Why we invested in DEFY move-to-earn game — our investment thesis
We just announced that we have invested into DEFY, a new location based move-to-earn game by the team also behind District App. We also invested in Genopets, a pokemon style move to earn game.
I met Ben Pember, DEFY’s founder through a mutual contact. Actually, before me met I’ve already heard of their District app. They had already ran several successful fitness events in Hong Kong and their campaign highlighted Utah Lee, Nike Master trainer who also happens to be on our KARA Smart Fitness mirror.
Web3 vs Web2
In web 2.0, we’re seeing a consolidation of companies. The likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are acquiring alot of the smaller players. It’s a winner takes all scenario.
In web 3.0, we believe that each project is analogous to running their own country. We believe there will be lots of different countries and less consolidation. Web 3.0 is fundamentally about collaboration more than competition.
Fitness metaverse
Our vision at OliveX is to build a fitness metaverse. We believe in fitness as a game and interoperability between fitness games as I’ve written about earlier. However, we cannot possibly build ALL the move to earn games in the world. In order to build this metaverse, we need to play nice and work with other projects. That’s why we’re actively investing in other move-to-earn games.
Fitness omnivores
We also believe that people are becoming fitness omnivores — people that do multiple fitness activities. It use to be that people did one single sport and that’s it but as multiple studies have shown that doing the same movements repetitively can lead to higher injury risks. It’s much better to do multiple sports and that’s why you see even elite athletes like Lebron James have incorporated yoga into their routine.
In the fitness metaverse, we imagine a world with fitness games for all sorts of fitness needs and we’re super excited about this nascent space. In our portfolio we have covered:
- Running (Dustland Runner)
- Cycling (Dustland Rider)
- Steps (Genopets)
- Location GPS (DEFY)
We think there will be NEW world changing fitness games that are yet to come in:
- Connected fitness (Rowing, treadmills, climbing, etc)
- Computer vision based games (i.e. Xbox Kinect, Just Dance)
- VR fitness games (I.e. Beat saber)
- Cognitive/meditation/wellness games
Conclusion
Imagine cycling for 100Km in Dustland runner and getting rewarded with an NFT item that be used in DEFY, Dustand Runner and Genopets. How cool is that?
If you are a gamefi project at the intersection of fitness, blockchain and gaming, please speak to us! We’re actively investing in this space.
