Steem Monsters Is Showing Steem dApps How To Be Self-Sustainable

One of the most promising developments for the Steem blockchain in 2018 was Steem Monsters. The implemented a collectible trading card game in the tradition of Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone on the decentralized blockchain, revolutionizing the gaming industry overnight. But the most prominent aspect of Steem Monsters is that it brings new money into the ecosystem instead of living from Steem Power delegations.

As interesting as it is to finance a project for Steem with massive delegations from the community or even whales, like Steemit's Hive account@mrdelegation, this is not a relyable business model in the long run. The reward pool of Steem is a powerful tool to create funds, but it is limited and hence under heavy competition. And finally, relying only on delegations is basically moving the ecosystem in circles, which can be empowering at starters but is not sustainable over time.

Steem Monsters is using the popular Loot Box System, where they sell a Starter Pack for 10 USD to get access to the game and then 5 random cards in Booster Packs for 2 USD each. The surprise through randomness is a huge aspect of games like these and Steem Monsters puts that on a new level by introducing the decentralized marked place for their tokens. For a fee of 5% users can sell their monsters to others which lead to a flourishing ecosystem with market places like Peakmonsters who get a share of the monster fees. After just half a year some of these cards are already trading for thousands of Dollars.

As some competitors like Gods Unchained got millions of funding to launch a similar game on the Ethereum blockchain, Steem provails through its market leading speed (3 seconds per transaction, only EOS is faster) and free transactions. The simiplicity of owning the cards via a Steem blockchain account and getting a fast and easy access to them is unchallenged in the industry. Allowing the purchase of cards via Credit Cards and PayPal brings in the much needed outside money, that ends up in the cards and ultimately in Steem when liquified.

The challenging and new game style attracts a lot of new users, which will make Steem Monsters a potential killer app for the Steem ecosystem. Kids and adults alike are drawn to the fast and rewarding gameplay. The monsters are like digital gold and proof themselves to be market resistant, when Bitcoin draws the crypto world into lower bears. This powerful concept is just the icing on the cake when daily and weekly tournaments are introduced, where money prizes will enflame a whole new competitiveness and monster evalutation.

Steem Monsters is on fire and creates with a simple concept a massively complex ecosystem. The early adopters are already getting 3x and higher returns on their cards and we haven't even talked about upcoming features like card delegations to others for passive income streams. The creators Hive account@aggroed and Hive account@yabapmatt are not just enriching the Steem blockchain but shock the entire gaming industry with a totally new market model for games.