Blockchain games are rebounding, what new activities are the former two gaming kings, Axie and STEPN, up to?

Blockchain Gaming Bounces Back Discover the Latest Ventures of the Former Powerhouses Axie and STEPN

Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

With the recovery of the chain game market, the former two chain game kings, Axie and STEPN, have been active recently.

Axie has come up with three strategies. On the one hand, it is focusing on the game sidechain Ronin Network. On the other hand, it is upgrading the classic game Axie Classic and trying to open up new growth channels in Web2 through IP sales. As for STEPN, it is more focused on launching its second chain game, Gas Hero, using GMT as the game token. In the market boom stage, AXS and GMT tokens have also increased by around 20%.

Axie unveils three strategies, Ronin sidechainshows strong growth

Since the recovery of the chain game market in October, Axie has been actively seizing the opportunity and focusing on three things.

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Firstly, Axie’s development team Sky Mavis has created the game sidechain Ronin Network which has performed extraordinarily well. According to CMC data, the price of its token RON is currently $1.56, with an increase of nearly 100% in the past month and over 30% in the past week.

In addition to the token growth, Ronin’s on-chain data has also increased significantly. According to Jef Zirlin, co-founder of Ronin and Axie Infinity, in an article published on X platform on December 9th, the monthly active addresses of Ronin Network have reached 572,000, with a daily active addresses of 144,000.

Ronin was originally launched as an Ethereum sidechain by Axie Infinity in February 2021, as Ethereum’s performance and gas fees were inadequate to support the phenomenon-level game Axie Infinity. In May 2021, Axie migrated to Ronin. As the largest application on Ronin, Axie Infinity and Ronin have been inextricably linked. With Axie being caught in a death spiral at the end of 2021, the on-chain data of Ronin also began to decline. The large-scale attack incident in March last year, which resulted in a loss of over $600 million, not only caused a sharp drop in Ronin’s TVL and token price, but also led to a serious trust crisis for Ronin and Axie.

After encountering a black swan event, Ronin did not give up. This time, with the recovery of the chain game market, the significant growth of Ronin is attributed to the continuous efforts of its network and ecosystem.

On the one hand, Ronin Network is continuously upgraded to improve performance. In October, Ronin announced the launch of Lucas (v2.6.2) upgrade and Shillin hard fork on its mainnet. The Lucas version implemented Optimistic Fast Finality (REP-0003) and multiple protocol improvements under REP-0002. Among them, the latest fast finality mechanism proposed by REP-0003 greatly improves the transaction confirmation speed on Ronin.

On the other hand, Ronin actively cooperates with well-known game studios, and many popular games have migrated to the Ronin ecosystem this year. Firstly, at the end of October, the P2E chain game Pixels migrated from the Polygon network to the Ronin network.

This brought a large number of new users to Ronin. According to Footprint Analytics data, Ronin had over 70,000 on-chain active addresses on November 7th, an increase of 238% compared to a week ago; there were 196,000 on-chain transactions, reaching a high point since late March. (Recently, Ronin’s data has shown explosive growth, with the number of active user addresses in early November increasing six times compared to the previous month.)

According to Ronin Daily statistics, the Ronin network has integrated at least 10 games, compared to just one chain game, Axie, on the network a year ago.

In addition, Ronin has partnered with several well-known game studios. For example, in early November, Sky Mavis announced a collaboration with South Korean game production company ACT Games, with ACT Games planning to migrate all their games to the Ronin network. Among them, ACT Games’ trading card game (TCG) Zoids Wild Arena has already migrated from Polygon to Ronin. Shortly after, in early December, Sky Mavis announced a collaboration with Singapore game developer Foonie Magus, with Foonie Magus planning to introduce the new game “Apeiron” to the Ronin blockchain. A playable version of Apeiron can be downloaded from the Epic Games Store. In addition, Sky Mavis has also collaborated with Directive Games, Bali Games, Tribes Studio, and Bowled.io, among other game studios, who will utilize the Ronin network to develop games.

