The article was originally posted on Hackernoon.
With GameFi entering beast-mode in 2024, new entertaining products are sprouting up like mushrooms. While the developers effortfully try to stand out with elaborate gameplays, the play-to-earn model remains at the heart of their projects.
Today’s report is analysing how the latest crypto games keep up to the robustness, fairness, and sequence of the financial incentive; simply put – distinguishes games that are worth your playing time, and games that are not.
Let’s dive in.
Contenders List
The research is specifically focused on the games launched by centralised cryptocurrency exchanges within The Open Network (TON). The reasons for the criteria does not end on chronological relevance, while these projects are one of the freshest in the market
In this day and age, GameFi products act as marketing funnels for the crypto companies; through offering playing experience, exchanges are introducing both “hot” and “cold” audiences to the product ecosystems in a more straightforward way.
Consequently, this strategy acts both as a precondition and incentive for building a product around the P2E model, seeing that this deeply correlates with the natural user fostering strategy that exchanges implement.
Ultimately, four contenders were chosen for the report:
Moonbix, a Binance-developed game, in which players control avatars in a space-themed environment, using a claw to collect items within a limited time. They earn points through daily tasks and game rounds, which can be exchanged for tokens
Coinsweeper, a tribute to Minesweeper launched by Bybit, where players uncover safe tiles while avoiding mines. Players earn points based on their performance and can compete for rewards through a leaderboard system.
Bull Run, an application dedicated to the birthday of WhiteBIT crypto exchange, in which players participate in daily Bitcoin price prediction challenges on Telegram, choosing whether Bitcoin will rise or fall. Accurate predictions help their chosen in-game character race faster, competing for daily crypto rewards.
OKX Racer, a relatively long-standing “clicker” by the eponymous company. In it, players predict Bitcoin's price movement as either "Moon" (rise) or "Doom" (fall) within a five-second timeframe. Correct predictions earn points, and consecutive wins activate multipliers for increased rewards.
How will the games be evaluated?
The goal of the report is to highlight the best-rewarding game from the point of relation to trustworthiness and fostering features. Thus, they will be rated upon the following criteria:
User count – a metric that will reveal how a game is staying up-to-date and highlight the consistency of rewarding process
Prize pool, which reveals a size of financial incentive offered to users
Technical and financial factors – a range of metrics, which reveal the essential qualities a potential gamer heed in a product. It breaks down into disclosing rewarding systems, fund conversion accessibility, bugs history, and more.
All factors combined will help you get a bigger, more compelling picture on each game’s factual returns.
User count differs dramatically.
With over 8.4 million users, Moonbix clearly dominates the list, as well as OKX Racer that was notably released two months earlier. Bull Run, while existing less than a month, has already attracted over 571,000 users – more than Coinsweeper, launched nearly simultaneously with Moonbix.
Rewards
Prize pool is another criteria where numbers diverge.
Coinsweeper and OKX Racer lead the list with nearly identical amounts of 70,000 USDT. Meanwhile, Moonbix’s total prize pool can’t be estimated, as it will clearly depend on the in-game points’ conversion rate into a specific token – MBIX.
As of writing time, MBIX value remains unknown, while token’s listing is planned to take place in the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025.
Crucially, Moonbix is the only game to promise self-sustained token as a rewarding currency. Coinsweeper players will receive payouts in Mantle (MNT), while OKX Racer offers rewards in USDT. Notably, Bull Run players are already receiving the payments in USDT, Leksis (LEKS), and WhiteBIT Coin (WBT).
At the same time, Bull Run is the only game among contenders which ensures factual daily rewards of visible size, apart from the ultimate monthly bonus. The total rewards are received by the end of the week – every Friday.
By contrast, other games utilising airdrop model – single token payout by the end of the activity span. Bybit, for example, gives a clear pool distribution across gaming activities, while the exact in-game points (also known as Mantle Bits) conversion rate to MNT is to be determined based on the total number of users engaged.
Rewards for OKX Racer players are promised to be announced later.
Still, OKX Racer stands out by its daily bonuses feature alongside Bull Run, and it is the only game in which you can receive points in your absence. Other products do not envisage idling.
Crucially, severe bugs have not been mentioned in the communities of four games, which makes them all rather playable products.
To sum up:
While sharing similar ideas and origins, the four aforementioned games differ dramatically not only in terms of gameplay, but also in rewarding framework and financial metrics. However, all of them share the necessary robustness, as the security measures at Binance, WhiteBIT, Bybit, or OKX have been verified.
Now, it is all up to you, the user experience you seek, and rewards you expect. In the end, the individual preferences are the essence!
