Welcome to the September edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. If you’d also like to join the discussion, please contact [email protected]

Some argue that NFTs in games never panned out. To this end we asked our panel of blockchain gaming pundits:

In terms of gaming, do you think NFTs are dead?

David Amor – CEO, Playmint

I feel sorry for NFTs. They’re a humble technology primitive that have been co-opted as a symbol of what many people hate about blockchain. To me, having an emotional response to NFTs makes as much sense as having an emotional response to an HTML document – don’t blame the primitive, blame the content! 

But perhaps the ship has sailed and NFT has become too much of a four letter word. My guess is that NFTs will continue to exist, but we’ll find another term to describe them.

Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

It’s crucial to acknowledge the speculation that often surrounds this space. Many discussions tend to focus on short-term price fluctuations and market trends, which can overshadow the genuine value that NFTs can bring, especially in the gaming industry.

At Planet Mojo, we believe in building strong fundamentals and providing meaningful use cases for NFTs that enhance the gaming experience: by integrating NFTs into gameplay, we empower players with true ownership of their digital assets, create engaging economies, and foster communities that thrive on collaboration and creativity.

As we move forward, our commitment is to shift the narrative from mere speculation to tangible value, showcasing how NFTs can revolutionize gaming and provide lasting benefits for players.

Tony Pearce – co-founder, Reality+

Whilst active users in web3 games is still relatively small compared to web2 games, in-game NFTs are far from dead. Many developers and platforms are still actively exploring ways to integrate NFTs into games to enhance player ownership, digital economies, and in-game assets. 

The technology is still evolving, and as the gaming industry continues to experiment, we will see innovative games and well known IP appealing to both players and developers. NFTs will continue to play a role in shaping the future of gaming.

Robby Yung – CEO, Animoca Brands

While “NFT’s are dead” makes for a pithy sound byte, I think that’s all it is, really. If we think about the innovation NFTs represent, it’s the ability for us, as game developers, to tokenise playable assets in our games as unique items, thereby conferring true digital ownership over them. That’s huge, and it’s not going away.

Players and developers can all debate good and bad examples of how the technology has been used in various games, just like most people have personal preferences regarding specific game titles, and this is healthy. However, I don’t think that anyone can argue that owning assets in games is a bad thing, and anything that can further that aim for the benefit of players is most definitely a good thing.

Christina Macedo – CEO, PLAY

NFTs are often seen just as collectibles, but what can it actually do for gamers?

At PLAY, our vision is to transform gaming into a more immersive, interactive experience where players become creators who benefit from their in-game environments and communities.

Imagine that in your game, the items that you create and the achievements that you obtain hold real-world value. They travel with you across games and platforms. They help build your digital onchain identity. You have true ownership of these things and tangible stakes within your favourite games. Do you feel a deeper sense of engagement and attachment to the game? Is your gaming experience richer and more personalised? This is thanks to NFTs, offering new layers of interactions and community involvement.

NFTs are far from dead. We’re just scratching the surface of their potential.

Jacobc.eth – Co-founder, HyperPlay

NFTs in gaming are still one of the most popular use cases for on-chain gaming, but they’ve become ubiquitous and are not marketed in the way that “profile picture NFTs” were during past cycles.

NFTs with real, tangible benefits to gameplay continue to accelerate a major shift in how people perceive and interact with digital game worlds. The key lies in creating value beyond mere ownership and artificial scarcity. 

Consider the example of XOCIETY, a web3 game that utilizes NFT-based skins and UGC, allowing players to truly own their characters and transfer them between compatible games. High-stakes extraction shooter gameplay allows players to risk their NFTs and assets in order to earn more in highly competitive matches. Assets from other gaming universes, like Pudgy Penguins, are playable characters within the game. This is more than just cosmetic; it’s giving players across the decentralized web a genuine stake in the game world.

The future belongs to those who can harness the technology to foster a deeper connection between players and the virtual worlds they inhabit.

Jamie King – Rockstar Games co-founder and advisor at Metacade

Although the word ‘NFT’ no longer holds the same allure for traditional audiences, the principles of what an NFT represents in gaming – true ownership, provable scarcity, and innovative player engagement – are far from dead. They’re evolving.

The initial hype might have subsided, but what remains is a powerful tool for building a new era in gaming where players are active participants in the ecosystem, not just consumers. At Metacade, we see NFTs as the backbone of this exciting future.

Sicco Naets – Head of ecosystem dev, Moonbeam Foundation

I still see significant interest in NFTs from game studios. It’s not a surprise – game development is capital-intensive, and NFTs offer a way to generate pre-launch buzz and funding. However, the value proposition for gamers is much less clear.

So far, game developers have mainly experimented with two NFT use cases:

• Cosmetics: Using NFTs to sell in-game cosmetics.
• In-game progress: Tracking items, upgraded characters, or achievements through NFTs, which serve as bragging rights.

Traditional gaming already offers ways to show off cosmetic items and progress through platforms like Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. So, for many gamers, NFTs don’t provide a groundbreaking difference. The concept of reselling NFTs after you exit a game is even more problematic. If someone can just buy their way to power by purchasing rare NFTs from exiting players, it erodes the game’s integrity.

Don’t blame the primitive, blame the content!

David Amor, Playmint

Where NFTs could offer something genuinely exciting is cross-game compatibility. This isn’t a new idea, yet, we haven’t seen much movement. Why? Many web3 game developers need NFT sales just to launch an alpha or beta. These studios don’t have the bandwidth or resources to make cross-game NFTs happen.

What we need is a third-party entity to step in. Imagine a recognizable someone paying for a recognizable IP like Star Wars or Pokemon and using that to launch an NFT collection. A portion of the sales could be reserved for game studios willing to support the collection. For gamers, this setup would be even better. The NFTs they purchase would have guaranteed utility across multiple games, increasing their value.

Another interesting angle is the enforcement of royalties. While royalties are a clear benefit for NFT creators, they’re tough to enforce. Nothing stops someone from selling an NFT outside the official marketplace or bridging it to another chain to avoid fees. But with cross-game NFTs, this dynamic changes. Game studios could verify whether royalties have been paid and deny access to players who haven’t.

Despite the challenges, I’m confident we’ll see teams start to realize the potential of cross-game NFTs. NFTs in gaming aren’t dead – they’re just waiting for the right framework to unlock their full potential.

Sam Barberie – Head of strategy and partnerships, Horizon Blockchain Games

This is a great question that brings up more questions. Are we talking about:

• NFTs as in generic PFP projects that hope to back their way into relevance and utility with a game?
• NFTs and NFT speculation as the sole mechanic for a “game?”
• Secondary NFT trades as the primary revenue driver for a game?

If it’s one of those, I sure hope gaming NFTs are dead forever.

The reality, however, is that gaming NFTs are proliferating at a higher rate than ever, just not with the signals (read: sky-high secondary trades) that we’ve seen in the past. By the logic of open market prices as our barometer for success, it’s equally fair to say that gaming tokens are dead, too. Part of this is because we’re still in the doldrums between content rollout cycles and live, full-featured games. It’s also a reality that the market is going to shift toward primary sales as the main revenue driver, with secondary providing a long tail of incremental revenue. This means we’ll have to change how we measure and understand the success of gaming NFTs. That said, gaming NFTs are everywhere, and so are their more scalable cousins, SFTs (aka ERC 1155, the standard co-authored by Sequence that is the go-to for all non-1:1 game items). Ubisoft just sold out a collection for Champions Tactics in under 5 minutes. Pixels is rocking the Ronin world with an NFT-heavy experience. 

Of course, web3 enhanced games don’t require NFTs necessarily, but NFTs are tangible assets in a way that tokens and on-chain behind-the-scenes actions aren’t. I think gaming NFTs are a far cry from being dead, they just have to start being applied in more meaningful ways.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs Games

We don’t believe NFTs are dead for gaming. In fact, we think NFTs, with their ability to enable transparent trading, remain one of the most critical aspects of blockchain integration in gaming. Since item trading and marketplaces have long been part of the gaming world, it makes sense to integrate them onchain. However, there are still a few challenges to overcome, which is likely why no successful case of NFT integration in games has emerged yet.

