Top Play To Earn Tokens by Market Capitalization

Play-to-Earn Crypto Games

Gaming is increasing in prominence every year, but play-to-earn games could act as rocket fuel to a trend that was already strong on its own.

Some estimations put the value of the global gaming market at $268 billion by 2025. As people are increasingly moving their lives online and in front of screens, the pandemic drastically increased the number of gamers. Cryptocurrencies and games are beginning to merge, and play-to-earn games may revolutionize the industry.

Play-to-earn games are games where players earn rewards for playing and participating in the game's ecosystem. Unlike in traditional games, (where rewards are only useful within the game's closed ecosystem), rewards in play-to-earn games can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies, and eventually for real money. They completely change the incentive structure around playing a game.

Rewards come in different forms: in general, players receive in-game assets and/or the game's native token. These can usually be exchanged for each other, enabling players to be financially rewarded for time spent playing the game. Rewards can be traded on secondary marketplaces, with most games offering native marketplace solutions.

The main appeal of play-to-earn games is giving the players equity and allowing them to own the game's assets. Leveling up becomes a financially worthwhile activity with play-to-earn games, instead of just a goal. Depending on the game's complexity, an entire in-game economy develops around the tradable assets, with more sophisticated games developing highly sophisticated game economies.

Although blockchain games have existed for years, play-to-earn games really became a trend during the coronavirus pandemic. Cryptokitties was one of the early blockchain games from 2017, but Axie Infinity (AXS) probably popularized the play-to-earn trend in 2021 more than any other game. Aavegotchi was another popular game also using NFT technology to allow players to earn rewards.

How to Earn Money on Crypto Games

The key appeal of play-to-earn games is the ability for players to earn rewards that can be exchanged for other crypto assets like Bitcoin or stablecoins. Imagine you could play FIFA and increase your team's value by winning games, and then were able to sell the team at a profit. That, in a nutshell, is the appeal of play-to-earn.

Unlike traditional games, play-to-earn gamers do not rely on sponsorships or competitions to make money playing. As all assets are tokenized — the game and everything part of it becomes ownable. This tokenization happens via NFTs, meaning players can own verifiably unique digital items the same way they own unique trading cards offline.

Earning money playing crypto games can happen in several ways.

The most straightforward and common way is to play the game and earn in-game rewards in the game's native token. Like in traditional games, players are rewarded for completing missions and advancing in play-to-earn games, the only difference being that rewards have a monetary value.

Players can also level up their character and sell. Since in-game assets are NFTs, they can be sold on secondary marketplaces and leveled-up or rare characters can yield high prices. Players can also sell other in-game items as tokenization rewards any kind of interaction with the game.

Games often come with DeFi elements, allowing players to earn with staking. Valuable NFTs can be staked and earn more rewards in the game's native token.

Finally, players can earn by trading items they acquired on marketplaces and reselling them at a higher value or by trading the game's token. AXS more than 200X'd its valuation at its peak, making trading play-to-earn tokens a potentially highly lucrative activity.

Play-to-Earn Tokens

Play-to-earn games are a dime a dozen these days, as many substandard games try to cash in on the hype started by a few very popular trailblazers.

Here is a list of the most notable play-to-earn games you should know about.

Axie Infinity (AXS)

Axie Infinity is a game that is reminiscent of the highly popular Pokémon game that featured collecting digital monsters and training them to become stronger. In Axie, these digital pets are known as Axies and can also be trained and improved. Unlike Pokémon, Axies can also be traded on marketplaces.

Each Axie features different stats and comes in different classes, with Axies varying according to their rarity. Players can work on their Axies to level them up and increase their rarity level, thus increasing their value. At its peak, AXS reached a multi-billion dollar valuation and was one of the most valuable crypto assets on the market. The token became so sought-after that entire playing farms in developing countries formed, allowing people to make a living playing Axie Infinity.

Smooth Love Potion (SLP) are ERC-20 tokens that are earned by playing the Axie Infinity game. It can then be used to breed new Axies. SLP has exploded in popularity in countries like the Philippines, where the SLP to Philippine peso pair is extremely popular.

Aavegotchi (GHST)

Aavegotchi is another early play-to-earn game and is named after the popular Tamagotchi digital pet game. Aavegotchi was a pioneer in combining play-to-earn functionality with features from decentralized finance, allowing players to stake collateral on their Aavegotchi and incentivizing them to constantly improve their rarity levels. Other play-to-earn games later copied this kind of rarity farming, but no other game managed to pull it off as elegantly as Aavegotchi did.

The Sandbox (SAND)

The Sandbox is one of the games that evolved from the initial play-to-earn trend and combined it with metaverse elements. In its blockchain-based virtual world, players can buy and trade virtual parcels of land, allowing them to create a digital world that has real-world financial benefits.

Decentraland (MANA)

Decentraland is another highly popular play-to-earn game with metaverse elements. Similar to The Sandbox, players can buy and own virtual pieces of land that can be used for different use cases. Several major companies are even said to have bought virtual real estate in Decentraland, a testament to the game's popularity and the appeal of blockchain games.

Illuvium (ILV)

Illuvium is a role-playing game that sends players traveling across a fantasy world to catch creatures known as Illuvials. These Illuvials are NFTs and allow players to trade them on the game's marketplace or use them for staking purposes to earn the native ILV token. One of the most popular fantasy games in the blockchain space, Illuvium rocketed from virtually zero to a four-figure token price thanks to its cleverly-designed in-game incentives.