Is social farming wagging blockchain gaming's tail?
A tale of peanuts and monkeys
Not every week in blockchain gaming has a theme but this week certainly did.
It started off when I looked at PixelPals, the simple farming game from developer LiquidX and blockchain L2 Mantle, which as well as distributing a $200,000 prize pool generated by IAPs, also allows players to farm for an allocation of Pixelmon’s MON token.
What I hadn’t previously realized, however, is MON is being marketed as more than being the underlying token for Pixelmon.
Instead, under the label the Mon Protocol, it’s trying to position itself as a gaming ecosystem token, or “The Publishing Protocol” as Mon now describes itself, with social activity to get tokens being directed through a X-gated mission reward system.
Of course, there are plenty of organisations attempting similar activity. Some are guilds such as Earn Alliance and GuildFi; the latter now rebranded as ZENT.
Other outfits announcing moves in the same direction this week included Game7, with its Dungeons & Degens program, and Immutable with its The Main Quest, something it says has $50 million-worth of rewards to give away, ranging from the IMX tokens to assets in the dozens of games soon to be launching on the Immutable zkEVM blockchain.
And that’s not to forget BNB-based Carv, which has also been doing something very similar for the past months; this week it announced a $10 million investment.
User can now connect various social and blockchain accounts to Carv in the hopes of getting some tokens which will convert into other actually valuable tokens in future.
As regular readers of this email will know, I’m not a fan of getting people to jump through meaningless loops via social media accounts in the hope of getting something in future.
I don’t think such activity builds anything worthy of the term “community”.
So it’s been something of a shock to see just how widespread this social farming has become, especially in the climate in which many projects are launching new tokens.
But, in the short-term at least, it appears to work with:
Immutable claiming 500,000 new wallets created,
Mon Protocol claiming 1.1 million connected X accounts, and
Carv claiming 2.5 million users.
Yet even if you take these figures at face value, I dread to think the percentage of bots involved because in my humble opinion, all these peanut-incentivized programs are doing is generating an infinite amount of monkeys.
If you want to build a community around your game, release a great game that people love to play. Focus on what’s killer. Ditch the filler.
So, in that context, let’s end the week with some better news. No doubt there are plenty of bots captured in this data too, but Ronin-based social RPG Pixels has broken three million life-time unique wallets, also hitting an all-time high of 870,000 daily active wallets.
And even more significant, players are paying for the privilege. Pixels is now generating $2 million a month, with 200,000 players spending $10 a month using the RON token to gain access to its VIP membership program.
Finally, numbers worth taking notice of.
Sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing 📈 in the future 🔮 of gaming 🎮
Weekly News Roundup
Funding #1: Carv raises $10 million
Funding #2: InfiniGods raises $8 million.
Funding #3: Tevaere raises $5 million.
Funding #4: Puffverse raises $3 million, is moving to Ronin.
Funding #5: Anichess raises $1.8 million.
Funding #n: Investment activity is still down on 2023.
South Korean shooter Xociety is coming to Sui.
Immutable launches its platform-wide rewards system.
MetalCore joins the Mon Protocol’s quest platform for MON token.
Xterio is launching its L2 on BNB.
Antler talks about forthcoming PC RPG Cloudborn.
BCGbiz’s Mavens on the long-term value of tokens.
As discussed below by the cats in the hats.
Additional Links
Ronin-based mobile strategy game Wild Forest has hit 106,000 downloads.
Decentraland will run its first Game Jam from 26th to 29th June. Teams can now apply to enter.
Crypto VC Pantera is looking to raise a $1 billion fund; which would be its fifth. Gaming-wise it recently invested in InfiniGods, Helika and Worldwide Web but hasn’t been a big player in the sector.
Mocaverse MOCA token IDO already massively over-subscribed.
A good overview of how — and more importantly — why to launch a token from a16z crypto. One notable line: “Most tokens will need cash flow in order to have value”.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q1 2024 👀 here or 👀 via PDF.