One common mistake is either putting too many or too few items onchain. The balance should be tailored to the game’s genre and the needs of its users. Some games aren’t complex enough to support a robust NFT ecosystem, leading to failure when they force NFTs into the mix. Others restrict supply too much, making it difficult for new users to join.

Another issue is the game itself. In traditional gaming, marketplaces and trading only thrive when there’s a large enough user base. Many projects focus too much on NFTs and trading mechanics before developing a strong player base or a solid game. The key is to first create a great game, then build an NFT-based trading ecosystem driven by live operations and user demand.

Welcome to the September edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. If you’d also like to join the discussion, please contact [email protected]

Some argue that NFTs in games never panned out. To this end we asked our panel of blockchain gaming pundits:

In terms of gaming, do you think NFTs are dead?

David Amor – CEO, Playmint

I feel sorry for NFTs. They’re a humble technology primitive that have been co-opted as a symbol of what many people hate about blockchain. To me, having an emotional response to NFTs makes as much sense as having an emotional response to an HTML document – don’t blame the primitive, blame the content! 

But perhaps the ship has sailed and NFT has become too much of a four letter word. My guess is that NFTs will continue to exist, but we’ll find another term to describe them.

Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

It’s crucial to acknowledge the speculation that often surrounds this space. Many discussions tend to focus on short-term price fluctuations and market trends, which can overshadow the genuine value that NFTs can bring, especially in the gaming industry.

At Planet Mojo, we believe in building strong fundamentals and providing meaningful use cases for NFTs that enhance the gaming experience: by integrating NFTs into gameplay, we empower players with true ownership of their digital assets, create engaging economies, and foster communities that thrive on collaboration and creativity.

As we move forward, our commitment is to shift the narrative from mere speculation to tangible value, showcasing how NFTs can revolutionize gaming and provide lasting benefits for players.

Tony Pearce – co-founder, Reality+

Whilst active users in web3 games is still relatively small compared to web2 games, in-game NFTs are far from dead. Many developers and platforms are still actively exploring ways to integrate NFTs into games to enhance player ownership, digital economies, and in-game assets. 

The technology is still evolving, and as the gaming industry continues to experiment, we will see innovative games and well known IP appealing to both players and developers. NFTs will continue to play a role in shaping the future of gaming.

Robby Yung – CEO, Animoca Brands

While “NFT’s are dead” makes for a pithy sound byte, I think that’s all it is, really. If we think about the innovation NFTs represent, it’s the ability for us, as game developers, to tokenise playable assets in our games as unique items, thereby conferring true digital ownership over them. That’s huge, and it’s not going away.

Players and developers can all debate good and bad examples of how the technology has been used in various games, just like most people have personal preferences regarding specific game titles, and this is healthy. However, I don’t think that anyone can argue that owning assets in games is a bad thing, and anything that can further that aim for the benefit of players is most definitely a good thing.

Christina Macedo – CEO, PLAY

NFTs are often seen just as collectibles, but what can it actually do for gamers?

At PLAY, our vision is to transform gaming into a more immersive, interactive experience where players become creators who benefit from their in-game environments and communities.

Imagine that in your game, the items that you create and the achievements that you obtain hold real-world value. They travel with you across games and platforms. They help build your digital onchain identity. You have true ownership of these things and tangible stakes within your favourite games. Do you feel a deeper sense of engagement and attachment to the game? Is your gaming experience richer and more personalised? This is thanks to NFTs, offering new layers of interactions and community involvement.

NFTs are far from dead. We’re just scratching the surface of their potential.

Jacobc.eth – Co-founder, HyperPlay

NFTs in gaming are still one of the most popular use cases for on-chain gaming, but they’ve become ubiquitous and are not marketed in the way that “profile picture NFTs” were during past cycles.

NFTs with real, tangible benefits to gameplay continue to accelerate a major shift in how people perceive and interact with digital game worlds. The key lies in creating value beyond mere ownership and artificial scarcity. 

Consider the example of XOCIETY, a web3 game that utilizes NFT-based skins and UGC, allowing players to truly own their characters and transfer them between compatible games. High-stakes extraction shooter gameplay allows players to risk their NFTs and assets in order to earn more in highly competitive matches. Assets from other gaming universes, like Pudgy Penguins, are playable characters within the game. This is more than just cosmetic; it’s giving players across the decentralized web a genuine stake in the game world.

The future belongs to those who can harness the technology to foster a deeper connection between players and the virtual worlds they inhabit.

Jamie King – Rockstar Games co-founder and advisor at Metacade

Although the word ‘NFT’ no longer holds the same allure for traditional audiences, the principles of what an NFT represents in gaming – true ownership, provable scarcity, and innovative player engagement – are far from dead. They’re evolving.

The initial hype might have subsided, but what remains is a powerful tool for building a new era in gaming where players are active participants in the ecosystem, not just consumers. At Metacade, we see NFTs as the backbone of this exciting future.

Sicco Naets – Head of ecosystem dev, Moonbeam Foundation

I still see significant interest in NFTs from game studios. It’s not a surprise – game development is capital-intensive, and NFTs offer a way to generate pre-launch buzz and funding. However, the value proposition for gamers is much less clear.

So far, game developers have mainly experimented with two NFT use cases:

• Cosmetics: Using NFTs to sell in-game cosmetics.
• In-game progress: Tracking items, upgraded characters, or achievements through NFTs, which serve as bragging rights.

Traditional gaming already offers ways to show off cosmetic items and progress through platforms like Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. So, for many gamers, NFTs don’t provide a groundbreaking difference. The concept of reselling NFTs after you exit a game is even more problematic. If someone can just buy their way to power by purchasing rare NFTs from exiting players, it erodes the game’s integrity.

Don’t blame the primitive, blame the content!

David Amor, Playmint

Where NFTs could offer something genuinely exciting is cross-game compatibility. This isn’t a new idea, yet, we haven’t seen much movement. Why? Many web3 game developers need NFT sales just to launch an alpha or beta. These studios don’t have the bandwidth or resources to make cross-game NFTs happen.

What we need is a third-party entity to step in. Imagine a recognizable someone paying for a recognizable IP like Star Wars or Pokemon and using that to launch an NFT collection. A portion of the sales could be reserved for game studios willing to support the collection. For gamers, this setup would be even better. The NFTs they purchase would have guaranteed utility across multiple games, increasing their value.

Another interesting angle is the enforcement of royalties. While royalties are a clear benefit for NFT creators, they’re tough to enforce. Nothing stops someone from selling an NFT outside the official marketplace or bridging it to another chain to avoid fees. But with cross-game NFTs, this dynamic changes. Game studios could verify whether royalties have been paid and deny access to players who haven’t.

Despite the challenges, I’m confident we’ll see teams start to realize the potential of cross-game NFTs. NFTs in gaming aren’t dead – they’re just waiting for the right framework to unlock their full potential.

Sam Barberie – Head of strategy and partnerships, Horizon Blockchain Games

This is a great question that brings up more questions. Are we talking about:

• NFTs as in generic PFP projects that hope to back their way into relevance and utility with a game?
• NFTs and NFT speculation as the sole mechanic for a “game?”
• Secondary NFT trades as the primary revenue driver for a game?

If it’s one of those, I sure hope gaming NFTs are dead forever.

The reality, however, is that gaming NFTs are proliferating at a higher rate than ever, just not with the signals (read: sky-high secondary trades) that we’ve seen in the past. By the logic of open market prices as our barometer for success, it’s equally fair to say that gaming tokens are dead, too. Part of this is because we’re still in the doldrums between content rollout cycles and live, full-featured games. It’s also a reality that the market is going to shift toward primary sales as the main revenue driver, with secondary providing a long tail of incremental revenue. This means we’ll have to change how we measure and understand the success of gaming NFTs. That said, gaming NFTs are everywhere, and so are their more scalable cousins, SFTs (aka ERC 1155, the standard co-authored by Sequence that is the go-to for all non-1:1 game items). Ubisoft just sold out a collection for Champions Tactics in under 5 minutes. Pixels is rocking the Ronin world with an NFT-heavy experience. 

