NFT: What Play to Earn games will explode in 2022?

NFTs are poised to dominate 2022, and the recent pivot to the utility of NFTs in Play to Earn games could make Blockchain Gaming the most important emerging sector.

After the popularity of the DeFi sphere, it was the turn of non-fungible chips to grab the market's attention, and to the surprise of many, NFTs captivated the whole world and stayed ahead, with the highest trading volume taking place this month.

Even though 2021 was the year of NFTs, GameFi applications surpassed DeFi when it comes to user popularity. According to data provided by DappRadar, a Bloomberg article reads:

Almost 50% of active wallets, which are connected to decentralized applications, have done this to play games. The percentage of wallets related to DeFi applications has dropped to 45% in recent months, after a very long period in which it occupied the leading position

Sky Mavis' Play-to-Earn blockchain game, Axie Infinity, was the first to explode and kick-start a huge adoption among users - and experts expect this trend to continue in 2022. Both supporters Cryptocurrencies, as well as video games, have high expectations for Play-to-Earn games built with blockchain technology.

In the following we will take a look at the games that could make big waves in 2022.

Axie Infinity 🐦

Also known as the first blockchain game to implement its Play-to-Earn model, Axie Infinity has established and developed an ecosystem with a very strong economic model. Currently, Axie Infinity is seen as the Trojan horse of a widespread adoption of blockchain games.

Axie Infinity continues to cement its leading position in the top ranking provided by DappRadar, according to the data presented on the site. In the last 30 days, Axie NFTs have generated a volume of $ 633 million, both on the Ronin network and Ethereum.

More about Axie Infinity & SLP, AXS and USD - the currencies of the ecosystem

Axie’s are the NFTs used to play the game and can be multiplied using SLP, the game’s utility currency, and AXS, the governing currency. AXS can be put at stake, where users benefit from an incredible annual interest rate of about 89%.

The recent launch of the Katana decentralized exchange allows players to provide liquidity using SLP or AXS, to earn USD

USD is the currency of the ecosystem, and like Ethereum, it will be used to pay taxes within the Ronin network on which the game is built. In many ways, Axie Infinity can be likened to a digital country that has its own economy.

Of course, like any market leader, the game also faces difficulties, and the recent price correction could be an attractive time to buy for investors whose Axie’s seemed too expensive in the past. Once Land Gameplay is released, users will have the opportunity to harvest resources that generate coins.

One of the largest sales of virtual land in the NFT / metaverse sector comes from Axie Infinity: a genesis plot, out of the 75 available, sold for $ 2.3 million.

Quickly adapting to the evolution of the blockchain gaming ecosystem, the Sky Mavis team announced that it has changed the basic model from 2D to 3D. The team also announced the launch of the Project K game - which will be launched in stages, each focusing on different elements of the game - from harvesting resources to group game strategies.

Blankos Block Party 🤖

The game created by Mythical Games, which received a $ 1.3 billion rating from a16z in November 2021, is an NFT game in Early Access that has only a few hundred thousand players, according to the company.

We did not plan to raise money for a few more months, "said CEO John Linden. And a16z came to us early and so they were all announced. They knew we weren't raising money, but they said, "Let's do this now" - and here we are in a fantastic position, with capital ready for many years to come.

One of the reasons Mythical Games has attracted the attention of investors is that the team is made up of veterans of the video game industry, who build a platform focused primarily on gameplay, and then on investments and blockchain infrastructure.

Blankos Block Party feels like a much less focused game on cryptocurrencies than the other NFT titles. It's an Open World game, but it uses a reward model that combines Battle-Pass subscriptions with an in-game currency, which users can use to buy NFTs that can be sold for real money.

Hundreds of thousands of NFTs have already been mined on the Mythical platform, where users can sell items or characters that they have bought or earned by completing missions. The system used by Blankos Block Party to reward players for their time is as follows:

• The user plays Blankos Block Party and solves the missions in Party-Pass
• By completing missions, the player is rewarded with NFTs (which can be sold on the Mythical marketplace)
• ⚠️ The currency used is the US dollar, not Ethereum

DeFi Kingdoms 🏰

The inspiration for DeFi Kingdoms came with simple principles: a passion for investment, which lured developers into the blockchain industry. DeFi Kingdoms was designed to visually render the investment in a liquidity pool, where the realms in the game represent the mining of liquidity of the parities placed at stake.

According to the game, investors own a portion of the liquidity pool through a virtual plot of land, from which resources can be collected. By simply attaching the growth concept to DeFi protocols in a Play-to-Earn model, DeFi Kingdoms offers a very interesting alternative for investors who prefer to do HODL.

Built on the Harmony network, DeFi Kingdoms was the first game of this protocol to debut in the top rankings of DappRadar. At the moment, it is in the first place when we talk about the volume of the last 30 days, surpassing even Axie Infinity. This huge increase could be attributed to an influx of users who are interested in both the DeFi sphere and the games built on the blockchain.

Jewel is the utilitarian and governing currency of the game, with which players can buy NFTs to advance in level. Crypto-currency can also be used to mine liquidity, and those who put it at stake are rewarded with even more coins. At the time of this publication, the price of a Jewel is $ 19.