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Game guilds: Revenues are falling and they need to change

2022-10-20 09:30

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Gaming Guilds Update

By Jayden Andrew, an analyst at Delphi Digital

原文编译：隔夜的粥， DeFi 之道

Introduce a,

For crypto investors, holding game guild tokens in 2022 is going to be a real pain. Each Token compared in this report is down more than 80% this year. Sure, a lot of crypto subareas have been hit hard lately, but gaming-related tokens have felt the full wrath of the relentless bear market. It begs the question of whether crypto gaming guilds have product-market fit in the absence of super-growing P2E games.

If our definition of guild is limited to "P2E scholarship providers," then the answer is probably no. However, many guilds have retained tens of thousands of members of varying loyalties, despite cash constraints and a depressed market. For the crypto gaming guild lucky enough to find itself in this position, the bad sentiment surrounding earnings and the concurrent bear market doesn't mean the game is over. However, it does mean that the surviving guilds must embody the "fulcrum", or at least change direction, if they are serious about playing crypto for the long term.

In this report, we cover six game guilds, highlighting how they fared in the market this year, their financials, and how they are adapting to the evolving crypto gaming environment.

Second, all aspects of data comparison

The following table shows how each guild is going head to head in terms of shared features and features that differ from other guilds.

These guilds share some basic features. In a practical sense, a guild is a group of individuals organized around common interests, values, and goals to achieve the common good of its members. In the crypto industry, gaming is clearly their focus. They differ in the specific characteristics and strategies adopted -- some of which are listed in the table above.

The most common feature is the scholarship program, which is offered by all the mentioned game guilds except BreederDAO. This makes sense, as crypto guilds have long focused on the P2E and scholarship model. However, this is slowly changing and we are likely to see a gradual shift away from these products offered by guilds. Another strategy commonly used by most guilds is seed investing. Interestingly, game guilds are increasingly becoming pseudo-venture capital (VC) companies that invest in early stage game projects to help support the industry and, of course, turn a profit.

Comparing the current guild NFT AUM (top panel) with nearly a year ago (bottom panel), we can make some interesting observations. The two most obvious guilds are BlackPool and Yield Guilds -- frankly, they're both terrible. Both guilds' NFT portfolios have taken a hit since we last looked.

This is not surprising given the continued tough macro environment in the NFT market and more broadly this year. Another observation we can make is the change in the portfolio weights of the two unions. Most notably, Axie Infinity is a much smaller part of both guilds' portfolios than it was last year.

While not entirely absent, Axie has moved from being BlackPool's second-largest holding, and Yield Guild's largest, to a relatively insignificant position.

Guilds have generally taken a hit this year, with Yield Guild, GuildFi and Merit Circle down 57.3%, 23.6% and 7.5%, respectively. Merit Circle has maintained its AUM at impressive levels despite adverse market conditions. It's worth noting that Yield Guild is the only crypto guild that has raised more money in AUM than they did in their initial fundraising (although it has the largest percentage of retractions so far this year). For more information on financing, see the chart below.

As you can see in the table above, there is a clear difference between the private and public financing of game guilds in this comparison. BreederDAO gets the most private funds while GuildFi gets the most public funds. One nuance to keep in mind is that these guilds raised money on different dates, several different stages of the bull market cycle. This means that large variations in funding are more indicative of the market temperature at the time of funding than any real insight into quality differences between unions.

However, it does show us which game unions should have a large Treasury, unless investor funds are badly mismanaged. Gaming unions lucky enough to fit this well-funded description should have plenty of cash to see them through tough times, and if they put their eggs in the right basket, they will come out stronger on the other side.

It's worth noting that despite raising relatively little money, Yield Guild has impressive statistical metrics in terms of community size (see below). Having a first mover advantage certainly helps.

The word "community" has become something of a buzzword during the recent bull market. In other, more relaxed contexts, "community member" has also become synonymous with "stickler." However, community is more than a buzzword or a joke about portfolio losses. Over time, it has become increasingly clear that communities can be powerful entities capable of achieving tangible results through collective action. Communities have untapped potential, and when unified and focused on specific goals, they become a true expression of the cliche "strength in numbers."

Player mobility, the concept that guilds can focus part of the community on a new game, could prove this. The idea is that this gives players a head start in new games and provides games with valuable early adopters to help them grow. In practice, it's unclear how effective this will be beyond the hyper-growth P2E gaming model. At the very least, getting the attention of the guild community isn't a bad thing for early games.

A specific non-crypto example of this ability is the launch of a supplement by the Fitness Big V. By tapping into their fan base, the fitness Big Vs can lead to consumer-facing businesses that have a huge advantage over the general population without a fan base.