Of course, web3 enhanced games don’t require NFTs necessarily, but NFTs are tangible assets in a way that tokens and on-chain behind-the-scenes actions aren’t. I think gaming NFTs are a far cry from being dead, they just have to start being applied in more meaningful ways.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs Games

We don’t believe NFTs are dead for gaming. In fact, we think NFTs, with their ability to enable transparent trading, remain one of the most critical aspects of blockchain integration in gaming. Since item trading and marketplaces have long been part of the gaming world, it makes sense to integrate them onchain. However, there are still a few challenges to overcome, which is likely why no successful case of NFT integration in games has emerged yet.

One common mistake is either putting too many or too few items onchain. The balance should be tailored to the game’s genre and the needs of its users. Some games aren’t complex enough to support a robust NFT ecosystem, leading to failure when they force NFTs into the mix. Others restrict supply too much, making it difficult for new users to join.

Another issue is the game itself. In traditional gaming, marketplaces and trading only thrive when there’s a large enough user base. Many projects focus too much on NFTs and trading mechanics before developing a strong player base or a solid game. The key is to first create a great game, then build an NFT-based trading ecosystem driven by live operations and user demand.

Welcome to the August edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. If you’d also like to join the discussion, please contact [email protected]

Do you think the current growth of games on TON is sustainable long-term?

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Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

It’s too early to determine if TON games will be sustainable in the long term, but early signs lead me to be skeptical.

Currently, the platform is booming with hypercasual games that promise tokens to players. However, it is widely understood the majority of these players are in fact bots. Platform supporters state that even if 90% of 100 million players are bots, there are still 10 million real players. Yet, they overlook the negative impact bots can have on the gaming ecosystem, the most obvious being taking rewards away from real players.

For TON games to become sustainable, developers need to create deeper, richer games with stronger engagement loops that attract players who enjoy the game for its own sake. As seen with Axie and other web3 games, economies based solely on earning cannot succeed long term. There must be a balance between players willing to pay for in-game items and those who are there just to earn.

By focusing on developing quality games that offer genuine enjoyment and robust player engagement, TON games have the potential to build a thriving and sustainable ecosystem. We will see what the bots think if that day ever comes.

Tony Pearce – Co-founder, Reality+

It will depend on developer interest and new funding for continued technical investment. TON seems to have a great community of gamers but as we’ve seen in the past these communities can move to the next big thing/chain very quickly so TON blockchain must continue to support developers and provide resources and incentives.

TON must also continue to innovate to differentiate itself from other blockchain platforms like Ethereum, Solana, Hedera or Polygon but having a shared connection through Telegram certainly helps.

Sam Barberie – Head of strategy and partnerships, Horizon Blockchain Games

Games on Telegram present an interesting opportunity that delves into well-worn territory: social games. First, I think it’s vital that we separate Telegram-based games from TON. TON is a non-EVM blockchain that is not a prerequisite for launching a game on Telegram. Games on Telegram are viable for all. 

Now for the fun stuff: Telegram games are simply the Facebook games of today, and that’s a good thing. Rewind about 15 years, when developers recognized the distribution benefits of launching a game on a platform that had nearly one billion users, and whose networking mechanics could be leveraged by games to enable players to loop in friends and family, creating a powerful user acquisition flow. Web3 developers see Telegram as a similar destination.

Particularly in the current moment, where the traditional game and app stores are less accessible to some web3 games, Telegram has an existing audience who are there for other primary reasons, the potential for network effects, and a relatively open playing field that isn’t yet dominated by a top-heavy cadre of Supercells or Scopelys (just like the early days of Facebook). 

At the same time, I want to caution against hype. Targeting users on Telegram is near impossible, though its app store launch may help. Telegram games also gained a lot of attention through heavily botted experiences, with few – if any – sustainable, human-played games to date. Both of these are challenges that early Facebook games did not face. And, like everything in web3 game development, the rules still apply that developers need to focus on end-to-end, safe, and smooth player experiences.

That said, I see Telegram games as a valuable option for devs that fill a time-based need while iOS and Android get more comfortable with web3 titles, and where game makers can make use of a less crowded field and some potentially unique mechanics.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs Games

At Delabs Games, we’re very optimistic about the future of Telegram games. We quickly moved to launch GIGACHADBAT on Telegram because we recognized the significant potential in this space.

From our experience, we know that games on chat apps can experience tremendous growth. For instance, our parent company, 4:33, successfully navigated the entire cycle with Kakao, South Korea’s leading chat app. We were the top game publisher on Kakao.

Chat apps have inherent advantages in terms of marketing, virality, and accessibility. Telegram, in particular, stands out with its seamless integration of web3 elements, such as wallets and tokens, directly within the app.

So yes, we are confident in the long-term growth of games on Telegram. We believe that what we’re seeing now is just the beginning, with the potential for more sophisticated and complex game structures in the future.

Tomer Pascal – Co-founder, OwnPlay

I’m quite skeptical of the current state of Telegram-based gaming experiences. Many of these games have flimsy foundations that won’t likely support long-term growth. These “meme games” are driven more by hype and speculation rather than real substance or sustainable gameplay. That means the incentives are skewed more towards narrative storytelling to the community of players, rather than organic interest in gameplay and the game itself. 

These meme games will remain niche, as I don’t see there being much room in the market.

I’d much rather focus my efforts on developing crypto gaming experiences with real staying power – not just quick-hit, incentivized diversions. I believe there are more sustainable, meaningful ways for us to engage players in the crypto gaming space – ways that combine fun games with proper incentives built less on token speculation and more on actual gameplay.

Carlos Roldan – CEO, Elixir Games

The growth of TON/Telegram games is something undeniable, it offers a closeness to users which is very positive and generates a really interesting user acquisition. It is also good to comment on how all these projects are at the entrance to games that offer a user experience focused on the long term, with a sophisticated development and which are sustainable.

Integrating features into Telegram such as truly accessible games for users is a very positive step forward, not everyone has the facilities and access to be able to play triple A games and this allows them to stay in the industry without needing the latest hardware. These integrations can serve as a good addition to the existing ecosystem for true gamers, while also providing an excellent avenue for new user engagement. However, this trend should serve as a stepping stone rather than the ultimate goal.

Developers must continue to focus on creating experiences for their audiences. Games must always have a focus on fun, focusing on the user experience as entertainment or a method of disconnection rather than a profit calculator with incentives. Speculation, as has been demonstrated, is not acceptable in games and projects that really want to make a place in the industry in the long term.

Russell Bennett – CEO, Metacade

You have to respect TON’s product fit and market positioning. I think it’s brilliant. But in terms of the growth of the TON network, from a financial point of view and due to the size of it there could potentially be no more than a 2x left in it. However I think the long-term growth will be seen in economy growth.

I think what it has done is encourage a number of projects.

One of our clients, Shockwaves, has just launched their first Telegram game, and it’s very good, far better than what we’re seeing at the moment. The main tranche of games which have hit Telegram are effectively farming activities. So people are literally going into an app and tapping, which is mind blowing to me. But if it works, it works. If hyper-casual games continue to hit Telegram, and it allows tokens to be used then I think we would definitely utilize Telegram for future games in the pipeline for Metacade. 

Games being integrated into Telegram is where we’ll see explosive growth. I think TON are going after the super-app philosophy. An app that does all – investing, gaming, viewing – and I think people fully expect to be living within one application in the not too distant future, probably 10 to 20 years. I think TON and Telegram probably have a good opportunity of completely cornering that market. 

Alexander Goldybin – Founder and chairman, iLogos

TON’s game growth is exciting but sustainability depends on:

• Engaging gameplay: Games must be fun and keep players interested.
• Strong ecosystem: A healthy developer community, tools, and player engagement are crucial.
• Long-term vision: Games need a plan for future updates and community building.

