GameFi: dawn of a new era

Gaming is a top entertainment industry; it is bigger than the music and film industries combined (USA News Group, 2019) and generated $152.1 billion global revenue in 2019 (Statista, IBISWorld, NewZoo, 2020). Millennials and Gen Z age groups are passionate about gaming: millennials were found to spend $112 monthly on gaming (SuperData, 2019), 43% of Gen Z played online games daily (Cybercultural newsletter, 2020). During the pandemic, video game traffic increased by a hefty 75% and is poised to grow (Verizon, 2020). Blockchain-based games and digital collectibles are a booming new trend in this industry and have the potential to deliver true digital ownership to 2.6 billion gamers worldwide, allowing trading of gaming assets and the much-needed interoperability. 2020 has seen a 30% increase of crypto players and a significant boom in the trade of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

GameFi (“game” + “finance”) most commonly refers to blockchain based games that enable players to earn crypto tokens: play-to-earn games. This type of games utilize non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as in-game assets that enable true digital ownership, transferability and tradability of these assets.

The GameFi space has been booming over the past year growing in users, transaction volume and dApps (decentralised applications) numbers. According to DappRadar, there were 544 blockchain games at the end of 2021, a number which is more than double in comparison to 200 games a year before. In the first week of January 2022 alone, the top 10 blockchain games had more than $841 million in transaction volume, and attracted more than 2 million unique active cryptocurrency wallets. (Bloomberg, 2022).

At Lympo, GameFi is merged with another big trend of digital assets on blockchain: sports-themed NFTs. The sports memorability industry is part of the collectibles market, which currently has a global value of $370 billion (Forbes) - and that’s without blockchain. While it is expected that in the upcoming years, most of the collectibles will remain off chain, the NFT market value is predicted to grow to reach $75 billion by 2025 from about $18 billion in 2021 according to the investment bank Jefferies. Sports NFTs is one of the most popular NFT categories alongside the play-to-earn NFTs. Lympo’s NFTs operate at the intersection of these two significant categories fueling the growth of the whole NFT market.