那哪个游戏公会的社区最强大？这是一个好问题。在上表中，你可以看到每个公会的 Twitter 关注者、Discord 成员、Telegram、 Token 持有者以及 NFT 持有者的数据。正如我们在融资部分提到的，Yield Guild 有一些令人印象深刻的社区统计数据。除了 Telegram 数据，它在所有方面都名列前茅。

Lower engagement -- more engagement as a Twitter follower -- more engagement as a Discord/Telegram member -- Highest engagement participants as an active Discord/ DAO -- purchased token/NFTS

Another issue to consider is where and how members participate in guilds. It's fair to say that different platforms lead to different levels of engagement. What does that mean? Think of it this way: If you've been working in crypto for a while, you'll find that when you cross the Twitter-to-Discord divide, your experience of project communities can be quite different. Discord will have less noise, more focused discussions, and generally more contact with the founders. Moreover, being a member of the Discord server was harder than following the project on Twitter. You usually need to read a brief list of server rules and click on a few options. Sure, it's not that hard, but it's a little harder than clicking the Twitter follow button. These factors may seem trivial, but they can lead to differences in the experience of member engagement between platforms.

Third, Yield Guild

Although Yield Guild's net profitability improved throughout the first half of 2022, its current earnings don't paint a picture of health and prosperity. With the exception of June 22, no other month this year has been net profitable for the Guild. Yield Guild also offers little hope of relief from its forward-looking earnings forecast through the end of the year. At best, this can be explained by a slowdown in the economy, causing net margins to stagnate. At worst, the union could see profits continue to fall in the New Year. This would undoubtedly call into question the viability of the Yield Guild's current strategy.

Yield Guild's best performing NFT investment right now is Ember Sword. In contrast to Merit Circle, Big Time is actually Yield Guild's worst-performing NFT investment.

如上图所示，Yield Guild 管理的总资产价值因 YGG 在 21 年 7 月的 Token 推出而得到显着提升。

这当然是在 YGG 在发布后大幅增值的背景下。然而，在上升过程中对总 AUM 值的积极影响，在下降过程中会成比例地变为负面影响。随着 YGG Token 从历史最高点下跌 96.9%，Yield Guild 的总资产管理规模也从最高点下跌了 93.4%，这并不令人意外。

在上面的图表中，我们得到了 Yield Guild 在一段时间内的总资产管理规模（不包括其财政库持有的 YGG）。正如你所料，随着时间的推移，总价值明显低于包含 Token 的价值。有趣的是，与去年 12 月创下的 1.69 亿美元历史新高相比，估值仍然大幅下降了。目前，Yield Guild 的总资产管理规模约为 4500 万美元，已缩水了 73.3%。这意味着，不仅 Yield Guild 持有的 YGG Token 遭受了巨大损失，而且他们的 NFT 以及其他 Token 投资也遭受了巨大损失。与此形成对比的是 Merit Circle，其总资产管理规模相当可观，正如我们在报告中进一步强调的那样。

We outlined the value of community earlier. While snapshot data can provide some insight into the size of the guild community, it's also helpful to evaluate the data over time to add some context. In light of this, we can see in the chart above the Yield Guild holdings over time. On the positive side, the total holder increases over time, meaning that guild members at this level of community involvement (investing their own money) increase over time.

The downside is that over time, the rate of new holder creation has slowed considerably to very little growth, which is not very good. This means that growth in investment community membership has actually slowed over time. This indicates that the overall interest in joining the guild is much reduced, especially as a participant willing to make a financial investment.

Yield Guild 的 Discord 成员数量已经从 21 年的快速上升趋势中下降。自 4 月份 Yield Guild 的 Discord 成员数达到 11.38 万的高点，到 8 月份已降至 8.1 万。有几个因素可能导致了成员的流失。今年 1 月，Yield Guild 的 Discord 服务器遭到了黑客攻击，可能导致大量用户被踢出了服务器。在 22 年期间，Axie Infinity 对其游戏经济进行了多项更改，其中一些更改直接降低了玩家的 SLP 收入潜力。除了因经济设计变化而损失收入外，SLP 还受到了熊市的蹂躏。该 Token 较 21 年 7 月 0.39 美元的历史高点下跌了 99.2%。最重要的是，像 Yield Guild 这样的公会越来越公开地远离「P2E」的奖学金模式，而是将重点转移到电子竞技游戏上。当我们考虑这些因素的组合时，Yield Guild 的 Discord 成员数减少就变得不那么神秘了。

The graph above shows the number of scholars in Yield Guild over time. As you can see, there was a substantial drop in academics between May and July, which supports the theory we outlined above.

