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Best-fit for SMEs: UK Guild aims to shape the future of business finance

In a strategic collaboration aimed at advancing the future of Web3 gaming, Yield Guild Games (YGG) has entered into a partnership with The Keystone Foundation, the developer behind the innovative Keystone Protocol.

Yield Guild Games Joins Forces with Keystone Protocol to Revolutionize Web3 Gaming

Web3 gaming community Yield Guild Games has partnered with The Keystone Foundation, developer of new web3 scaling tech Keystone Protocol. In

YGG partners with new web3 gaming network Keystone Protocol - BlockchainGamerBiz

Guild

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Blockchain and crypto in general bring about the possibility of financial inclusion and a new way of storing and transferring value at a scale unseen before. Nevertheless, blockchain technology and crypto concepts are generally difficult to understand, and inherently difficult to attract mass adoption. In fact, the first reason that brought most people to crypto is the get-rich-fast scheme and more often than not, people are generally being let down once they failed to grab the profit, not to mention the huge amount of rug and pull GameFi projects that have recently ravaged the industry,  significantly putting off new users. Let’s have a look at the state of P2E. Current Play-to-Earn games landscape First and foremost, Play-to-Earn generally implied everyone who plays/participates will earn some sort of money/currency. Thereby, forcing players to become speculators/investors and subsequently, severely interfering with the core gameplay. Game studios/dev that mostly focuses on maximizing short-term money-making through activities such as: The selling of NFT assets, and loot boxes during pre-release; promoting the scarcity of the asset/item to create speculation/hyperinflation of after-sale price to the advantage of whale/guild only. Public sale/IBCO/IDO of its governance token while not building a sustainable approach to the in-game economy. The game becomes a yield farming tool, not entertainment, and therefore will not capture mass-market; negatively impact the general perception of crypto. In its essence, when it to economics generally, monetary value transfer to existing/early players can only be generated from 1) developers and 2) the inflowing money from new players, therefore in order to keep a constant earning to existing players requires an increasing capital inflow from new players which is finite. Many have claimed this to be a Ponzi. In fact, most games failed to keep the price of their in-game reward from steep declining after weeks of launch. New players act like exit liquidity to existing/early players. Although better use cases for in-game reward token to support the price will be introduced as the industry learn and adapt, it remains largely unchanged that the earnings to players must come from the inflow of capital from new players joining or up-spending of existing players. Eventually, new players will be capped so the earnings can only be transferred between players within the game meaning many will lose and only a little will earn. A case study of Axie Infinity shows that the studio revenue largely comes from marketplace fees and breeding fee surges only for a period of 5 months from July to the end of November and then becomes almost zero as there is no more influx of new players; also the price of Axie NFT and the in-game reward token SLP fall dramatically due to the hyperinflation of emission. Although some studios have started to change their approach from Play-to-Earn to Play-and-Earn, most games will still be classified as Pay to Earn and Pay to Play although Free to play elements have been gradually introduced. Fairer distribution to community/customers narrative You will often find this narrative whereby new web3 game studios claim that fairer revenue distribution to the community through the use of web3 and as a gamer/retail investor, one would feel this is the right thing. While I agree that game studios make millions, if not billions, you must also account for the fact that rewards are the main incentive for developing such entertaining games. Without proper rewards, I doubt that we would have any titles like Starcraft, Age of Empires, DOTA, CS:GO or League of Legends. Capitalism is in the play whether you like it or not. Suppose a web3 studio will distribute more back to the community through P2E, what would be the incentive for developers to create better games? Is the remaining share of profit enough to keep the best people around? I don’t have that answer. The volatility of in-game reward and NFT price Although this is a typical fundamental of free-market trade, I do think that a non-stable value reward and pricing is also a major hurdle for the mainstream web2 players to join the crypto space generally and crypto gaming specifically. People are used to anchoring the price to some measurement system so that a rational purchase decision can be made quickly at any time. The same is not true anymore for crypto gaming and that creates extra uncertainty on both the positive and negative sides once the purchase/redemption is made. In fact, financial speculation is a strong factor that severely impacts core gaming. It has been seen in many recent P2E games that players leave once the in-game reward goes down to almost zero. Guild (earner pool) Unsustainable centralization of power and conflict of interest Guild was originally a place/forum for like-minded gamers to comprehend each other, socialize, become better players, and jointly form up teams for competitive ranking/battle. Early observation shows that guilds create a huge conflict of interest and centralization of power in the crypto gaming sector. Here are why: Most guilds in crypto gaming utilize their strength in capital to buy NFT assets in bulk to enjoy discounts and then optimize their meta to maximize efficiency to get break-even in the shortest amount of time. In other words, guilds will try to exploit the game mechanics to deliver the best return on investment as their first priority. The bulk purchase from guilds, on the other hand, acts as an essential source of early revenue/investment for game studios, therefore studios are inherently under strong influence from guilds to adjust the game mechanics in favor of guilds and their scholars, not the normal players. In other words, the game will generally be designed to favor the whales. On top of that, thanks to guilds’ large pool of scholars, games that cooperate with guilds will secure a large player base even before the release, however, the game will be strongly influenced by the guild’s ROI maximization. This creates a death spiral in which games have to forfeit the long-term sustainability for the upfront cash. In addition, only games that follow the model of requiring intensive upfront investment will be able to attract guild since it is largely the way for a guild to gain a competitive advantage over normal players, games that try to stay away from that route to appeal to the mass players will not be able to get much financial support from the guild and therefore will likely need much higher investment in marketing expense to approach mainstream web3 gamers which are already very small in comparison to traditional web2 gamers by multifold. The 1st version of P2E Gaming Guild is not cashflow sustainable Most prominent guilds that attract big money such as YGG, Avocado, Gamefi, etc, according to their own report have made most of their treasury growth thanks to the appreciation in the price of in-game NFT assets in Q4 of 2021. Most of which come from Axie NFTs price appreciation, the largest and most played P2E games Most guilds stopped reporting their treasury asset value in November 2021, the same period that Axie’s in-game reward token and Axie NFT fell dramatically in price as well as its breeding and market activities. A quick look at Axie’s price on the marketplace, it looks like the guild’s treasury has fallen dramatically in value, in line with the drop in price of Axie NFTs. On the earning side, given that most P2E games in the market are following Axie’s model as explained before, my assumption is that the in-game reward will decline after the initial surge period when a lot of players join in. Therefore, as explained in the Guild’s model section above, the guild will only make considerable money in the first few months after the launch of the game and the cash flow generated afterward will become very insignificant due to the price depreciation of the in-game token, to an extreme that no scholar would want to take part in such games anymore. In this sense, to sustain the earnings for guilds and scholars, new games are required to be injected continuously. Although incentive and loyalty schemes such as rewarding scholars with guild’s token and NFT can be seen as an alignment of incentives and loyalty schemes, they will not be able to sustain scholars if the key earnings from a particular game are not secured. In the above flow, web3 guilds are starting to act like game publishers who act as promotion agents to commercialize games to certain areas and territories, in this case, its guild’s members. However, traditional web2 publishers earn money from gamers. Web3 gaming guild is essentially industrializing the process of value extraction from a game ecosystem. In fact, guilds have started to diverge into a few complementary areas within the gaming industry such as building e-sport teams, NFT gaming marketplace, and gaming studios/incubation. The failed experiments of web2 studios on NFT/Crypto Ubisoft, one of the respected studios have experimented with NFT in their famous game Tom Clancy’s Breakpoint in which limited-edition cosmetics items can be bought as an NFT via Ubisoft’s own marketplace. Overall, there were only 31 sales over the course of 3 months. More worryingly, some items are bought and then traded a few times before finally being listed for a few hundred times the original price which is very similar to the price behavior of pre-sale NFT assets across many recent P2E games: wash trading and speculation. Ubisoft closed its NFT experiment after 3 months. Although there is not enough data to draw any conclusions on this experiment some reasonable causes can be attributed to: Tom Clancy’s was not designed from the ground up to be an NFT/crypto-enabled game. It was a side experiment in which cosmetics items are distributed in the form of NFT and tradable via a free-trade marketplace. There was not enough existing audience of Tom Clancy that is equipped with NFT/crypto knowledge to apprehend it and hence led to the insignificant number of activities. Closing thoughts While blockchain and web3 bring in a wealth of opportunities and new ways of doing old things, it is still in its fancy, mainly driven by the bull run in 2021. There are certain core principles that need to get right before implementing all these new changes in proper ways. Gaming should firstly be entertaining, allowing people an escape from the real world before introducing other elements. Core gameplay must be respected to the utmost for a game to function its basic objectives: entertainment. Although new kinds of business models will be arriving, only time will tell how they will evolve to stay meaningful and relevant. Having said that, I am pretty sure that many people are working days and nights, including our team at T-REX Global and to bring in meaningful innovations and challenge the status quo. The best is yet to come! UGEsports

