Most projects in Web3 would agree that 2022 is not a strong year for crypto, with a rather chilly bear market hitting DeFi particularly hard, several notable disasters including the Terra Network collapse, a would-be rug pull from SushiSwap founder and nearly $1.7 billion in crypto stolen in hacks, according to a May report by Chainalysis.
Alien Worlds (CRYPTO: TLM) by Dacoco has remained in an orbit all its own, maintaining its spot as the top GameFi project for the last few months, according to CoinMarketCap. It has over 200,000 users playing and over $10.5 million in transactions.
According to the recent "2022 GameFi Industry Report" by CoinMarketCap and Footprint Analytics, blockchain games represent more than 50% of DApp usage, and the top 14 projects raised $748 million in 2022.
Of course, according to the gaming industry standard NewZoo report, Roblox is the top game overall with over 200 million monthly active users. Web3 gaming has a lot of roads to cover to compete with the popularity of mainstream games.
But there are opportunities for Web3 games to differentiate themselves, if not with gameplay, but with play-to-earn (P2E) and play-to-own (P2O) dynamics that mainstream major game publishers are struggling to copy and integrate.
We spoke with the CEO and co-founder of Dacoco Sarojini McKenna to learn more about its trajectory and the larger vision for Alien Worlds and for the Web3 community to grow in its interstellar conquest.
Its objective is to colonize the metaverse and fill the virtual world with active user groups developing their own projects and charting the course for their planets.
BZ: Is Dacoco a native Web3 developer, or did you pivot into Web3?
McKenna: "We are very much natively blockchain. Dacoco made a pivot into gaming rather than the pivot into Web3. So we started in 2018, having come together as block producers on several chains. We were part of a block producer organized as a DAC, a Decentralized Autonomous Community, which is the same as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). We were helping other communities use that software to make their own tokenized assets. That's how we became aware of the transformational power of blockchain technology as applied to groups of people or communities.
We are still the primary producer of games into the metaverse, but we're not the only people building content and games into the metaverse. That vision of being a decentralized Metaverse, where Dacoco has created some of the elements, gives us a sense of cohesion. And also a reason for being."
Did you see creating games as the best way to encourage ongoing positive community participation?
"I think we can see the natural, creative, and competitive element present in DeFi blockchain communities. They're already functioning a bit like gaming collectives. We wanted to give them better tokenomics for doing that, like a more specific token that they can fight over and using more specific games that they could be doing.
Some communities are speculative in nature, like trading forums. I think that there is a strong team spirit involved in those communities. They were already functioning as teams. There was an element of competition and collaboration between them. That was all part of realizing that it didn't take much to coalesce those teams into competitive teams within an environment."
BZ: Are the planets essentially metaphors to represent DAOs?
McKenna: The planets are metaphors for DAOs. People stay on a planet, which is how they become members of that DAO. Then they impact the governance of that DAO, and they can start staking on another planet, which is how they would take over another DAO."
BZ: What is the game Alien Worlds like in terms of actual gameplay?
McKenna: "It's all asynchronous gameplay between players using NFTs."
BZ: Is there a play-to-earn (P2E) Dynamic in Alien Worlds?
McKenna: "Individual players might mine on planets for Trilium (CRYPTO: TLM), and then they use that Trilium to impact the governance of the planets. The governance controls how the mining on that planet is functioning and can also impact other things that the planet might do like funding any other kind of development or introducing their own games.
BZ: Is team play at the center of Alien Worlds, or is there room for solo play?
McKenna: "There are ways for players to run entirely solitary games. They can engage in the mining game. There will be quests in the future. Some communities, for example, are doing things like lore creation. So they're not even necessarily entirely focused on the actual gameplay.
But the collective component is this staking to the planets' planning, governance control, and the various interplanetary activities that the planets themselves are organizing. We haven't yet launched the planets to full governance, but I know that they have been self-organizing for months. Many have evolved plans and have their own websites, Telegram, and Discord channels."
