From the birth of Ethereum and the establishment of the 0-layer network, after 8 years of construction, the blockchain 0-layer and 1-layer network environments have begun to take shape, and cross-chain and multi-chain symbiosis have become a reality. Next, where will the future of blockchain go?
Undoubtedly, from the rise of early blockchain technology to the reshaping of the concept of Web3.0 today, blockchain is no longer a simple technical bottom and a new stablecoin, And Web3.0 has formed a subversion of Web 2.0 in the underlying network.
Last year, the NFT went out of the circle, allowing cultural products such as artworks, pictures, avatars, and music to enter the Web3 and walk out of the independent market; this year, the GameFi track has sprung up, the regionalized GameFi project has grown rapidly, and millions of new users have poured in in in a single day, all of which let us see the inevitable outbreak of the application layer.
So in the early stage of the development of Web3 applications, which scenarios will become the first explosive track? The "X to Earn" pattern may become the "singularity" to open Web3 applications.
First, let's see what is X to Earn (the following are replaced by the X2E abbreviation)?
The concept of X2E was first proposed by Ben Schecter, head of operations at RabbitHole, in an article published on the a16z website.
X can be any human act, eating, exercising, sleeping, shopping, learning, playing, creating, brushing up on drama, and so on. Earn is the economic benefit generated by the actions of these specific scenarios. It is foreseeable that in the Web3 era, people can earn money through daily behavior, play games, learn skills, exercise regularly, or use their imagination and creativity, and the money will be in hand. At present, X2E has appeared in multiple application scenarios of Web3, such as Play2 East, Move2 Arrow, Learn2 Arrow and so on. X2E may already be building a new economic model of user behavior. The following categories are the most likely application scenarios for X2E to erupt as summarized in our research.
Play to Earn
Play to Earn (P2E) – The Economy of Gaming Behavior. Making money in the form of games, without being constrained by centralization, corresponds to the Free to Play (F2P) model of traditional games. Players play P2E mode games and earn in-game base assets (NFTs) or game tokens, which are owned by the players themselves and no longer belong to the game developers, and players can earn real money by trading their game assets through the open market.
According to the report of the Dutch market research institute Newzoo, the traditional game market size in 2020 is about 175 billion US dollars, and 2021 is about 180 billion US dollars, in contrast, the current tens of billions of blockchain games Market size is only a small fight, from another side, the market development space of blockchain games is incomparably huge, maybe one day can take off, so players who want P2E must seize the opportunity now.
The game scene will undoubtedly embrace the World of Web3, and compared to other money-making models, the P2E model is currently the largest. With just one Axe Infinity, users are mainly distributed in Southeast Asia, and the number of daily active users is also more than 1,000,000. During the epidemic, Axie Infinity was a lifesaver for the bottom people of the Philippines, and they can still play games and earn food after losing their jobs due to the epidemic. For those who know strategy and have plenty of time, the benefits at Axie are several times that of ordinary jobs. Some people exchange the tokens earned in Axe for fiat currency, then buy milk powder, buy motorcycles, buy all the daily necessities, and some people buy real estate through this game.
Move to Earn
Move to Earn (M2E) – The Economy of Movement Behavior. Simply understood as making money while exercising, it is a new earning model that combines sports with getting paid, represented by STEPN on Solana, which just completed a $5 million seed round last month.
In M2E, users are no longer playing for the sake of playing, users can completely start from their own subjective initiative, when they want to exercise or go out to play, open the application of M2E to earn income, neither because of forcing themselves to exercise and lose enthusiasm for exercise, but also a wave of physical fitness, will not be because P2E sits in front of the computer for a long time to lose the body, but also made money.
Taking STEPN as an example, users can equip "NFT sneakers" in the application, and can also be equipped with gems to increase the attributes of sneakers, users can earn rewards by walking, jogging or running outdoors, the rewards can be NFT assets, can also be tokens, and can also be traded in the market for real money.
This M2E model, which combines blockchain games with real-life mobile devices, not only promotes low-carbon and environmentally friendly life, but also promotes the construction of the Web3 world, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone, and it is believed that the number of users will soar in the near future.