The first generation of Crypto Games and Crypto Gaming Guilds

This is a story about the revolution in Africa through . Web3 NFT gaming It's midday in the bustling city of Lagos. The city is known for its famous yellow buses, fast lifestyle, and the never say die of the 20 million people who live there. It's also the home of 21-one-year-old Salami, a crypto gamer. Despite being in his third year studying Physics at the state university, Salami confesses that he currently dedicates almost half of his time to playing . He also says that he owes his current progress at crypto gaming to a gaming guild he joined late last year. crypto play-to-earn games Unlike traditional gaming guilds, crypto gaming guilds aren't based on a group of gamers just coming together to play games. Instead, crypto gaming guilds are a million-dollar crypto phenomenon. They rose in popularity with the and are the only way poor people or people in the global South can play Blockchain play-to-earn games like , , etc. exponential rise in popularity and value of NFTs, Axie Infinity The Sandbox The reason is simple; the virtual assets (NFTs) required to play these games are expensive to purchase. While this is a normal barrier to entry for most gamers of any kind — after all, high-end consoles and computers aren't cheap — it's more so for crypto gamers because of prohibitively expensive NFTs. Game consoles could cost hundreds of dollars, but the NFTs needed to play these crypto games could cost thousands of dollars. These gaming guilds solve this problem by bringing gamers together, renting NFTs out to them, and taking a cut of their earnings. In other words, the gaming guilds help players play expensive games in return for a cut in their earnings. This revenue-sharing program is called a scholarship. For people in like Salami, these gaming guilds are a lifesaver. By reducing the barrier to entry for these games, he can play them and manage to make a living for himself. And it's not only young students like Salami who are getting into the game of crypto gaming. emerging markets Because of the precarious economic conditions in Africa, both old and young people all over urban centers in the continent have been learning how to play these games and joining crypto gaming guilds. The fact that their earnings can easily be converted to dollars, an extremely valuable currency unit in the continent, means that gaming is a lot more lucrative for these African players. It also means that crypto gaming can be a real career path for many African gamers. While blockchain gaming is popular in Western countries, it's never really seen as a good career path. Of course, there are several reasons for this, but the important reason boils down to the odds of success being not very good. In a world where there are better career paths with more stability and bigger odds for success, treating blockchain gaming as a valid career path will just not work. Sure, some game NFTs are worth — however, a vast majority are worth nothing or will soon be worth nothing. tens of thousands of dollars However, this dynamic does not exist in Africa. For example, On the other hand, What this means, in essence, is that there are very few career paths with more stability and bigger odds for success than crypto gaming in Africa, while the opposite is true for developed nations. In the final analysis, this dynamic guarantees that more Africans will be interested in crypto gaming than in the West. the GDP per capita of most African nations hovers below 5,000 dollars. there's hardly any western country with a GDP per capita lower than 30,000 dollars. Africa: The Future Of Gaming Guilds In 2021, a by Kucoin affirmed what most analysts already knew; crypto adoption was growing at an unprecedented rate in Africa. Interestingly, this wasn't because of external factors. It was even despite external factors, as poor socioeconomic and ordinarily meant that crypto adoption would be stunted in Africa. report regulatory metrics However, this was not the case. According to the report, crypto adoption grew by 2500% in a single year. Analysts further predicted that this trend will continue for a long while, even if regulatory and economic indices remain opposed to cryptocurrency adoption growth. With the growth of crypto in Africa came the growth of crypto games. Ordinarily, the adoption of these games would have been met with hesitation. However, 2020 was a period of an extraordinary bull run in the cryptoverse, and this gave most gamers renewed confidence in the market. Within mere months, African gamers realized that crypto gaming was a viable industry. They also realized that only a gaming guild can reduce the barrier to entry and make the space attractive for gamers. Thankfully, there were already a few gaming guilds in place for that purpose, and that's how the gaming guild industry in Africa began to grow. Today, there are loads of gaming guilds in Africa. Some have even been accepted into the Binance Labs accelerator program, and many are poised to interest many crypto VCs. is one of those guilds, and the company has been growing exponentially. Afriguild The guild is certainly the most ambitious gaming guild in Africa right now, as it aims for the ambitious — but still possible — goal of onboarding a hundred million Africans into the world of Web3 in five years through education, gaming, and community building. The team-building effort of Afriguild is led by some of the brightest lights in the Nigerian Web3 space, including Toyosi Abolarin, and Tomiwa Olajide. And the guild itself is already doing exploits. Despite being only a few months old, Afriguild won 2nd place at the Axie Infinity Game Tournament at the Meta Conference In Dubai. This win shows that the startup has built a very vibrant network of young gamers, and its repertoire of games and NFTs is expanding by the day. Right now, the startup is still in early-stage funding, but its magnificent team and expanding community mean that it is one of the most promising guilds in the African Web3 space today. Despite it being a young company, Afriguild has made rather impressive strides in reaching this goal. The startup has built a very vibrant network of young gamers, and its repertoire of games and NFTs is expanding by the day. While many sincerely doubt that the startup will reach its goal of converting 100 million Africans into the world of Web3 within five years, one must realize that it's merely a matter of 2000% year-on-year growth. That has happened before, and it surely can happen again. Are you looking at the next ? What do you think? Yield Guild Games (YGG) The Future Of African Gamers Today For young people like Salami, crypto gaming is a lifesaver. Right now, he is pretty confident that his future lies in Web3, whether it's through playing games or participating in some other way. "I think I've gotten half of all my friends into crypto gaming. Of course, the money isn't a lot. However, while 0.2 BTC or ETH may not be a lot of money in United States Dollars, it's quite a lot in  Nigerian Naira. With that you can feed yourself, and even pay your tuition" He says. And what about his degree in Physics? Will he still pursue it? "Of course, I will. But that's just for a degree. The opportunities in Web3 are a lot more profitable than a degree in Physics. And that's not a bad thing — after all, Elon Musk left a graduate degree program at Stanford to build two internet companies." When asked whether the bear market scares him, Salami just nodded. "Yes, there might be some economic uncertainty. But there's economic uncertainty everywhere. Didn't a global recession happen in 2008?" There are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of African gamers on the continent who feel the same way. The only question now is whether time will prove them right or prove them wrong.