With the frequent addition of games on the Ronin blockchain, and many games migrating from Polygon, the community has speculated that TheSandbox plans to migrate to the Ronin chain based on the transfer information of SAND tokens on the Ronin testnet.

Apart from expanding its gaming business, Ronin is actively expanding its domain services and wallet business. For example, in mid-November, Ronin Domain Name Service (RNS) started its public sale. On December 1st, Ronin Wallet also partnered with Binance to allow users to exchange BTC, ETH, and other assets held in Binance for AXS, SLP, USDC, and other Ronin assets. On December 6th, DeFi protocol Impossible Finance will also deploy its LaunchPad on the Ronin network, enabling developers and game studios on Ronin to launch their own ERC-20 tokens. Additionally, products released on this LaunchPad may require staking RON, AXS, IDIA, and other tokens for distribution.

In addition to making efforts on the Ronin Network, Axie Infinity has recently followed the footsteps of blue-chip NFT sales IP such as Pudgy Penguin and Doodles. At the end of November, Axie announced the launch of an online store, Merch Store, and official merchandise. The Merch Store sells Squishmallow-style plush toys, $300 statues, branded hoodies, t-shirts, baseball caps, and more. In addition to selling official products, Sky Mavis is also attempting to go down the UGC route, encouraging owners of specific Axie NFTs to create and sell their products. Axie owners can now use their NFT characters as mascots for various businesses, including Axie-themed cafes, comics, restaurants, or toy collections.

To reach more Web2 users, Axie Infinity also announced a partnership with Philippine ride-hailing giant Grab to launch a user rewards program. Users can access the Merch Store to purchase merchandise through the Grab app. According to Sky Mavis, 20% of the net profits from merchandise sales will be distributed to the Axie treasury.

However, it is worth noting that according to Axie market data, currently less than 5000 out of the 11.9 million Axie Monster NFTs have had their commercial restrictions lifted, accounting for only 0.04% of all Axie Infinity NFTs. Since the launch of the online store, Axie has not shown significant effects in terms of discussion hype or community growth.

In addition to focusing on sidechains Ronin and IP peripherals, Axie also played a nostalgic game, with its classic series Axie Classic returning after an upgrade. Axie Classic has added a new game mode called “Curse Arena” and has attracted players in pursuit of rewards.

According to Axie, within just four days of the return of its flagship game Axie Classic, the platform’s weekly active user count has exceeded 100 million. And AXS has also surged by 10%.

Currently, Axie’s strongest focus and effect are on the game sidechain Ronin. With the potential arrival of more well-known games in the summer, Ronin may experience new growth. Recently, OKX has launched perpetual contracts for RON, and many users in the crypto community are also looking forward to its listing on more exchanges such as Binance.

STEPNFocus on the new game Gas Hero, is it effective forGMT empowerment?

Compared to Axie’s multi-faceted layout, STEPN seems to be more focused on its second self-developed game, Gas Hero.

In July of this year, the STEPN development team Find Satoshi Lab announced plans to launch the large-scale multiplayer online (MMO) game “Gas Hero.” Gas Hero is deployed on Polygon and stated that it will not launch a new game token, but will use STEPN’s token GMT as the in-game token. In addition, STEPN’s generous support for Gas Hero also reflects its level of importance. When the game was looking for creators for character art symbols, the STEPN development team Find Satoshi Lab rewarded approximately 2 million GMT tokens and promised to pay 2% in royalties.

The game setting and development speed of Gas Hero also highlight its ambition. It is reported that the initial capacity of the game can accommodate about 130,000 players, but the gameplay and technical framework can be expanded to more than 6 million players. Less than half a year after the official announcement, Gas Hero has already started community testing on November 27. This round of testing is open to 3,000 community users, including holders of Gas Hero NFT badges, Find Satoshi Lab ambassadors, partners, and other different groups. It is reported that once the closed beta testing is successfully completed, the official version is expected to be launched in December.

