The gaming industry…
My gaming addiction started when I was around 5 years old. Back then games came in floppy disks, and to start them I had to put a sort of command line in DOS… I was 5, I didn’t know how to read or write, so, every single morning I would wake up my mother at 6 am so she could start the game for me, poor woman. Prehistorik 2, Centurion, Prince of Persia, I played so many PC games back then.
But PC games weren’t the only games I played! I played Crash Bandicoot, Vigilante 8, Tekken, Spiro, Spider-Man, Galaga, MediEvil on PlayStation… I played Pokemon and Super Mario on Gameboy… And these were just a few of the ones I played when I was a kid, I’m 24 now, and I’ve been a gamer all my life, I have games that have shaped my life in more ways than one! I created friendships and enemies in these games, especially when the internet joined the battlefield!
When the internet first appeared everyone was afraid of it, my parents were afraid that I would get stalked by some crazy online weirdo with an ice-cream truck and a creepy mustache (it never happened), still… Internet shaped the gaming industry like no one ever did!
Going from small servers with 10 people battling on Counter-Strike to the massive MMORPG servers of World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, the internet came and revolutionized the whole industry! It allowed for one to fight, trade, bond with any person in the world that had access to the internet! The internet united humanity under one single world, the online world.
Some of the best memories I have were spent in these games, and even though I hung around with them in my virtual life, I also hung around in real life with the people I played with. Yes, maybe we shouldn’t have stayed up so late, yes, maybe we should have gone out and played football, or hide and seek, yes, maybe we should have done that… but we didn't, and we are no more nor less happy than the ones who did.
We have good memories, we developed bonds that have endured to this day! Damn, if I have a problem in my life they are probably the first ones I contact to ask for advice…
And just like the internet shifted the gaming paradigm forever, blockchain is also going to change it… and a coin that is attempting to do this is Enjin!
Enjin!
Enjin, an ERC20 token made and customized for the gaming industry by gaming fanatics! What fanatics? Well, you never heard of the website Enjin? Let me explain…
The Enjin website has been around for years, it basically allows for the creation of easy-to-use websites targeting the gaming industry. Guild’s websites, Clan’s websites, Minecraft server’s websites, etc… there are thousands of websites tailored by the Enjin company! It’s an already established company that is estimated to make around 8 million annually! They create a place in the world for gamers to unite.
With the blockchain revolution starting, this already established and worldwide famous company decided to create a token targeting the gaming industry! To be more specific, targeting the real ownership of virtual items.
What they intend to do is associate in-game items like currency, weapons, consumables, skins, etc… to cryptocurrency and wallets through the use of a Smart Contract, the process is called minting.
What basically happens is that a developer using the SDK(software development kit) made available by Enjin can make a smart contract with the name, start supply, inflation, max supply, whitelist and price in ENJ of a certain item, if for example the price of the item is 10 ENJ the developer can mint that item just by sending 10 Enjin coins to the smart contract, and the Smart Contract will send the item minted to his wallet.
This minted item can be dropped by a monster in-game, can be bought in a shop, can be anything at all in the game, imagination is the only limit this system has, and it can be used by the player.
This system allows:
- True Ownership
You actually own the item, you can send the item to someone’s wallet and the item becomes theirs! Valuable currency and legendary items can never be taken away from you by hacking the game. The item is yours, it’s bound to your wallet, encrypted in the blockchain, and only you have access to the item. No matter what item is! You only lose it once you sell it or melt it.
- Passion through control
This system will create collaboration, pride, and passion for the game by giving players more control over their own Virtual goods and their own virtual lives!
- Anti-fraud
At the moment it’s estimated that for every purchase of an item through a shady website 7.5 items are lost to fraud, Enjin can work around this problem by creating in-game markets, in-game stores, that go around this specific problem. The item is associated with a Smart Contract, the transaction is made through a Smart Contract, you don’t need to trust a shady fellow, you only need to trust the code in the Smart Contract!
- Developers revenue
Game developers will have increased revenue, first by putting up stores that take a percentage of the in-game market fees for them, second because every time a player melts down an item to get his base ENJ a percentage is taken for the developers (max 50%). This would make game developers revenue for years to come! And would also decrease shady outside markets.
- Specific token creation
It allows for the creation of subscription-based virtual goods, sites, and communities with specific tokens tailored just for them. Imagine a guild with a specific minted currency that acts as payment for helping out new members of the guild.
- Value retention
The minted item is always going to have the minting ENJ prince associated to it, which means that, even if the game ends or the person is banned, the item can be melted down to his core ENJ price.
