GameFi: XPLA, The Journey to Brilliant Content Delivery and Experiences (Part #1)
Key Points (TL;DR)
- Com2uS Group had great gaming IPs and a rapidly growing Web3.0 business but was hit hard by the Luna incident and decided to build their own, independent mainnet, XPLA.
- XPLA has its own technological differentiation from the Cosmos-based mainnet, but current metrics show that it is still in the early stages compared to the global mainnet.
- Nevertheless, many are excited about the future of XPLA due to the unique challenge and pioneering DNA of the Com2uS Group, their proven game IPs and global reach.
- XPLA is in the process of realizing P2O with three core economic models.
- Four popular IPs have recently been onboarded a balanced mix of dApps and services are being built within the ecosystem.
- By positioning itself as a content-specific chain, XPLA hopes to create a transparent and fair ecosystem while giving many users a reason to use the blockchain.
Key Chart 1. XPLA Ecosystem Summary Map
Key Chart 2. Com2uS Group Organizational Chart (partial)
Key Chart 3. Com2uS Group
I. Introduction
In the previous article (link), we concluded that gaming is likely to be a trigger for the mass adoption of blockchain due to its large market size, active investment by game companies, and user characteristics that are well suited to blockchain. In this article, XPLA will be discussed as a representative example of an ecosystem where game companies are participating as core partners and examine the journey that blockchain projects built by traditional game companies have taken so far, the path they need to take, and the points they are looking forward to in the future.
II. XPLA’s History and Present
1. XPLA’s Past, C2X
In 2021, mobile gaming powerhouse Com2uS Group announced its intention to build an open blockchain gaming platform (C2X). After seeing the potential of a P2E game called Axie Infinity, the company decided to jump on the bandwagon.
Since its inception, C2X has been highly anticipated by the industry. Com2uS Group, the market leader in mobile gaming, entered Web3 with a proven track record of innovation during the industry’s paradigm shift from PC gaming to mobile gaming. Com2uS and Com2uS Holdings supplied proven games to the C2X platform, and Com2uS oversaw creating the platform based on the know-how of successfully operating HIVE, a game platform with 100 million annual active users, for seven years. In addition, Terraform Labs, a developer of the Terra Chain, and Hashed, Korea’s top crypto venture capital, participated as advisors. The platform’s creators and game content producers were a dream team, and the gathering of top experts in the crypto industry at the time was enough to attract attention from the industry.
In March 22, C2X raised $25 million in a private round at a valuation of $500 million. The round was led by FTX Ventures, JumpCrypto, and Animoca Brands, with participation from VCs including Hashed, Terra, and Galaxy Interactive. The C2X ecosystem grew rapidly, meeting the expectations of investors. Four popular games were onboarded to the C2X platform in just three months, starting with Summoner’s War: Hundred Years War. The ecosystem quickly built the necessary infrastructure services, including an IEO on FTX, the second largest exchange in the world at the time, a quick listing on multiple exchanges to improve accessibility for users, and the creation of the C2X NFT Marketplace (now X-Planet) and its own wallet called C2X Station.
The C2X project seemed to be on a roll, but in May 2022, Terra crashed. Like other projects launched on the Terra chain, the C2X ecosystem took a significant hit, but within three months, it was reborn as XPLA, with a new mainnet built on Cosmos.
Figure 1. Three Months Into the C2X Ecosystem
Figure 2. Platform Ecosystem Components
Figure 3. C2X Private Round Investors(announced 22.03)
2. XPLA’s Current Status
1) The Decision to Build Their Own Mainnet
XPLA set the goal of ‘building a digital media content center in the Web3 era’. There are several reasons why C2X decided to build its own mainnet instead of building services on top of major mainnets such as Ethereum and Polygon.
First, it was necessary to build the mainnet underlying the blockchain project independently to secure independence and create an environment that is not affected by external factors, and second, there was no game-specific mainnet that provides a seamless service environment for the high-level games and content held by the Com2uS Group. Third, the number of users from operating on a global mainnet was very small compared to the number of users Com2uS Group already had, so the effect of acquiring new users was minimal, and finally, they believed the number of developers they had was sufficient to catch up to these other mainnets. When developing and operating a blockchain mainnet, it is important to secure development manpower, and the Com2uS Group had already accumulated development know-how, and therefore were able to quickly deploy the mainnet.
2) Technical Features of the XPLA Chain
XPLA is a blockchain network focused on digital media content developed by a team with over 20 years of experience in the gaming and entertainment industry, and the mainnet was created by a team that understands the game and game builder ecosystem best. XPLA uses the Cosmos SDK to achieve interoperability with various chains through the Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC).
Cosmos IBC is characterized by the fact that each blockchain can make independent decisions while enabling information and asset movement with other chains through the TCP/IP protocol, just as PCs using different devices and S/W can send and receive information through packets, thus securing both scalability and governance. The main advantage is that it can maintain its own direction as a game-centered entertainment chain rather than a general-purpose chain like Ethereum, while still being able to scale with other chains.
XPLA also secured compatibility with the Ethereum network in February this year with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum has the world’s largest developer community and the vast majority of dApps (80% of all dApps) and users are powered by Ethereum, so early compatibility with the Ethereum network was necessary for the globalization of the mainnet. XPLA’s unique technical features include the XPLA Alternative Transaction Protocol (XATP) and Adaptive Token Standards. XATP is a technology that allows users or partners to pay mainnet fees with the app’s own token instead of XPLA tokens, improving the user experience for users and partners. Adaptive Token Standards is a technology that allows NFTs to change their properties even after they are issued, and we are building a technology that allows NFTs to be used flexibly in games and content areas.
Figure 4. Cosmos IBC AppChain Map
Figure 5. Architecture of the XPLA Chain
Figure 6. XPLA Chain Features