YGG holders with a YGG Guild badge can pledge their token (up to 90 days) in either of the two YGG reward vaals on Polygon for a corresponding reward in the form of a P2E token. Yield Guild chose to launch a reward vault on Polygon with the goal of lowering the barrier to participation and enabling participants to keep more of their rewards instead of paying gas fees.

Quest: Unlock Achievements > No brain to participate in

Yield Guild 正在开始其公会晋升程序 (GAP) 的第二季，这是一个成就驱动的社区 Token 分发协议，奖励 YGG 成员通过高质量的贡献为公会提供价值。

GAP 的第一个赛季由 45 项成就组成，这些旨在激励某些行为以帮助发展公会。此外，它允许成员建立他们的元宇宙简历。它通过奖励参与者特定任务的 NFT 和 YGG Token 来实现这一点，这些 Token 既奖励参与者的努力，又区分公会内的杰出参与者，为他们在未来开辟更多机会。

Yield Guild describes the GAP as a return to the basic concept of guilds in medieval times, when skilled merchants used their skills to improve the local environment and enhance the guild's reputation.

Ignite the fire of competition

The Yield Guild is one of several guilds making a move toward esports gaming. The leaderboards shown below show high achieving guild members in order to promote healthy competition within guilds.

Four, GuildFi

GuildFi's Treasury has the largest cash position of all Guilds in this report. Excluding other token holdings, seed investments and NFTS, the total cash in its Treasury is about $85.4 million. Given the current bear market, such a sizable sum is clearly a real advantage for the guild.

GuildFi ID

GuildFi ID GuildFi describes its GuildFi ID as a kind of metaverse passport. The idea is that it links all of your game accounts together to ensure that your achievements are recognized throughout the metaverse. Just like a normal passport, it allows you to visit places and experiences you wouldn't be able to without it. This includes products in the GuildFi ecosystem.

How to register GuildFi ID:

Visit the GuildFi website; Create an account using email; Connect their accounts to Discord and Metamask; Proof-of-Play

游戏证明 (PoP) 是玩家从 GuildFi 上的游戏参与和活动中获得 GXP 作为体验点的地方。玩家只要注册 GuildFi ID，都有权获得这些 GXP。玩家可以通过参与 GuildFi 上提供的游戏和任务来赚取 GXP，然后可以获得从 Token 奖励到分配 NFT Metadrop 的许多好处。GXP 还将有助于升级系统并确定玩家的排名。

Players can earn GXP by completing quests, playing buddy games, participating in GuildFi's scholarship program, and using GuildFi's features. GXP benefits players by assigning them NFT drops from Metadrop launch board activities, other free NFT drops, early access to the game, and possibly GuildFi rewards.

Metadrop start plate

GuildFi 提供来自其合作伙伴的特殊 NFT 和早期 Token 投资机会。分配取决于玩家在元宇宙中的参与情况。这个想法是游戏可以在发布时奖励合适的玩家。资产分配基于他们的 GXP/ 参与游戏（游戏证明）/ 持有的 GF。

Five, the Merit of Circle

Merit Circle's total AUM has remained strong over time, especially as the bear market has continued to be sluggish. This illustrates the effective management of the Merit Circle's financial pool funds, and of course brings positive influence to its guild. This gives Merit Circle a huge financial advantage over underfunded guilds. This is especially true as the winds inevitably shift in a more favourable direction for financial markets. Until then, it provides Merit Circle with enough money to ride out the current storm.

When visualized, the NFT investment performance of Merit Circle appears to embody the Pareto principle. Most of the total profit and loss can be attributed to a few investments. In this case, the Big winner in Merit Circle is Big Time Land. Similarly, most of Merit Circle's losses can be attributed to a handful of investments. In this case, the culprit is Axie Infinity.

MIP-7: Let the token burn

MIP-7 is a proposal to Merit Circle DAO regarding the operation, structure, and strategy of Merit Circle's investment.

MIP-7 由 Sad Cat Capital 提出，并于 2021 年 12 月投票通过并得到了实施。通过 MIP-2，DAO 开始正式制定一个框架，将其从财政库中获得的大量资源投资于 Token 、NFT、稳定币和收益农耕业务。

MIP-6 pushes this further by setting the parameters by which DAOs can reduce their investment risk. This takes a multifaceted approach, as there is a need to find a balance between returning profits to the DAO and maintaining the level of productive assets that are used to generate P2E revenue along with cooperative games.

MIP-7 extends its previous mission by integrating Merit Circle's investment framework with Merit Circle DAO's vision for a sustainable future. This is twofold -- in addition to increasing the value of the MC, it also promotes the growth of the DAO itself.

The purpose of this task is to create a more transparent and structured way to distribute the realized benefits of the DAO, which includes:

20% of the revenue is sent back to the Treasury in USDC; 5% of the proceeds are sent back to the Treasury as crypto assets (mainly ETH and WBTC); 60% of the revenue is used to support the MC price 10%-35% below the market price; 15% of the proceeds are used to buy back MC and send to 0x000000 (burned).

