Previously referred to as “play-to-earn”, GameFi enables gamers to earn digital goods for their in-game activities via missions, trade, and other techniques. Although traditional games typically encourage players to accumulate and exchange digital assets, the value of these – sometimes scarce – items are seldom allowed to be actively traded for real-world currency.

That said, in the world of GameFi, valuable in-game items are saved as assets on the blockchain and trading them for crypto (which can be exchanged for Fiat!) is actively encouraged, enabling users to earn tangible rewards for their time invested.

As we head into 2023, here are the top 5 trends to watch for in the crypto gaming industry. Revolutions will happen radically in the industry from technology, user experience, business model and more.

And these trends will shape the future of blockchain gaming. So if you're a developer or gamer enthusiast into web 3.0 gaming, make sure to keep an eye on these exciting advancements!

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Trend 1: Crypto Games Going Mobile

Mobile gaming will give rise to the biggest products in Crypto, by improving key user experience and in-app purchase flows.

In 2022, we saw many cases of blockchain ecosystems taking bets on phone manufacturing and mobile infrastructure building. Public chains like Solana and Polygon are releasing new products that aim to make it easier for developers to build decentralized applications on mobile.

Furthermore, a crypto-native and Ethereum-based operating system is already in beta supporting a variety of blockchain features. We can expect to see more innovation like this in the near future.

Zooming into the games sector, console games have long been the denominator, but we’ve observed a huge market void for engaging crypto gaming experiences on mobile.  At present, there are more than 1700 projects listed on chainplay while only 30% of them support Android or IOS. The migration of web3 games to the mobile terminal has not yet been officially kicked off. 

Developing apps natively on mobile caters the need for crypto games to be massively adopted. The gaming industry is worth over 100 billion, with mobile games accounting for over 50% of the revenue. Compared to that, the current GameFi market value is only 6 billion and growth in its user base has stagnated for the past quarters since the beginning of the crypto winter. 

One key advantage for mobile native crypto games is to leverage the existing distribution channels, and therefore speaking to the greater gaming audience. In order to achieve that, there are gaps to be filled in the current P2E project’s user experiences.

To attract more general gamers, crypto games on mobile have to improve the key user experience steps such as onboarding and in-app purchase flows to increase the adoption of Crypto games and dApps.

Trend 2: Geographical Divergence

South East Asia, South America and Africa will give rise to the biggest player communities and medium-sized game studios, Mature markets like Japan and Korea will have their own gaming chains powered by large incumbents

In 2023, we expect to see a clear divergence between emerging gaming markets and mature gaming markets in the development track of crypto games.

We forecast that the biggest player communities and medium-sized web 3.0 game studios are forming in emerging markets, while mature markets like Japan and Korea will have their own gaming chains powered by large incumbents.

Take Africa as an example. It is a promising continent for crypto game development due to its young population and rising digital literacy rates. Several countries in Africa rank high on a global crypto adoption index.

In addition to that, a survey in 2021 found that 9.4% of South Africans intend to purchase NFTs in the near future, with NFT adoption expected to reach 17.8% in the near term. This indicates that Africa is poised for continued growth in the crypto gaming industry while NFTs and cryptocurrencies will play a major role in this growth.

Another emerging market for video games to be reckoned with is south-east Asia. With an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6% between 2020-2025 for video game revenue, Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing games markets in the world.

Just like south-Africa, the booming of south east Asia’s gaming industry is largely due to the region's young demographics and their demand for games, as well as the tolerance for innovation in the gaming field.

As one of the leading countries in games innovation in the region, Vietnam has a gamers’ population with only 30.1 average age. Local players in Vietnam continue to pay attention to games and related industries in 2022, with mobile game users, console game users, and PC game users all experiencing growth.

Meanwhile, game-related industries in Vietnam are also seeing increased attention, with the number of audience watching game streamers and attending eSports events both experiencing significant growth.

For game companies, this indicates a sustainable enthusiasm for games that is motivating developers to create new and innovative content. Additionally, the adoption rate of crypto-currency in Vietnam is high, with 6 million people (~6% of the population) owning crypto assets. This makes Vietnam, and counterparts in south-east Asia, promising markets for the development of blockchain-based games for domestic adoption.

Looking into the more mature gaming market like Korea and Japan, there are a lot of different stories to tell. The Korean Gamefi ecosystem is dominated by three local public chains: WeMade, Netmarble, and Neowiz.

These companies have created their own game ecosystems/sidechains, which account for around 80% of the market. There are also a few smaller companies that have developed their own games and gaming platforms, including BSS Studio (KlayDice), Npixel (MetaPixel), and an independent team (Ludena Protocol).

Similarly, in Japan, the leading game manufacturers are accelerating their process in GameFi and Web 3.0, with many of them establishing their own crypto labs or chain game studios to develop crypto games.

Plus, Japan has been a leader in regulating and taxing blockchain-related industries. With prograssive tax rate ranging from 15% to 55% and strong regulations filters only regulated and qualified GameFi projects from Japan and can prevent small to medium sized gaming studios from competing in the domestic market.

Trend 3: Easier Onboarding 

More games will have their in-game wallet and social login, instead of replying on EOA (Externally Owned Account) accounts

As a prerequisite step to mass adoption, we will observe more crypto games design and integrate their own wallet authentication process. In other words, products and user experience has to be blockchain-agnostic enough to give the highest conversion out of the onboarding process.

Many of the projects in the Gamefi 1.0 era use EOA (Externally owned Account) to authenticate their gamers. One of the benefits of EOA is that there is no central authority to censor or block you from using the system.

However, this also means there is no central authority to turn to when things go wrong. In-addition, EOA authentication always involves a more complicated authentication that involves pop-ups or jumping out of the application. Consider a typical EOA on-boarding process demonstrated below as an example, 

EOA wallet has posed a severe challenge for reliable, secure and seamless onramp experience and it somehow prevents more decentralized applications, especially in niche like crypto games that emphasize un-interrupted experiences, from mass-adoption.