Gas Hero, as the new work of the once phenomenon-level game STPEN, has naturally attracted a lot of attention. Currently, its Twitter follower count has exceeded 50,000. So, what are the features of Gas Hero? Gas Hero project leader Johnny (@johnnyL37020770) revealed in an AMA in July that the Gas Hero game model attempts to solve three major challenges faced by Web3 game design, namely how to achieve Web3-native social interaction methods; how to make various assets have comfortable ways of production and recovery; and how to handle the impact of economic cycles.

Specifically, Gas Hero’s features are in several aspects. Firstly, the game’s architecture needs to place all players in a shared world social system. There are 9 players in each settlement, 9 settlements in each guild, and 9 guilds in each jurisdiction. Gas Hero hopes to have at least millions of users throughout the game, so this scale needs to be considered when designing cities, jurisdictions, guilds, settlements, and bases.

And the game sets up a tree-like world structure, with each unit having its corresponding manager, starting from the base and going all the way to the top level, considering issues such as the ruling class, the benefits and obligations of ruling, and the combination of power design and fame. For example, the map structure above the guild level in the game also involves some buildings related to governance, such as the management department, city hall, and United Nations. Players need to constantly improve their status through various means.

In addition, the core design of the game is the supply and demand of resources. “Gas Hero” has a wide variety of resources, and each resource has its specific consumption needs. How to grasp the cycle and changes of individual products will be an important part of the market economy.

According to the feedback from beta testers, compared to STEPN, the game story and play mode of Gas Hero are more enriched. The background of the entire game tells the story of the revival of humanity in the future world after a nuclear war, where surviving humans fight underground with limited resources. Players, as survivors, need to join cities, guilds, and tribes to establish connections with other players collectively, and obtain rewards through personal adventures as well as tribe and guild battles. Currently, many game items also have good price performance on the Mooar marketplace.

Xiangzhi Research Institute analyzed that the game mode of Gas Hero is very similar to the popular Japanese mobile game company Cygames’ mobile game “Princess Connect! Re: Dive”. Cygames is known for its generosity in providing benefits, and whether Gas Hero will inherit Cygames’ legacy remains to be seen.

Compared to the game mode of Gas Hero, users may be more concerned with the empowering effect of Gas Hero on GMT.

After going through the death spiral, STEPN has made several attempts to activate the GMT ecosystem, including launching the decentralized exchange Dooar, and launching the NFT marketplace MOOAR, but they did not achieve significant effects in the market downturn. Currently, after the market rebounded, Dooar TVL is around 7.5 million US dollars, but there hasn’t been much activity recently. MOOAR, after being launched at the end of last year, also didn’t have many updates until recently when MOOAR and STEPN announced the joint launch of a limited edition sneakers, and currently its total trading volume has exceeded 75 million.

In addition, similar to Axie, STEPN has tried to attract new users by settling in Web2 channels such as Apple LianGuaiy and Apple Music, but the results are not significant as of now.

This move by Gas Hero comes at a time when the entire crypto market is recovering and blockchain games are gaining momentum. In the game setting of Gas Hero, whether it is strengthening game characters or the play mode, a large consumption of GMT is required, which seems to be a good positive for GMT. In the past two months, the highest increase in the price of GMT tokens has been nearly 50%.

However, in the current blockchain gaming market, there have not been many breakthrough and validated economic models to solve the sustainability issue of blockchain games. Whether Gas Hero can attract a large number of players like STEPN did to empower GMT, more observation is needed.

Conclusion

For games like Axie and STEPN, their biggest advantage is the massive user base they have accumulated in the previous cycle. During the bear market, both Axie and STEPN have tried various self-rescue methods to maintain their ecosystems, but the results have been less than satisfactory. With the emergence of new blockchain games like Big Time and Fusionist, the landscape of the blockchain gaming market is undergoing a rewrite, and Axie and STEPN need more immediate and effective measures to secure their industry positions.

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