On December 15th, Overworld, a Binance-backed mobile RPG, minted its second collection — 6k Incarna NFTs. The project sold out in less than a minute and is now sitting at a ~2.5ETH FP, with just under 3.7k ETH in trading volume.

 

On December 18th, Fusionist, a Chinese-led gaming ecosystem with 3 games in development and its own vertical blockchain stack, had its TGE on Binance launchpad. The token reached a peak price of $18, with a market cap of $400M and $1.22B in 24hr trading volume within 24hours of launch.

Both projects solidified the return of a crypto gaming narrative, a meta that is capturing an increasingly large percentage of retail attention.

Below is the TLDR on both projects, if there is still an opportunity for outsized returns, and what other projects are on my radar.

 

Overworld

Overworld is the flagship game of Xterio, a blockchain gaming platform that recently raised a $15M strategic investment from Binance Labs (bringing their total funding to $55M). The game is led by Xterio co-founder Jeremy Horn, who, it is fair to say, is the primary reason the game has seen this level of success.

Very little is known about the project, apart from it being a multiplayer mobile RPG. That said, Jeremy has been very forthcoming about his belief in blockchain rails as a powerful incentive mechanism that can enable gaming teams to leverage social relevancy to raise future rounds of funding.

By the end of Jeremy’s 6-week marketing campaign, the project pre-sold 3,900 NFTs to strategic partners (YGG owns 47, BreederDAO owns 300, among a number of other influential groups). The remaining 2,100 were heavily overallocated, leading to a total of $800k being spent on gas and 1686 failed transactions — although the team did well to reduce FUD and rectify the situation. Off the back of the successful Incarna mint, Overworld’s highly limited Supporter Key collection, which has been trading at <1ETH since April, recently saw a sale for 27ETH!

The collection has one of the healthiest price charts I’ve seen in a while, and I expect it to remain strong in the lead-up to Overworld’s TGE event sometime in Q1. Overworld incentivizes hodling by leveraging a snapshot points mechanism for the airdrop that was reset upon listing the asset for sale. Future buyers will still gain access to the airdrop, and holders of 3 NFTs will get a further bonus to encourage future sales.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a relatively lower sell-off pre-reveal as holders value the airdrop over rarity but expect more volatile prices closer to TGE. I also think the token is definitely one to keep an eye on, purely based on Jeremy’s proven ability as a Web3 founder. That said, I don’t see much merit in holding either the NFTs or token for long as the game is far from completion.

 

Fusionist

Fusionist is a relatively unknown project in Western circles but has been steadily picking up steam in China and Japan over the past year. I covered the project here in the Asian Gaming report, but the TL;DR is that Fusionist has built an in-house blockchain vertical stack (blockchain, wallet, UA tools, etc.) along with 3 games (1 launched, 1 in alpha, and 1 in early development).

What I like the most about Fusionist is that it has built each game with a specific user archetype and demographic in mind. Similar to Overworld, Fusionist are also excellent marketers (just in different circles), amassing a sizable social media presence (even accounting for the bots) and a respectable Web3 player base.

NFT holders who completed various in-game and on-platform takes were eligible for an airdrop (some netting 7-figs). Additionally, in the lead-up to TGE, stakeholders were able to stake BNB on Binance Launch to farm ACE tokens (>3% yield).

Upon launch, ACE quickly hit $14 (was previously trading at $6 OTC) and amassed >$11B in trading volume. Given the project’s questionable social/community vanity metrics, it is unclear how much of this volume is organic or how sustainable the current market cap of ~$300M is.

However, it is important to remember that ACE is not a single gaming token like BIGTIME or SHRAP. I think a better comp would be Echelon Prime’s PRIME token. PRIME might currently just be the core reward token for Parallel, but it has an end goal of becoming an ecosystem token used between multiple first- and third-party titles.

My largest concern with Fusionist, aside from the arguably bloated metrics this early into the token’s life (my guess is that Binance helped a lot), is the lack of awareness in Western circles. This is by no means a deterrent to growth, but there are no historical examples of a gaming token maintaining a top-10 position from a purely Eastern-based, non-English-speaking community.

That said, as outlined in that same Asian Gaming report, I remain confident in the fact that blockchain gaming will ultimately scale in the East. Maybe ACE will become the flagship token for these largely unrepresented markets… For that reason, I believe it is definitely worth keeping on your radar.