The Rise of Crypto Gaming Guilds in Africa

What is crypto gaming and the P2E movement? Many winters ago, in 2017, the first, rather infamous, game that used a blockchain infrastructure was launched. CryptoKitties allowed users to mint, breed, trade, and collect their Kitties. The game had explosive growth in 2017, with transactions accounting for more than 10% of the traffic on the Ethereum blockchain at its peak (honestly, not many of us used Ethereum in those days, but still). The hype created by the game was huge. On 2 December 2017, the Kitty ID 1 was sold for more than 100,000 $ (247 Eth at the time, worth >750,000$ today). Such an exorbitant price tag gained plentiful media attention, attracting even more players into the ecosystem. On Day 10 and Day 18, after the game’s launch, the highest number of new addresses were registered with the game. However, no party lasts forever. This one didn’t last more than a month. CryptoKitties, like most of the games before the 2020 bull market, lacked in playability. Within a month after the launch, the gap between the rich and the poor increased vastly, disincentivizing new players to start playing. The game mechanics were broken, so the chance of getting richer with each breeding transaction fell to less than 50%. Considering that (i) the breeding (and then selling) transactions accounted for around 65% of the transactions in the game and (ii) the average profit for a player to breed and sell a kitty became negative, the game started losing traction. The number of kitties available on sale increased daily, while fewer kitties were sold every day. Even though the first major experience of a crypto game was not a pleasant one, it taught a lot of things to future game developers. Today, multiple games on the blockchain allow people in the world’s poorest regions to make a living. Games like , , and are currently sitting at a market cap of more than 1 billion $ each. The new movement in P2E (Play-to-Earn) has gained popularity in countries like the Philippines, with around 1 million daily active users of Axie Infinity. In Axie Infinity, players participate in battles using colorful blob-like Axies. They are mainly rewarded “Smooth Love Potion” (SLPs) that can be exchanged for cryptocurrency or cash — or invested back into the game’s virtual world Lunacia. Axie Infinity Sandbox Decentraland What are guilds and why do they exist? Crypto gaming guilds began as a solution to solving the entry barrier issue with the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity. To play the game, you must own Axie NFTs in your wallet. In the beginning, there was no flaw in the design of the game, and many new users started playing Axie Infinity. However, with further demand for the Axies rising, the prices for the Axie NFTs also increased significantly. To start playing, you need to have 3 Axies. So, roughly, at the start of the game, an excellent Axie team with high chances of winning may cost more than $10,000. As previously discussed, the P2E movement thrives in the corners of the world where people’s financial reach is limited. Affording a 10k USD NFT just to start playing a game for people in countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, and India is not possible. For this reason, specific organizations were created that gave access to players to these NFTs via lending in exchange for a percentage of the user-generated earnings. Gaming guilds often split the profits in a 30/70 ratio, i.e., 30% of the earnings/airdrops go to the guild. The guilds, in return, provide users who want to join (AKA “scholars”) with the resources required to play the game. A symbiotic relationship. Guilds generally concentrate on a particular game, and separate guilds are created for individual games. The guilds also support the gamers in case of a change in conditions. Supposedly, if the game becomes unpopular, they may shift to new games or offer mutually profitable solutions to the users. What improvements are required for the development of guilds today? As it should be clear by now, gaming guilds have only two primary objectives: maximizing profits by recruiting talented scholars and supporting the scholars’ growth. Guilds often spend lots of time filtering out the best candidates to recruit the best of the players. The process generally occurs like this: “A community manager will give you study material and train you about the basics of the game. After a ton of back and forth communication, a test is conducted. After successfully passing the test, the guild onboards the gamer to its platform. The entire process is inefficient, with a conversion rate of 0.1%, which means that out of every 1000 applications, only one gamer becomes a scholar. This method isn’t sustainable because web3 games and guilds miss out on potential gamers who could generate revenue and increase profits”. What is Respct.club? Several teams are currently working on solving this problem for the gaming guilds. One of such prominent examples is co, which is working on blockchain-based “CVs” for gamers. The idea they have proposed is that when a user plays a game for a certain guild, all the data and progress will be tracked, and most of it will be available on-chain. Respct. Using ERC721 and ERC1155 interfaces, the gamers will mint on-chain NFTs representing their experience in a game. This means that players will be able to build their gaming “resume” by simply playing and constantly upgrading their NFTs (that represent a player’s experience in the game). Whenever user experience reaches a certain threshold (experience is measured using engagement points), the corresponding guild can allow the user to upgrade their NFT. When a game becomes unpopular or if the user wants to apply for other guilds, he can always show proof of his hard work and ability with the non-fungible tokens. On the other side, Guilds do not have to do extensive research on the player’s experience and can save time by simply taking a look at the user-owned tokens. A simple signature off-chain will be probably needed to prove that the gamer actually owns the wallet (and consequently the NFTs representing practise and XP) that he claims to own. Respct.co Moreover, the recent paper published by Vitalik Buterin’s team on SBTs talks about social recovery for wallet keys. Down the lane, if social recovery of keys is implemented, players will feel safer to hold their on-chain resume linked to a single wallet. In case of loss of the private key, the players will be able to recover it with social SBTs (originated, most probably, from gaming communities in which the user must have been active). But we will have to wait a “short” while for that to be implemented xD. While bull and bear markets repeat in cycles, blockchain gaming is here to stay. Have a great day! 🚀 Sources: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2021.631665/full https://chainplay.gg/ https://respct.co https://devfolio.co/projects/respct-85e7 Also published here.

