I would love to see MetaDAO lean more into gamified systems design. VC investors spend so much time and energy doing due diligence that when an investment gets approved, the majority of stakeholders involved have already convinced themselves to be long-term bullish.

MetaDAO ICOs are different in that i) the time horizon for payouts is generally much shorter, and ii) there is an expectation that the majority of DD has already been completed, with the result being "bullish."

Extending the time horizon for payouts would prob do more harm than good short-term, and generally speaking, you don't want to add additional friction or create a worse UX when trying to scale a product unless the goal is to increase monetization of existing users.

However, there is little to no downside in incentivizing stakeholders to do better DD. Adding a gamified points system that rewards users as they engage deeper with projects would shift user behavior for the better, create more robust user profiles for better targeting in the future, and embed a feature set that can later be leveraged to help projects with things like distribution and UGC.

Now imagine what happens when the two converge (it's already happening).

All that really matters is whether or not Zora can create positive return on ad spend (ROAS) for advertisers. They don't even need that much scale (as proven by the recent boom in web2 rewarded ad networks).

Respectfully, for as long as ROAS is negative they are nothing more than a meme regardless of any ethical or philosophical considerations.

Best way to test this going forward will be to see if they are a) able to attract advertisers and b) can retain them.

Adding a bit more context and a counter opinion...

The best way to think about this model is supply vs demand, where the supply side is apps (supplying ad placements, AKA ad inventory), and the demand side is ad networks.

An app's job is to show as many ads to a user without destroying their retention rates. An ad network's job is to serve the right ad to the right user in order to maximize the chance of a conversion.

The base value of an ad is derived purely from how much an ad network thinks it is worth. An app's potential ad revenue is derived from its ability to sell as much ad space and have as many different ad networks compete on price as possible.

All that is to say, the value of an ad has an indirect correlation with the reason Jeff Bezos is on the app (i.e., the content) and a direct correlation with how many times an ad will be shown, how valuable he is as a customer, and how many ad networks want their ads in front of him at the same time.

Based on this, I would argue that it is the platform that is the source of value when it comes to ads. Without ample ad inventory (ad placements) and enough diff ad networks competing for impressions, the main sources of monetary value would be things like in-app purchases, subscriptions, and B2B sales.

For content creators specifically, they have no impact on ad-derived value aside from electing to turn ads on/off on platforms like YT. This is why the main ways creators monetize are via affiliate marketing, sponsorships, and member programs.

Before creator coins can even claim to change this dynamic, they need to have the right infra in place, and even then, their ads are relatively lower net value if the inventory (ad placement) is shallow and the value of the underlying user is deemed to be not very high by ad networks (currently the case for most crypto apps).

The internal struggles and token drama make this a hard one to bet on at these prices. Esp. when you compare it to other ecosystems that have seen significantly more traction.

At a high level, I think the trends are largely the same, with the main difference being that blockchain games are more scalable when focused on a more Eastern audience.

You could say that fully on-chain degen experiences, like xpet for example, saw more traction in the East and I think this will likely continue in parallel to the interest in ordinals and the Bitcoin ecosystem.

I think it would go a long way if staking rewards were more closely aligned with game partner product performance.

Long term, the ability to gamify yields and staking to specific games is a cool idea to align incentives and reduce "freeloaders" riding the waves of the higher-performing games. Treasure attempted this but didn't quite accomplish it.

I'm bullish on the idea of TON but still waiting for them to execute on it. Distribution is still super hard on TG and monetization is also an issue.

Correct. Bitcoin is by far the most normie consumer friendly token (maybe par stable coins but a lot of misinformation circulating there).

Aside from the nan-rewards model highlighted in this report, sustainable P2E is like an oxymoron. I think Sorare has a good model. In general, any tournaments-based earning can be made sustainable without as much work as, say, an MMO like BigTime.

In terms of reading materials, I think there are some good Twitter accounts to follow on the topic but the truth is no one has figured out the playbook yet.

This is a great YT video on the topic. It's focused on Web2 but gives you a good idea of how much more complicated things get when using blockchain rails.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrf1cou_yVo&t=1s

Big Time had a solid foundation. The first hour+ of the game is a struggle, with a terrible tutorial, and there are still a lot of features missing, such as in-game group chat and P2P trading.

Anyone who said the game is ready for players either hasn't played yet or is lying to themselves. But it was shaping up to be a fun game (with 2-4 more years of dev).

bot players 100%

bot volume hard to tell

There is no clear value in bot trading for trading sake afaik but there is certainly a bunch of crap items listed so take that number with a pinch of salt (just image how many white t-shirts they have). That said, this is a problem for all UGC platforms and curation is becoming increasingly important.

On the topic of curation, I haven't seen anyone build it yet (apart from a few systems in games like Shrapnel) but UGC curation is an interesting area that blockchain could add value - increased transparency and effective value distribution

In traditional markets, the name of the game is to ensure a user's lifetime value (LTV) is higher than the cost per install (CPI). Seeing as Yuga isn't really doing any UA right now, they should, at the very least, ensure that these games are generating more APE revenue than the DAO is spending - but note that this still doesn't necessarily make them a "cash flow-positive business." I can only imagine that Yuga labs has a monthly burn rate of 7 to 8 figures.

It may have been an objectively simpler game but still performed better than HV-MTL in most metrics.

I'm most curious to see if this was because hypercasual game are better received by the "player base" or if it is just because hype/fomo peaked at that first game and the novelty has since worn off.