Top Podcasts
Organic Growth And Success In The World Of Blockchain Gaming With BNB Chain, Ava Labs, Cross The Ages And Ape Coin
There are a lot of lessons learned from the past ball run that we can apply to make more sustainable games in the future. This is on top of mind for this episode’s guests, who spoke with Josh Krieger at the Web3 Gaming Summit 2023, powered by ABGA. On the list are Walter Lee of BNB Chain, Ed Chang of Ava Labs, Sami Chlagou of Cross the Ages, and Vera Li of Ape Coin. Join in as they tell us of the latest tricks they have under their sleeves and give us an idea of this new approach that developers are taking to make blockchain games more sustainable while meeting the needs of the communities behind them. Tune in for more!
Listen to the podcast here
Organic Growth And Success In The World Of Blockchain Gaming With BNB Chain, Ava Labs, Cross The Ages And Ape Coin
We are in Singapore at the Web3 Gaming Summit 2023 powered by ABGA. This is our second year here. We’re having a blast meeting all sorts of cool people. We are learning how the Asian gaming ecosystem is developing. Certainly, a key player in that is BNB chain. I’m excited to meet here with Walter Lee, who is the Business Development and Web3 Gaming Growth Lead at BNB Chain. It is great to have you on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
A little background for our audience. BNB Chain is a leading L1 blockchain infrastructure. Walter spearheads the Web3 gaming initiatives, fostering strategic partnerships and building connections across the gaming industry. He’s also the Founder of GameFi, which is a Web3 GameFi management consultancy focused on the growth of the gaming sector in Web3. He is Chairman of the GameFi Committee at the Risk and Insurance Management Association of Singapore. He advises Aether Games, a prominent Web3 gaming studio. You are really deep in the gaming space. That’s the bottom line.
To update a bit further as well, for GameFi, it was before I joined BNB Chain. I closed that consultancy business because we do not like to have any clash of interests at BNB Chain. I closed that and the chairman position at RIMA is a nonprofit angle from there. My main role is really in BNB Chain.
You have this broader perspective from all this other work that you’ve done. I’m excited to talk about some of the detailed projects and everything that you’re working on. What does everyone need to know about BNB Chain and how it’s tied to the gaming ecosystem if they’re not familiar with it already?
Most people will refer to BNB Chain as the layer one blockchain with the largest ecosystem. We have around 1 million daily active users in the markets. That creates about three million transactions every day. In the sense that projects such as games, you’re looking for people and an ecosystem, that is where gaming will shine on BNB Chain for developers to develop that game. If your game is fun and, naturally, if you put it in the largest ecosystem, you will gain the highest traction with the most number of gamers. This is the angle of BNB Chain in gaming.
**Your job is pretty easy, then? **
Not really. Since it’s a very dynamic atmosphere, we have to consistently, as an infrastructure company, catch up with the technology for our developers.
To develop high-fidelity games with AAA games.
That’s correct. We have to provide the infrastructure for that. On layer one alone, maybe a few years back, the technology might be enough, but layer two is coming out. We need faster transactions and lower gas fees to feed the developers what they want to do for Web3 gaming. You’re right. Many people will love to deploy here. We’re happy and we welcome them, but overall, we have to be on our toes in this industry.
I’m assuming that you’re a gamer by trade. To be the gaming lead, you have to have a passion for gaming. What are some of the games that have come out on the chain that you’re excited about the gameplay and maybe some of the ones coming out soon that haven’t been released yet?
Since the industry is very new, if you see the games that we have, there are a couple of trading card games or casual games. For example, Gameta. Back then, we had SLG games like Monsterra. It is more the early days of Web2 gaming style. Don’t be mistaken. There are many genres of people still enjoying this era of casual games. As most gamers know, high-quality games like PC games or console requires a lot of manpower and time to develop.
Also, many years.
Many people and many years. We are at a stage where we talk to a lot of them and they are developing. Some examples that you can see some launching the betas and alphas like Citizen Conflict, for example. There are a few games we featured at EthCC in France, Oxya Origin. By LitLabs, there is a game called CyberTitans. GFAL is a studio that created lots of games. They’re starting to put up one game out of the studio. Slowly, they’re increasing the quality and getting more talent. I believe more high-quality games will launch very soon, maybe in 2023 or 2024.
