Why we believe in gaming NFTs
Since the Axie Infinity hype cycle in 2021, the blockchain gaming space moved towards becoming the number one vertical on the blockchain when it comes to user activity. More than 50% of crypto wallet activity and roughly one-fifth of the 2021 NFT sales volume originated in gaming.
Although the recent macroeconomic pressure and collapsing DeFi projects led to decreasing NFT sales volumes in the short term, the overall amount of gaming NFTs sold increased by 20%. VC investments of around $2.5b deployed in Q2 2022 underpin the bullish hypothesis that blockchain, as a new layer of technology, will accelerate consumer spending in gaming similar to the launch of mobile games or the introduction of consoles before.
We have a strong conviction that decentralized ownership of digital gaming assets will lead to more users being willing to purchase them as full autonomy over their assets gives them the option to sell, rent or lend the assets or otherwise dispose of them whenever they feel like it. This creates lots of new business opportunities.
Do you remember the time when you could borrow Gameboy cassettes?
Back in the days when the overall gaming market was mainly driven by physical game copies, there was a substantial secondary market around used games. Apart from secondary sales, renting games from video rental stores or borrowing games from your friends was very common until low-cost, high-convenience (centralized) digital gaming content took over.
Through the decentralization of digital gaming content enabled by blockchain technology, NFT lending and borrowing are currently experiencing a strong revival, as proven by the fairly well-known scholarship model in games such as Axie Infinity.
In the Axie case, the necessity arose from a high monetary entry barrier, which we expect to fade away in future games, to allow the broader consumer market to access blockchain games. However, we believe that scarcity will remain a driver of NFT prices, thus there will always be high-value assets.
Let’s make use of idle assets
True ownership and autonomy over digital assets also attract collectors and investors seeking value appreciation of gaming NFTs without the intent or the capability to use them in games. This is certainly not a new concept. Think back to the time when Pokémon trading cards ended up being collectibles that were merely used for playing, while some of the scarcest ones are worth millions today.
However, the great advantages that digital assets, such as trading cards, possess over physical goods are that they don’t show signs of wear and tear and that it is much easier to borrow and lend these assets to people all over the world without having to deal with complex and time-consuming logistics, if the right infrastructure is in place.
We observed that several key needs around borrowing, lending, and delegating gaming NFTs on both the owner and the borrower side have so far remained unfulfilled across the ecosystem, which is why it is time for an easy-to-use platform that enables the lending and borrowing of these digital assets. Or in web2 terminology: it is time for an “Airbnb for gaming NFTs”.
Unbound — the one-stop solution for lending & borrowing gaming NFTs
After conducting more than 100 interviews within a customer focus group of NFT holders, game developers, and gamers, we saw a unique opportunity to satisfy this need through our existing core assets: our gaming community and the existing tech stack that allows us to efficiently and effectively match NFTs with gamers.
What makes our product unique?
- Ease of use. A single, intuitive interface to lend, borrow, manage and track all gaming NFTs.
- Scalability. A tech stack that is independent of any game application and blockchain.
- Security. No NFT transfer to the gamer, only utility delegation. You keep the NFT ownership.
- Community. An existing player base and a gaming community of 10.000+ gamers.
Benefits for an entire ecosystem
Our mission is to enable the highest utilization rate of gaming NFTs possible by democratizing their accessibility in an effortless way, through our platform. Therefore we serve NFT owners and gamers alike:
In addition to NFT owners and gamers, game developers benefit greatly from our platform as it allows them to grow their user base by eliminating items sitting idle in passive NFT owners’ wallets.
The road ahead
Currently, we are running our platform in a closed beta test phase with our early adopter customers and a pool of 8000+ chess NFTs in the very popular Immortal Game. 3,000+ players will be onboarded onto the platform accordingly. If you’d like to try Immortal Game for free, sign up here and get your NFTs within one hour!
On top of that, we are currently prioritizing which games to onboard next, as various large NFT owners have expressed their interest in deploying high volumes of NFTs across multiple games. As per our current forecast, we will accumulate a significant 5-digit NFT volume towards the end of the year that will be made available to the gamer community.
If you are a gaming NFT owner, wish to join Unbound’s closed beta phase and contribute to its early testing, we would like to invite you to express your interest here. In case you have any questions, you can always reach out to our partnership lead via email at bertrand@unboundnation.io or Telegram at @Bertienamnam. We look forward to hearing from you!