GameFi projects that use EOA to onboard users are like walled gardens that stopped the mainstream from learning how wonderful their games were. With more innovation, development and well as capital flow into infrastructure building, we will expect to see more projects adopt their own in-game wallet authentication that lowers user access barrier.

Trend 4: New Distribution Channels

Blockchain gaming adoption will drive channel payment fees down; New distribution channels will rise outside of App Store and Google Play

High channel fee payment to centralized application stores such as Apple Store and Google play has long been denounced and even raised legal issues. In August 2020, Epic Games filed a lawsuit against Apple stating that Apple's practices in the iOS App Store were anticompetitive.

Specifically, Epic Games challenged Apple's restrictions on applications from having other in-app purchasing methods outside of the one offered by the App Store. As part of the suit settlement, Apple has changed their policy to allow app developers to email their users about alternative purchase options. 

Adoption of blockchain gaming has offered another solution for game developers to avoid distribution channel fees. Currently we saw very few web 3.0  projects are willing to pay 15% to 30% of their gross sales to application stores.

More and more of them are building their own storefronts and leveraging crypto payments options. The STEPN team, a move-to-earn project, sets a standard of a brand new marketplace experience as it announced its browser version of the marketplace.

While it can be harder for smaller projects to develop such integrated features like STEPN did, there are cost-effective infrastructure providers that offer toolkits  to allow for cheaper on-ramp and checkout experience. 

Trend 5: New Business Models

New business models emerge and Less projects will be "play-to-earn" and more will be "free-to-play". In-game sales will still be the main revenue stream for most projects, despite a small percentage of projects' large secondary volume. 

According to the gamefi report by chainplay, 58% of investors worldwide stated that “Poor In-game Economy Design” is the number one reason for declining GameFi profits in the last six months. So what is wrong with most Gamfi’s economy design? 

In the traditional P2E (Play to earn)  mode, gamers will need to purchase assets (NFTs) before entering the game. Key revenue sources for previous P2E projects rely heavily on asset-purchase, in-game consumption and secondary market sales.

Most users are attracted to such a mode with the only goal to break even, and  many of them leave right after they earn some fortune, in fear of the game economy collapsing competently before they exit. With problematic user profiles, many game economies break down. 

In 2023, we would expect to see a transition from P2E to F2P (Free to Play) for most crypto gaming projects. We firmly believe that this transition will be the building block to bring crypto games to mass adoption.

In a F2P mode without asset sales, how can game studios make money? The key here is to increase revenue through in-app purchases. With easy on-barding and seamless on-chain translation, in-game sales would be made possible.

Therefore, asset sales will still be the main revenue stream for most projects, but it’s now taken into the game and the revenue comes from gamers who really liked the game but not those who want to break even.

We also expect to see more projects taking token incentives outside of the game’s economy loop, allowing users to focus on the entertainment while embracing ownership of their digital assets by being able to trade seamlessly with a beautifully built marketplace. Afterall, that’s what blockchain has empowered gamers, not monetary earnings. 

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There are several runaways in the crypto world that stubborn retail investors favor yet often return with empty hands: Wallet, Privacy, DAO.

These runways often endure high expectations from retail investors, but none of these runways has emerged a unicorn project so far, especially for crypto wallets.

After these two cycles, a couple of in-n-outs, and ecosystems filled with emptied wallets, still, some remained stubborn.

As a senior retail investor, I will try to rethink the current situation, dilemma, and future of crypto wallets without considering my current investment positions, traditional conceptualizations, or the outdated retail investor mindset.

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The Current Situation

Low market value. Crypto wallets did not live up to the hype.

For ordinary blockchain users, the most common mobile applications they use are the decentralized exchanges app and wallet app. And that is where most of the user's blockchain assets are stored and presented.

As of now, amongst the assets with the Top 20 highest market values, only one of them is the decentralized exchange asset (namely BNB) and 0 wallet-related assets was ranked on top. If we zoom out to the Top 100, the decentralized exchange asset occupied 5 of them, still with 0 wallet-related assets in the list.

As an industry under constant regulations, centralized exchanges are the primary target of supervision. 1

Whenever such fake news or "inside information" appears, the first thing investors do is withdraw their assets from centralized exchanges to their wallets.

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In the old-fashioned industry concept, the wallet "stores" assets means that assets are put on the chain. Since we hold the private key of the wallet, it feels more reliable to store assets in our own wallet than in centralized exchanges.

This explains why wallets are so essential to general users, they need something to generate address , backup, transfer, inquiry, and display of crypto asset.

For example, during the 2017 "94" regulation incident, Imtoken quickly became the most widely used wallet by global users. A large number of centralized exchange users (Huobi, Okex, Bitcoin China, etc.) transferred their assets to wallets to avoid the potential loss of assets caused by the exchanges’ closure.

Based on this, Imtoken quickly accumulated users and established its industry position for the next two years, becoming the most trendy company at the time. Soon after, IDG led the A-round investment of Imtoken.

The general usage and importance of wallets in the industry seem to be a consensus and are visible to all. Given the unanimous consent, the market value of wallet applications seem to be seriously underestimated and signify a good reason to buy in.

However, unfortunately, the market has not given us the expected feedback, and the market value of wallet projects has always been sluggish.

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The Current Situation

Crypto Wallet has been taken advantage of as giants’ tool

In simple terms, let’s look at a group of past financing information:

• In June 2016, Imtoken received angel round financing from the traditional institution Tisiwi; subsequently, IDG Capital led its A round financing.

• In June 2017, Blockchain obtained $40 million in B-round raise.

• In April 2018, TP Wallet completed several million dollars in angel round financing.

• In August 2018, Binance announced the acquisition of wallet provider Trust Wallet.

• In May 2020, Binance announced an investment in wallet provider Safepal.

• In December 2020, Math Wallet completed B-round raise led by Binance for $12 million.

• In November 2021, Coinbase acquired wallet provider Breadwallet.

• Before 2018, financing for wallets was mainly from institutional investors. After 2018, it was mainly from top centralized exchanges acquiring and investing.

