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Several popular games leave, is Polygon becoming the 'Whampoa Military Academy' of blockchain games? - ChainCatcher
Author: ZEN, PANews
On August 2nd, two weeks after announcing the rebranding of the entire ecosystem, the MOJO Token of the Web3 game platform Planet Mojo successfully migrated from Polygon to the Base network. Planet Mojo changed its logo from a purple rune to a blue one that fits Base. Its auto-battler game Mojo Melee, parkour game GoGo Mojo, in-game avatar system Mojo Maker, and the upcoming role-playing game Prophecy of the Ancients have all become part of the active contributors to the Base ecosystem.
Polygon, once the preferred network for deploying GameFi projects, has been highly favored by developers in the past few years. It was also ranked as a top developer ecosystem in the 2022 Developer Report released by Electric Capital. However, with the rise of various public chains, Polygon, known as the 'West Point Military Academy' of Web3 games, has lost its former competitive advantage and its market share in the gaming industry is gradually decreasing, as popular games like Pixels and Crypto Unicorns have left.
Are they all scattered stars? Multiple games are going their own way.
Migrate to the Ronin blockchain network operated by Sky Mavis and achieve a win-win situation with their pixelated farming game Pixels, which is a model of this. Pixels was launched in 2021 and chose to migrate from Polygon to the Ronin network at the end of last year. Luke Barwikowski, CEO of Pixels, stated in a statement at the time, 'Sky Mavis is the only company that has achieved scalable development in the Web3 gaming field. It is wise to collaborate with a team that is based on practice and experience rather than assumptions. Migrating to Ronin and leveraging their wisdom is the logical next step in our journey.'
Subsequent events have proven that this major change was indeed a wise choice. According to DappRadar data, Pixels' monthly unique active Wallets (UAW) reached 1.8 million, with a daily UAW of over 700,000, making it one of the hottest Web3 games currently, and its rapid rise has been sustained for more than half a year. Ronin has completely emerged from the shadow of Hacker attacks several years ago, and its ecosystem, based on the model of Pixels, has begun to introduce more high-quality chain games. For example, Apeiron, the first Web3 god simulation game, followed the path of Pixels and announced its departure from Polygon to join Ronin in December 2023.
MapleStory Universe, which just completed its pioneer test on August 2nd, is a PC-based MMORPG owned by Nexon, a Korean gaming giant. It combines blockchain technology with the IP of 'MapleStory' and claimed to have received a $100 million investment by the end of 2023. The 'MapleStory' IP has attracted over 180 million registered users in the past twenty years and is one of Nexon's most popular games. In March 2023, Nexon announced that it had chosen Polygon as its partner to closely collaborate with the team at Polygon Labs on the development and marketing of MapleStory Universe. However, in March of this year, Nexon and Polygon went their separate ways and switched to using a dedicated Avalanche subnet.
Coincidentally, South Korean web game developer Delabs Games, led by former Nexon CEO Joonmo Kwon, almost simultaneously announced its entry into the Polygon ecosystem, just like MapleStory Universe. The team, known for creating the popular Nexon game series 'KartRider', plans to launch a web 3 arcade racing game called Rumble Racing Star (RRS) on Polygon. However, in May of this year, Delabs Games announced a collaboration with Arbitrum, migrating RRS to Arbitrum. Additionally, their upcoming web 3 games, Metabolts and Space Frontier, will also be built on Arbitrum, completely abandoning their partnership with Polygon.
In addition to the above-mentioned Block chain networks, Immutable zkEVM and Xai games public chain are also popular choices for "migration". For example, Hunters On-Chain and Battle Royale games Blast Royale, as well as collectible card game Storm Warfare, which have contributed a lot of activity to Polygon, have successively migrated to Immutable zkEVM; while pet collection and simulation business game Crypto Unicorns, action/cyberpunk MMOYaku, and mobile RTS game Land Before War have chosen to join Xai.
Will there be a reunion someday? Why did the blockchain game developer leave?
Most development teams often choose to remain silent about the reasons for leaving Polygon in order to maintain respect for their former employer. However, some clues can be gleaned from the information disclosed by individual development teams.