The jury’s still out on TON’s long-term sustainability, but the current growth is certainly a positive sign.  Let’s see if these games can deliver the engaging experiences and long-term commitment needed to thrive. 

As always, players will ultimately decide the fate of TON’s gaming scene.

Christina Macedo – CEO, READYgg

There’s undeniable potential in TON’s integration with Telegram. It’s exactly what we need to push gaming content to mobile users globally, which is in line with PLAY’s mission to democratize web3 gaming. Not only does it broaden access, it also changes how we think about distributing and accessing games. 

But the games that are currently available on TON remind me a lot of the very early web3 games. Most don’t have the mechanics and storytelling that draw players in and, more importantly, retain them. Many of them aren’t on-chain either.

At PLAY, we’re looking to bring our advanced technology to TON to deepen player engagement. We’re talking about enabling MMOs, PvP, and other community-centric games that can thrive in a social platform like Telegram. 

In short, I believe the growth could be sustainable – if the games evolve significantly. We need to see blockchain being leveraged to its potential, with real integration, richer game dynamics, and an improved discovery mechanism. If TON can grow along these lines, it could become a mainstay platform for web3 gaming.

Welcome to the July edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. If you’d also like to join the discussion, please contact [email protected]

Of all the factors to take into account when choosing on which blockchain to deploy a game, which is the most important one and why?

Robbie Ferguson – Co-founder and President, Immutable

At Immutable, we believe the most important consideration is the blockchain’s focus on gaming. This includes assessing how aligned the blockchain is to the success of your game. We consider whether their technology is built with game economies in mind, rather than primarily for DeFi or other use cases. It’s crucial that their team, including Business Development, Partner Success, and Support, deeply understands the challenges game developers face daily. This understanding should be reflected in their technology stack, services, and support. We also evaluate whether the network’s users are primarily gamers or crypto mercenaries looking for the next arbitrage or narrative opportunity. Finally, we assess if their monetization incentives align with those of a game studio.

Working with ecosystems that deeply understand the problems game developers face will help teams navigate the many pitfalls of building in web3. This, in turn, allows developers to focus on their primary objective: shipping fun and engaging experiences to players.

Kevin Rose – CMO, Dacoco

There are two parts to this. The first part: all blockchains present the same “Trilemma” famously coined by Vitalik. In a blockchain you want security, scalability, and decentralization. Gamers need immediate feedback in a game so we need to focus on scalability above all else. 

But blockhains have a fourth value, network effect. Because blockchains are closed systems often with steep onboarding asks, game developers also need to focus on where the largest potential market of players is. Finding that sweet spot between speed and player onboarding is the key. 

The second part: in the future, players won’t care what blockchain you deploy on. It’ll be that players want to trade in-game items, not trade them on XYZ blockchain.

David Bolger – Senior partnerships manager, Offchain Labs

Economic activity, gamer UX and support are the three areas that game studios mainly optimise for when choosing which chain to deploy on.

Economic activity: With tokens as the lifeblood of many web3 game economies, having a liquid network is crucial. 

Gamer UX: Transaction speed is crucial to retaining users who are used to minimal loading times. Beyond speed, support from centralized exchanges, fiat on-ramps, marketplaces and high quality gaming wallets is pertinent. With the explosive growth in new chains, the infrastructure providers have not maintained pace with the adoption and therefore some new chains lack key infra.

Support: The support from a chain can include co-marketing, grants, investment, technical support and more. Word of mouth around which chains support teams over a long time horizon vs those that focus on the upfront announcement is a strong driver of teams decision making.

Overall, Arbitrum has been optimizing for these areas in particular. The Foundation and DAO is doubling down on this with the 200 million Arb gaming catalyst program that recently passed voting.

Christina Macedo – CEO, READYgg

Scalability tops the list because it’s all about supporting growth without losing a beat. And scalability can impact not just the technical performance, but also the overall user experience.

Scalability also ties directly into security and decentralization. It’s important for a blockchain to be scalable while having the right security measures in place to protect against fraud and hacks. At the same time, we need to maintain a level of decentralization so we can efficiently process transactions to support complex game mechanics and a high number of concurrent users – while upholding trust and transparency.

Our aim is to strike the right balance for a scalable, secure, and user-friendly gaming environment that fosters innovation and maintains the integrity of the gaming experience.

Sicco Naets – Head of ecosystem dev, Moonbeam Foundation

If all you’re getting from a blockchain is a grant, then you’re getting poor service. Blockchains can help with several other important areas that are undervalued, including networking and introductions to VCs. They can also assist at a technical level and with co-marketing. Not all chains are equal in their responsiveness and willingness to support. 

Beyond that, priority input into the product roadmap can be very valuable. You want a chain that prioritizes your tech needs, as that can save both headaches and money.

Lastly, blockchains can help with user acquisition. Chains can create events (like Moonbeam’s Lunar Gaming Festival) and tournaments to directly stimulate game interest and user adoption.

Robby Yung – CEO, Animoca Brands

I think the most important factor when choosing a blockchain to deploy a game is the community. While it is true that your game may attract players from elsewhere (other blockchains, web2, etc.), you need to engage a core base of supporters native to the locale you’re building. This is why it’s important to start engaging with the community early and understanding what they like, what other similar applications and content exist in that community, and what you’re planning to add to their community experience. 

A perfect example of this is the game Pixels, which really accelerated its growth after moving to Ronin, where they found a core base of players who were familiar with farming sim games that were relatively easier to onboard because they were a good fit.

Tony Pearce – Co-founder, Reality+

At Reality+ we have a partnership with the Hedera network and HBAR Foundation to mint, sell and trade NFTs for our new Doctor Who: Worlds Apart mobile and PC trading card game. When choosing a blockchain to deploy a game, for us, it came down to three important factors – high transaction speeds, low fees and proven sustainability.

Doctor Who: Worlds Apart is aimed at mass market CCG players and has the potential to have millions of players and concurrent users. It was essential that we had a blockchain that could handle high transaction speeds and scalability with low transaction fees. Sustainability and energy consumption was an important factor especially when working with the BBC. We needed a blockchain that was one of the most sustainable public distributed ledgers.For Doctor Who: Worlds Apart, we have already minted 1.5 million collectible NFTs, which are being sold and traded by early adopters of the PC game, a testament to the high throughput, fast, and cost-efficient credentials of the network.

Anthony Palma – Gaming partnership lead, Mysten Labs

There isn’t one specific factor, but rather a combination of three critical requirements – performance, functionality, and support. From a performance standpoint, the blockchain must prioritize scalability, speed, and low costs – all three, not just a combination of the group. 

Object models and robust tooling have to be part of the functionality of the blockchain, while the support system should encompass engineering, marketing, GTM, and funding if need be. Without all three, you’ll have to fight unnecessary battles to build, deploy, and launch the game you want without significant workarounds.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs

Our focus is on user convenience and quality, meaning our games have a manageable number of on-chain elements. However, the speed and low cost of transactions remain essential factors.

Additionally, considering an L2’s user base’s size and activity level is crucial since a large, active community can drive greater engagement and faster growth for the game. A high concentration of quality games can attract more users. Conversely, fewer competitors might allow our game to dominate the ecosystem, offering a strategic advantage.

Furthermore, ensuring that the chosen L2 solution aligns with our ecosystem positioning strategy is vital. It involves deciding whether to position our game as a leading title in a less crowded ecosystem or to compete in a dynamic, competitive environment based on our strategic objectives. 

Marketing support is another critical consideration. Platforms that actively promote gaming content through their main channels, rather than segregating it, can offer greater exposure due to their larger follower base and higher visibility. 

Russell Bennett – CEO, Metacade

The common belief in the gaming space is that the next billion users will come through a game, but I believe it’s the blockchain that will facilitate this growth. We recently chose Base for Metacade, with the decision driven by our business goals and desired outcomes. We positioned ourselves on Base to ensure we are front of mind for new users, helping them learn about the wider gamefi space.