How many MC tokens have they repurchased and destroyed so far? Let's look at the chart below.

正如你在两个图表中看到的那样，回购量和销毁量相当零星，但它们开始减少 MC 的供应。MC Token 回购总数（上图）接近 500 万。总 MC 燃烧数（下图）接近 1.2 亿。这相当于迄今为止购买或燃烧的全部稀释供应量的 12.5%。尽管这是一个有形的数额，但净流通供应在同一时期内有所增加。除非 Merit Circle 的收入大幅增加，导致更多的回购以及燃烧，否则 MC 在可预见的未来仍将保持通胀的状态。

Sphere is Merit Circle's game asset-only NFT marketplace. Their goal is to create a market best suited to gaming NFTS to compete with the likes of OpenSea, which they believe is less suited to gaming assets due to its lack of specificity. With marketplaces like OpenSea handling billions of dollars in transactions each month, Merit Circle is using Sphere to tap into a large market. MC will play an important role in this market, especially in terms of fees. Sellers pay a 2.5% fee per transaction, paid in ETH. The collected ETH will be used to buy back the MC from the secondary market and then returned to the seller. This mechanism reduces the seller's fee because 50% of the total fee paid is repaid in liquid MC. This model creates consistent purchase traffic for MCS while motivating Sphere usage in other markets. Sphere is still a work in progress, but Merit Circle had said it was nearly ready in July, so it could be something to watch for in the near future.

Six, BreederDAO

Metaverse (P2E) factory

BreederDAO is quite unique relative to the other guilds in the report, as their business model has never directly offered a P2E scholarship program. Instead, they largely position themselves as game NFT providers. They provide in-game assets to guilds like Yield Guilds, such as characters with certain favorable characteristics.

Playcore

Playcore 是由 BreederDAO 开发的专注于 crypto 游戏的数据仪表板。它提供有关诸如游戏 Token 铸造、销毁以及净供应变化等指标的实时数据，以及平均地板价、销售价格和交易量等市场统计数据。它还提供细微的玩家数据，例如随着时间的推移新的、回归的、活跃的以及休眠的玩家数量。

For a deeper understanding, please check out our previous report on BreederDAO's Research report.

Seven, PathDAO

PathDAO's best performing NFT investment is League Of Kingdoms. Like Merit Circle, their worst-performing NFT investment is Axie Infinity.

PIP-6B: PATH buyback

Similar to Merit Circle, PathDAO introduced a repo system based on guild revenue. According to PIP-6B, realized proceeds will be used for PATH buybacks as well as Ether purchases, divided into the following parts:

20% 的收益以 USDC 送回财政库；5% 的收益将以加密资产（主要是 ETH 和 WBTC）的形式送回财政库；15% 的收益将用于市场回购 PATH；60% 的收益将用于对低于市值 10%-35% 的 PATH Token 的有力支持。

To date, PathDAO has managed to buy back nearly 1% of the total PATH supply, although it is not as impressive as Merit Circle's MC buyback and destruction data.

Eight, BlackPool

Similar to Yield Guild, BlackPool's revenue looks terrible. The guild's monthly net income has been on a downward trend since October 21. Most notably, the last month of the second quarter was BlackPool's worst ever net earnings month.

Based on the data, BlackPool appears to have underperformed in several ways over the past few years. As we mentioned earlier in our community comparison table, BlackPool ranks last in most cases, despite being one of the oldest crypto game guilds. As we saw in the last chart, BlackPool's earnings have been moving in the wrong direction since September '21. Now looking at the chart above, it's clear that BlackPool's NFT portfolio has also underperformed throughout the year.

Nine, final thoughts

Crypto gaming guilds are at a turning point as they face the challenge of how to move forward after the "P2E" model becomes obsolete. Those guilds with large financial balances are in a good position, giving them a much-needed runway to figure out where to invest next.

Yield Guild 刚刚推出其 GAP 的第二季，该公会正在将重点转向电子竞技。相比之下，GuildFi 是现金之王，其拥有令人印象深刻的 8540 万美元财政库储备，为进一步开发其游戏玩家仪表板提供了充足的动力。Merit Circle 正在开发其游戏 NFT 市场 Sphere，以期与 OpenSea 等平台竞争。可以肯定的是，在这份报告中，每个公会都受到了熊市的重创。 Token 价格以及管理的总资产价值都在下跌，收益也没有好转。目前还不确定的是，在这段艰难时期的另一面，我们还会看到哪些游戏公会。这取决于他们前进的方向，以及最终需要多少资金来支持他们。