The Play2Earn (P2E) revolution is here to stay. Or so says Absolute Reports, who forecast that the P2E market will reach a $2.8 billion valuation by 2028, up from $776 million in 2021. Games like Axie Infinity have risen to become incredibly popular, and now a new project called Metacade is seeking to reach mainstream success in the growing GameFi market.
In this article, we’ll explore what made Axie Infinity so popular and why Metacade could soon be overtaking it as one of the most valuable P2E projects.
Axie Infinity (AXS) Offers Multiple Ways to Earn While Gaming
Axie Infinity (AXS) is a P2E game built atop the Ethereum blockchain. It’s a Pokémon-style game where users collect and battle Axies. Axies are virtual monsters that are stored on the blockchain as NFTs, which players buy and sell on the Axie Infinity Marketplace to create battle-winning teams. While these monsters might seem cute, their prices are anything but: some Axies have sold for as much as 369 ETH, worth over $800,000 in July 2021 when it was bought.
The incentive to compete and win these duels is the reward of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), which can be traded for real cash. However, this isn’t the only way to earn by playing Axie Infinity. For example, Axies can be bred to create new Axies with unique traits and sold for a profit.
Some players even rent out their Axies to other players in “scholarship programs.” These programs have helped players in lower-income countries, like the Phillipines and Indonesia, to replace their regular working income during the Coronavirus pandemic, demonstrating the potential for P2E to open up entirely new income streams for players across the world.
What is Metacade (MCADE)?
Metacade is a community hub destined to be at the center of the GameFi industry. It’s a platform for anyone to log on and link up with other gamers, crypto investors, and Web3 enthusiasts in a fun, vibrant community setting while immersing themselves in everything GameFi has to offer.
Metacade’s core philosophy is making sure that everyone is able to make the most out of P2E, no matter their resources or background. Part of this vision is giving players equal access to discover the latest P2E games, learn how to maximise their gaming income, and even have a say on the games they’re most excited to play.
Metacade’s ultimate goal is to create the world’s first player-owned virtual arcade that is responsible for generating some of the market’s best P2E games. To achieve this goal, they’re introducing plenty of innovative features that are likely to disrupt the gaming industry significantly over the years to come.
Why Could Metacade (MCADE) Be a Leader in P2E?
Web3’s Ultimate P2E Resource
As mentioned, Metacade wants to level the playing field for anyone to start playing and earning more from P2E games. But what does this look like in practice? In Metacade, you’ll be able to find reviews, game breakdowns, and leading GameFi alpha posted by some of the industry’s most successful players that open doors for anyone looking to get ahead in P2E.
Rewarding the Community
Of course, it would be naive to expect that experienced players are simply going to share their knowledge out of the kindness of their hearts. That’s part of the reason GameFi can seem a little daunting for new players: there isn’t really an incentive for those with the expertise to make things easier for others. Metacade is addressing this by providing those incentives with the MCADE token.
Every time someone posts a review, P2E alpha, or content that simplifies things for others, they’re rewarded. This means that even if you’re new to P2E, you can still earn MCADE just for sharing your thoughts on a new game you’ve been playing!
Producing Community-Backed Titles
One of the most significant factors that could drive Metacade to dominate the P2E industry is the launch of Metagrants in 2023. Metagrants are a type of grant given to game developers that win exclusive funding competitions. In these competitions, developers post their game ideas for the community to vote on amongst dozens of others. The most popular is allocated funding from the treasury, with the option to beta test their game alongside its most avid fans in Metacade’s native testing environment.
Becoming Fully Decentralised
Eventually, once Metacade reaches self-sustaining status, the core team will step back and allow it to become a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO). This will see leadership roles handed over to Metacade’s most prominent members while allowing each MCADE holder to vote on the future direction of the community. Key issues, like new features, partnerships, tokenomics, treasury allocations, and more, will be decided by a community referendum, fulfilling Metacade’s vision of becoming the world’s first player-owned virtual arcade.
Which Is the Better Investment – Axie Infinity (AXS) or Metacade (MCADE)?
Axie Infinity was one of the first P2E games to go mainstream. It demonstrated that not only were P2E games able to garner a massive audience (Axie Infinity had nearly 3 million players at its peak, according to a release from the developers) but that it had the potential to change lives across the globe by opening up a novel revenue stream.
With this in mind, consider Metacade’s position in the GameFi market as a platform for P2E gaming. You can think of it like Netflix: movies rise and fall in popularity all the time, with a select few attaining legendary status. But would you rather invest in the movie, or the platform that shows those movies?
In this scenario, Axie Infinity is like the movie; it’s done incredibly well, but there’s a chance it might fall out of favour as new games come along. Meanwhile, Metacade is like Netflix, a platform where users go to find and play these games that is relatively unaffected by a single game’s performance.
While this analogy simplifies a lot, it’s easy to see the comparison. And given that GameFi is expected to explode at 10x the rate of traditional gaming by 2025, according to a recent report by Crypto.com, you can expect Metacade’s user count to rapidly expand as more players join the gaming revolution. For this reason, Metacade represents a potential once-in-a-lifetime opportuntity to get in on the ground floor with one of GameFi’s most promising projects.
You can participate in the Metacade pre-sale here.