The Importance of Gaming Guilds in the Web3 Gaming Space

In the grand scheme of things, Play-to-Earn (P2E) gaming is still an astonishingly young phenomenon. It exploded in popularity over the course of the pandemic, as it presented a means of remuneration for many young tech-savvy gamers from all around the world who were feeling the economic and social effects of COVID-19. With the meteoric rise of P2E gaming also rose an entire ecosystem of gaming guilds and scholarships that - at least on paper - are meant to facilitate gamer’s entry into the P2E space. The ways in which P2E has affected the gaming industry, blockchain, and gamers themselves merits a deeper study. In this article, we focus on the latter. What kinds of relationships exist between gamers, games, and gaming guilds? And what is being done to make this relationship work better for gamers? P2E’s origins The earliest P2E game, CryptoKitties, appeared in 2017. But the phenomenon did not gain steam until the COVID-19 pandemic hit and remained a fixture of daily life, decimating local economies and confining people to their homes. Axie Infinity, perhaps the largest P2E game to date, saw a meteoric rise in users in 2021. Clocking in 2.5 million daily users and generating 1.2 billion USD in revenue according to . 35% of the game’s daily traffic, and the largest share of its player base, are in the Philippines. France24 Almost all P2E games require players to purchase a token, playable avatar, or other digital assets in order to get started in the game. In the aforementioned Axie Infinity, a starter set may cost over 100 USD. For many of the P2E gaming base, such costs can be prohibitively high. This is where the guilds and scholarship programs come in. Guilds can cover the costs of entry into the game by purchasing the required assets and renting them out to players. But these profit-sharing schemes are far from perfect. The vetting process of a prospective player can be costly and take precious time. These inefficiencies prevent the entry of new players into the play to earn space. Furthermore, the centralization of wealth and assets in a guild goes against the decentralized ethos of blockchain technology. Simply put, gaming guilds and scholarships are standing in the way of the mass adoption of crypto in gaming. But what is the solution? How can games and gamers cut out the middlemen of P2E gaming? One solution is to apply the aforementioned decentralizing principles of crypto to asset lending. One exciting new company in the P2E space, LuduFi, offers peer-to-peer lending between investors and players. Through its platform, players can build up a profile that captures their skill level, scores and total playtime. The platform’s easy-to-use dashboard allows investors to view player data and make informed decisions about who they want to invest in. LuduFi essentially removes the middlemen and creates a direct peer-to-peer transaction, opening the GameFi industry to individuals who have NFT assets and want to make passive income through this structure. At the moment, it is challenging for individuals seeking to invest in P2E games to find players for their assets, especially as they find themselves competing with gaming guilds that have thousands of assets. LuduFi LuduFi also benefits guilds by providing them with further use cases. Currently, guild tokens practically have no functionality outside of the guild ecosystem. However, LuduFi gives the option of consolidating tokens to the players and investors in their preferred token, such as USDT, the in-game token, or LUDU tokens (where they would see minimal transaction fees). LuduFi also benefits games. With the bear market ravaging on, games are struggling to sustain their in-game economies as their token price drops over time. LuduFi aims to invest the players’ earned in-game tokens back into the game. In exchange, players can provide LuduFi with NFT assets that it could lend out. LuduFi aims to incentivize their most dedicated users to continue using the platform through a variety of means, such as locking players’ tokens or allowing players to stake on LuduFi’s platform and receive a share of company revenue. By applying innovative blockchain solutions, LuduFi is one step closer to creating a more fair gaming ecosystem for P2E players.

