MapleStory Universe's complex tokenomics

Building a robust creator economy

Shaping up to be one of the most thoughtful and one of the most anticipated blockchain gaming ecosystems, Nexon’s MapleStory Universe has revealed more details about its underlying tokenomics.

Notably, this revolves around the ability of players and other agents to create content — “including but not limited to creating videos, generating artwork, writing articles, and developing full apps and games” — for which they will be rewarded with amounts of the NXPC utility token, which underpins the entire economy. There will be a total supply of 1 billion NXPC tokens.

The way Nexon — formally its UAE-based web3 subsidiary Nexpace, hence the token’s name NeXPaCe — has organized this seems rather convoluted in terms of how it’s explained but likely will make more sense in the actuality.

NXPC tokens are used to ‘create’ item NFTs. Notably there is a fixed supply for each type of item per cycle. These are stored in what Nexpace calls the Universal Item Base.

Over time, these items are moved to the Nexpace Item Pool — i.e. akin to a blockchain’s mempool — where they can be created by the community spending their NXPC tokens. These items are then transferred to each creator’s own ecosystem, which Nexpace labels “planets”.

Because of the Universal Item Base system, all items in MapleStory Universe will be fully interoperable between planets, and each creator will have the ability to modify an item’s stats for their particular experience.

As well as creators running their own planets, the planetary structure is how the official MapleStory games are being presented. For example, one planet will be the main PC-based MapleStory N MMORPG, whereby players can complete quests and gain off-chain items and the off-chain NESO token.

Together, off-chain items and NESO can be minted into onchain items and hence made tradeable.

As Nexon has previously highlighted from its early tests, the majority of the NESO generated through gameplay was consumed by enhancing in-game items, with some item trading generated even in these test conditions.

The main conclusion of Nexon’s explanation, however, is its obvious desire to build a decentralized and open ecosystem, which is why it’s making MapleStory N as a single experience within the wider MapleStory Universe, not just making MapleStory N as a standalone blockchain game, as many companies would likely do given the same opportunity.

Personally, I also really like the fact that it appears NXPC is primarily being given away through the work of committed members, although it would be great to get more detail about how the reward process works.

The downside is that making MapleStory Universe in this manner is much more complex than just making MapleStory N so while Nexpace will be running more tests and releasing more information during 2024, a formal launch won’t be until sometime in 2025.

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Calendar

• Ubisoft-backed The Watch launches its alpha — 28th August

• Otherside launches Project Dragon Episode 2 — 29th August

• Captain Laserhawk: the G.A.M.E. beta ends — 1st September

• Waitlist for SuiPlay0X1 console opens — 2nd September

• Polygon upgrades, MATIC becomes POL — 4th September

• Nyan Heroes launches Season 3 playtest — 4th September

• Flow launches EVM compatibility — 4th September

• Game community Tribal’s TGE on Base — 5th September

• Hamster Kombat’s token will (air)drop — 26th September

• Champions Tactics’ open beta launches — TBA September

Funding news

• US/Israeli outfit Gameplay Galaxy has announced that it’s raised $11.2 million in what it’s calling an extended seed round consisting of equity plus token warrants. That description seems a little odd, however, given it previously raised $12.8 million way back in September 2022. The company is now valued at a reported $71 million.

The lead investors were the same in both rounds; Merit Circle and Blockchain Capital. Com2uS, Hustle Fund, YGG, Mysten Labs (Sui) and Solana Ventures invested in the original round but aren’t mentioned in the new round.

Sharing the same executive team, Gameplay Galaxy is effectively the web3 evolution of mobile developer Deemedya, which is best known for its Trial Xtreme motocross racing game series, which generated 300 million downloads, although it also experimented less successfully across the usual mobile genres.

Gameplay Galaxy is working on mobile game Trial Xtreme Freedom, which is said to combine web3, esports and UGC — including bikes but hopefully also maps — and is currently live in closed early access. The public release is scheduled for early 2025, alongside the game’s token launch.

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Blockchain Gaming Alliance’s 2024 State of the Industry is now open for responses.

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More Funding news

• Veteran Japanese blockchain developer Double Jump Tokyo has announced a $10 million Series D round. It was led by Japanese strategic SBI Investment with participation from Sony. Other investors included Gate Ventures, Japanese degen Taisu and Singapore-based degen Bing Ventures. This takes Double Jump Tokyo’s total funding to beyond $36 million.

One result of the round will see Double Jump Tokyo collaborating with SBI to expand its web3 offerings, as well as working with Sony over its recently-announced Soneium blockchain.

In terms of its games, Double Jump Tokyo will soon release Battle of Three Kingdoms, a TCG based on Sega's Sangokushi Taisen IP on the Oasys blockchain.

We Need Another Chain news

• US developer Proof of Play has kicked off its multichain strategy for fully onchain game Pirate Nation with Boss chain now joining the original Arbitrum-based Apex L3 chain for players to use. Notably, the two chains will be interoperable in terms of NFT trading, with no bridging required for the sale of assets between Boss and Apex via the Pirate Nation marketplace.

Claiming over 2 million transactions a day, from over 250,000 lifetime wallets and consuming more Mgas per second than any other EVM blockchain, access to Pirate Nation had been gated for non-NFT-holders for some time so the launch of Boss chain has been eagerly awaited. 20,000 Apex chain users have already migrated their accounts, albeit incentivized by the reward of a Boss skin for their pirate ship.

More generally, Proof of Play’s CEO Amitt Mahajan argues that this “horizontal scaling” is now a prerequisite for web3 gaming to grow to millions of players.

“During my time developing Farmville, we had to manage around 64 databases to support 30 million daily active users and prevent the game from crashing. This is why Proof of Play is building the multichain,” he explained.