GameFi in 2024

After experiencing the GameFi game craze and bubble burst represented by Axie Infinity in 2021, GameFi began to recover in the second half of 2023. The explosion of the AAA blockchain game Bigtime has attracted widespread market attention to GameFi. On January 9, 2024, the Arbitrum Layer3 Xai game proprietary chain was officially launched; on January 12, the game platform SkyArk Chronicles completed a US$15 million financing led by Binance Labs. The combination of new public blockchains + new games has become the focus of the market, and many users have high hopes for GameFi's future performance.

What is the current development status of the GameFi track? Which projects are worthy of attention? We will analyze it one by one for everyone.

Overall analysis of GameFi track

In 2021, GameFi-related project financing totaled more than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. Excluding the market value of GameFi tokens, the total valuation of the development company of the GameFi project alone is nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars. After experiencing a cold winter in the Web3 market, about 31% of GameFi projects have stopped development or are inactive.

Thanks to the recovery of the market and the popularity brought by the new GameFi project, the overall activity of GameFi has increased significantly. Taking Ethereum's leading blockchain as an example, the transaction volume of games such as Gala, Stepn, Axie, and Sandbox reached a record high in the past year at the end of 2023.

In October 2023, the primary market financing in the GameFi track exceeded US$100 million, and many GameFi projects raised tens of millions of US dollars again to continue to use the development, testing and promotion of games. With the public testing and official launch of a large number of games in 2024, the market's attention to GameFi is likely to increase.

Key projects on the GameFi track

1. Ronin Network

Ronin is an EVM blockchain specifically designed for games, launched by Sky Mavis, the development team behind the once-smash-hit chain game Axie Infinity, a project that has generated more than $1.3 billion in revenue.

After experiencing a security incident in 2022, Ronin Network gave up adopting the original Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus. PoA is based on the reputation-based consensus mechanism. The Sky Mavis team selects node verifiers based on credibility and they verify transactions. Among the node validators are well-known companies such as Binance and Animoca Brands. The PoA consensus mechanism can quickly confirm transactions, but it makes Ronin Network too centralized. After the upgraded consensus, Ronin Network is more decentralized than before. The number of validator nodes has increased from 9 to 22, and there are a total of 27 candidate validators. However, Sky Mavis stipulates that governance validators must be validators, and companies such as Sky Mavis, Yield Guild Games, NonFungible.com, Nansen, Google, DappRadar DAO and Animoca Brands are designated as governance validators, and there are still 15 validators left. The quota is given to the community. Currently, Ronin Network’s total TVL is approximately US$150 million, and its ecological projects are developing rapidly. Sky Mavis has developed Axie Infinity, Ronin Wallet, game NFT trading market Marketplace and game integration platform Mavis Hub. In 2023, Ronin has cooperated with game studios such as Directive Games, Tribes, Bali Games and Bowled.io and will launch multiple games on Ronin Network.

2. Immuatable X

Immutable Immutable X is built using StarkEx technology. Validium's off-chain data security mainly relies on off-chain node security. In order to achieve high performance, Immutable X sacrifices certain security by using off-chain transactions. If a certain number of validators are controlled, user funds may be maliciously frozen or transferred. Currently, a number of games are running in the Immutalbe X ecosystem, such as Gods Unchained, Guild of Guardians and Illuvium, among which Guild of Guardians and Illuvium have issued game tokens.

3. Xai

Xai is Layer 3 built on Arbitrum Nitro, focusing on the incubation and user experience of GameFi projects. Its main features are the back-end integration of the wallet, providing a transaction-fee-free gaming experience and a unique game economic design. Xai is currently cooperating with the game team Ex Populus to develop two games, Final Form and LAMOverse, on the Xai chain. Xai has issued the token XAI, which will be used as a gas token and node reward for the Xai chain. More uses will have to wait until the games on its network are launched to be known. Xai is currently included in EagleEye, and users can query or monitor related on-chain activities.

4. Gala

Gala Games announced a strategic partnership with DWF Labs in November 2023 to drive mass adoption of Galachain. This cooperation has brought the GameFi project that became popular in 2021 to once again attract market attention. Gala Games has launched a number of games and expanded its business into music and movies. In January 2023, Gala Games optimized its token model. When purchasing and paying with Gala tokens on the Gala platform, the Gala tokens spent will be distributed to nodes to increase node income. 

Conclusion

GameFi is a fast-growing and innovative field that combines blockchain technology and gaming. It has experienced ups and downs in the past few years, but it has shown great resilience and potential in the face of challenges. The emergence of new public blockchains and new games has brought new opportunities and excitement to the GameFi track, and attracted more users and investors. GameFi is expected to continue to develop and expand in 2024, and become one of the most popular and influential sectors in the Web3 ecosystem. Some of the projects that are worthy of attention are Ronin, ImmutableX, Xai and Gala. These projects have demonstrated their creativity, quality, and scalability, and have gained a large and loyal fan base. GameFi is not only a form of entertainment, but also a way of empowerment and value creation for the users.