- Higher value than the minting value
Even if the price to mint an item is 10 ENJ, the item can go for much more because of the supply and demand in the in-game market, an item that costs 10 ENJ to mint can later cost 1000 ENJ through the in-game market,
- Renting system
It allows for the leasing system that I’ve spoken many times! Imagine buying a sword, a rare skin, anything at all and renting them out to a player through the use of a Smart Contract. You will still be the owner, the item will be associated to your wallet, but a Smart Contract is made where for 10 months the item is rented to another player’s wallet for an amount of ENJ each month.
This makes the game much more interesting. Depending on the Smart Contracts we can have betrayals, alliances, wars, anything is possible through the use of Smart Contracts.
- The creation of game-related jobs.
The gaming world is exponentially increasing in size, every week we have more and more games, more and more players, more and more game-related jobs, it’s a rising industry, not only to program them but also to play them. Just go look at Twitch.
Sodappopin, Ninja, Summit1g are some of many streamers that have earned thousands if not millions just playing and Streaming games, for years. Now, imagine what this whole new market allows, imagine farming the same dungeon for weeks to get a sword worth 10.000$?! Imagine being paid to be an online bounty hunter, where a guild pays you to kill the enemy players. Imagine being paid to carry items from place A to B safely. Yup, with Enjin these can be someone’s job in the future… In-game farming, in-game helping noobs, in-game PvPer, in-game guild hall protection, all of those can be jobs in the future with the help of Enjin
- A multiverse of games
All different Enjin games will be interconnected in a massive massive multi-universe, with money going from one to the other, with just one single character, a character that goes from one game to the other, no barriers, no boundaries, a decentralized united gaming universe under one single currency!
Team and advisors
I’m not going to say the Team is perfect, but for what they are trying to do, they are next to perfect.
Just among many powerhouses in the gaming industry, we got Maxim Blagov, Witek Randomski, Robin Hanson, Ilija Rolovic, Roger Walco, the team is composed of people with 10 years or more of experience in the game industry. People that have worked as creative Directors at Bioware and EA, done AAA games, with experience in VR and mobile. The team is amazing! They have the knowledgable and influence to make this project move forward in the industry.
Partnerships, use-cases, and adoption
Minecraft
They have an SDK tool that allows for Minecraft servers to mint items in the Enjin Ecosystem, it’s estimated that there are around 100.000 Minecraft communities around the world. Many of these communities have blogs, forums, and websites done by Enjin.
Unity
Enjins is developing and already got a sort of finished SDK tool for games developed on Unity, estimates say that there are around 1.000 unity-based games, think about the possibilities if these games adopt Enjin, or if the next games adopt the token
Donationcraft
Donationcraft is powerful e-commerce system that already processes millions of dollars per month that is going to use Enjin
Ark
An SDK tool for ARK is being developed.
Multiverse
The Enjin multiverse is probably the biggest project and use-case in the Enjin Ecosystem so far. It’s a collaborative of many game developers trying to create a single universe of games, where characters can go from one to the other, where items can have benefits in other games, one ecosystem of games.
You might be thinking that they are probably crappy games… well, not actually, they are games with more or less good graphics, with good gameplay, and they already have communities of gamers around them.
9lives is the one I’m more interested in, it has good graphics, gameplay and it looks a lot like a fusion of Diablo with Battlerite. When doing my research I happened to stumble on one of the 9lives game developers and he introduced me to the blueprint system that they are running with.
The blueprint system is a system where one can buy a limited supply blueprint, for example, a blueprint to craft skins and sell those skins for ENJ. Yup, skins that can go for thousands of dollars, just look at Fortnite, the Skull Trooper is worth between 4000$ and 5000$ and this is without the demand that a free fast and safe market allows. From what I’ve been told one of rarest 9lives blueprints that has a max supply of 38 creates a 500$ skin…
Mobile Wallet
This one really triggers me… There is a mobile wallet that is called Enjin Wallet, it was created by the Enjin developers, and it’s designed in a way that allows for an easier and faster access and trade of the minted items created in the Enjin ecosystem. The Wallet has been out for months, it was available for download in many places, and any crypto enthusiast knew this. The wallet doesn’t directly increase scarcity or demand for the token. The wallet only facilitates the mass adoption of the Enjin ecosystem through, fast, easy to use transfer of items.
This same wallet is rumored to be integrated into the new Samsung S10, I’m still waiting for clear signs that it is indeed integrated into the new S10, still… in no way whatsoever does the wallet increase the token scarcity and if it increases demand it’s only because the Enjin token shares the same name as the wallet. The price still pumped a hundredfold because of one rumor. Well, whatever… I call it dumb money.