The reason for the change is not hard to understand. As the number of cryptocurrency traders and the scale of funds exploded, exchanges became absolute industry giants, with a huge amount of capital to buy around.

For the sake of their own benefits, the platform has enough motivation to maintain and strengthen its monopolistic advantage and position.

At the same time, the blockchain industry itself has also been developing rapidly in recent years. In the past, the "trading" of the secondary market was the only demand and scenario in the industry. But now, with the rise of DEX, Defi, NFT, Gamefi, and SocialFi, the user scenarios are no longer limited to secondary tradings in centralized exchanges.

Users can choose to withdraw assets to the chain (wallet) to play with various interesting and profitable applications, protocols, and financial products, and the demand is strong. The wallet is now the best carrier of the industry's new needs and scenarios.

If central exchanges do not change and stick to CEX, there will inevitably be a large amount of user and capital outflow.

Spending money on acquisitions is the most cost-effective and efficient way for top centralized exchanges. Under the multi-chain structure, wallet serves as the entrance step of the acquisition funnel, and had undoubtly become the object of acquisition and strategy investment by top institutions.

For wallet providers, it is difficult to say that they are not moved by the opportunity for realizing their personal wealth after being acquired, given the dilemma of making a profit only through wallet services.

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Dilemma

Why is it that wallets are clearly important, but difficult to be profitable and capture value?

In my opinion, the core is that although the wallet is called a "wallet", it is not essentially related to the user's on-chain assets.

The business model of the exchange is clear. transaction fees, new coin listing fees, staking, market making, primary-secondary incubation, wealth management, mining pools, etc., it can be said that centralized exchanges can make a profit in any way we can or can’t think of.

The exchange is like a large pond, sedimenting real users and assets. With a large amount of assets in the exchange, as long as the exchange provides a possibility of making money, users will operate their own funds to use and gamble for it.

If a user wants to withdraw, the exchange can even suspend the audit, freeze the account, etc. In other words, the exchange has a strong relationship and is in a dominant position over the user's assets.

The biggest difference between wallets and exchanges is that, in essence, wallets do not really sediment users' assets.

Although users' assets are in the wallet, they are not really "in" the wallet. Instead, they are on the chain. The wallet only provides users with a way to manage their assets on the chain.

Because the assets are on the chain, they are completely controlled by the user. Users can use one wallet to display, or they can use another, and there is no threshold or barrier to switching between them. It is even harder for the wallet to organize the behavior of how users are going about transferring their assets.

Users have the lowest friction and the freest control over assets when they operate assets in the wallet. The problem this brings is the wallet’s weak relevance to the user.

Of course, we also see that many wallets have also been trying to break through such difficulties, such as launching asset management products, trying to oursource security solutions to other businesses, opening up information services, selling advertisements, and even selling hardware wallets, etc.

But many of them are mediocre that cannot make a lot of money or cannot capture value in an effective way by creating sustainable competitive advantages and barriers.

Future of the Wallet

Users use wallets because wallets are safer than exchanges and allows them to have stronger control over their assets. If the logic of exchanges is used to think about the direction of profits, it may be a mistake from the beginning.

Here we try to classify users according to their trading preferences, which can generally be divided into: token traders, currency hoarders, and application surfing users.

Token trading users care about liquidity and have a high trading frequency. These users like to keep their assets on exchanges and are ready to buy and sell at any time.

Currency hoarders, on the other hand, have a low trading frequency and care about the safety of their assets. Once they buy, they will not sell in the medium to short term. After buying, they are used to withdrawing from the exchange to the wallet or even to the cold wallet. This type of user usually has a large amount of funds.

The application surfing user likes to try various new applications and concepts, such as the latest web3, metaverse, defi, GameFi, NFT, etc. They may also participate in the donation and crowdfunding of some early DAOs. This type of user has a high frequency of using wallets and longer use-time of the wallet.

Of course, these three types of users are not constant, they are sometimes exchangable, and sometimes they exist on the same user at the same time.

From the perspective of how user changes in general , I think as the overall performance of the blockchain improves, on-chain applications will become more abundant, and the number of application-surfing users will continue to increase. Even if secondary market trading is still the largest proportion in the future, the overall upward trend is clear.

Wallet as a widely used user entry point, it is worth exploring continuously serving app-surfing users. Wallets should abandon focusing on user assets and instead focus on user behavior, creating solutions around the web3 and meta-universe needs of users.

These users currently have a lot of unmet needs, such as how to prevent phishing app deception, how to identify suspicious authorization, and how to identify misleading zero-width characters. And also how to quickly view chain data, various warnings, the latest developments of whales, etc.

These needs can be listed several pages long. Not every need needs to be met by wallets, but they can selectively meet user needs to explore a closer relationship wallets have with users, and with user assets.

Looking further into the future, blockchain will inevitably become popular and common. Once it is widespread, users will not need to know what underlying chain their device is using; this is not necessary and not what users are most concerned about.

All chains will be sufficiently secure and smooth, and what users need is a friendly entrance to find their favorite applications. All applications, whether they are on multiple chains or a single chain, make up the entire application ecosystem where users can surf endlessly and realize various possibilities of the metaverse and web3.

What users need is only a convenient and unified entrance. With a wallet in hand, web3 is all yours to explore.

Standing in the future form of wallets and looking at the present, maybe the term "wallet" is not appropriate and can easily lead to limitations and misunderstandings.

Once I have a friend in the wallet industry argued that wallets should insist on being simple, clean, and only having a single function because the core purpose of wallets is to provide asset storage services for users. Only in this way can it become an Alipay for encrypted assets.

This should be the stereotypical thoughts of most people about wallets. Wallets should be the counterpart of Alipay on web3.

However, wallets may never become Alipay, because these are two completely different asset forms, and the flow of their assets are in completely different ways.

Users do need a wallet, but they do not only need a wallet. What users need is a tool for displaying and transferring assets on the chain. As for tools, they may be useful, but they do not necessarily have independent value.

When wallets become tools, whether they are backup tools for top exchanges or tools for displaying user assets, they do not have high valuation potential. However, the "wallet" that has the potential to become the entrance of the future metaverse, web3, may be the "wallet" that we dream of, with valuation potential similar to that of exchanges.

