Decentralised ownership was cited as one of the main advantages for members polled in the 2021 Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) member survey which neatly illustrates the growing influence of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) in the sector.
This burgeoning scene is led by names such as Alien Worlds (whose co-founder Sarojini McKenna recently stated that 2022 would be the “year of the DAO”) but also boosted by a host of aspiring new platforms that have secured backing over the last six months.
In January, Vietnamese blockchain gaming guild Ancient8 completed a $4m seed round to accelerate its development of a DAO to create a community and software platform that enables users to play and build in the metaverse.
Yield Guild Games, an entity which sponsors players to buy assets needed to compete in blockchain games in return for a cut of their future earnings, raised $4.6m last August. OP Games raised $8.6m in October and GuildFi completed a $6m seed round in November.
P2E driving DAO structures
The obvious revenue generator for creators of DAOs is play-to-earn (P2E) where gamers are required to pay certain fees to unlock various features or speed up the game. More than two-thirds of the respondents to the BGA survey described P2E as the biggest driver behind industry growth.
These findings are not dissimilar to those revealed by blockchain platform Stratis in November 2021, which reported that 54% of game developers saw blockchain technology as a way of rewarding players with real-world value.
Hong Kong-based game software company and venture capital company Animoca Brands is one of the investors in a $70m fund raised by Taiwan-based Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC) to boost the growth of P2E games in Asia. IVC has already put money into DAO Yield Guild Games.
Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu – Photo: Animoca BrandsAccording to Yat Siu,…
