The cryptocurrency space looks to disrupt most industries, with gaming being particularly prominent. Many tokens are game based, from Sandbox and Chiliz to Decentraland and Enjin Coin. Some have built their own protocols whereas others use the Ethereum or Solana blockchain.
Within the gaming space, there are tons of subcategories. For example, Decentraland is a virtual reality platform where people can buy land and other items. It even allows you to socialise and play games in the ecosystem.
Crypto casinos are also surging in popularity, helped by shirts sponsorship of English
Premier League clubs like Leicester City. New games are available to play such as crash games, where the aim is to bet on when the object will crash. You must settle the wager before the object like a car or a kite crash and then you’ll win.
Nevertheless, traditional casino games are also available at dedicated crypto casinos. These include everything from slots online and table games like roulette, blackjack and poker. You can also wager cryptocurrency in niche games like bingo, keno, craps and scratchcards.
The largest gaming token is Immutable, which has a market cap of just under $2bn at the time of writing. Cryptocurrency is the first two-layer solution for NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The blockchain tackles some of the issues on Ethereum such as low scalability, illiquidity and a better user experience.
NFTs or non-fungible tokens are unique digital assets that prove only one person or organisation owns them at one given time. Therefore, the notion of NFTs ties in with the gaming industry seamlessly because in many games, you unlock skins or collect assets.
One aspect that is holding gaming cryptocurrencies back is the lack of progress into the mainstream. Currently, only a few large game developers are experimenting with in-game cryptocurrencies. For instance, EA Sports is currently considering whether to build a metaverse, which is a type of virtual reality.
In a metaverse, players use virtual reality goggles such as the Oculus Rift and play their favourite games, socialise and trade digital assets. One of the titles suggested that EA launches it with is EAFC, the successor to the popular FIFA video games.
Facebook changed their name a few years ago to Meta, and it’s expected that the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is strongly interested in the “metaverse”.
It’s fair to say gaming will play a huge role in mainstream adoption, coming in all shapes and sizes from racing and shooting games to sports and puzzles.
The video game industry continues to grow year on year and is expected to be worth $580bn by 2030. The future trends include cloud gaming, artificial intelligence, NFTs and in-game currencies.
The big issue that gaming cryptocurrencies currently have is entering the mainstream because protocols are too expensive and too slow. The main one, Ethereum, has been criticised for being too pricey when sending gas, and the time it takes to send is not instant.
On the other hand, cryptocurrency companies are becoming household names such as crypto.com. The company sponsors the F1 and other sporting events and even offers users a crypto NFT trading platform, where they can trade digital assets such as art.
Many new games are taking the cryptocurrency space by storm. Take Axie Infinity, a popular crypto game where players collect and breed Axies to battle one another and win prizes. Moreover, many card games are growing in popularity such as Gods Unchained and Splinterland.
Overall, the gaming cryptocurrency space looks great, with a wide range of protocols from Solana and Hive to Ethereum and Cardano all platforms to build on. Solana in particular has done so much for the NFT and gaming space in such as short space of time.