As for how to become such a future entrance, I currently do not have a clear idea. It may be:

• The wallet becomes a DID identity system, managing wallet addresses on various chains with a unified identity system.

• The wallet becomes a reliable and secure web3 access portal through its powerful tool development capabilities.

• Investing and incubating to create phenomenon-level applications, and letting applications drive traffic back to the wallet.

• Positioning as a portal and app store, rather than an asset tool, and focusing on meeting users' diverse needs.

This is an open question. If you keep an eye on the development of wallets in this general direction, you may be able to capture some opportunities at the end.

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The battle between Solana and Ethereum has been an ongoing debate as more and more Web 3.0 startups look to leverage the power of blockchain technology. While both chains offer a range of features and advantages, their different structures make them suitable for different purposes.

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In our previous blog, we have detailed the major differences between the two public chains from a developer’s perspective. This time, we would like to go over the most important considerations to bear in mind for web 3.0 start ups when it comes to the desicion of choosing a public chain ecosystem.

What to consider when choosing a blockchain for your project

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Design:

Ethereum was designed as a general-purpose blockchain platform that enables developers to build a wide range of decentralized applications (dapps) on its network. In contrast, Solana was designed specifically for high-performance dApps. As a result, Solana is able to process transactions at much higher speeds than Ethereum.

Functionality:

Both Ethereum and Solana allow users to create and manage smart contracts. However, Ethereum's smart contract language, Solidity, is considered to be more user-friendly than the smart contract language used by Solana. Additionally, Ethereum's Virtual Machine (EVM) is more widely adopted than Solana's Virtual Machine (Serum).

Community Support

Ethereum

The Ethereum community is a place where people from all around the world come together to talk about recent developments, debate technical issues and imagine what future could look like.

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It's not just an online forum but rather its own self-sustaining ecosystem with thriving communities in different countries that have been growing exponentially for years now!

Online community

If you're looking for a place to discuss all things Ethereum, this is it.

These online forums are chock-full of people from around the world who share news about recent developments and imagine what tomorrow might bring as they debate technical issues at every turn in clever conversations that range far beyond simply coding languages like Solidity into more expansive topics such as politics or philosophy--even art history!

Upcoming Events

There are a number of Ethereum-related events happening every month that you can attend to meet new people in the community, learn about employment opportunities for yourself or your company's employees (especially if they're related), develop skills on topics such as blockchain technology itself by attending talks given at these conferences/workshops - there really isn't any bad time!

Meetup Events

The meetups are a great way to get in touch with other like-minded individuals who share your passion for Ethereum. Groups usually have around 20 attendees and they're always interested new people want learn about the ecosystem!

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DAOs

DAOs are an innovative way for you to find groups that share your values, collaborate with other members of the community and grow in influence. The potential impact on society could be significant!

Solana

Solana has a very engaged and helpful community of developers who are always happy to help out new members of the community.

Solana is committed to fostering a strong developer community. They achieve this by organizing regular hackathons and building an online and offline ecosystem that supports developers.

Join Solana Smart Devs

Hackathons are a great way to get developers excited about a new technology. They provide a forum for developers to learn about the technology and to collaborate on projects. Solana regularly organizes hackathons to promote the development of applications on the Solana blockchain. The six prize tracks that Solana is incentivizing include payments, gaming, DAOs, DeFi, web3, and mobile.

Security

Another important consideration when choosing a web 3.0 platform is security. Thankfully, Solana has this covered as well.

Solana’s special design of account system, Solana is subject to less attack due to its account system. Security is more emphasized in Solana’s architeture. Not only does this make Solana more secure, but it also makes it more environmentally friendly than Ethereum.

Cost:

Solana's high-performance protocol for scalability could be a huge advantage for startups looking to process a high volume of transactions quickly.

However, the hardware support for Solana is costlier in comparison, so startups may need to weigh the benefits against the costs. Additionally, Solana is not decentralized enough, so it may not be the best option for startups looking to build a truly decentralized network.

Botton Line

Ultimately, there's no easy answer to solana vs ethereum, but by carefully evaluating their specific needs, startups can make an informed decision about which blockchain platform is right for them.

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If you have any questions or need help getting started, our team is always here to assist you. Contact us anytime at sdk@mirrorworld.fun. We can't wait to see what you build!

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Mirror World SDK

Mirror World SDK is a set of cross-platform tools aiming to help developers integrate blockchain more efficiently, easily and cost-effectively.

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To start, let's briefly review the history of money and how it has evolved over the centuries. In the physical world in which we live, we have high demand and dependence on different natural resources, which often leads to resource scarcity problems. With the evolution of civilizations, however, we learned to store, exchange and trade these resources, issuing credit notes among local communities. Over time, the way humans perceive money gradually expanded from stone money on Yap to gold across the globe. This was when the gold standard monetary system and paper credit emerged.

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We can observe from the process that money often evolved after devastating economic crises, in which financial markets, far from trending towards equilibrium, are inherently unstable. There is thus an urgent need to recognize today's volatile, dynamic business environment, where we cannot expect a particular mechanism to address all the problems once and for all.

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In the essay Liberalism and Labour, John Maynard Keynes defines the political problem of mankind as combining three things: economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty.

As he further explains that

“The first needs criticism, precaution, and technical knowledge; the second, an unselfish and enthusiastic spirit which loves the ordinary man; the third, tolerance, breadth, appreciation of the excellencies of variety and independence, which prefers, above everything, to give unhindered opportunity to the exceptional and to the aspiring."

In fact, these three things should co-exist as the core values of society, shaping the policy prescriptions for a good economy. With the increase in manufacturing capacity, however, more countries chose to compromise by emphasizing economic growth and neglecting the other two. As a result, leading a policy design and implementation change became the last and only resort to deal with constitutional issues.

Today, despite the economic turmoil, we witness an increasing need for creating a virtual world, charting a path to future prosperity and sustainable development. Having that in mind, Mirror World Ecosystem defines the major objectives of economic growth as:

• Economic Efficiency: Match the demand and output of MWM Token for key ecological players.