Making P2E Gaming Guilds More Fair for Gamers: Problems and Solutions

Bringing GameFi to the Masses with Soccer Digital Entertainment Asset (DEA), a Singapore-based worldwide GameFi platform, has teamed with the Japanese-affiliated Cambodian soccer club Angkor Tiger FC. As part of this cooperation, Angkor Tiger FC will engage in DEA’s Play-to-Earn ecosystem as a “gaming guild.” The soccer club will use its sponsor’s investment cash to acquire NFTs of digital assets and in-game products on DEA’s gaming platform “PlayMining.” Gaming guilds are groups inside the DEA ecosystem that invest in NFTs of the platform’s Play-to-Earn games and earn money from them by systematically playing. Such guilds are fast growing in popularity, particularly in Southeast Asia, and are drawing attention as a new source of employment. Naohito Yoshida, CEO of DEA, said: The business models we are working on under “PlayMining,” such as GameFi and Play to Earn, are not only a fusion of gaming and fintech, but they also aim to solve sustainable social issues and help people around the world to achieve their goals. We are committed to ensuring that the efforts of DEA and Angkor Tiger FC will contribute to creating jobs and improving people's livelihood in Cambodia. Promoting Digital Assets in Cambodia The COVID-19 epidemic severely impacted the world economy. Cambodia’s economy was among the most impacted, and the country is currently grappling with growing unemployment as a result of the country’s economic stagnation during the previous several years. The Cambodian soccer team hopes to use DEA’s varied selection of play-to-earn games to help establish new revenue streams in Cambodia via this relationship. Additionally, fans who gain prizes by engaging in play-to-earn games must deposit their profits for club-related activities, which will help Angkor Tiger FC’s economic zone grow faster. Akihiro Kato, Angkor Tiger FC’s owner, is optimistic that this partnership will help strengthen the Cambodian economy and the club simultaneously. He said our aim is to be more than just a soccer club. In our hometown of Siem Reap, usually a vibrant tourist destination, many people have lost their jobs because of the Corona pandemic. As we thought about what we could do as a club besides soccer, we met Mr Yoshida. We decided to start the Tiger Guild project because we saw the possibility of improving the livelihood of our supporters and the people of Siem Reap. I want to team up with DEA to create a new form of club management for the next era. Angkor Tiger FC is a well-known soccer team situated in Siem Reap, Cambodia’s main professional league, and home to Angkor Wat. The club was purchased by current owner Akihiro Kato in 2015 and moved to Siem Reap in 2017. The team was named “the club with the most supporters in Cambodia” for the 2018 and 2019 seasons. However, because of the pandemic, the team played league games with no fans in 2020 and 2021. Angkor Tiger FC stepped out to help the community during these trying times, offering tangible assistance to individuals and making gifts to the province government. DEA is a digital arts-focused blockchain-based multimedia digital entertainment platform. The startup, founded in August 2018, is leading the charge to build a new economy in which artists and consumers can interact directly and profit while having fun. DEA has launched many projects as part of its GameFi concept, including PlayMining and DEAPcoin. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story! Image credits: Paul Szewczyk and Angor Tiger football club. The content of this story DO NOT represent the views of HackerNoon and are meant as information only from the lens of the independent contributor. Please DYOR before investing.

GameFi Platform DEA signs Partnership Agreement with Angkor Tiger FC to Promote Gaming Guild

Because of the rising interest in digital assets, the concept of making revenue through virtual games has been a popular topic in the crypto gaming space. Blockchain-based games with scholarship programs like Axie Infinity have been instrumental in the growing interest in Play-to-Earn (P2E) gaming. UniX is a P2E gaming guild that aims to become the go-to guild for gamers in the crypto-space. What is UniX? is a community-focused platform that seeks to create a home for gamers in the metaverse, whilst also providing scholarships to allow people in developing nations participate in the expanding play-to-earn industry. UniX Gaming The project aims to be the P2E industry's leading gaming guild, being the first stop for NFT and crypto gamers. The majority of the guild's revenue comes from investments, purchases, and production of NFT assets in . blockchain-based games The platform partnered with Sandbox in order to become a Sandbox ecosystem builder. The team is developing a gameplay prototype using their proprietary game-maker tool based on Unity, with the goal of creating unique and exciting gaming mechanics that can be expanded into full-fledged Sandbox experiences. How does UniX work? Through a play-to-earn concept and a specialized scholarship framework, it blends the fun of gaming with the benefits of supporting people in underdeveloped countries. The team is in the process of forming a sizable community, which is referred to as a "guild" in the world of online gaming. UniX Gaming provides gaming talent with training, management, and support in order to help them play at their best. The P2E model is supposed to provide opportunities for both gamers and non-gamers to make money. UniX also uses process automation to make processes like NFT renting and staking easier for users. UniX features Play-to-Earn Scholarships Over a thousand scholarships have been offered by the UniX Gaming team in recent months. Members of the community who play the popular Axie Infinity game will be able to earn a regular income as a result of this. Over 1,000 Axie Infinity scholars are housed on the platform, which also includes over 6,000 scholarships in other games that use the P2E model. Additionally, the community is rumored to have plans of hiring 9,000 more Axie Infinity scholars in the first quarter of 2022. The platform is based on a classic scholarship model, but it has been given its own twist, with a profit split of 50/50. The main idea is to provide high-quality Axie teams in comparison to others on the market, and one of the main objectives of their business model is to provide players with training and growth as well as the necessary resources to succeed. The team is also working on the second version of their scholarship, which will allow academics to work full-time in the metaverse and earn money while having fun. To do this, the UniX team is developing a comprehensive support system that aims to match the level of security that people would expect from a typical job, including health insurance, pensions, and other benefits. UniX Foundation The UniX Foundation was the first of its kind in the world. It is a charitable organization that accepts year-round donations with the goal of providing scholarships to persons in impoverished countries. The scholarships would give students access to all of Unix's free education platforms, which are open to the public. Scholarship recipients would learn new abilities that they may use to work as freelancers or at UniX in-house agencies as a result of this training content. Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and SubDAO’s Unix gaming intends to establish a DAO with SubDAOs to host certain game assets and activities. The UniX Treasury acquires, owns, and controls all of the assets in this area. Smart contracts allow members of the Unix community to put their money to work. A share of the SubDAO token will be provided to the community because it will be converted into a token. Holders of the SubDAO token will be able to participate, vote, and submit recommendations relating to the game's mechanics, allowing them to influence the direction in which the updates are focused. The purpose is to educate the community so that the assets under treasury administration can be put to good use. In exchange, SubDAO community token holders will benefit from the asset's potential appreciation as well as the returns earned by their productive play. The UNIX Token UniX  has its own native token, UNIX which is used for the following purposes: Governance - UNIX gives voting rights to DAO members Staking - UNIX can be staked to earn additional UNIX tokens In-Game Rewards - Players will be able to earn UNIX tokens by playing games supported by the platform NFT Drops - Holders get access to special NFT airdrops NFT Marketplace - Holders get discounts on NFTs on the NFT marketplace IGO Launchpad - UNIX will be used for fundraising on the IGO launchpad UniX Launchpad IGO (Initial Game Offering) Gaming assets and tokens have become highly valuable as crypto games have established themselves as some of the most profitable blockchain enterprises. With the support of the greater community and "play-to-earn" social networks, UniX has started building the UniX "play-to-earn" for the metaverse IGO (initial game offering). launchpad UniX also intends to use their skilled team to aid with marketing and to enhance their awareness by hiring 24 full-time streamers on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. People will be able to engage, cooperate, and exchange new ideas on the UniX launchpad. New games will be featured and streamed on their platform with the help of their community. Conclusion UniX's focus on the Play-To-Earn industry allows them to provide opportunities to P2E scholars to make an income via crypto gaming. The platform plans to build stronger gaming teams (Axie teams for example) through training programs for scholars. By focusing on building a strong P2E community, UniX could make it easier for P2E scholars to make a living.