That’s a theme I’ve experienced in these conversations in Korea and Singapore so far. Be patient. The games are being built. It’s a little bit different than the normal launch mentality. You can’t launch a game prematurely if it’s not ready. This is a complex infrastructure that’s being built.
I agree.
It makes sense. Speaking of infrastructure, you’re doing a lot to support the ecosystem. One of those initiatives is a BNB Chain hack solution, you call it?
Yeah. It’s one of our hackathons.
**What’s that all about? **
For BNB Chain, because we want to grow our ecosystem, we understand hackathons are important for startups to showcase themselves to potential investors or other people who are looking for great games to play. Hackvolution is the hackathon event that we did. Follow our social. You can see we do a lot of hackathons almost every few months. We have the Most Valuable Builder. We have the Zero2Hero. We also have one goal, to let startups showcase the quality of their games and their innovation and to put that up on the market so that they get invested and have the runway to bring the games to the community at the BNB Chain.
Blockchain Gaming: Hackathons are important for startup to showcase themselves to potential investors or other people who are looking for great games to play.
That’s great. That’s something to check out if you’re in the gaming space. You also partnered with Animoca Brands on a unique GameFi tokenomics study that focuses on what are the network effects and sustainable tokenomics for gaming. Tell us a little bit more about that project and some of the learnings.
For BN Chain, because we are a decentralized platform, we specifically partner with firms and stuff. What we do is collaborate with many strong brands like Animoca Brands itself. Together, we built the gaming infrastructure itself in the BNB Chain space. For example, they probably have games in their portfolio that are looking for a strong, maybe multi-chaining strategy or they’re looking to deploy on BNB Chain. As BNB Chain, we can work with them. We get those projects with high potential and help with maybe marketing or some ecosystem support to bring the games to our users and community.
You also studied the tokenomics and what works. Are there any insights from those studies that you were surprised by?
There is no perfect recipe for tokenomics. I can’t comment on what kind of tokenomic recipe to use, but over the years, for gaming tokenomics, we have to be very careful about the past cycle. We have to be careful about the supply and demand of tokenomics. Oversupply is dangerous.
Right now, there is no perfect recipe for tokenomics. Click To Tweet
**We’ve seen that. **
We have to have burning utilization of the tokens to keep the demand up and that kind of thing. These are the general macroeconomics that we must focus on for future games to be successful. These are a few things.
That makes sense. There are a lot of lessons learned from the past bull run that we can apply to make more sustainable games in the future.
I agree.
In terms of BNB Chain, you do have exposure to what your colleagues are doing in the Web3 space. Are there any initiatives or projects that you’re particularly excited about in terms of the broader Web3 ecosystem that BNB is building?
What I’m really excited about is what we’re offering our developers. BNB Chain is already relatively fast and has low gas fees. That is part of the success of our growth. We are catching up further. We are building opBNB using the optimistic roll-up.
What does that stand for?
Optimistic BNB. opBNB. That’s layer two of BNB Chain. We offer faster transaction rates. Roughly, it’s tested. It’s about twice as fast with 80% less gas fees. I believe that we’re helping adoption. For gamers, sometimes, although the gas fees are already low, for certain concepts or certain transactions, people still feel that it can be cheaper and faster. It is so that we can drive the fast-moving and big volume in the Web3 space as a whole, not just gaming. We are very excited for that. We are probably launching this in 2023.
That’s exciting. Are there any projects outside of gaming that have launched that have really taken off, maybe in the entertainment space or the virtual world space, other genres outside of gaming?
Since Web3 is all about people and community, there is a convergence. Some people do call it SocialFi, and then GameFi back then. There’s convergence. Gaming is also about the people. For traditional gaming, we are behind computers since online computing. In the online space because of Web3 communities, Axie Infinity has a huge community in the Philippines because of people owning tokenomics and maybe having a DAO to make decisions off the games that bring the social aspect into gaming, which is the interesting part. This is leveraging on the spirit of Web3 to change gaming. The social aspect of social gaming is an upcoming trend. We can’t even see this in traditional games.
Is there someone that’s launched on BNB?
There are many launches. We can see some upcoming in 2023 or 2024. It is a platform that users hash and then you participate in the platform and the games. You can create community links on it and that kind of thing. All of this is happening. To highlight that, in BNB Chain, we are in the Web3 eSports. We have the gaming ambassadors, the GaiminGladiators. They’re the number 1 Dota 2 team in the world. They have a logo over here on the Jersey. They have a gaming platform. That’s one of the few gaming platforms that we have on BNB Chain that brings the Web3 social and gaming aspects together.