• Ecological Development: Having Mirror World Mobile SDK as the foundation to generate quality content in bulk.

• Freedom & Democracy: Everyone can participate in building under the governance of DAO.

In Mirror World, MWM Token acts as the only token that connects all participants within the entire ecosystem. Hoping to address its economic instability, Mirror World not only publishes different types of games, but also offers a range of in-game mechanisms to facilitate trade and stabilize the token economy in different stages of growth.

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Over the last few years, NFTs have become a worldwide craze.

Almost everyone wants to own one or get rich finding a golden nugget to sell, similar to how the Doge meme sold for $US4 million.

But what is an NFT, and why do they exist?

Non-fungible tokens, better known as NFTs, are data units or records on the blockchain that confer digital ownership of an asset.

Examples of common NFTs include:

• Image file

• Digital artwork

• Music

• Items found in video games

NFTs live on the blockchain, the same technology that gave rise to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Since NFTs and cryptocurrency are both based on the blockchain, the terms are often used interchangeably. However, they both serve different purposes and are not the same thing.

Unlike cryptocurrency, each NFT is distinct, and only one copy can exist in a wallet at any given time. An NFT cannot be replicated like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which all have the same value, and can exist in multiple wallets at once.

An NFT is ‘minted’ or created using a digital representation of a physical object.

For example, instead of buying a physical oil painting, buyers receive a digital version of it with proof of ownership verified on the blockchain.

NFTs And The Mobile Marketplace

NFTs have been around since 2014, but they only gained notoriety after art houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s made headlines in 2020-2021 for record-breaking auctions of digital art.

Celebrity endorsements and NFT collections such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club further helped raise the profile of NFTs among consumers.

Besides art, the gaming industry has been another early adopter of NFTs.

In 2021, almost US$4 billion was invested into blockchain games and gaming NFTs or digital representations of an item found in a game.

However, gaming NFTs are a contested topic.

While some gamers welcomed announcements such as Ubisoft’s to launch NFTs for its Ghost Recon franchise, other studios changed plans after backlash.

Despite the aversion of some traditional gamers, blockchain-based games and NFTs have proved a hit.

Each day, millions log in to play games like Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, and other play-to-earn (P2E) titles for entertainment, to earn digital currency, or to collect in-game assets for profit.

But blockchain games have been unable to realize their full potential. Until now, most crypto games ran on the browser and required players to own laptops or PCs, which alienated a significant chunk of players in developing markets.

However, crypto mobile games are gaining traction. In three months of its release in December 2021, the multiplayer battle game Thetan Arena had been downloaded 10 million times on the Apple iOS and Google Play Store.

When combined, NFTs and the crypto gaming model offer mobile game developers new avenues and opportunities to explore and exploit.

Pros and Cons Of NFTs

NFTs solve several challenges that make industries restrictive and less creator-friendly.

For example, besides providing entertainment and an escape from reality, NFTs in video games allow players to make money.

For artists, creating digital copies of their work as NFTs allows them to access a global market online:

Here are some advantages of NFTs:

Advantages

• Ability To License Digital Assets:

An NFT cannot be replicated. Once a digital asset or NFT is minted, no other exact copy of it with the same value can exist.

Hence, the concept of digital ownership is now becoming a reality, just like how physical goods and assets have been licensed.

A digital painting or item in a video game can be sold on a marketplace just like shoes and books are on Amazon.

• Monetization of assets:

Converting a digital file into an asset means it has some value attached to it. How does this benefit people?

For artists, the ability to transfer the rights of their work online in a decentralized marketplace helps them gain exposure to the world market without interference of middlemen, which means higher profit.

For gamers, in-game items or assets that used to be walled in a very narrow ecosystem and were in the control of a central authority are now in their hands on a decentralized platform.

A gamer can monetize time spent playing a game and make decisions of what to do with their assets.

But not all the news around NFTs is positive. Being a new technology, NFTs are speculative and uncertainty still surrounds their potential.

Let’s look at some concerns surrounding NFTs:

Disadvantages

• Fears The Nft Market Is A Bubble:

The phenomenal pace at which the NFT market is concerned. There are fears that the initial hype and craze surrounding NFTs has helped create a bubble that will crash at some point. Rather than prove proof-of-concept, many investors bought NFTs to flip for quick profit.

For a new and unproven technology, a crash is dangerous. It can spell disaster for the technology as people can be just as quick to stop using NFTs as they were to buy and hoard them.

• Environmental Concerns

The same technology that makes the crypto world exciting and innovative is a hindrance to its long-term sustainability.

The blockchain requires large amounts of computing power to verify transactions and keep the system secure. This translates to higher energy or electricity consumption and higher carbon emissions.

In a now famous test, in 2021, digital artist Memo Atken analyzed 18,000 NFTs and found that each had an average carbon footprint equivalent to a month of electricity usage of a person living in the EU.

This value was the result of the combination of electricity required to mint, bid, sell, and transfer ownership of one NFT.

What Is The Objective Of The Mobile NFT Market?

As hinted before, NFTs allow artists, content creators, or gamers who’ve earned items in games to monetize their work.

For example, artists now list their work on a marketplace as an NFT.

But the NFT marketplace is more than simple buying and selling. An NFT creator can also collect royalties each time their work is sold in the future. This is an innovative feature of the NFT marketplace that’s attracting creators who are accustomed to one-time profit.

To understand the NFT ecosystem, let’s look at how to buy an NFT first:

Buying NFTs

Buying an NFT may seem complicated, but it’s a straightforward process.

To get started, all that a person needs to do is download a digital wallet to store NFTs and then acquire cryptocurrency to pay for items on a marketplace. (Check out the wallet solution provided by Mirror World SDK

Examples of common digital wallets in use include Coinbase Wallet, Electrum, Exodus, and Metamask.

There are also many methods to acquire cryptocurrency.

For popular crypto tokens such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, using a credit card on a third-party platform such as Paypal or Coinbase is sufficient.

