Our Investment in GuildFi
We are excited to share why we backed GuildFi — a Web3 platform that empowers all gaming communities and creates interoperability across the Metaverse.
Over the past two years, the demand for crypto games, also collectively described as GameFi, exploded beyond the expectations of many native crypto enthusiasts.
Leading crypto games, like Axie Infinity, which Hashed incubated and invested in since 2018, began to empower the livelihoods of millions of users particularly in Southeast Asia.
Taxi drivers, small business owners, and many other individuals started to join guilds — organizations that lend NFTs and educate users to play crypto games — to earn additional income.
The emergence of guilds created a new digital economy fueled by digital assets and NFTs, supplementing the livelihoods of many, especially in underbanked regions.
To further bolster the growth of GameFi and aid the long-term prosperity of guilds across Southeast Asia, Hashed led the $6 million seed round of GuildFi, the first interoperable ecosystem of games, guilds, communities, and NFTs.
We call this the start of Guild 2.0.
An overview of GuildFi, aka Guild 2.0
GuildFi aims to create an interconnected ecosystem of games, NFTs and communities to enable interoperability across the metaverse. GuildFi provides the infrastructure to onboard, connect, and add value to all GameFi participants — whether you are a Player, Guild, Investor or Game.
Players can:
- Sign up with a GuildFi ID which stores their achievements and footprint across the metaverse
- Discover curated games, get access to elite GameFi tools, assist game creators in discovering the right player base for their game launch
- Find guilds with scholarship programmes that reduce the barrier to entry for P2E games
- Receive experience points (GXP) and ranking which entitle players to rewards, e.g. allocation to exclusive NFT campaigns, bonus yield on tokens, etc.
Guilds can:
- Recruit more scholars by integrating with GuildFi to showcase their profile and let new players easily discover them
- Well-established guilds can let their scholars sign up for a GuildFi ID to start earning double rewards on their metaverse activities
Investors can:
- Leverage Guild-as-a-Service to start their own guild instantly to acquire virtual assets, recruit scholars and manage guild members with no overhead and operational costs
- Access Guild Network to plug and play GuildFi Modules and curate their customised guild
- Maximise asset utilisation by lending out virtual NFT assets or cash to meet market demand in the metaverse
Games can:
- Integrate with GuildFi to grow their community and enhance discovery (e.g. games can introduce scholars between guilds or bring players from partner guilds)
- Enhance the gameplay experience for players, by equipping them with better tools and maximising in-game rewards (e.g. IGO, NFT sales, NFT airdrop to players, etc.)
Our investment thesis
1. Ease of access:
Blockchain gaming has the potential to onboard billions of people into crypto and provide the unbanked access to financial opportunities. Players see the earning potential but the barriers to entry are extremely high due to start-up costs. The space is also growing so quickly that it may be confusing for newcomers to partake without a steep learning curve.
Just as DeFi saw the popular rise and use case of DEX aggregators (like 1inch) and yield aggregators (like Yearn, Convex and Beefy); we believe the metaverse would need an ecosystem aggregator too. There will be an influx of guilds, game creators and investors in the near future, so the market will eventually demand for convenience.
We believe that a Metaverse aggregator connecting ecosystem participants is imperative for this sector’s development and GuildFi has the best Web3 infrastructure to become the go-to platform.
2. Ease of operations:
Managing guilds can get complex — from sourcing and interviewing scholars to facilitating a revenue-share system and tracking NFT inventory. As the space gets increasingly saturated, guilds need to be equipped with the best tools to:
- Ensure economies of scale (efficiency of operations as they grow larger)
- Visualise overall performance of scholars and players
- Differentiate themselves from the competition and continue to value-add to their audience and partners
We believe GuildFi has the technology and capability to provide games, guilds and communities the necessary tools to excel in the space.
Concluding thoughts
Hashed has been a huge proponent of metaverse developments even before its investment in Axie Infinity in 2018. We feel strongly about growing the concept of the metaverse and provable ownership of digital assets, and believe that there is huge potential for this to completely change the way users consume entertainment.
GuildFi’s long term vision is aligned with ours — they intend to produce a platform for a diverse set of game economies to be interoperable and easily accessible. GuildFi aims to be the one-stop-shop for metaverse participants and we at Hashed are fortunate to support their journey!
“Hashed foresees that the next-generation game platforms will be underpinned by a combination of P2E gaming models and interoperable in-game assets. The new paradigm for the gaming industry will be decentralised, so the more authority games give to the players, the more successful the game will be. In that respect, GuildFi has a very strong potential to solidify its position as a new gaming platform.” — Ethan Kyuntae Kim, Co-founder & Partner, Hashed.
Disclosure: Hashed has established, maintained, and enforced strict internal policies and procedures designed to identify and effectively manage conflicts of interest related to its investment activities. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Furthermore, references to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services.
