Justin Sun: GameFi is the next hot spot in the blockchain era

On the evening of August 3, the first batch of 300 NFTs of Tencent's NFT trading software Huanhe went on sale and sold out in less than 1 second, which is enough to show the enthusiasm of the outside world for NFT. Although it is not a new concept, judging from the successive bets of giants such as Tencent, Alibaba, Instagram, etc. in recent months, large-scale financing, and the emergence of various NFT projects and platforms, NFT has become a hot word in the current crypto world.

As the new wave of "gamified finance" hits, Justin Sun, a hot spot indicator, recently announced his entry into GameFi. In the eyes of the founder of TRON, GameFi will lead the next blockchain era as strongly as DeFi, so WINkLink in the TRON ecosystem will work with the APENFT Foundation to officially deploy Gamefi and NFTfi, and will be officially launched in the fourth quarter. With Justin Sun booking the best hot spots this year in advance and more and more competitors entering the market, the "finance on the left hand, game on the right hand" model seems to have become the next explosion point in the market.

Google search trends show that NFT searches have been far ahead of DeFi for quite some time. At the same time, according to the "NFT 2020 Annual Report" released by Nonfungible, NFT market transaction volume has increased from 40.9 million in 2018 to 338 million US dollars in 2020. This year, the peak of NFT single-day transactions even set an astonishing record of 102 million US dollars. The data also shows the strong capital effect of the NFT market. Even though the market value was cut in half due to the "Black May" in the crypto market, NFT still recovered at a relatively fast speed. Coingecko data shows that as of August 12, the total market value of the top 100 NFT project tokens has rebounded to more than 23 billion US dollars.

Top 10 popular NFT projects Source: NFT Insider (May 28, 2021)

NFT can gain momentum again thanks to the resurgence of blockchain games.

In terms of market value and token growth, half of the top ten NFT projects in Coingecko are games. From the growth of these game projects, as of August and September, the average growth rate in the past 30 days exceeded 49.7%, far exceeding the growth of mainstream currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as DeFi leading currencies such as Uniswap, Maker, and Compound.

In terms of user numbers and transaction volume, Dappradar data shows that in the past 30 days, the number of users in the gaming field exceeded 860,000, and the transaction volume exceeded US$19.7 million, far ahead of DeFi, exchanges and other tracks. In terms of financing, many game developers or projects, such as Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, Virtually Human Studio, and The Sandbox, have successively obtained millions of dollars in financing.

Number of users in the gaming field in the past 30 days Source: DappRadar

The exponential rise in the popularity of blockchain games is inseparable from the promotion of GameFi projects. Although the combination of "DeFi+NFT" last year unexpectedly collided with development vitality and possibilities, this type of game quickly fell out of favor after becoming popular, and GameFi is still a little short of large-scale development. However, this year, typical GameFi projects such as Axie Infinity, Illuvium, My Neighbor Alice and My DeFi Pet have ignited the first fire for the game with the P2E model. Among them, Axie Infinity's daily revenue once exceeded the popular mobile game Honor of Kings by three times. Unlike in the past, this game financialization method that combines DeFi and NFT not only truly broadens the application scenarios of game assets, but also allows users to earn real income while playing. Therefore, "GameFi" has become the biggest selling point of blockchain games.

However, the GameFi sector is still relatively vacant, and traffic is mostly concentrated in a small number of top projects, and most of the projects are based on Ethereum, which means that there is still huge room for development in this field. Especially under high traffic, Ethereum often affects user experience due to network congestion and excessive gas fees, which also gives other blockchains more opportunities. For example, Justin Sun announced on Twitter that the APENFT Foundation will join hands with WINkLink, the first TRON ecosystem full-system oracle project, to enter GameFi, and the product prototype of the joint project will be ready in the third quarter of this year.