That’s very cool. Thanks for sharing all these insights with us and spending a little time together. If folks want to learn more about the BNB gaming ecosystem, where do they go?
They can follow our Twitter. It is our largest and strongest social. On Twitter, it is @BNBChain. Look out for information and different events and campaigns being featured there.
Thanks for hanging out.
Thank you so much.
What’s up, everyone? I am with Richard Carthon in Seoul, Korea. We are having a blast. We are at Ava House, which is on this dope floating island. It was really cool to come over here besides the traffic. We’re getting to know someone special in that ecosystem, which is Ed Chang, Head of Gaming at Ava Labs. It’s great to hang out.
Thanks for having me. This is exciting.
Ed brings a wealth of experience to the team. He has a background as a Senior Director of Partnerships at Electronic Arts, Head of Business Development at Streamlabs, and the Founder of Basikz Agency. He is well-equipped to navigate the industry’s evolving landscape and drive innovation adoption in the world of blockchain gaming. Gaming has been the talk of talent for this trip. It’s easy to appreciate that with all the iconic IP and gaming history in Asia. It’s worth asking the question. Why did you guys decide to do this event in Asia on this dope floating island? How does that relate to your focus?
When you look at the progression of how Web3 gaming has developed, you’ve really seen a lot of investment from the Asian publisher side, especially in Korea and Japan, where you’ve got publishers like Nexon, NEOWIZ, Netmarble, Square Enix, and Gumi. These are storied publishers. They’ve bought into this crypto Web3 ethos more so than maybe their Western counterparts.
Blockchain Gaming: When you look at the progression of how Web3 gaming has developed, you’ve really seen a lot of investment from the Asian publisher side.
Alongside a lot of the regulations and things that are being adopted, and a general sentiment towards crypto, we think it’s really ripe to scale up in terms of mass adoption. We were very targeted as a company, not just in gaming on the Korean market and Japanese market. You’ve also seen that in the moves that we’ve made. The team traditionally has been in the West, but our first international expansion was in Korea. We’ve got Justin as our head of Korea. We’ve got Roy as our head of Japan. They’re doing a great job of spreading the word of Avalanche and bringing on some solid partners.
I am excited about the gaming aspect. One of the companies that is doing something cool is Shrapnel. I got to experience playing a little bit of that game plan. It’s a taste of a lot of cool gaming that’s coming this way. In addition to the gaming and everything else, you have a ton of awesome content that’s coming out. What are some of the highlights and things that you’re looking forward to as far as some of the things that Avalanche is moving forward?
It’s great because it’s not just on the gaming side. We announced a couple of big partners in Japan. They were focused on the loyalty point system. Across the over 100 million potential users being represented, this is tech and scale that we’re really excited about because we feel like you can only do that on Avalanche. There was that. We are announcing a DeFi protocol called Cavalry.
We’ve also announced a new NFT platform in the marketplace called Hyperspace coming to Avalanche. We’re also going to be on stage later to announce a new partner for a gaming program that we have called Arcade. It allows us to broker and bridge the connections between traditional Web2 publishers who want to learn more from native Web3 gaming teams and vice versa.
You also have a partnership with Rumble Kongs, if I’m not mistaken. I’m a fan of the sports genre of gaming. I was an old-school fan. Tell me a little bit more about Rumble Kongs and what you guys are doing there.
We really like that team. One of them was a co-founder of Sandbox. Another one was a crypto native and NFT rental platform, alongside other things. We’ve had a good relationship with them. We’ve been talking with them for a while. I also grew up playing games like NBA Jam, which is very similar to 3-on-3.
More of a theme. They’ve done a really good job building a strong brand traditionally on Ethereum. They’ve brought in some well-known influencers like Steph Curry and Paul George who have repped the different gear and logos. They’ve got CA sports on board. They built a rabid following. As they’re transitioning away from an NFT collection to an actual game, you need the scale. You need the speed. You need the transaction fees that something like Avalanche can help with. We’re excited to announce them coming aboard. It’s going to be a gradual transition of how to get all the assets over. We’re working a lot with them over time on figuring that out.