In my view, games should adopt a similar strategic approach when choosing their blockchain. It’s crucial to find a chain with a significant number of on-chain users to benefit from cross-pollination. There are popular ecosystems gaining traction with many games deploying on them, attracting more gamers. However, this is a short-term view. Projects should focus on chains offering a frictionless, gas-free experience and a public commitment to onboarding users. 

The key question for any project is whether the chosen chain aligns with their business goals. 

Alexander Goldybin – Founder and chairman, iLogos

When you’re deciding which blockchain to use for your game, think about scalability first. You need a platform that can handle a lot of action without slowing down or getting too expensive. For example, Solana and Binance Smart Chain are great because they can manage lots of transactions quickly. This means your game will stay fun and responsive, just as players expect.

But don’t forget about the user base. Choosing a blockchain like Polygon, which already has a large, active community, means there’s a ready-made audience eager to try your game. This can give your game a head start in popularity. 

In the end, the best choice is a blockchain that balances both scalability and a strong user base. 

Carlos Roldan – CEO, Elixir Games

Processing speeds and transactions per second (TPS) are incredibly important for choosing a network. Networks designed to handle massive amounts of data quickly and that can readily support high throughput games will be crucial to the overall success of any title.

Partnering with networks that are easy to learn how to use for newcomers to web3 is another important factor. This is the main problem that L2s and L3s face, despite solving the data processing issue, as they complicate the onboarding experience. No gamer is going to sign up for 3 hours of homework to try a new game they don’t know they like yet. 

This emphasis on onboarding extends to the game development as well, with all-in-one wallet solutions for handling player assets seeming to be the easiest answer available right now. At Elixir Games, we are working on integrating all of this into an all-in-one gaming platform so the technicalities of connecting blockchains are handled by us, not the gamer.

Sam Barberie – Head of strategy and partnerships, Horizon Blockchain Games

In the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Web3 Game Developer Needs, many developers get lost thinking about things that don’t matter in the long term, particularly in an increasingly commoditized chain landscape. Typically, games are looking for: 1) Money; 2) Access to “gamers.”

Here’s the real deal with each of those needs:

1) If a chain investment is the make or break of your game, you’re likely already DOA. Yes, capital is important for game development. And I firmly believe that great games can come from anywhere, even solo devs for whom some extra cash could be the difference between making the next viral hit and sticking to your day job.

At the same time, the era of free absurd money is largely over, and there needs to be recognition from devs that chains will not earn back the grant money they give you; you simply won’t use enough gas to make it happen. Traditional games don’t get paid by Steam, or Unreal, or Unity. It’s time for this concept of money-above-all to end, because it is not bringing great games to market, and the money well is drying up. 

2) Chains do not have access to “gamers.” Some chains have access to bots, but there are simply not enough people who will actually play your game currently onboarded to web3. 

Yes, co-marketing support from a chain is helpful. Yes, web3-natives are an important part of your game’s economy. But a one-time tweet from a chain’s main account is not going to bring you your 1,000 true fans.

Beyond this, most chains don’t have mechanisms for reaching users outside of social accounts, so what they’re doing isn’t any more special than what any other KOL/streamer/influencer can do, except those people reach actual players. 

Moreso, the blockchain is an open database, as a dev you can throw a token “ad” into anyone’s wallet, on any chain, at any time. Entities that aren’t chains like guilds can also help you reach people, and that’s agnostic of the chain. 

As a developer, however, be mindful of what you ask is, and understand the specifics of how the chain will help you reach the audience that will benefit your game in the long term.  

All other things being equal, the team behind a chain – and the degree to which they understand game development, the challenges of web3 game development, and have a network of casual and formal relationships to help support your go to market – is going to make the difference. That’s where the arrival of new gaming-specific L2s and L3s is exciting, because it means more chains with more people dedicated to you with domain expertise. 

Who has the knowledge to help you get approved for the App Store? Who understands how to design a game for different player profiles? Who can help you figure out the issue you’re having with multiplayer matchmaking? This is where chains are really starting to differentiate, either through their own staff or by leaning on an ecosystem of experts that will bring the next generation of great games to market.

Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

One of the most dynamic elements of working in blockchain is that it’s constantly evolving and improving.  At Planet Mojo, based on our experiences in multi-platform game development, we’ve always believed in a multi-chain future.

Regardless, it is always important to choose long term partners that align with your long term vision and values as well as have a track record of being able to execute at a high level in a timely manner. 

Sometimes, you will find a single, perfect partner but oftentimes there can be a divergence and you are a 70-80% match.  Now you can choose from several partners that together may form that perfect 100% for your needs. We foresaw this evolution and built a robust back-end tech stack named “Sumatra” to support a multi-chain future where players can hold assets on diverse chains but still play games together. 

Welcome to the June edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. If you’d also like to join the discussion, please contact [email protected]

A lot of hot air has been spent on the subject of DAOs over the years, with little actual adoption. With the recent launch of The Sandbox DAO (and other examples such as ApeDAO) we asked our panel of blockchain gaming experts if this suggest the concept of DAOs is not dead?

Robby Yung – CEO, Animoca Brands

I think DAOs are a true innovation in web3 – not because democratic voting systems were unavailable in other forms, but because DAOs that organise stakeholders who hold tokens are far more efficient and trustworthy, meaning easily deployed at scale for people and institutions across the Internet. However, we must remember that a DAO as a construct is only as good as its membership (a lot like democracy), and so the implementation and management / facilitation of the DAO is key to its success. 

We’re big believers in DAOs because we think they’re part of the path to decentralisation, and I personally really love the way that they can be both inclusive and representative. 

Imagine a big web2 tech platform that was run as a DAO – say, if the Apple App Store had stakeholder voting by all the developers who offer their wares there and they could have a say in the take rate, the running of the store, etc. It would be a very different place. But just like democracy, it’s messy and imperfect, but you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as they say. 

Rebecca Liao – Co-founder and CEO, Saga

DAOs were entirely misbranded on debut. DAOs are neither truly decentralized nor autonomous, and there is usually only the faint outline of an organization. A DAO is really a community organized around token incentives, which can be highly valuable in communities that have suffered from coordination problems and do not neatly fit the mold of more formal organizations. Gaming guilds are a great example of this, but they only work when there is highly dedicated human leadership involved. 

Automated smart contract triggers were part of the early feature set of DAOs, but what most found was that they were incredibly difficult to implement beyond voting and always led to irreconcilable controversy. In addition, the volatility of tokens means that token incentives and ownership alone cannot define roles and responsibilities in a DAO. 

Lots of lessons learned from the first go around, and I’m optimistic about the next iteration because we’ve become much more clear-eyed about what a DAO is not – a crypto commune – and what it is – community organization for networks that exist almost exclusively online.

Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

What we’re seeing now is the maturation of the idea of a DAO. Just like the early days of blockchain gaming, the initial hype was filled with potential but often lacked substance. Now, DAOs are starting to find their footing with more structured and meaningful applications.

It’s not just about decentralized decision-making; it’s about creating real value for the community. By allowing players and creators to have a say in the development and direction of the platform, DAOs manage to tap into the collective intelligence and creativity of its user base. This level of engagement and ownership can drive innovation and growth in ways that traditional corporate structures might not be able to.

Last but not least, just like with blockchain games, the key is to make the user experience is seamless and intuitive: if interacting with a DAO feels cumbersome or confusing, it will struggle to gain traction.

Jon Allen – Co-founder, Game7

So many of the past DAO failures have been due to improper application and understanding of the model.

DAOs are inefficient at running a business, building a product, and getting things done. However, DAOs are incredible at getting public input, optimizing for community discourse/contribution, and are well positioned to leverage the fractal nature of growth that web3 has so effectively tapped into to solve large, challenging problems. 

A DAO is an optimal structure if we want the community to own and evolve any aspect of humanity, and it is my belief that the future will be heavily shaped by decentralized communities that band together to strive for a better and more transparent future. To achieve this, communities need to be active. They need to participate in learning, building, and decision-making. 

DAOs continue to evolve, yet DAO tooling, for the most part, remains fragmented and ineffective. In addition, many communities are suffering from a number of challenges because of the standard ‘one token, one vote’ governance model. 