A Look at UniX Gaming: The Growing P2E Crypto Gaming Guild

The Rise of AAA Blockchain Games and Metaverse UniX, a blockchain gaming guild, will launch an Initial Games Offering for its triple-A rated game known as Karmaverse. This is one of the first launches of a triple-A-rated game that may disrupt the GameFi ecosystem. Karmaverse is a metaverse entertainment platform that uses blockchain technology, making it fair and decentralized. It was launched in 2021. The gaming platform features several game worlds created and designed by Karmasgames, a prominent blockchain game developer, and toolsets that allow the community to develop comparable games on the platform. Avatar NFTs are a public NFT inside the Karmaverse that can be used in any game or in-game environment and allows users to create, modify freely, and exchange avatars. It also contains a token, KARMA, that can be used and exchanged throughout the Karmaverse, and it can be used to pay for all in-game resources and transactions. The gaming initiative has already attracted funding from some of the industry’s most prestigious venture capital companies. In a private fundraising round headed by prominent VCs such as A&T, TPS, and Yield Guild Games South East Asia, the Karmaverse project garnered a total of $8 million. Infinite Venture Capital, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Foresight Ventures, NFX, Mindfulness Capital, and HashKey Capital were among the other investors in the round. At launch, a total of 3 million Karmaverse tokens will be issued, with a market valuation of $1.5 million. Once the game is published, the UniX launchpad will have a public sale of 1 million tokens, with each token selling for $0.5. Users will require the native Unix token, $UNIX, to invest in the platform, with $UNIX holders getting first dibs on the tokens. UniX Gaming was one of the first blockchain gaming companies to use the play-2-earn (P2E) concept. The platform blends the desire to have fun while gaming with an incentive-based concept that has attracted 190,000 users. The network also offers scholarships to its users and has grown into the world’s largest gaming community (guild), with over 5,000 students and over 10 million viewers. What is Initial Game Offering? - Understanding GameFi Fundraising Initial Game Offerings (IGO) are becoming more popular among crypto investors, thanks to the advent of GameFi. IGO enables you to pre-purchase NFTs or tokens in a blockchain game while still under development. Launchpad platforms are often used to coordinate IGOs. Investing via launchpads often necessitates users locking the platform’s native token for a certain length of time. Depending on the initiative, participants may get early access to the game’s tokens or NFTs. In certain situations, the tokens and NFTs obtained via IGOs may be exchanged on decentralized exchanges and NFT markets outside of the game environment. UniX, Binance NFT, BSCPad, TrustSwap, and EnjinStarter are IGO launchpads now available to users. The structure for an IGO varies with each launchpad; however, it typically needs investors to acquire the launchpad platform’s native token to participate. There is no assurance that IGOs will provide a profit, as there is with any investment. Always DYOR and examine the possible hazards before committing to any IGO. Check the game project’s website or social media to determine whether it has a clear goal or development roadmap, for example. You may also check to determine whether the project has any trustworthy investors or partners. After obtaining the necessary tokens, players must place them in a pool for a certain amount of time. According to the allocation mechanism, they will get the project’s token or NFTs based on the number of locked tokens. Through blockchain technology, IGOs provide a novel approach for game creators to finance their games. While IGOs may be a terrific method for investors to assist early-stage gaming businesses, they also come with many risks. Before putting your money on the line, you should always do your homework. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story!

UniX a Crypto Gaming Guild is Launching Karmaverse, One of the First Triple A-Rated Blockchain Games

Play-2-Earn the next opportunity for gaming guilds , a play-to-earn NFT based game, became the first game to launch 10 gaming guilds bringing nearly $2.5 million USDT in-game assets. The NFT based game hopes to cement its position as a go-to play-to-earn game as the GameFi category expands and matures. To draw conventional gamers into the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. This tendency has already emerged in the wake of the release of recent games with large fan bases, and it is likely to persist for some time. This has led to the start of the Guild race, which is intended to attract new players and hobbyists to the GameFi community and has directed to a new Guild vs. Guild (GvG) eSports trend. WonderHero What is Crypto Gaming Guild? The Future of Blockchain-based Gaming Traditional gaming guilds and crypto gaming guilds are vastly different. While the conventional kind is tied to the game and can grow and fall with it, the crypto version aspires to be a platform for new gamers. Even if a game loses popularity, members of a crypto guild may swiftly switch to something more profitable for the organization. By doing so, the guild guarantees that no one in the guild wastes time or potential if there is a better choice available. Whilst it’s still too early to know how successful a Crypto guild will be, experienced investors are beginning to discover that it is worthwhile to place a significant investment in these guilds. It’s worth investing in these guilds that are looking for the next Axie Infinity, for instance, because there are hundreds of prospective games that may be the next Axie Infinity. In the crypto market, finding a game with equal, or even more, potential might be significant, and being at the top of such a game for a guild could be tremendous. While the majority of non-fungible tokens aren’t worth much, a few are. A guild can obtain as many NFTs as possible from various sources by playing different crypto games, and most of them aim to create their NFT market if they haven’t already. Crypto guilds have the ability to alleviate the centralization problem that regular guilds face with the issuance of tokens. Instead of being just social organizers, guilds now have a far more economic function with the digital goods available to participants. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story!