Learn to Earn
Learn to Earn (L2E) – The Economics of Learning Behavior. This has the potential to open up a new model of education where users no longer need to pay to learn, but instead gain money by learning industry expertise and participating in question and answer tests.
Back in 2018, Coinbase launched the Coinbase Earn project, where users learn about cryptocurrencies to get cryptocurrencies, which of course was an early project of the Lion to Earn model. There is also RabbitHole, a cryptocurrency protocol (task party) that pays for tasks, incentivizing users to complete specific actions on the chain. When the user completes these actions, they will receive a reward from the task party.
This model both promotes knowledge and facilitates trading activities. Not everyone likes gaming, but in the process of contacting new areas, everyone inevitably needs to learn, and the market prospect of learning to make money is very broad.
I believe that the follow-up Learn to Earn model will also introduce more fun gameplay, in the context of decentralization, everyone in addition to being a participant, but also an organizer, can plan problems, can organize learning experience exchanges and so on to earn more income.
Design to Earn
Design to Earn (D2E) – Design behavioral economy/creativity economy. At present, this model has not yet produced specific projects, but there will inevitably be projects hatched in the future, and the popularity of picture and avatar design in the NFT market is one of the proofs. So many people participate in the NFT transaction, each NFT must have its own designer to design the most original template, excellent designers are one of the reasons for the exquisite NFT big sale, NFT big sale and reverse promote the designer's fame, which is a good positive cycle.
There are also a lot of talented people around us, and they may just design it well, so that they can design their own NFTs in the game, hang on the market, and if anyone likes it, they can buy it in cryptocurrency. Maybe their clothes look good, so that they can make this collocation their own patent, and if any other project uses his collocation in the future, then they must pay the matcher.
Design to Earn (D2E) keeps talented people from being buried and shines even more in the Web3 world.
Watch to Earn
Watch to Earn (W2E) – Movie-watching behavior economy. Just like the current Vibrato, users can actually get revenue by watching videos, so in the Web3 world, will this way still exist?
The answer, of course, is yes, and the transition from Web2 to Web3 won't simply make some applications disappear, perhaps in another form. Of course, at present, Watch to Earn (W2E) has not yet produced a Web3 project, I don't know if any project party will see my article and start the research and development of the project.
In this way, everyone can get benefits by watching videos in the world of blockchain, and you can also see many creators' interesting creations and relax your mood. At the same time, it is not necessarily the creator's video, but also the advertising video of some project parties, users can earn income while watching advertisements, and the project party has also achieved its own accurate delivery purpose and KPI, and can receive user viewing feedback, which can be described as a win-win situation.
I'm really looking forward to the arrival of TikTok/YouTube in the Web3 world, and I will definitely be the first to participate in it.
X to Earn
Looking beyond the track to see the business model, X2E is a way to retain users for a long time, which can make users and applications have a high sense of belonging. This sense of belonging allows users to no longer stand against the application or service provider, but to become co-builders. As with the commercial crowdfunding model that first appeared in Web2, when a project sits on 100,000 co-builder mentality users, it has 10 million potential users connected behind those 100,000 users. In the end, then, such a business model is no longer a psychological warfare of B2C, but a win-win situation of B+C.
But at present, it is worth noting that many projects in the X2E scene face loopholes and hidden dangers in the design of the economic model in order to rub the heat of the track, and the economic model as the core of X2E, the potential problems of the design have appeared in some head projects. For example, Axie has the problem that inflation is too fast, resulting in a sharp decline in user earnings, an excessively long return cycle, and insufficient user retention motivation. Therefore, how to design a long-term sustainable economic model, and constantly stimulate the user's continuous use of power through the underlying product and economic model is the basis for X2E to win the market.
The application layer war has been ignited in the game field, and other scenarios are also eager to try, but no matter which scenario is based on which ecological construction, the project can only continuously produce applications with excellent user experience and economic models, and build applications from a long-term life cycle, so that users can truly integrate into it for a long time and participate in the construction to achieve a win-win situation.