Web3 Domains And The Future Of Blockchain Gaming

Blockchain gaming is booming.

According to DappRadar, Web3 games represent the fastest growing category of decentralized applications with titles like Axie Infinity boasting over 2 million monthly active users.

And the growth isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

$3.6 billion was invested into blockchain gaming last year and the two largest metaverses, Decentraland and The Sandbox grew to a combined market cap of over $7 billion.

And the industry’s potential for growth is attracting some of the biggest names in Web2 gaming to crossover.

Gala Games was founded by the co-founder of Zynga (Farmville) and Illuvium, considered by many to be the first AAA blockchain game, has brought on former Marketing Executives from Playstation and more.

The popularity of blockchain gaming for players, devs, and investors is rooted in the inherent benefits of Web3. 

A great example of this can be seen in the replacement of “pay-to-win” Web2 games with Web3’s  “play-to-earn” titles.

To put the gravity of this transition into perspective, Web2 mobile game players spent over $116 billion on in-game perks and buffs to help them win.  

Combine these game-changing opportunities with the fact that players downloaded 82.9 billion mobile games last year and the opportunity that blockchain gaming represents for gamers, developers, and investors starts to appear in higher resolution than Unreal Engine 5.    

We love blockchain games because they’re a fun way for everyone to get a start in Web3, regardless of their current expertise in the space. We think, if done right, gaming will play a big part in onboarding the next billion people onto the decentralized web.

But like all things we want to see come to life in Web3, next level blockchain gaming won’t just happen – it's up to all of us to create it.

Let’s take a look at how Unstoppable Domains can help create vibrant blockchain gaming communities for players and devs. 

Unstoppable Domains already allow blockchain users to replace their complex wallet addresses with human-readable names.

So, what if we extended this functionality to games?

In blockchain games, in-game assets are NFTs that are owned and controlled by the players, stored in their crypto wallets.

This is a huge shift in the power dynamics of gaming because the value of in-game assets is now set and captured by players, not companies.

Items that players have worked to craft or obtain can no longer be forcibly nerfed or devalued and, the best part, players can finally profit from the digital assets they earn in-game without having to rely on sketch third-party sites.

Still, blockchain wallets are essentially just digital folders with long, confusing labels like 0xdh8Psjn32xix194chdJ29s37f.  While they make it possible for players to own their digital assets and move them around, there is one more missing piece to this puzzle. 

By adding recognizable Web3 domain names to these wallets, they evolve into digital identities — collections of your digital assets and achievements across all Web3 games.

This way, if you want to connect with a friend or sell one of your items to someone they can tell you to add MikeFPS.x to your friend list.

And because this is still a blockchain wallet, they can use it across all of the games they play. Their avatars, in-game currencies, digital vehicles and items, all attached to the same name. 

Owning your digital identity as a gamer, or anyone else, is rooted in the ability to securely store personal data and controlling when and where you want to use that data.

And one of Web3’s key components is giving people the ability to decide what data they store, how it’s used, and what apps have access to it.

But there’s a problem for any project that may require an age verification or access to other personal information in order to deliver rewards or access to users.

On its own, wallet-based authentication is just a handshake that doesn't give a way to pass data through to third parties.

Our Login with Unstoppable feature solves for this by enabling a mix of centralized and decentralized resources on the back end so you can associate metadata with your online identity.

It’s basically a fully decentralized, self-controlled front door to determine what data you’ve attached to your digital identity (domain name) pass through to games and dapps.

Login integration can create a more connected experience for players across games they love by enabling the porting of data from one metaverse or game to another in a more seamless way. This interoperability allows for universal Avatars, NFTs, shared leaderboards, etc.

On this basis, in the future we can have awesome, never-before-seen video game events like metagames — metaverse triathlons built on Web3 domain player identities...and anything else we want to create.

Web3 games and metaverses can also create higher order and more valuable reward programs given the depth of data users can bring and permission to the apps and dapps. 

For instance users' crypto status can trigger rewards like "get now, pay later" for digital items, exclusive access to game events, and more.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the rewards angle for developers who want to drive loyalty and retention with confidence that actual, individual people are being rewarded instead of bots.

Anonymity is important in gaming and Web3 and is deeply rooted in the ethos of both.

But there are issues with the level of anonymity that we have right now because anonymity doesn’t always translate into equity.

Our 100% user optional Humanity Check feature solves these problems while preserving privacy and anonymity by providing a way for people to verify their online identity without revealing info about themselves to the applications and services that they use.

When using Humanity Check, at no point does any personal identifiable information go to the app requesting verification or to Unstoppable domains. 

It simply confirms that you're human and unique.

So the only thing UD or the app sees is that you’re a person who can be hypothetically identified as “human number 12.”

This is super important for gaming developers who want to create fair and open participation. They can utilize Humanity Check to verify real human users and better reward them, helping to ensure the long-term health of the game.

For example, let’s say a blockchain RPG project with community size of 1 million was going to mint an exclusive new set of 10,000 cosmetic armor kits and the demand is crazy high - half the community shows up for the drop. 

Now, there’s a line of 500,000 people waiting in line for 10,000 NFTs and developers need a way to make access fair so whales or bot farms don’t come in and buy out 1,000 of them with the intention of  driving up the price for everyone else.

Humanity Check integration solves for this reward program and any other innovative uses that gaming projects can dream up. 

The future of blockchain gaming may very well depend on the quality of the games, experiences, and rewards that devs can create for players to enjoy.

The gaming community's collective imaginations combined with the utility and superpowers of Web3 domains will lead to fair, fun, and rewarding games that are unmatched by today's standards.

Game on.