WonderHero Becomes the First Play-to-Earn Game Launching 10 Major Guilds at Once

What is a Gaming Guild? Crypto gaming is a hot topic now in a world where . We have seen some great crypto projects and others that failed terribly. As a result, some users have enjoyed the benefits of blockchain technology, while others have fallen into the hands of scammers. blockchain technology is revolutionizing many industries ‘A gaming guild is a collection or group of gamers that organize to play video games together and share data.’ Even though ‘guild’ is the most common term in the gaming world, such groups can also be known with other names such as factions, clans, or communities. Gaming guilds have been with us for decades. However, esports (competitive gaming) is why gaming guilds have increased in popularity recently. Competitive gaming guilds such as FaZe Clan, Cloud9, and Team Liquid are representations of traditional gaming. Crypto gaming guilds come with different visions. While some want to amass millions of dollars through P2E gaming, others want to build strong communities that produce the best alpha and ultimately the best projects. How it Started​​ The Philippines has been branded as the origin of the current play-to-earn concept today. The popularity all started as Covid-19 was ravaging the world, but gamers in this country were earning from game. #ThankYouAxie was a trending hashtag during this era as people cashed out their winnings, took photos of their shopping, and accompanied their captions with this hashtag. the Axie Infinity More and more people gained interest in this game, and its demand rose. As a result, demand for Axies, the in-game tokens needed to play this game, rose. Dizon, the founder of Yield Guild Games (YGG), saw an opportunity and started leasing his Axies in what is known as ‘scholarships’. The proceeds would be shared between scholars (70%) and the guild (10%), while the community managers got 20%. Others soon embraced the model, and new guilds were created. Top Crypto Gaming Guilds Yield Guild Games is one of the most prominent crypto gaming guilds with a market capitalization of $420 billion. YGG has a Decentralized Autonomous Organization that invests in virtual world NFTs. The guild was founded in 2020 by Gabby Dixon, a gaming veteran and Axie player. Yield Guild Games With over 74,000 members on Discord, YGG is among the biggest crypto gaming guilds. It is also important to note that it is the pioneer of P2E gaming guilds. YGG has adopted the name “Guild of Guilds” as it comprises almost every other popular guild in the space. Merit Circle Merit Circle guild is governed by a DAO, the prominent holding company of all the subDAOs. The most prominent partnership is with Axie Infinity, even though there are plans to work with Illuvium, Hash Rush, and Star Atlas. SubDAOs are present in both YGG and Merit Circle. It simply means that Axie Infinity has a subDAO within Merit Circle that allows it to hold only Axie assets. If one of the subDAOs is hacked, other games will not be affected. $MC is the native token of this guild. There are two staking options in this guild. Single stake for the MC token and Liquidity Pool as an MC/ETH pair. UniX Gaming UniX Gaming operates a DAO that has more than 1,200 scholars. Some of the games that UniX works with include Axie Infinity, Star Atlas, and Splinterlands. All these games have their subDAOs that hold individual assets. $UNIX is the native of this guild. The DAO earns revenue through various approaches such as Axie breeding, launchpads, scholarship revenue, and revenue from the NFT marketplace. Astra Guild Ventures Astra is governed by a DAO, which earns 20% of all the revenue generated from the guild. The guild has over 2,000 scholars on Axie Infinity. Transparency is one of the things that differentiates Astra from other guilds. The earnings dashboard is right there on the website so that users can see what the DAO is earning and you can also check the number of assets held by every subDAO. $AVG is the native token of this guild, and its total supply is 2 billion tokens. Good Games Guild Good Games Guild is another popular guild with over 300 scholars in its program. The guild has exciting features such as Good Game Labs, its game incubator and its investment arm. Good Games Guild has a DAO that earns 20% of all the revenue generated from the guild. GGG has partnered with brands such as Titan Hunter, DopeWars, Gamestation, and The Monopolist. Some of the notable names that have invested in Good Games Guild include AU21 Capital, Animoca Brands, Basics Capital, and OKEx Blockdream Ventures. The guild has $GGG as its native token, and the supply is capped at 100 million tokens. GuildFi GuildFi is a guild that seeks to create an interconnected ecosystem of games, communities, and NFTs that enables interoperability within the metaverse and also maximizes players’ benefits. The guild focuses on solving access and discovery problems while at the same time enhancing players’ performance and maximizing their rewards. Wrapping Up GameFi and play-to-earn opportunities are changing the gaming landscape and the above guilds have been at the forefront to offer such opportunities. This is a perfect approach to making money in the virtual world while avoiding some of the problems associated with the real world. The GameFi space is still young, and we can only wait and see what the future holds for the entire blockchain space. Also Published Here