Tokenomics
Tokenomics are based on 2 things, increased scarcity and increase demand. Let’s see the different ways this works in Enjin:
Minting items “traps” ENJ in those items, at least until they are melted down back to ENJ, at the moment there is already 1% of ENJ trapped through the minting process - Increased Scarcity
Every new game and community that wants to develop on the Enjin ecosystem needs Enjin to send to the Smart Contract to mint items - Increased demand
Gamers will want to buy items, create communities, etc... for the games they are playing - Increased Demand
Community
The community? Well, what do you think a community of gamers is like? A toxic bunch of kids... Yup, just going to the Enjin telegram makes my point. Enjin telegram is populated by a bunch of toxic kids with their pimples and hormones without any logical reasoning behind their arguments, almost all of them with game characters and anime characters as profile pictures.
I asked 4 or 5 times why the wallet was such a big deal, why would it increase scarcity and demand, their answer was always the same: “Because Samsung!” and “MOOOONNN!”
When I asked if there was a way to get passive income with Enjin the answer provided to me was “dividends are a scam, it’s a security, you are going to lose everything…” to which I replied “Security lool, you Americans and your SEC, your SEC has no power in my country! Begone! ”
I was called fudster, hater, retard, stupid, moron, etc… I could say I hate the community, but I don’t, mainly because I was presented with a few good people that sent me messages through telegram explaining me the things I didn’t understand. One of those was the 9lives developer that spent one hour telling me how the blueprint skin system works and how I could farm items without even playing so it wouldn’t require much work! We had some communication problems but we were able to understand each other.
Shady out of the game markets
Enjin introduced a bound and whitelist system to prevent out of the game shady markets. How this works is that a bound item can only be melted or traded with a whitelist wallet, using both systems makes it so only approved exchange wallets are allowed to trade certain items.
My problems with Enjin
I have some problems with Enjin...
When I look into the tokenomics of a token I always look into passive income, compound growth, exponential ROI, without almost no effort, a sort of snowball effect where the return I get is automatically invested into more return, basically something that I can invest in and just leave it generating income without me doing much.
Enjin looks awful in this system...Even with the rental system and the blueprint system that 9lives provides, I would have to actually play the game and know what the players are interested in. There is no way to make it compound unless I learn about the different games and different in-game trends.
There is no way to get passive income off of Enjin in a quick and easy way. This is a deal breaker for me.
The game developers have tried to provide a good passive income system with founder’s tokens that release items from time to time, etc… but that would mean that I would be in the hands of the game developers, the founder’s tokens only release what they choose, I don’t like this system, I like to have at least a little control.
Fees, I already told you about how the developers get a percentage of the in-game market fees and a percentage of the melting down minted items. Even though there is a max limit, they are the ones that choose how much percentage they receive, and this is a big turn off for me. At least as an investor…
Bots, bots and Chinese farmers can just rush into the game and farm all the items for themselves, can game devs keep up with this? Maybe. Can players report bots to earn some ENJ? Maybe. But I do see it as a problem and I’ll be looking closely to how they deal with this sure to come problem. Bots can unbalance the whole ecosystem. Maybe this will finally make gaming companies fight against bot users, it would be a first...
Time, Enjin and the minted items run on the Ethereum blockchain, and, at the moment, the Ethereum blockchain is slow, requiring many confirmations to confirm a transaction. From what I’ve seen Enjin does have a way to circumvent this, they use a trusted platform and a wallet token to make the item available but not tradeable until all the confirmations are done.
Will I invest?
The token is as solid as they come, the developers, the team, the partnerships, the development, the whitepaper, it’s a really really solid project, probably one of the best I’ve seen around! But I won’t invest…I won’t invest mainly because of the first problem I wrote.
There is no compound growth/ passive income in this token without knowing the ins and outs of the different games, I would have to do exhaustive research to find out what the best items are, which isn’t worth my time. Maybe, in the future, they will provide a passive income system that I would like enough to invest in, but at the moment there is no such system. If I was about to finish my degree in computer science I would consider this investment, but since it so far away I don't think it's worth, the time/ROI isn't worth.
Further info: I could have gone more in-depth with the post, explaining the way the wallet works, how the trusted platform works that circumvents the slowness of the ETH blockchain, bound items, whitelists, etc... but I don't consider it necessary, the more important part is the tokenomics But for those that want to, go ahead and research, I spent one whole day reading all the blog posts, whitepaper, etc...
Images Free Source - 1, 2,3,4,5,6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 - Tradingview snapshots too.
Question of the day: Did you guys know that the same leasing system will be made available in Steemmonsters? Do you guys know if aggroed has any intentions of developing a blueprint system like 9lives has? Maybe I should give him a call and give him this idea if he doesn't have it already...
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