Blockchain is the technology behind cryptocurrencies or digital currencies. Cryptocurrency is the currency of the metaverse, a gigantic market, according to a study recently published by McKinsey & Co. The consultancy estimates that the metaverse will have a turnover of up to US$ 5 trillion this year, with US$ 125 billion coming from Web3 games.
McKinsey & Co points out that the current version of the metaverse is largely driven by games, while applications emerge in socializing, fitness, commerce, virtual learning and other uses. More than three billion players worldwide have access to different versions of the metaverse. And then, how many of them you thought were in Brazil?
Using the information I get in my day-to-day life about the games market, I can say that the number of fans of Web3 games in Brazil is infinitely greater than the number of BR games offered. At the height of Axie Infinity, the game that has become synonymous with the NTF game, Brazil was among its top three audiences.
While we have few national releases starting to appear, we see foreign companies selling their games here, and some specialized influencers are starting to grow their audiences, teaching how to play and how to earn money with NFT games.
Devikins, released a year ago, was developed by the studio of Brazilian Sérgio Nunes Jr, a developer who worked at EA, where he worked on FIFA, and who set up MoonLabs Studio in Canada a year ago. It is an NFTs and crypto game, with little creatures called Devikins.
Another Brazilian who is engaged in this market is the consultant Carlos Estigarribia, director of business development at Wappier, a company specialized in Web3, based in Portugal.
McKinsey & Co found that, in 2022, investment companies put US$ 120 billion in the metaverse. This total represents double the money invested in 2021.
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is the technology used for digital currencies and NFTs to exist. As the idea of Web3 is to give greater control to the user, decentralizing services, technology is essential in this process.
Decentralization helps with the point that generated discussions on Web 2: the internet belonging to a few companies, which gave them a lot of power. Web3’s goal is to end the middlemen.
A tangible example is that banks will no longer be needed in financial transactions when consumers start to adopt digital currencies.
On Web3, money is native to the network, which makes it global, eliminating banks, governments and other actors. The money will be globalized, instantaneous and will belong to its owner. There will be no more percentages to be paid, nor different types of exchange. You will use the same money here or in Europe.
This movement will influence not only the games industry, but also the most diverse areas of education, arts, communication, among others. The result is that giants like Google and Facebook will no longer have power over the network. Meta is already shaking things up as far as the metaverse is concerned.
For scholars at consultancy Goldman Sachs, cryptocurrencies are just the beginning of blockchain adoption. For this American investment bank, blockchain is the most disruptive technology that has emerged since TCP/IP, when in the 90s we had the democratization of the internet with http.
Read more about blockchain:
Blockchain in games
Play-to-earn, or play-and-earn games as they are being called recently, only exist thanks to the blockchain. Driven by the onset of COVID, they are mostly popular in poor countries like the Philippines. There, entire families learned to play to earn money and survive playing Axie Infinity during the pandemic, when job vacancies were scarce.
For those who don’t know, Axie Infinity is a type of Pokémon-like game where the player earns money as a reward for their actions.
Dapp Radar data shows more than 101 million transactions involving NFTs in 2022. The number is almost double the previous year, which was 58.6 million. Just a reminder that 2021 was marked by the token boom. At the time, the technology became popular around the world and was adopted by large companies and celebrities.
Even though the number of transactions almost doubled from 21 to 22, NFT prices fell, resulting in a similar trading volume when comparing the two periods. In 2022, NFTs had a turnover of US$ 24.7 billion, and in 2021, the turnover was US$ 25.1 billion.
In my opinion, the current moment is one of learning. The market offers opportunities for free. An example: the cryptocurrency exchange Binance invested US$ 200 million in the purchase of a Forbes shareholding, with the purpose of teaching the mechanics of crypto and NFTs to readers.
We here in this blog will publish enlightening articles like this one, about blockchain and metaverse, as well as daily news of what happens in the market, so that, after consuming this content, the reader can decide whether or not it is worth playing.
Translation by Laura Bonci