To acquire more obscure tokens, buyers may need to use coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

But no marketplace is made up of just buyers.

Selling NFTs is just as crucial to the success of this ecosystem. However, the selling process is a more complicated process.

For a marketplace to maintain its brand reputation and keep users on the platform, sellers have to go through a few extra verification steps to be able to list and sell NFTs.

Choosing The Right Mobile NFT Marketplace

An NFT marketplace is where buyers, sellers, investors, and creators meet. A few popular examples include OpenSea, CryptoPunks, and Rarible.

Yet, most of these marketplaces are browser-based, meaning mobile users have little choice to shop for NFTs on an app.

As people are already used to traditional mobile eCommerce on Amazon and eBay, the next phase of growth and innovation is tipped to be driven by mobile NFT marketplaces.

But whether shopping for an NFT on mobile or PC, these marketplaces have unique attributes. To understand how to sell and invest in NFTs, we must understand the quirks of an NFT marketplace first.

The Function Of The Mobile NFT Market

Whether a creator, or investor, it’s important to understand what is required to get started on an NFT marketplace.

Here’s a breakdown of how an NFT owner can list and sell assets:

• Asset holder creates a profile on a marketplace of choice

• The owner creates and links a cryptocurrency wallet to store their asset(s)

• A niche or category under which the asset is to be listed must is selected and the asset uploaded

• The marketplace moderation team reviews the listing and either accepts or rejects the item

• If accepted, the asset can be bid on or sold at a fixed price

• When an NFT owner and buyer agree to a transaction price, the listing is removed

• The marketplace lists the transactions and moves the agreed price in cryptocurrency and NFT to the owner’s and buyer’s wallets.

Although following this step-by-step on a mobile marketplace like SketchAr or Panto NFT is possible, it’s a cumbersome process.

How To Choose The Right Mobile NFT Market

As a digital asset owner, great care and consideration must be practiced when choosing which mobile NFT marketplace to list on.

A few issues to consider include the security and privacy policies of the marketplace.

Centralized marketplaces are easy targets for cyber-attacks and identity fraud, as was seen in January this year when a phishing attack tricked supporters of CryptoBatz who lost money after connecting their wallets to a malicious site.

Another key issue to consider is the ease of cryptocurrency and wallet integration with the marketplace.

No two NFT buyers or sellers will be using the same digital wallet. Besides popular options mentioned earlier, a marketplace should make it easy for people to transact on a marketplace.

For people who want to create marketplaces to attract vendors to use their service, a host of other issues must be considered.

First, the platform must be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and not require technical skills.

For example, not every seller will know how to mint an NFT using anything but a GUI interface.

Another key factor for providers of marketplace services is the transaction speed. Any user, whether seller or buyer, will prefer a marketplace that can move coins and assets in either direction the fastest.

That’s why Mirror World’s mobile SDK kit is a great platform, whether you’re an NFT owner looking to mint and sell assets or a developer interested in creating a marketplace.

Mirror World SDK provides a developer-friendly solution that allows developers to implement the mint function and trade function in just a few lines of code.

For mobile marketplace developers, Mirror World’s solution provides pre-made templates that help launch a marketplace.

Instead of stressing or worrying about the nuances of being accepted on the Apple iOS or Google Play Store, developers can focus on their brand and marketing instead.

Key Takeaways

The NFT market is at a crossroads.

It has already revolutionized how artists create and sell their work and how gamers view their time playing as not just entertainment.

But for NFTs to make inroads into other aspects of our lives, making it as easy as possible to buy and sell NFTs is critical.

Here’s a review of the key facts:

• The NFT marketplace is growing, and a shift towards mobile could be the launchpad for the next stage of growth.

• Gaming studios are exploring blockchain-based mobile games as ownership of in-game items as an NFT provides incentives to players.

• The ability to license and monetize digital assets is ushering in a new digital economy.

• Selling NFTs requires an owner to mint and list items on the marketplace

• Sellers and marketplace developers can use Mirror World to simplify their processes.

If you are interested in Mirror World SDK, please check the following links:

Website: https://mirrorworld.fun/developer

Mirror World SDK

Mirror World SDK is a set of cross-platform tools aiming to help developers integrate blockchain more efficiently, easily and cost-effectively.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mirror_matrix

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9NkOWpL_b2kotDBmtE98dw

We are aiming to help all game developers integrate blockchain more efficiently, easily, and cost-effectively.

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GameFi Projects: How to be Resilient in Bearish Market

As we make our way toward the third quarter of 2022, we would like to share a few datasets for the GameFi market so far observed in the first half of 2022 according to data from Footprint Analytics:

• During the past 9 months, GameFi market cap has declined from $20 billion to $5.6 billion. Meanwhile, we can see the BTC market cap has also declined from $900 billion to $445 billion;

• GameFi active users have dropped from 42.63 million to 6.24 million since January 2022; GameFi trading volume has dropped from $3.13 billion to $0.18 billion;

• From May 2022 to date, the number of StepN average daily unique active wallets for the headline program dropped from 33,000 to 0.6 million; BNB profit dropped from 30,000 BNB to 32 BNB and SOL profit dropped from 110,000 SOL to 1,405 SOL;

• From Jan 2022 to date, Axie Infinity active users declined from 130k to 33k;

• From Jan 2022 to date, Splinterlands active users declined from 380k to 188k.

Amid crypto market turmoil, most, if not all, of the GameFi projects have suffered. The data not only shows the instability of revenue generated by the GameFi market, but also the user growth challenge that most GameFi projects are currently facing. While some might see dropoffs in the market cap and declines in active players & users as red signs to enter this sector, there is actually a great opportunity to change the game.

However, the game-changing strategy that we are talking about here is not the Ponzi structure that was widely used by most of the projects, but building a mobile version of the game that can really grow your user base. Many successful projects, in terms of user acquisition and growth (such as Axie Infinity, Splinterlands, and StepN), have resorted to building games on mobile, and have rapidly expanded their user base.

