New Developments in GameFi: Play-to-Airdrop and Prediction Markets

Key Takeaways

• Just lately, a brand new type of Web3 gaming has shortly collected customers – play-to-airdrop, and particularly, tap-to-earn. On the identical time, prediction markets have change into in style in 2024. Our newest report seems into new developments in GameFi by delving deeper into these two developments.
• Play-to-airdrop permits customers to earn rewards whereas finishing sure in-game actions, and the rewards are sometimes associated to a future token airdrop. It represents a new ‘twist’ to the play-to-earn mannequin, the place customers have a built-in possession of an current cryptocurrency or NFT assortment. Below play-to-airdrop, limitations of entry are sometimes decrease for gamers given the straightforward options and absence of preliminary necessities for a pockets or cryptocurrency holdings. 

Faucet-to-earn is when gamers merely faucet or click on within the recreation to earn in-game currencies. Telegram is likely one of the key enablers of this development, because it helps constructing embedded purposes (referred to as bots) to host in style tap-to-earn video games like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat. The combination with The Open Community (TON) has additionally enormously simplified the crypto onboarding course of for video games on the community. 

Launched in January 2024, Notcoin is a Telegram-based recreation by which customers simply merely ‘faucet’ the picture of a gold coin to earn rewards. Notcoin has shortly gained quite a lot of consideration, garnering 20 million signups inside the first 26 days of launch. As of 9 June, Notcoin has 40 million customers.

Hamster Kombat, a tap-to-earn recreation launched in March 2024, surpassed Notcoin and have become the most important Telegram channel globally with 44 million subscribers. Each participant is the hamster CEO of a digital crypto change, and gamers faucet the hamster to earn gold cash. Gamers can even full numerous every day combos, boosters, and refer associates for extra earnings.

• Faucet-to-earn video games are a good way to drive crypto adoption, as they’re straightforward to play, hooking each newbies and crypto fans looking for rewards. The mixture of the ‘dumbing down’ of gameplay and airdrops helps tasks unfold extensively, however the long-term sustainability after airdrops ends is unclear. 
• Prediction markets can act as a bridge between GameFi and SocialFi by enabling customers to put bets on future occasions associated to each gaming and social interactions. This would possibly contain predicting the outcomes of numerous subjects starting from politics, sports activities, and macro occasions. 
• Polymarket is likely one of the largest crypto-based, decentralised prediction platforms. Its weekly buying and selling quantity has seen a spike in 2024, exhibiting an 830% year-over-year improve evaluating January-Could 2023 to January-Could 2024. Polymarket permits customers to deposit stablecoins and purchase/promote shares on how a future occasion will resolve. Worth of every share ranges from $0-$1, representing the chance of incidence of an occasion. The platform operates on a Central Restrict Order E-book (CLOB) mannequin, a hybrid-decentralised model by which order matching, ordering, and execution occur off-chain, whereas settlement is on-chain.

• Prediction markets comprise the ingredient of relevancy, as subjects seize in style narratives and infrequently mirror what’s prime on the viewers’s thoughts. It probably enhances crypto adoption and serves as a gateway to introduce new customers into Web3 by integrating trending web2 subjects. It acts as a “excessive sign info supply”, and the information can probably assist customers make extra knowledgeable selections.
• Each play-to-airdrop and prediction markets have blurred the boundaries between Web2 and Web3. Play-to-airdrop made cryptocurrency onboarding easy, whereas prediction markets present all kinds of related and fascinating subjects for individuals to wager on. We see the success of tasks like Notcoin as blueprints for future developments in Web3 gaming, and we sit up for seeing how these can probably assist mass adoption in cryptocurrency.