Yield Guild Games: The Ally of Gamers

NFT gaming has recently taken the blockchain world by storm. A notable mention is Axie Infinity which has shed light on the play-to-earn trend and gained massive popularity in the community, reaching an all-time high in revenue of $364M in August 2021. This game inspired the creation of Yield Guild Games (YGG), a play-to-earn (P2E) gaming guild and investment DAO. Although NFT gaming is still a nascent market and inherently risky, it has the potential to reach a larger scale in the following decades, and YGG attempting to become a dominant player in this untapped market.

YGG's Unique Business Model

When the GameFi – an intersection of blockchain games and decentralized finance – market was budding, YGG established itself as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focusing on in-game NFTs and decentralized games investment, aiming to accrue assets in the emerging virtual world economy. The core business of YGG can be described as a combination of Berkshire Hathaway and Uber in the sense that YGG is acquiring a variety of NFT assets from different play-to-earn games and renting those NFTs to players who need initial capital (in-game NFTs) to earn money.

As a result of players initially needing Axie’s to farm SLP in Axie Infinity, some Axie holders started renting or providing “scholarships” to players without starting capital. These scholarship recipients pay a specific amount of interest to the NFT loaner. YGG has taken the scholarship model to a greater scale by providing NFTs to new players (scholars) to start playing immediately without paying any upfront costs. Players receive 70% of the earnings, community managers enjoy a 20% cut, and YGG retains the remaining percentage.

How to Join a YGG Guild

To join YGG, participants need to mint their YGG Guild Badge to officially become guild members and start their gaming adventure. This badge will serve as their visa to access the YGG website and involve in numerous activities including registering scholarships, unlocking exclusive features, and joining e-sport events.

Up until now, YGG has generated approximately $13 million in total revenue, and its dominant source comes from Axie Infinity, whose profit has been only second to Ethereum in the past six months. In September alone, the scholars generated 20 million SLP (a reward token in Axie Infinity) worth $1.24 million, and YGG enjoyed a fair share of $124k. As Axie Infinity has recently introduced its ownDEX Katana and continues seeing a surge in total active users, it will appreciate SLP’s value; hence increasing the value of YGG’s portfolio.