We believe that GameFi+Mobile is the next trend in the GameFi industry, both in the current phase of Web3 Game development and in the history of Web2 Game. Here, let's take another look at the recent example from Web2 Game: Stumble Guys, the clone project to Fall Guys, is currently ranked #1 on the iPhone free game charts in the US and UK, and in the top 10 on the Google Play free game charts in both countries. Since its launch in October 2020, the game has been downloaded 163 million times and has generated over $21 million in revenue. Distinguishing itself from the Fall Guys' strategy, Stumble Guys has chosen PC as well as mobile from the start, completely capturing a market where Fall Guys has not deployed.

But even with this trend, we would like to point out that there are still some obstacles to the implementation of GameFi+Mobile:

• The complex user onboarding process of mobile dApp: How to make a user with no prior blockchain knowledge experience a Mobile dApp without any friction?

• The complex process of on-chain interaction on mobile dApp: How to create a user experience that doesn't feel complex at all?

Enough chitter chatter, let's get down to the 5 strategies to solve the above dilemma and increase your user growth in this market downturn.

5 User Growth Strategies That Actually Work

1. How to improve the onboarding flow for better conversion?

   1. Players have to go through a series of tedious steps before entering the game. And there is also a very complicated cost of understanding for players who do not have any prior blockchain knowledge, which will lead to player churn. When the game allows login through players' familiar social accounts (e.g. Google, Discord, Twitter, Apple, Email, etc.), a cryptocurrency wallet is automatically tied to the user while logging in, which can help them interact with the blockchain in the game.

2. In-game limited assets and achievement system are the keys to direct player engagement with the game

   1. In-App Wallet and the game's built-in marketplace make it easy for users to purchase NFTs or access other in-game assets and store them directly in their wallets, making the game experience both exciting and smooth. Creating a marketplace centered around your game where players can exchange these crypto assets directly into real-world currency will help make your game more engaging and participatory than having users jump to other pages in the game to use the existing NFT platform. Additionally, for new blockchain gamers, you can leverage your community to organize frequent airdrops of your in-game assets and host in-game achievement events to attract more players directly to your game.

3. Free-to-Play will be a player growth strategy you can't ignore

   1. The common blockchain game mechanic of using NFT as a prerequisite to enter the game has some inherent user acquisition disadvantages:

      Firstly, it limits the number of players who can experience the game, which of course can be solved by designing different Breeding mechanisms

      Secondly, when the number of players or speculators grows and the number of NFT is limited, the price of NFT will rise, thus attracting many more profit seekers than real gamers. This situation will lead to a high percentage of speculators and exclude Web2 players. We believe that one of the strategies for blockchain games to generate more stable revenue is to lower the barrier to entry and expand the number of players in a F2P model. Further, the proportion of In-App Purchase can be increased by adding NFT Sell and trading to the game.

4. How to get more organic and natural traffic with a core SEO strategy?

   1. One of the core elements of SEO strategy: keyword research will help you understand who your target users are, what they need, and what they are looking for in a product or service by identifying the terms they are searching for; keyword research can also help you identify the topics that people are most interested in in your industry.

      This helps you provide content ideas that appeal to them and meet their needs, thus strengthening your brand's content strategy and leveraging more and better backlinks to increase your ranking in search engines and attract more users to bounce through the public traffic pool to your private website.

   2. Research long-tail keywords that have:

      • Low-enough Keywords Difficulty to rank higher on SEO (<40)

      • High-enough Traffic Potential to receive traffic and impressions once it is ranked high on SEO (>5000)

• Recommended tools：

  • Ahrefs - All-in-one Google SEO Toolset

  • Keywordtool - Comprehensive keywords research

  • Moz - Free SEO keyword tool + competitive analysis tool

5. How to ensure accurate and efficient delivery of messages and use of player behavior data?

   1. Email marketing allows you to have a stronger and more precise one-to-one connection with your target audience. Sending relevant game announcements, press releases and other information builds trust and increases brand credibility.

      First, collect as many players' email addresses as possible through contests, questionnaires, whitelists, and playtests. Next, create informative and attractive articles or announcements and send them regularly to ensure that interested players are the first to know all the information about your game in detail. Finally, through the continuous collection of player behavior data combined with the tracking tools of on-chain and off-chain data analysis, the tracking of on-chain data, including asset transactions, transfers, and players' off-chain game behavior data can help more than imaginable for game content iteration and economic system simulation.

Cross Platform SDK Offer

Mirror World provides SDKs for Android, iOS, Unity and Web that eliminate the complexity involved in Authentication, NFT Marketplace Trading, Tokenization, on-ramp and off-ramps for consumers. This allows Mobile developers to focus on building their own applications and easily integrate the best of Web3 into their Gaming, DeFi, and NFT applications.

With a market cap of only about 4% of the gaming industry, GameFi is still in its infancy, which means you can still take over the market quickly with the right, effective user growth strategy and a more user-friendly, smooth player experience.

As you focus on developing killer crypto games, we want to help you improve your player experience as much as possible by providing content on user growth strategies, economic model consulting, and blockchain technology integration SDKs. We have successfully launched two Open Beta tests of our own blockchain games with active player participation and experience scores of over 8, and can seamlessly complete the process for you.

Schedule a call with our experts today! Looking forward to discussing more of our user growth experiences and approaches with you!

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In this special episode, we invited CEO and Co-Founder Chris, Community Manager Ryan, CTO Jonas, and System Architect Le from Mirror World team, talking about crypto's mobile from three different perspectives.

Please view the original video here:

Section 1: Mobile Dapp Users—Pain Spots

From a user's perspective, the first topic we discussed is Solana mobile, which is quite a trend nowadays. In talking about common issues on Solana mobile, we shared what role mobile dApps' safety plays in terms of customer acquisition.

Ryan:

For me, Mobile end Web3 dApps need to be easy to use and have good accessibility. For example, you don't want an app that only allows you to trade three or four different tokens. Instead, you want it to have a wider array, which explains why multi-chain dApps are likely to be the future.

Another thing users want is a fast transaction. If you're trading from A currency to B currency, you want it to be almost instant, as the blockchain changes so much and the value of the tokens goes down constantly. As a result, you must be quick at taking that particular snapshot and creating your block. Users want transactions that work as a smooth network and have no stop congestion, rather than letting them fail.