An Overview of Crypto Gaming Guilds:  The Future of Play 2 Earn

Hello, Hacker Noon people! Technology guilds are a popular but still fresh way of implementing in companies. Still, there are many questions, especially related to guild responsibilities and organization. Together with , I've prepared this post for you as a summary of our personal experience and understanding of the role of a technology guild nowadays. communities of practices Andrew Kozin The motivation It is essential to have such processes, because a good specialist is learning and researching during the whole life.  Developers also like to increase their contacts network. They often try to keep up with the community and keep their professional context wider, then a current project scope. Transfer of knowledge, technologies, and experience between engineers of the same company can be done in many ways. That’s where the so-called “guild” comes up. The Guild approach A technology guild by itself is a community within the company, all members of which are developing using the same technological stack, but on different projects. For example: a Front-end guild, Back-end guild, Android guild and so on. In charge of the guild is either a single person (Technology Lead / Competence Lead / Guild Master / Guild Coordinator) or several equal skilled professionals with this role (Core competence leading team). The main responsibilities of the guild: keep in touch with the community to select best practices set standards within the guild based on best practices ensure compliance with development standards spot and remove technical debt maintain effective team communication apply cutting edge technologies when relevant provide well-balanced features architecture and development estimations build guild expertise provide mentoring and coaching of all members improve guild members skills interviews and right candidates selection process Let's explain each responsibility item in more detail. Keep in touch with the community to select best practices Each technology stack in IT has its worldwide community and every self-respecting developer tries to track it. There are well-established best practices, such as OOP, OOP patterns, FRP, Clean Architecture, SOLID principles, and many others. Such type of knowledge is not that hard to obtain since there are many resources including famous books and authors like Robert C Martin. Also, there are highly specialised best practices for a particular technology or framework or project. In terms of specific projects, such best practices are the most valuable. But they often and fast become obsolete. They require continuous monitoring, ranking, and retrieval of the most relevant of them. To get them you need to track conferences, meetups, read prof. news feeds, etc. The guild should regularly monitor and extract from all this endless stream of information best practices that are suitable for use within the company. It must be clear for all guild members that they are also part of the community because they adopt the experience gained in the world, successfully implement it and increase their unique expertise. Such expertise parts (in a volume that will not violate the NDA) can be shared in articles and speeches. Thus they also contribute to the further development of the community. This is one of the motivations for being in a guild. Some successful and generalized solutions that are born inside the guild can be pushed into open source. After all, some unique development expertise could be shared with the community, following the example of how Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Wix, and many others did it. If a company not only keeps in touch with the community but also contributes to its life, this brings it to a radically new level of prestige. Set standards within the guild based on best practices The following standards should be explicitly described within the guild: Standards of code style, variables naming, writing comments on the code, the use of certain patterns. Specific Tools usage Standards. Standards for frameworks and related packages. Standards of supported language versions. Standards for branching (version control), commits naming, etc. Standards for working with environments and branches (development, stage, master ...) Test writing standards. Purpose, methodology, coverage. Code review standards Standards of technical debt registration and removing it. Team communication standards And more... Convenient access and navigation should be provided to all these standards so that new employees can familiarize themselves with them as soon as possible when starting work. Ensure compliance with development standards The main principle here is to automate everything possible. Basic code style is automated by configuring code formatting tools. All used frameworks, tools, package managers should be easily and quickly set up on working machines, sometimes with the help of prepared guidelines. It is also possible to automate the creation of individual modules / components / units in the project code via templating tools. CI/CD pipelines configs and many other receipts can be carefully stored in the guild sources. Things that just can’t be automated, should be checked during the code review and mentoring processes. Spot and remove technical debt Every experienced engineer knows about the harm that can bring the technical debt. Having a guild in the company, engineers can use it as the leading broadcaster that enlightens all others (management, customers, sales team, e.t.c), about technical debt, how to deal with it and what are the consequences of ignoring this problem. Maintain effective team communication A very important standard is communication between guild members. Guild management must prevent any toxic communication, comments on someone's skills. Each developer should feel like a worthy member of the team. All comments about technical debt elimination should be reasonable and correct. At the same time, it is crucial that the guild strictly follows the interests of best practices implementation and can correctly substantiate to less qualified engineers why their solutions are not appropriate, require rework, or cannot be approved. All relationships between guild management and guild members must be built on trust. Apply cutting edge technologies when relevant The guild should support development of new projects using a modern technology stack. It should also try to update the stack for existing ones whenever possible. This is a huge motivational component for both: the developers themselves and for the customer of the product. Global expertise is growing, and more flexible, productive and functional solutions are emerging. The guild should be a trendsetter within the company in this regard. The guild must be able to find, implement and justify new solutions and frameworks, programming languages and tools. Moreover, the choice should not be hype, but thoughtful and rational in terms of stability and further support. Therefore it is strongly recommended to do guild practical part of work to be based on internal company projects with real and measurable goals. Provide well-balanced features architecture and development estimations Guild's estimations should be built on correctly defined architecture and this definition should be based on understanding of existing relevant cutting edge technologies. Besides, existing proven solutions libraries of a guild can be also used as a “ready to go” option. All team members must train their estimation skill, the higher the qualification, the more voluminous things can be given to evaluate (from micro-tasks to entire projects). By features estimating, it is necessary to understand its implementation steps. In most cases they are the following: Create a fully working code based on defined architecture Check the running application feature in different scenarios Check the feature on supported platforms Cover the code with tests (unit, etc.) Roll it out, pass the code review, maybe do some fixes after getting comments Build guild expertise Guild expertise should be based on planning and execution of internal projects, where new technologies, approaches and methodologies are used. The projects can be sample and have study purposes only, but it is preferable to try to apply any project to either specific internal company needs or even develop and implement an idea of a commercial project. This concept also helps to utilize and grow expertise of existing bench resources and apply the obtained cutting edge technology knowledge to regular commercial projects. A codebase of released commercial products can be also a useful source for the guild expertise. Some of the features (modules) can be implemented with a possibility to reuse in future projects. Such cases should be registered and cataloged in the guild’s proven solutions library. Provide mentoring and coaching of all members It is essential to cultivate a culture of communication and mutual assistance for those who need help. In large companies, the number of members at one guild can be quite big. That’s why guild leadership team must not only mentor but also know how to delegate mentoring duties among the most qualified engineers. Mentoring should be one of the necessary skills of senior-grade developers. Developers say that you can’t feel like a truly senior, if you don’t work with lower grade teammates. Improve guild members skills Guild members need to be continuously developed. The guild should give motivation, provide its members with roadmaps, checklists, and transparent assessment procedures. Relevant training and workshops should be performed on a regular basis. Skills assessments should be done in terms of guild projects execution. Assessment must be carried out in such a way that the final result is reasonable, measurable, unbiased, honest and understandable to the engineer himself. Interviews and right candidates selection process The guild should select top notch specialists that can provide high quality job interviews. Conclusion As we can see now, a technology guild has many duties. We understand that some of the statements described above, can’t be implemented immediately and in full. Sometimes, in the real world, you have to deviate from rules for the sake of the result. Nevertheless, we think that technology guilds should serve companies in achieving the following goals: The released products should have decent quality, made with love and modern approaches, a small amount of technical debt, which is registered and can be eliminated if necessary. Having guilds, companies can easier unify technologies usage and delivery processes across various accounts and departments. Offer proven solutions for standard as well as for non-trivial tasks. The guild expertise should grow and help to solve engineering problems more and more effectively . Significantly raise engineers retention in a company. It’s good when the guild creates a large number of successful developers who are grateful for their expertise. The expertise of the company itself must be carefully stored, cataloged and be accessible to reuse. And some of its innovative components should be presented to the community to promote the company as an active participant in its life.

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