Eden Gaming Guild: Two Month Update
The Eden Gaming Guild (EGG) has officially been live for two months now. EGG launched with Castle Crush as its pilot game, and we are pleased with the progress and results so far. Much credit is due to our partnership with APEX, who has given us high card rental rate, play-time, centralized card/player management, and meaningful rewards bonus (~20%) on tokens due to their top in-game ranking. We were even approached by multiple Castle Crush clans asking to gain access to our sought after NFT collection which suggests to us that the hunger for NFT gaming is real.
At a high level, here are some of the metrics achieved since launch:
- Successful launch with Castle Crush
- Partnership with #1 Castle Crush clan, APEX
- Lent NFTs to over 50 unique players
- Earning 20% rewards multiplier on $ACS earned
- Reached top 11 addresses with most $ACS earned
- Earned over 150,000 $ACS tokens
LEARNINGS
Our learnings can be broken down into the following points:
- Clan partnerships are key when lending NFTs
- Basic knowledge of crypto amongst blockchain gamers is still low
- High quality blockchain games are few and far between
- UI, gameplay experience, and wallet interaction are key to adoption, and are equally important as the earnings potential of NFTs
The smooth running and initial success of EGG has been due to our partnership with in-game clans un-affiliated with Eden Network, rather than existing EDEN stakers organically participating in the Guild’s offerings.
EGG launched with 100 Castle Crush NFTs, and the vast majority have been rented and played by APEX members. Around five non-staker, solo players have rented NFTs from EGG, and only one EDEN staker has rented. While we were not expecting a huge amount of EDEN stakers to participate in the EGG, we did think at least a small handful of the over 4,000 stakers would be interested.
At least for Castle Crush, it seems there is little overlap between EDEN stakers and gamers. It also tells us that we might have an opportunity to attract a new audience which could benefit from the wonders of the Eden Rocket RPC and future products.
EGG has, however, received a lot of one-off interest from individual Castle Crush players. Due to our existing partnership with APEX, lower rewards, more complicated ‘accounting’ when lending to individual players, EGG has only worked with a handful of them. The vast majority of these players are not involved or knowledgeable about crypto, aside from what they have learned from playing Castle Crush. This has led us to believe that overall, penetration of crypto within the mobile gamers community is still low, but that games like Castle Crush are successfully educating players about crypto and blockchains, slowly exposing them to the ecosystem (albeit in a somewhat skewed and limited scope).
We also have learned that working with clans has far reaching benefits and potential. Two of them being, ease of rental management and increased token rewards. Working with APEX has been wonderfully helpful, as the clan has a representative that we work with, who helps manage the 40+ clan members we rent to.
Player crypto addresses and card rentals are provided by the clan rep in a centralized database, which is updated each month with the desired new card rentals. Additionally, the clan self-manages its players, ensuring they are competitive and play their cards daily, to earn maximum token rewards. This accounts for an additional 20% token payout. While EDEN stakers still have NFT rental priority, going forward we will heavily favor clan partnerships in both Castle Crush and other blockchain games.
On that note, blockchain games have also been more sparse than anticipated. While we have our eye on a couple potential developments, we could not help but notice that “what/where are the other blockchain games on Avalanche” is a common question regurgitated among key ecosystem participants. That being said, 2023 is shaping up to be the year in which many bigger projects finally start to show off their game builds. And who knows — perhaps EGG will branch out and find games in the Ethereum ecosystem as well.
TREASURY MANAGEMENT
Recently, Castle Crush released their second round of NFT-containing chests, and EGG deployed some of its $ACS to update its portfolio:
- Purchased additional Founder chest
- Upgraded Dragons and Phoenixes to Level 2
- Sold ~10% of $ACS treasury into AVAX
For $ACS spend, EGG has chosen to solely focus on acquiring additional Founder NFTs, as we anticipate they will hold their value better in the long run due to their limited supply. Furthermore, they allow for influence over game development, and secure a base-level value to EGG’s NFT portfolio through potential secondary market sales.
As far as card upgrades, upgrading NFTs increases their $ACS earnings potential, strengthens their rental attractiveness, and therefore also our partnership with APEX. EGG chose to upgrade Dragons and Phoenixes first at the request of APEX.
WHAT’S NEXT
As we move into 2023, EGG is on the lookout for new games and NFTs to support. For now, we plan on continuing to upgrade and expand our Castle Crush NFT collection.
Are you an EDEN staker, or do you know about a game that EGG should consider? We’d love to hear from you. Post a message in our Discord #gaming-guild channel to get started.
May 2023 bring us all countless hours of GAME time and some new GameFi titles to be excited about!
Season’s greetings from the entire Eden Network team.