We need tooling that makes it easy for DAOs to measure the contributions of their members and reward them in ways that go beyond money, like granting engaged contributors status, rewards, influence, and power. By tracking, measuring, and rewarding contributions, DAOs could align decision-making capabilities with those who invest the most time and effort into the community. The result would be a meritocratic governance model that distributes power and governing rights to the most productive members of the DAO.  

It’s become clear that if we want to address the specific and urgent challenges our world is facing, we need to pull together as a community, as a species, to do so. 

Although DAOs have come up short when it comes to getting things done quickly, they remain excellent at supporting the critical community-building aspect of the future, and bright-eyed optimists continue to work day in and day out to ensure that, one day, they will change the world.

Christina Macedo – Co-Founder and COO, READYgg

Reflecting on the trajectory of DAOs, it’s clear that the concept has evolved rather than diminished. When it comes to DAOs, four things come to mind: decentralization, community empowerment, and innovation in governance.

At The Sandbox DAO, stakeholders including gamers, developers, and investors directly shape the project’s governance and development. This approach doesn’t just align with community needs — it drives innovation, engagement, and a sense of ownership that’s transformative for both the platform and its users. It shows how community-driven governance can create robust ecosystems that are responsive and adaptable to user needs. Similarly, ApeDAO illustrates the power of DAOs in niche communities, where decentralized decision-making allows members to manage collective assets and drive the project’s direction together. This empowerment gives users a tangible stake in the ecosystem and becomes a model for active, meaningful community interaction. At READYgg, we integrate the principles of community-centric governance into our strategies to ensure our platforms not only resonate with our users but also lead the way in innovative community engagement.

Ultimately, these examples mark a transition to a more mature phase of DAO implementation. We’re moving beyond the initial hype to establish sustainable, community-focused practices. This evolution shows that DAOs are becoming more sophisticated. When aligned with clear use cases and supported by an engaged community, DAOs can facilitate a more inclusive and responsive organizational management and decision-making process.

Sam Barberie – Head of Strategy and Partnerships, Sequence/Horizon Blockchain Games

Early DAOs were such generalist entities that they were basically useless. Most were just vehicles for token speculation and a place to gather a handful of crypto people who were in the DAOs for the sheer zeitgeist of it all. They were like nation states but no one actually lived in the nation the DAO was governing, so decisions and proposals were made in a void; you can’t answer “what do our citizens want?” if you don’t have any citizens who live, love, and work in the same space. That’s how you wind up with random parties, bland collabs, etc. 

Fortunately, in gaming, we’re seeing a renewed effort to think about DAOs not as half-baked republics that throw keggers but as groups of people with common financial and spiritual interests in the growth of a sector, ecosystem, or game. That’s great! 

At the same time, gamers don’t want bureaucracy. They want safeguards—they want to know that governance and voting structures are established in a way that doesn’t let populist insanity take hold—but even more so they want a say in what will lead to more fun (and yes, perhaps more money) for their community, without a long to-do list. What ideally needs to happen, as it is to a degree with the Arbitrum Gaming Catalyst Program and others like it, is for new structures to spring up to enable decisions at speed, but with guardrails. For example, the structure and rules for how to fund games is a big decision, but whether game X gets $50k or $150k doesn’t need a DAO-wide vote. It’s great to see DAOs in gaming start to put a greater focus on content and enabling content with technology, and less on what city will host the next party. I hope it continues. 

Canaan Linder – Founder and CEO, Stardust

Governance is the cornerstone of every company from Fortune 500 companies to open source projects. On blockchain, DAOs have become the de facto decentralised governance method for projects that seek to be owned and operated by the community. While it is extremely transparent, it also comes with incredible amounts of red tape when involving the community in every single decision.

Personally, I believe that elected leaders by a DAO are the way to go, direct democracy as applied to on-chain DAO governance. This takes the best of an efficient company structure with qualified parties directly making decisions while holding them accountable to the broader community through a DAO vote. As Sandbox becomes a DAO and starts to source its community for effective governance to grow its user base and bring it to a sustainable and flourishing game, I do believe it will struggle to establish an effective form of decision-making without elected leaders who the community believes have their best interests at heart.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs

DAOs are a core concept in the vision of web3 technology, and their idea is unlikely to die out. They are fundamentally important, and many projects will continue to explore and develop them. However, it is true that there has been limited adoption.

This is mainly due to the still-restricted ecosystem. The number of people who can participate in blockchain-based voting is limited, and of those, the number who actually engage is even smaller. For the majority of DAOs to function effectively, mass adoption is necessary.

Nevertheless, DAOs are operational in ecosystems that have grown significantly and amassed a substantial on-chain user base. Examples include large-scale infrastructure projects like Layer1 and Layer2. Delabs, for instance, has recently onboarded the Arbitrum ecosystem, where many decisions are made through DAOs.

Players can directly influence game development, rules, asset management, and funding allocations through voting mechanisms and participation in the DAO. This level of community involvement is unprecedented in traditional gaming, fostering a sense of ownership, engagement, and inclusivity in shaping the gaming experience. DAO governance enables players to build the game they want in a fair and democratic way.

As outlined in our Whitepaper, Delabs Games’ roadmap for DAO governance includes player participation through staking $GAME tokens. These tokens are crucial in determining factors supporting the ecosystem’s sustainability and growth. These factors include community reward allocation schemes, distribution rates among vaults, staking reward rates, asset inventory system (AIS) expansion prices and models, and new project onboarding. $GAME incentivizes and rewards contributors based on their input to the platform.

Russell Bennett – CEO at Metacade

DAOs are a great concept to create a strong level of decentralized governance and connection providing a voice for the community in key decisions. The trouble is that many DAOs, like Sandbox DAO, are pivots from centralized companies to form a community. Due to the centralized nature of the company it brings the question whether it really ever can be a true DAO? Sandbox is a very successful company, it will be interesting to see how successful their phased approach to disentangle Sandbox DAO from The Sandbox will be and how the council formed will guide the process bringing more power to the community?

In a true DAO, no one holds the keys. Successful DAOs exist in the market, but sadly they don’t get the attention or recognition despite working very well. For example, Loot Chain is the most prominent chain of games built autonomously, which is the purest form of a DAO. Every game on Loot Chain is created by players – a bit like a Minecraft or Roblox model – and celebrates pure creation which by definition is what a DAO should be.

The concept of a DAO isn’t dead, but onchain gaming is the perfect platform for DAOs to succeed, in fact music could be another environment for success along with anything that is creative at its core in my opinion. Creativity is a space where more people can have a voice, you don’t need to be an expert to be creative, but you do need expertise in finance to advise on subjects to do with investing for example, which is why many more complex DAOs fail – the community empowered to vote simply doesn’t have the knowledge required for success. For a small niche it is highly successful, but because others are centralized entities with a DAO element it feels more like it’s a play on words at the end of the day.

Sarojini McKenna – CEO, Dacoco

DAOs are far from dead. So long as value is being created on the blockchain the necessity to use a DAO to govern them will remain.

As far as in-game DAOs are concerned things are heating up around the space. At Alien Worlds we are about to launch Tokenized Lore, which is the idea that a DAO governs the canon of our original sci-fi IP. This has huge implications for the media and entertainment space especially as AI tools come online that make it easier to create content and harder to enforce centralized IP.

Welcome to the June edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. If you’d also like to join the discussion, please contact [email protected]

A lot of hot air has been spent on the subject of DAOs over the years, with little actual adoption. With the recent launch of The Sandbox DAO (and other examples such as ApeDAO) we asked our panel of blockchain gaming experts if this suggest the concept of DAOs is not dead?

Robby Yung – CEO, Animoca Brands

I think DAOs are a true innovation in web3 – not because democratic voting systems were unavailable in other forms, but because DAOs that organise stakeholders who hold tokens are far more efficient and trustworthy, meaning easily deployed at scale for people and institutions across the Internet. However, we must remember that a DAO as a construct is only as good as its membership (a lot like democracy), and so the implementation and management / facilitation of the DAO is key to its success. 