Mobile and Customer Acquisition

Ryan:

The thing that really puts me off using the mobile market is that transactions occasionally fail. If I'm trying to buy an FTP or mint an NFT on, let's say, Magic Eden using Phantom, the process itself is quite strenuous, taking a while or a few attempts to go through.

The problem, therefore, has less to do with the market, but more with mobile devices, as the application you're using is not built for that particular process —— it is built for quick browsing.

We just saw the Solana saga, the new Solana phone. One of the leading brands they have is safety because it is well-adapted to Web 3 overall blockchain functionalities. Since safety is one of its main functions to be taken care of, mobile has a lot of potential for the market. Chris, what do you think? If we have the overall safety on Solana mobile improved, what is its overall scalability? What's its potential?

Chris:

From a user's perspective, I believe mobiles have historically been a lot safer than PCs, just because all of the security mechanisms can be instilled directly within, for example, apple chips. That is why Solana, aside from the Saga phone itself, also has a seed fault program within their Solana mobile stack SDK that they're providing, which essentially calls for the security measures of native devices like IOS.

I believe Saga is one step ahead of that in thinking of what are some frameworks that developers can use, making sure that none of the private keys leaks out and the execution environment is safe. As there is no sense of exploitation anywhere within the user experience, having a native device will surely make many more users feel secure and safe. However, at the end of the day, it still depends on the ecosystem and applications built on top of the hardware. In that regard, Solana Saga will definitely be attractive and appealing for those hardcore users.

Section 2: Deep Dive—Developers' Encounters with Mobile Dapp

The first question we discussed with developers is: what are some main differences between Solana Mobile and PC in your overall developing process？

Jonas:

I think mobile development is initially and natively different from building for PC and the web. Previously, you had to write in native and specific languages, but till now, we have solutions that allow us to write in a cross-platform way.

Once you write solutions for cross-platform applications and frameworks, you can deploy them to many contexts. The process has become more accessible in terms of mobile and particularly for building on the blockchain. I wouldn't say desktops had a lot of challenges, but they had a very specific subset of tools, and these tools were as strong as the tools built for the web by native desktops.

I believe the number of developers built on the native desktop is not as many as those built for the web. Whereas on the web end, there are a lot of tools and frameworks offering faster support to back-end and front-end applications

In the native context, it takes a lot of work. You have to work very closely with the teams to write these frameworks, such as Ethereum, JS for Web3, and JS for Solana, as it is important to work very closely with the teams, understand how to perform the RPC protocols, and how to package the transactions and send them.

Differences between Solana Mobile and PC for Developer

Le:

I have a straightforward example demonstrating why the mobile experience differs from the desktop experience. Many decentralized or Web 3 apps start with desktop browsers; whenever you want to transfer tokens to someone else or assign a transaction, a pop-up window will show up, directing the user to create, authorize, and approve the transaction to the chain.

That works for the desktop, but when it comes to the mobile side, where users want to start a transaction within the game, jumping to a different third-party mobile wallet app and then switching back could be an unpleasant experience.

That is one incentive why we want to focus our resources on the mobile end.

Section 3: Sum Up—Experience Exponential Growth with the Best Mobile Dapp Experience

Given that Solana just launched their Saga and mobile is kind of the talk of the town right now, why is it important for users to go mobile and Web 3?

Ryan:

That is an excellent question. The main reason is that it makes mass adoption easier. At the moment, not everyone owns a PC, but probably 50%, maybe more of the world is actually on mobile.

It is easily accessible data, allowing everyone to access technology from anywhere in the world you've been building and creating. Since you have to use particular applications that you have to access from a PC, such as Megaplex, candy machine, or bubble gum, to build, the fact that you can do this from your mobile now is a game changer.

We will probably see a lot more Defi project projects out there with different VCs investing in that. And yes, it is fascinating.

Today, Blockchain and Web 3 are developing rapidy and there are new chains and products releasing everyday. While knowing that more people are going to notice and develop mobile devices after the release of Saga, we also asked Chris what are some current market niches for mobile SDK. Similar to the situation in which the new Apple Store was released earlier, what are some current market niches for mobile dApp SDK?

Chris:

That is an interesting question because when you think about the first original iPhone, there is no App Store tied to the first hardware, which is very different from when Solana released Saga. I'm sure the App Store will be tied together with the product itself.

But that being said, I think a very limited number of applications have been deployed now. Without a lot of users on crypto aside from centralized exchanges, it led products like Coinbase and Binance to gain vast numbers of users in the past couple of years, especially coming from developing countries for Binance and the majority of the U.S. market for Coinbase.

As these centralized exchanges brought a wave of users, we believe games will be another explosive niche after the development schedule of these games near completion, where it takes about one to two years for a smaller scale game and maybe three to four for a larger one. There will surely be users coming into the space simply because they are fans of those entertainment products.

However, at the same time, there is a longer time schedule. Something like StepN is brilliant in that it dives into the nature of human behavior and incentives of speaking financial rewards, making the interaction with the product much easier. Such logic always applies to future developments, whether it be Play-to-Earn or Move-to-Earn products. There will also be waves of users crowd into the product itself. I'm not suggesting that there would be sustainability in the long run. Whereas as an acquisition strategy, it has merits to it. And once they're in the ecosystem, there is probably a higher possibility that they will try out different applications.

We consider some social, notification, and gaming apps that will bring more users into the space, but it is hard to tell at this point. From our perspective of Mirror World, we genuinely want to be product agnostic, where a mobile stack is just a mobile stack, solving the problems for any mobile developer that wants to join this space. If you want to make the payment, it is the same across games, social, or marketplaces. Ideally, it can offer the best experience as a mobile product rather than just a vertical edge.

If you are interested in Mirror World SDK, please check the following links:

Website: https://mirrorworld.fun/developer

Blog: https://blog.mirrorworld.fun/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mirror_matrix

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9NkOWpL_b2kotDBmtE98dw