Cryptoblades, GameFi, Fuels Binance Smart Chain’s Growth

As Axie Infinity continues to soar and write history, Cryptoblades, a casual NFT game operating under Binance Smart Chain (BSC) which also integrated their own style of play-to-earn model is also rewriting the GameFi history.

All data in the article are as of Aug. 12, 2021. This is an opinion article by Sean Millare.

DappRadar, a platform which enables its users to track, analyze, and discover decentralized applications shows that more than 621,000 new users were on “Cryptoblades” in the past 30 days surpassing Axie Infinity 271,000 new users in the same period.

On the other hand, Binance Smart Chain is eclipsing Ethereum blockchain when it comes to transactions per second and daily transactions after a decentralized exchange named “PancakeSwap” on BSC has seen an increase in users. These users are either traders, investors, gamers, and even those just trying out play-to-earn games. (Read More: Play-to-Earn Cryptoblades Philippines Guide: What is SKILL Token)

On his Twitter account, Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance tweeted, “#BinanceSmartChain handled 10M+ transactions yesterday. #Ethereum handled 1.2M.” This just shows how effective and future-centric Binance Smart Chain is, especially in today’s world where games are really fuelling the whole economy and growth of the cryptocurrency market.

Changpeng Zhao posted another tweet saying, “#DeFi and #GameFi are growing” when another Twitter user asked him a question on whether BSC can already handle up to 20 million transactions a day. Zhao replied that he is not an expert and they will soon both find out if BSC can really handle that amount of transactions per day.

This type of competition in the industry is really healthy overall as it pushes every project to raise their standards and be creative on how they will achieve their plans and roadmap on time, but the real question hiding along with this trend is why these projects are rushing to become the main and ideal blockchain or platforms? (Read More: Beginners Guide to Binance Smart Chain: BSC Philippines Guide)

DeFi which means Decentralized Finance is the previous trendsetter before the so-called GameFi (an acronym which combines Games and DeFi). GameFi is the gamification of Decentralized Finance where players can exchange their time and effort learning the rules of the game for in-game tokenized currency which they exchange for real money. This type of gaming economic model is popularly known today as “Play-To-Earn.”

Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum are just two blockchains that developers use to create and integrate their games, utilizing either BNB or ETH, to interact with the games they play. 

As of this writing, if you try to send ETH on Axie Infinity Ronin wallet based on “Axie.live,” it will cost you around Php875 per transaction This is a lot, that’s why players save first their farmed Smooth Love Potion (SLP) before withdrawing out to further maximize their earnings.

For us to further appreciate the importance of blockchain’s scalability for a game, we have to look into Axie Infinity and Cryptoblades’s play-to-earn economic model as they are the top games of the two major blockchains that we have right now.

Cryptoblades is using one (1) in-game tokenized currency which is called “SKILL”, that can be exchange through a Binance decentralized exchange like “PancakeSwap” or “ApeSwap.” You have to trade your BNB for SKILL.

Just like every other NFT game, “SKILL” can be used in trading game characters and forging of weapons. However, every movement inside the game will require players to pay a certain amount of gas fees in BNB.

If we compare it to Axie Infinity, once your Axies and other in-game items are already inside the Ronin wallet every movement in the game is already free (note: 100 free transactions per day) and new players might say that Axie Infinity has less cost long term compared to Crypto Blades. (Read More: Comprehensive Axie Infinity Scholarship Guide [English])

However, because of the limited scalability of Ethereum blockchain and soaring gas fees, some players delay their decisions inside the game. For example, they won’t withdraw SLP or trade until it becomes more profitable to do so.

Thus the full potential of Axie Infinity cannot be maximized for now as they have to delaysome movement due to uncontrolled gas fees. But, we are not saying that Axie Infinity is not a good game as they don’t have control over the development of the whole ecosystem of Ethereum. That is the reason why they created the Ronin sidechain to escape such problems in the main Ethereum blockchain.

With that, players and investors must look into GameFi or NFTs on a long-term perspective and expect that there will be blockchains that might develop slower than their counterparts. Even so, all of them are software that can be updated anytime to become the new, best version of themselves. Still, no individual can conclude where this trend will be going.

This article is published on BitPinas: Cryptoblades, GameFi, Fuels Binance Smart Chain’s Growth