With the gameplay experience there, does the rarity of your ape have a lot to do with their performance on the court?
There are a lot of things to figure out. Gaming, in general, has moved towards more of a traditional free-to-play, even on the Web3 gaming side. The early games were an NFT that was going to gate your access to the game. If you’re a game publisher, you don’t want to limit that potential success. You need to hit critical mass. It’s then about how you get that top of the funnel as wide as possible, and then you can add on freemium or premium features with NFTs and stuff like that.
I have picked up on that theme in conversations. Especially with regulations varying by country, some folks are making that experience around blockchain come later in the process, where you’re already hooked in the game. You can take another level of stickiness to the experience.
Exactly. That’s a great point. When I started here, the conversation was very similar to what Axe Infinity did with 2 tokens, and then it was 1 token. It was then like, “Do you need a token for the game? Can you use a stable coin or the native coin of the platform?” There are a lot of really interesting considerations that were stepping through with all of our partners.
It’s really cool to see the evolution from what you’re doing in gaming and figuring out how to bridge these pieces, making it more seamless and having that good experience. You have other initiatives going on. One of them happens to be the Avalanche Vista. You have some really great announcements that’s been coming out with that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah. The blessing and the curse of Avalanche is that we’re not an NFT platform. We’re not just a gaming platform. There are six verticals that we try to excel in. There’s institutional, DeFi, and enterprise. Morgan leads our institutional efforts and has been doing a great job. There’s this concept of RWA, which stands for Real World Assets.
We’ve announced a program with KKR, the massive private equity fund, about tokenizing one of their funds and putting it on the chain. It’s super exciting. You have instant settlement and way cheaper transaction fees. Think of a world where pretty much everything is on chain and tokenized and you can easily transact those things back and forth.
Vista is one of our first large initiatives to help spearhead that to help handhold a lot of these large traditional finance companies and bring them into this new age of Web3. With the toolset and the tech that we have, we are one of the only chains that can enable this at scale. It’s really exciting with all the efforts that Morgan is putting in.
**That’s very cool. Besides gaming in the South Korean market, you’re also working with SK Planet. You did a big partnership there. **
Going back to this loyalty use case, they have a loyalty program called OK CASHBAG. This is something where it’s got tens of millions of people who are using it in the Web2 world. They’re bringing that into Web3. They’re slowly onboarding all of these KY seed users, like actual real use cases of your loyalty points on the chain. You can transact for other things. You can sign up for merchants.
That loyalty use case is massive in Asia, even more so than it is in the Western world. It’s the start. There are a lot of other things we’re talking to that team about. SK is one of the biggest companies in Korea. It’s a great first massive announcement to the world that we’re taking this market seriously and we’re going to be here for a long time.
Loyalty use case is massive in Asia, even more so than it is in the Western world. Click To Tweet
That’s a really good distinction. There is something I want to spend a quick amount of time on. There is a lot of emphasis on how you can grow in the Asian markets and learn from a lot of active pieces that are different than the Western side from the loyalty standpoint. There are different interactions that happen over here versus what happens on the Western side. You are able to learn from that and able to take it into other parts of the world. What do you say is one of the biggest things that Avalanche has learned from being here in Asia and then being able to take some of those lessons and apply them to the rest of the world?
It’s the Promised Land. Exactly.
Likewise. Thank you so much.
Cross The Ages, Sami Chlagou.
You are doing well.
Thank you so much.
I am impressed.
It’s the best technology for the need.
What is that called again?
The minimum price is 1.
1 ETH?
$1. The maximum price is $135,000.
Are you dabbling with AI at all?
Thank you.
It’s all about co-creation, right?
Yes.
There are very interesting proposals.
Probably some eccentric ones, too, right?
Are you going to have a cameo?
Thrive Coin is the one that created Thank Ape.
That’s generative AI.
Faster, right?
I’m going to have to check it out.
Is it digital and physical or just physical?
When’s the product line coming out?
That is a couple of dollars USD.
I love it. Thank you so much for hanging out.
Thank you.
Thank you for hosting.
Important Links
-
@BNBChain – Twitter
-
@Avax – Twitter
-
@EDC – Twitter
-
@GamingOnAvax – Twitter
-
YouTube – Cross The Ages
-
Discord – Cross The Ages
-
Twitter – Cross The Ages
-
@VeraTheApe – Twitter