When asked why she abandoned Polygon, Angela Son, the MapleStory Universe partner in charge, only emphasized the team's belief in the advantages of using Avalanche to assist with server and infrastructure needs. However, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Decrypt, after Polygon Labs stopped supporting Polygon Edge, which allowed for the construction of custom Ethereum-compatible chains, in December of last year, Nexon chose to use other networks. The source added that Nexon and Polygon Labs had agreed to part ways before officially deciding to use Avalanche. Web3 game and creator platform Hytopia (formerly Non-fungible Token Worlds) also seems to have migrated to Arbitrum for similar reasons.
Scalability issues and "high" gas fees are one of the important reasons for the exodus of blockchain games. Before Crypto Unicorns left the Polygon ecosystem, its Non-fungible Token had generated about $35 million in volume. Aron Beierschmitt, co-founder and CEO of game developer Laguna Games, said the team had "challenges" running the game on Polygon, especially as network gas spikes made the game more expensive to operate and caused friction for players. Aron also said that Laguna Games needs to provide a monthly subsidy of about $5,000 to $10,000 for players' network gas fees, which is unsustainable. Xai, a Layer 3 gaming network built on top of Arbitrum, exempts players from such fees altogether.
The role-playing game Pirate Nation is facing similar issues to Crypto Unicorns. The game is developed by Pro of of Play, which announced a completion of a $33 million seed round of financing in September 2023, led by Greenoaks and a16z. Pirate Nation chose to part ways with Polygon in March 2023 and joined Arbitrum Nova. Amitt Mahajan, co-founder and CEO of Pro of of Play, said that Pirate Nation needs to transition to a more affordable and scalable platform. 'As more people move to Polygon, we are starting to encounter scaling issues on the Polygon chain.' 'We have to pay gas fees of $3,000 to $4,000 per day. So this becomes unsustainable. This prevents us from scaling the game.'
In addition to issues with technical support and high expenses, it seems that the lack of support from the platform is also an important factor for game developers. The NFT game Pegaxy, developed by Mirai Labs, migrated to Avalanche at the end of last year. Corey Wilton, the CEO and co-founder of the developer, bluntly stated that compared to that, Polygon Labs did not provide much 'help' in developing games and encryption projects on its ETH sidechain. 'It feels like we haven't received any help in a sense.'
Who are the latecomers? Polygon still holds the trump card
In addition to the explosive data achieved by Ton's ecological mini-games, the 'traditional' blockchain gaming track as a whole has not seen much growth in this cycle, and no blockchain game has stood out. However, Polymarket, a Decentralization prediction market platform in the Polygon ecosystem, has become the focus of market attention for encryption applications in this cycle, surpassing the various games mentioned above. Since April of this year, the platform has entered the public eye, and its volume and number of users have exploded. Especially in the catalysis of annual events such as the assassination of Trump, its typicality as a prediction market has been widely reported by mainstream media, and its popularity and influence have been further enhanced. From June to the end of July, Polymarket's cumulative volume surged 58% from $663 million to $1.05 billion, and its volume in July alone exceeded $380 million.
However, the bigger the tree, the more wind it attracts. According to CryptoSlate, US legislators are calling on the CFTC to ban election betting. Senators including Elizabeth Warren stated that gambling around elections would undermine public trust and the democratic process, and urged the CFTC to immediately establish rules to prevent the 'commodification' of elections. Polymarket, which has gained popularity due to the presidential election, has a market volume of over $4.74 billion, accounting for over 45% of the total volume. With regulatory intervention, the future development of Polymarket has also become uncertain.
In addition, Polygon's accumulated technological foundation is also the killer feature of the network, especially the customizable toolkit Chain Development Kit (CDK), which allows developers to create their own layer-2 blockchains based on Polygon's zero-knowledge technology. In March last year, Immutable and Polygon Labs announced a collaboration to launch Immutable zkEVM, with technical support from Polygon, laying the foundation for the rapid rise and breakthrough of the Immutable ecosystem to millions of players this year.
In the past two months, Ronin and Telegram have also successively announced that they will launch their own Layer2 network based on Polygon technology to support the Blockchain The Open Network (TON) team. Ronin uses the Polygon Chain development kit (CDK) to create its own zkEVM chain on Ronin to improve scalability, security, and Decentralization; TON will use CDK to create the TON Applications Chain (TAC), enabling EVM-based Decentralization applications to access the TON ecosystem, paving the way for innovative applications such as TON Blockon-chain games and Decentralization identity solutions.