The Dawn of the IAO
Last week, War of Crypto launched the first ever Initial Asset Offering (IAO) featuring ERC-1155 assets, the world’s first true collectibles. The IAO was sold out in less than 30 minutes.
As the sun sets on ICOs, it rises with IAOs.
ICOs: Initial Coin Offerings
ICOs are old news. 46% of last year’s ICOs have failed (59% if you consider those classified as “semi-failed”), and support for new currency-based fundraising is fading fast.
Of the numerous reasons so many cryptocurrencies are failing, three core issues stand out among the rest:
- Many projects are structured in a such way that even if they achieve adoption, it still won’t raise demand for their currency.
- Too many projects rely solely on investor funding, rather than developing high value products and services that can be monetized.
- The world can only use so many global currencies and programmable blockchain platforms.
For some, these problems are a product of starry-eyed entrepreneurs that don’t fully understand business strategy, deflationary economics, or the limitations of the blockchain. For others, it simply comes down to a lack of creativity.
IAOs: Initial Asset Offerings
At Enjin, we strive to enable real businesses of all sizes to conduct real business on the blockchain.
Assets are much simpler to manage than currencies. For the majority of projects, it makes far more sense to offer an asset with provable utility rather than a cryptocurrency with its own economy.
In the context of gaming, there is a long list of in-game items that can be offered in an IAO, including characters, weapons, items, power-ups, skins, employees, real estate, pets, universes, games, and even currencies.
Yes, currencies is still on the list, and a currency sold in an IAO is still technically a cryptocurrency. The difference, however, is that the gaming IAO offers a cryptocurrency that will later be used in games and sold on in-game marketplaces. Therefore, its value will generally be defined by the game’s developers, not by price action on volatile cryptocurrency exchanges.
Whereas ICOs are designed to fund economies and ecosystems, IAOs are specifically designed to fund products and services.
The World’s First IAO
The first ever ERC-1155 Initial Asset Offering, completed by Lucille Games for their debut blockchain game War of Crypto (WoC), was a resounding success.
Featuring a one-time-only selection of heroes and skins, the hype boiled over into frenzy when the IAO suffered a DDOS attack, forcing Lucille Games to temporarily shut down the WoC website. Once their servers were secured, the pre-sale was relaunched and sold out in less than 30 minutes.
The lucky few who obtained pre-sale assets now hold some of the rarest heroes and skins that will ever exist in the WoC universe. As soon as the game is available to play, these heroes will plug right in and be ready for battle.
Enjin’s mission is to empower entrepreneurs like Lucille Games and ensure they can utilize the full force of the blockchain and create the most advanced form of cryptocurrencies — without the need to hire a team of blockchain specialists.
ERC-1155: The True Collectible Standard
In the real world, collectibles are more than just rare, tradable items. The physical attributes of tangible collector’s items create nuanced properties that have a massive impact on their intrinsic, sentimental, and instrumental value.
Because they cost nothing to create and aren’t imbued with materials that can be extracted upon the item’s destruction, ERC-721 tokens are not comparable to physical collectibles. You can mint infinite amounts and there is no material standard to back their value or certify their authenticity.
Enter ERC-1155.
When minted using Enjin’s development platform, an ERC-1155 token is backed with a nominal amount of Enjin Coin (ENJ). This certifies the item’s quality (as a technology) and generates trust that its creator truly believes it is something of value.
One can’t just throw caution to the wind and print infinite tokens. If a developer wants to create next-generation blockchain assets supported by our smart contracts, the items must contain ENJ — the gold standard for digital assets.
We’ve developed our platform to enable entrepreneurs to create ERC-1155 tokens that are far more powerful than popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even our beloved ENJ.
We’re creating a new form of intangible asset that contains all the properties of tangible assets, but that can be coded to action complex commands.
We are developing the functions that enable collectors to use, trade, buy, sell, destroy, upgrade, combine, augment, rent, lease, loan, and lose their collectibles. They can even cash them in for cryptocurrency (ENJ) at any time.
With ERC-1155, you will be able to do everything discussed above without typing a single line of code. But the best part is, it’s an open platform that will continue to grow and advance based on the innovations required by our adopters.
In any ecosystem, every organism is shaped by — and in turn shapes — its environment.
The Enjin ecosystem is no different.
War of Crypto, 9Lives Arena, and CryptoFights are already some of the most highly anticipated, innovative games in the blockchain gaming space. They have inspired us to work harder and faster, while adding even more features to our ecosystem.
We have some other really exciting projects just around the corner, too — and we’re just getting started.
This is the most exciting time in the history of Enjin. I urge any game developer that wants to make the most out of the blockchain to contact us immediately.