BZ: Since Alien Worlds is running on WAX, do users have to register for a WAX wallet to play?
McKenna: "People don't have to use the WAX cloud wallet to sign in with their WAX account. All they have to do is to be in a position to potentialize our gaming smart contracts in their WAX account and then to call smart contract actions through WAX. We prefer that they do it through the WAX cloud wallet because it allows us to track certain patterns of behavior to single out if they might be bots. For that reason, most players go through the WAX wallet, although we are looking to expand the number of wallet options.
There's no business relationship between us and the WAX team at all. These were all just components that we were able to use there. The WAX cloud wallet plugins are all open-source.
I think WAX has considered using the wallet as a way to throttle actions on the WAX chain, which is one of the reasons why it's useful for us as a large DApp to have more options than just the WAX cloud wallet. Within a Web3 Metaverse, If you're really a decentralized Metaverse running on a public permissionless chain, you're using components from different groups, many of which are open source."
BZ: How do planet NFTs for Alien Worlds differ? How do they interact in-game?
McKenna: "Different planets have different terrain which yield different profiles of Trilium rewards. This is also a bit dependent on which tool NFT you use in conjunction with the landscape, so this is all part of the strategy.
If you look up alien worlds mining rigs, for example, you'll see users going through our forums and comparing notes. Like 'if I have a sandy desert, is it better to use this extractor or that shovel?' The planets have different attributes, but how they might evolve their gameplay is open ended.
For example, a substantial crypto community called the CryptomonKeys started to gather on one of our planets called Nari. The communities are still evolving, and we have functionality in the pipeline that will allow many more DAOs to be created. So any community can create its own DAO and have a treasury that they're governing collectively for earned rewards. The system rewards DOAs differently depending on how they stack up on the game variables."
BZ: So if a player is part of a DAO, can they obtain mineral rights for other planets so they can mine different types of terrains?
McKenna: "If you wanted mining rights on a piece of land, you would go directly to the landowner, not to the planet. The planet is governing more collectives and gameplay elements. The tokenomics is more than what you're describing, and the differences across planets are owned at the level of landowners rather than controlled at the level of the planets. That's not to say that there might not be some and especially as the gameplay evolves. It may be the case that certain planets develop strategic collaborations and allegiances. They would do so, perhaps to control collectively more Trilium which is the one fungible and common element across every planet."
The Last Word
If Cosmos is looking to build an internet of blockchains, Dacoco has set its sights on building a metaverse of communities and games. Examples of "planets" or DAOs that are building their own projects. Examples include Jr.'s Lands, which has developed a metaverse card game, and CryptomonKeys, which offers a "meme-rich digital trading card" NFT series.
What's notable about Alien Worlds is not that it has covered the delta between blockchain gaming and mainstream gaming player experience — that accomplishment seems to be in the future for the Web3 space.
Rather, Alien Worlds has successfully appealed to the Web3 space by creating a game that models the DeFi staking experience but keeps rewards and interactions within the Dacoco ecosystem. In that way, they can offer incentives for positive participation and still encourage an audience that is there not just for the "pay" part of the equation but also to play and build.
It's an interesting project to watch not only because of its success up to this point and 200,000 users but because it has a decentralized plan for innovation that is in part led by the users. That means the next big thing to come out of the Dacoco tool set and metaverse is hard to predict — in fact, the next significant innovation may not come directly from Dacoco.
With GameFi remaining a rare bright spot in the bear market, it will be interesting to watch this project shoot for the stars and colonize the virtual universe with DAOs.
The Future of Crypto: To hear Alien Worlds’ viewpoint on the GameFi space, join Benzinga for its first Future of Crypto live conference Dec. 7 in New York City at Pier Sixty.
Some of the best minds and most important projects in Web3 will be in attendance, including Cosmos, Yuga Labs, Immutable, Solana, Laguna Labs and Algorand. Keynotes include Jordan Belfort, Kevin O’Leary and Anthony Scaramucci.
*Cover based on image by Daniela Realpe from Pixabay.