We’re big believers in DAOs because we think they’re part of the path to decentralisation, and I personally really love the way that they can be both inclusive and representative. 

Imagine a big web2 tech platform that was run as a DAO – say, if the Apple App Store had stakeholder voting by all the developers who offer their wares there and they could have a say in the take rate, the running of the store, etc. It would be a very different place. But just like democracy, it’s messy and imperfect, but you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as they say. 

Rebecca Liao – Co-founder and CEO, Saga

DAOs were entirely misbranded on debut. DAOs are neither truly decentralized nor autonomous, and there is usually only the faint outline of an organization. A DAO is really a community organized around token incentives, which can be highly valuable in communities that have suffered from coordination problems and do not neatly fit the mold of more formal organizations. Gaming guilds are a great example of this, but they only work when there is highly dedicated human leadership involved. 

Automated smart contract triggers were part of the early feature set of DAOs, but what most found was that they were incredibly difficult to implement beyond voting and always led to irreconcilable controversy. In addition, the volatility of tokens means that token incentives and ownership alone cannot define roles and responsibilities in a DAO. 

Lots of lessons learned from the first go around, and I’m optimistic about the next iteration because we’ve become much more clear-eyed about what a DAO is not – a crypto commune – and what it is – community organization for networks that exist almost exclusively online.

Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

What we’re seeing now is the maturation of the idea of a DAO. Just like the early days of blockchain gaming, the initial hype was filled with potential but often lacked substance. Now, DAOs are starting to find their footing with more structured and meaningful applications.

It’s not just about decentralized decision-making; it’s about creating real value for the community. By allowing players and creators to have a say in the development and direction of the platform, DAOs manage to tap into the collective intelligence and creativity of its user base. This level of engagement and ownership can drive innovation and growth in ways that traditional corporate structures might not be able to.

Last but not least, just like with blockchain games, the key is to make the user experience is seamless and intuitive: if interacting with a DAO feels cumbersome or confusing, it will struggle to gain traction.

Jon Allen – Co-founder, Game7

So many of the past DAO failures have been due to improper application and understanding of the model.

DAOs are inefficient at running a business, building a product, and getting things done. However, DAOs are incredible at getting public input, optimizing for community discourse/contribution, and are well positioned to leverage the fractal nature of growth that web3 has so effectively tapped into to solve large, challenging problems. 

A DAO is an optimal structure if we want the community to own and evolve any aspect of humanity, and it is my belief that the future will be heavily shaped by decentralized communities that band together to strive for a better and more transparent future. To achieve this, communities need to be active. They need to participate in learning, building, and decision-making. 

DAOs continue to evolve, yet DAO tooling, for the most part, remains fragmented and ineffective. In addition, many communities are suffering from a number of challenges because of the standard ‘one token, one vote’ governance model. 

We need tooling that makes it easy for DAOs to measure the contributions of their members and reward them in ways that go beyond money, like granting engaged contributors status, rewards, influence, and power. By tracking, measuring, and rewarding contributions, DAOs could align decision-making capabilities with those who invest the most time and effort into the community. The result would be a meritocratic governance model that distributes power and governing rights to the most productive members of the DAO.  

It’s become clear that if we want to address the specific and urgent challenges our world is facing, we need to pull together as a community, as a species, to do so. 

Although DAOs have come up short when it comes to getting things done quickly, they remain excellent at supporting the critical community-building aspect of the future, and bright-eyed optimists continue to work day in and day out to ensure that, one day, they will change the world.

Christina Macedo – Co-Founder and COO, READYgg

Reflecting on the trajectory of DAOs, it’s clear that the concept has evolved rather than diminished. When it comes to DAOs, four things come to mind: decentralization, community empowerment, and innovation in governance.

At The Sandbox DAO, stakeholders including gamers, developers, and investors directly shape the project’s governance and development. This approach doesn’t just align with community needs — it drives innovation, engagement, and a sense of ownership that’s transformative for both the platform and its users. It shows how community-driven governance can create robust ecosystems that are responsive and adaptable to user needs. Similarly, ApeDAO illustrates the power of DAOs in niche communities, where decentralized decision-making allows members to manage collective assets and drive the project’s direction together. This empowerment gives users a tangible stake in the ecosystem and becomes a model for active, meaningful community interaction. At READYgg, we integrate the principles of community-centric governance into our strategies to ensure our platforms not only resonate with our users but also lead the way in innovative community engagement.

Ultimately, these examples mark a transition to a more mature phase of DAO implementation. We’re moving beyond the initial hype to establish sustainable, community-focused practices. This evolution shows that DAOs are becoming more sophisticated. When aligned with clear use cases and supported by an engaged community, DAOs can facilitate a more inclusive and responsive organizational management and decision-making process.

Sam Barberie – Head of Strategy and Partnerships, Sequence/Horizon Blockchain Games

Early DAOs were such generalist entities that they were basically useless. Most were just vehicles for token speculation and a place to gather a handful of crypto people who were in the DAOs for the sheer zeitgeist of it all. They were like nation states but no one actually lived in the nation the DAO was governing, so decisions and proposals were made in a void; you can’t answer “what do our citizens want?” if you don’t have any citizens who live, love, and work in the same space. That’s how you wind up with random parties, bland collabs, etc. 

Fortunately, in gaming, we’re seeing a renewed effort to think about DAOs not as half-baked republics that throw keggers but as groups of people with common financial and spiritual interests in the growth of a sector, ecosystem, or game. That’s great! 

At the same time, gamers don’t want bureaucracy. They want safeguards—they want to know that governance and voting structures are established in a way that doesn’t let populist insanity take hold—but even more so they want a say in what will lead to more fun (and yes, perhaps more money) for their community, without a long to-do list. What ideally needs to happen, as it is to a degree with the Arbitrum Gaming Catalyst Program and others like it, is for new structures to spring up to enable decisions at speed, but with guardrails. For example, the structure and rules for how to fund games is a big decision, but whether game X gets $50k or $150k doesn’t need a DAO-wide vote. It’s great to see DAOs in gaming start to put a greater focus on content and enabling content with technology, and less on what city will host the next party. I hope it continues. 

Canaan Linder – Founder and CEO, Stardust

Governance is the cornerstone of every company from Fortune 500 companies to open source projects. On blockchain, DAOs have become the de facto decentralised governance method for projects that seek to be owned and operated by the community. While it is extremely transparent, it also comes with incredible amounts of red tape when involving the community in every single decision.

Personally, I believe that elected leaders by a DAO are the way to go, direct democracy as applied to on-chain DAO governance. This takes the best of an efficient company structure with qualified parties directly making decisions while holding them accountable to the broader community through a DAO vote. As Sandbox becomes a DAO and starts to source its community for effective governance to grow its user base and bring it to a sustainable and flourishing game, I do believe it will struggle to establish an effective form of decision-making without elected leaders who the community believes have their best interests at heart.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs

DAOs are a core concept in the vision of web3 technology, and their idea is unlikely to die out. They are fundamentally important, and many projects will continue to explore and develop them. However, it is true that there has been limited adoption.

This is mainly due to the still-restricted ecosystem. The number of people who can participate in blockchain-based voting is limited, and of those, the number who actually engage is even smaller. For the majority of DAOs to function effectively, mass adoption is necessary.

Nevertheless, DAOs are operational in ecosystems that have grown significantly and amassed a substantial on-chain user base. Examples include large-scale infrastructure projects like Layer1 and Layer2. Delabs, for instance, has recently onboarded the Arbitrum ecosystem, where many decisions are made through DAOs.

Players can directly influence game development, rules, asset management, and funding allocations through voting mechanisms and participation in the DAO. This level of community involvement is unprecedented in traditional gaming, fostering a sense of ownership, engagement, and inclusivity in shaping the gaming experience. DAO governance enables players to build the game they want in a fair and democratic way.

