How WAX will empower casual gamers?
The tale of an Indonesian gamer who turned to digital asset trading to make a living.
In 2014, I didn’t know that trading would be easily adopted to all gamers. I had to go through plenty of scam attempts to figure out if a trader was real or not, to notice lowball (when a trader is bartering lower valued goods for a higher valued item) and highball (vice versa). A highball offer usually ends with an attempted scam, while a lowball offer usually never works out for obvious reasons. Back then I was playing Dota 2, and was on a third party site called “Dota 2 Lounge” where players could post the items they have in exchange for items they would like. Alternatively, traders could offer to purchase with real currency, e.g. USD via PayPal or in-game currency (we had “keys” in Dota 2). But six months in, it became clear that a role in in-game items trading was not enough to put bread (or even rice) on the table. I was forced to turn to something with more profit in the digital asset trading game. To become a “middle man”.
With only an idea, no specific skillsets and many +REPs on my steam account, I set out to build a career in mediating. To succeed, I had to be someone deemed trustworthy enough by both parties to hold the valued item being exchanged while money was transferred from person A to person B, and to approve the transaction. Only once both parties confirmed with me that the agreed price had been transferred could I complete the exchange by trading the valued item across.
A simple method to solve all scams.
Yet, not so simple. The key to this solution — the “trustworthy enough” — turned out to be an impossible task. Because of my cheap rates (being in the Indonesian economy I didn’t need to charge as much as my competition) my recommended services were often met with suspicion. Unable to pass as a neutral participant, by early 2015 I had chosen to walk away from the scene
Fast-forward a few years, and to my surprise the in-game digital items trading industry I was once part of is now a 50 billion dollar industry with over 400 million users trading digital items. Here are some stats I’ve managed to scoop up.
With this level of growth in the industry, there is a clear need for improved trading methods. Most importantly, the demand for security for all gamers — casual or full-time.
With the guild system being created by World Asset eXchange (WAX), it will allow middlemen from across the globe to work together and secure peer-to-peer deals amongst traders with a fair price in mind. In mid Q4 we’ll be able to see the creation of these guilds, and they will lead the market to safer transactions for millions of users in 100+ countries.
Note that the team of WAX is the same one behind OPSkins, who is currently the largest marketplace for in-game digital trading.
With over 200 million item transactions every week, we can almost be assured that there will be plenty of guilds that we can participate in when dealing with highly valuable digital items.
WAX will be offering a greater version of my 2014 “Middle Man Idea” into something even greater, using the blockchain system to secure our virtual goods from hackers and scammers. And also using the community to keep an eye on the market.
Fingers crossed we have a future-proof solution on a platform that traders, middlemen and casual gamers can flourish.
REFERENCE:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/748044/number-video-gamers-world/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/656278/steam-most-played-games-peak-concurrent-player/
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/report-millennials-cryptocurrency-gaming-networks/
For a more detailed information about the guild mechanism and structure. Please check out this amazing read from blockchaingamer
https://www.blockchaingamer.biz/profiles/660/what-is-wax-platform/
