “In Games”, and #6 “In Poligon”. While CoinCodex ranked Aavegotchi #48 in the DeFi Coins sector, #140 in the Ethereum sector, #22 in the NFT Tokens sector, #19 in the Gaming sector and #23 in the Metaverse sector.
Price Prediction estimated the maximum value of the token this year at $3.03. In turn, between 2023 and 2025, Pickacrypto believes the price of GHST will be around $10 to $25 and attributes this to the team continuing to develop their products, which gain the approval of their target audience.
Digital Coin Price points to the token’s significant potential for growth beyond 2025. And, according to the same source, Aavegotchi is at #346 with a price of $1.86 in the entire cryptosystem, with its $59.94 million circulating supply, and $61.71 million total supply.
To sum up
Based on the Tamagotchi concept from the 90s, the modern version of pixel animals embedded into the Aavegotchi game is an amalgamation of the metaverse, NFTs, DeFi with a unified in-play economy and an uncomplicated way to make money with just pet ghosts.
Final thoughts
Today there are more and more GameFi projects emerging, the developers of which are trying to implement special features that will appeal to the target audience and at the same time will be unique within the crypto-market.
The OneArt team has only briefly outlined the main concepts of successful, in our opinion, projects today. However, before you start playing, it is better to carefully study the additional features and available mechanics. In any case, whether it will be a game with cute pets or monsters, each of them has something special to offer. And of course, It’s up to you to decide which project to dive into for both entertainment and income.