As outlined in our Whitepaper, Delabs Games’ roadmap for DAO governance includes player participation through staking $GAME tokens. These tokens are crucial in determining factors supporting the ecosystem’s sustainability and growth. These factors include community reward allocation schemes, distribution rates among vaults, staking reward rates, asset inventory system (AIS) expansion prices and models, and new project onboarding. $GAME incentivizes and rewards contributors based on their input to the platform.

Russell Bennett – CEO at Metacade

DAOs are a great concept to create a strong level of decentralized governance and connection providing a voice for the community in key decisions. The trouble is that many DAOs, like Sandbox DAO, are pivots from centralized companies to form a community. Due to the centralized nature of the company it brings the question whether it really ever can be a true DAO? Sandbox is a very successful company, it will be interesting to see how successful their phased approach to disentangle Sandbox DAO from The Sandbox will be and how the council formed will guide the process bringing more power to the community?

In a true DAO, no one holds the keys. Successful DAOs exist in the market, but sadly they don’t get the attention or recognition despite working very well. For example, Loot Chain is the most prominent chain of games built autonomously, which is the purest form of a DAO. Every game on Loot Chain is created by players – a bit like a Minecraft or Roblox model – and celebrates pure creation which by definition is what a DAO should be.

The concept of a DAO isn’t dead, but onchain gaming is the perfect platform for DAOs to succeed, in fact music could be another environment for success along with anything that is creative at its core in my opinion. Creativity is a space where more people can have a voice, you don’t need to be an expert to be creative, but you do need expertise in finance to advise on subjects to do with investing for example, which is why many more complex DAOs fail – the community empowered to vote simply doesn’t have the knowledge required for success. For a small niche it is highly successful, but because others are centralized entities with a DAO element it feels more like it’s a play on words at the end of the day.

Welcome to the May edition of BlockchainGamer.biz’s regular Mavens group. If you’d also like to join the discussion, please contact [email protected]

Recently, platforms like X (former Twitter) has been trying to inhibit the use of bot accounts and social farming as it’s lead to abuse and spamming. Nevertheless, a growing number of web3 games have relied on this tool in their marketing. We asked our blockchain gaming Mavens:

With the ability to grow audience with social farming likely to be hit by changes to X, what’s your best advice for projects looking to grow back their community in the coming months?

Canaan Linder – Founder and CEO, Stardust

All media, particularly the internet, is a form of clickbait. Published headlines have long been half-true and intended to incite a reaction. Engagement farming is not synonymous with botting. There are plenty of X users – people and companies – who ask questions in good faith for audience input and opinion. As a B2B company, Stardust is genuinely interested in what other companies and potential users are thinking about and motivated by. We use these tools with integrity for a purpose: to grow a steadfast community of collaborators. It takes time, but it ultimately grows a community worth stewarding.

A trusted company or brand should focus primarily on connecting with their users organically. By providing relevant insights and content (rather than bad jokes or reporting memes) on their social channels, they are less likely to lose their audience. Quality users can easily spot ploys for engagement, so by continuing to stay on topic, we avoid community disservice or mismanagement.

Rebecca Liao – Co-founder and CEO, Saga

When it comes to community building, there is no substitute for engagement, an authentic voice and finding your audience. All these are critical components of any healthy social media campaign, but they take much longer than social farming. In order to get those big bursts of engagement, aim to host virtual events and partner with influencers and content creators to elevate your story and brand. Frequency of engagement matters as well: projects should look to release only the most important news or content from their main handles, but activate your community to post as often as possible.

Carlos Roldan – CEO, Elixir Games

Social farming has been a popular tool for growth because it leverages two key aspects of the web3 community: the look for financial incentives and the rapid, concise communication style favored by Twitter users. However, with or without restrictions, the landscape always evolves, and adaptation is crucial. One constant is delivering true value to your users through quality products and involving them in your vision, which always fosters genuine engagement.

Once established, focus on increasing reach through your channels, collaborating with community leaders and partners to amplify your message, and being there for your community. They are your most important asset. Emphasize transparency and trust by showing progress and ensuring members feel heard. A resilient and engaged community leads to sustainable, compounded growth.

Ben Cousens – Chief Strategy Officer, ZBD

If you provide real value and are consistent in interacting with your community, it will grow. Growth hacks like social farming might work in the short term, but I don’t think this was ever a good way to foster a truly engaged community. I’d rather have 10k hardcore fans than a million semi-interested people who only came to capitalize on an airdrop. At ZBD, we prioritize building our community steadily and organically, and are focused on driving people to our Discord. The result is a highly engaged and positive (or at least not toxic) space that focuses on fun and discussion more than just rewards. Though, showering people with tiny amounts of Bitcoin through our Discord bot certainly helps!

Christina Macedo – Co-Founder and COO, READYgg

We now see a distinct shift from audience numbers to the depth and richness of user interactions. Projects can now share longer posts, enjoy greater reply prioritization, and experience fewer adverts, which can foster dynamic engagement, offer genuine value and foster a dedicated community. But it’s important to recognize the backdrop of this change — a significant drop in daily active users and a struggle against rivals like Instagram and TikTok.

For community growth in this new era, I’d suggest a twofold approach. First, focus on quality over quantity. The value lies in cultivating deeper, more meaningful interactions with the community; sharing detailed insights, telling compelling stories, providing real value that resonates with the audience on a deeper value. Second, amplify presence with the enhanced features. With priority replies, engage more dynamically with community feedback; this builds a loyal following that feels heard and valued.

The recent changes also present a unique opportunity to innovate how we think about tokenization in community building. The idea of ‘social farming’ — where engagement directly translates into value— can be reimagined. Think of tokenization not just as a financial tool but as a way to deepen community ties. As users engage with content, their interactions could help steer the project’s direction, making every like, comment, and share part of the decision-making process.

Mike Levine – Founder, Mystic Moose

Growing an engaged community includes the intersection of two key components: fostering a community you want to be part of, and creating value for that community. It’s also very important for a game to attract “high quality” users who care about their product vs other incentives alone.

Setting a spotlight on your most valued community members through community creator programs, designing UGC (User-Generated Content) campaigns, continued engagement and a strong feedback loop, are only a few of the fundamental building blocks to setting you up for success to grow your community. 

Creating additional value for your community varies greatly depending on the kind of community you’re trying to build. Driving focus to your games keeps the focus on high quality users.

Outputting high quality content that reaches your target audience is key: once that audience will have found value in your content, they will be more likely to share it and get an exponential growth curve going.

Alexander Goldybin – Founder and Chairman, iLogos

It’s important for blockchain gaming projects to adapt their community-building strategies. Start by spreading your engagement across various platforms like Discord, Telegram, Reddit, and decentralized social networks to lessen the impact of X’s new policy. Strengthen community bonds by hosting regular events, encouraging user-generated content, and maintaining open communication. Additionally, offering rewards and referral programs can keep current members active and attract new users, fostering an engaged community despite the changes on X.

Quinn Kwon – Head of web3 strategy, Delabs

Fortunately, the monetization of X is planned to be targeted towards new subscribers. The intention behind this decision was to filter out malicious and fake comments triggered by indiscriminate replies from new subscriber bots. Therefore, if these sanctions are applied only to new subscribers, current users of X will not immediately face any sanctions. Since most gamers using web3 games also possess Twitter (X) accounts, the short-term impact on the game seems negligible in this regard.

Given the significant shifts in X’s policies over the long term, it becomes essential to explore alternative communication platforms like Discord and Reddit to foster a stable web3 community. Delabs Games has adopted a multi-tool approach to community engagement, exemplified by our Discord channel, which has amassed over 46,000 members since its inception in March 2023.

Ultimately, the most important aspect for community activation is to deliver messages that instill trust in the community. 

For instance, Delabs Games actively engages with the community through various activities, such as AMA sessions, to consistently clarify our vision and goals to stakeholders. Beyond merely disseminating information, we prioritize our community by offering additional bonuses and in-game items to our NFT holders upon the launch of new games.

Platforms like Twitter and Discord serve as invaluable tools for community interaction, with the understanding that the most effective means of conveying core messages may evolve over time. Delabs Games always approaches communication from the perspective of maximizing community benefits.