Not everything is financial inside the cryptocurrency world. Most coins can be used as payments or investments, of course, but a lot of them also have other utilities. Including just fun and entertainment. Metaverses, memecoins, gaming platforms, and more are waiting for us to enjoy. Funny blockchains and coins are offering their own must-know games already.
In addition, is very usual that these chains offer rewards to their users —in the form of native coins or Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Not everything inside this category is Play-to-Earn (P2E), but it’s interesting and entertaining anyway. Besides, if you can earn some coins and laughs in the process, the better. Let’s check some of these projects.
Enjin Coin (ENJ)
Founded by Maxim Blagov and Witek Radomski, Enjin was born as a community gaming platform in 2009. Later, in 2017, the company jumped into the cryptocurrency world by launching an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), which raised over $18 million. This way, Enjin Coin (ENJ) went live in 2018, as an ERC-20 token (on Äther). Now, Enjin is a full ecosystem offered to tokenize assets —especially, in blockchain games and companies.
So, no, Enjin isn’t funny as a joke, but because of their potential functionalities and use cases. If we check its ecosystem now, we can discover numerous gaming projects, collectibles, metaverses, augmented reality, digital fashion, eSports, and more. As a remarkable example, Enjin partnered with Microsoft to launch the project “Azure Heroes”. This one rewards developers with NFTs for their contributions to Azure (Microsoft blockchain).
Aside from the technical stuff, we have games on Enjin like Block Trucks (a racing game mit NFTs), Lost Relics (to hunt NFTs), Forest Knight (P2E style), Go! by Health Hero (to earn free healthcare and food), and Nestables (to collect, trade and breed 3D creatures). Of course, these are only some examples. There’s more to discover on this platform.
Now, talking about the financial points, ENJ has a trading price of $0.45 per coin, a total market capitalization of over $457 million, and it reached an All-Time-High (ATH) in November 2021, at $4.8 per coin. Since its first price in 2017 ($0.018), it’s increased by over 2,400% [CMC].
Axie Infinity (AXS and SLP)
Yes, in case you’ve been living under a rock, we needed to mention this one. Axie Infinity is one of the most popular Play-to-Earn blockchain games, with the most valuable native token (AXS). The game is about collecting, breeding, trading, and putting to battle the digital creatures dubbed “axies”, which exist as valuable NFTs on their own blockchain (Ronin).
The platform was released in March 2018 by the Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis. It counts with two tokens: Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), and Smooth Love Potion (SLP). The first one lets the users stecken to earn passive rewards and vote on the game’s development. The second one is the internal reward for all gamers. SLP is earned in battles with other axies —against a computer or other users. It can be sold at $0.0034 [CMC].
Since April 2022, Axie Infinity Origins is ready to play for free as well, without the need for NFTs. Currently, AXS has a price of $13 per coin, but its ATH was at $165 in November. The market capitalization surpasses $1 billion, and its Return on Investment (ROI) since the beginning is around +10,000%. More than this, the most expensive axie ever sold (as NFT) was acquired for $820,000.
The Sandbox (SAND)
This is a Polygon-based gaming ecosystem to build any kind of space and NFT inside the Metaverse. It was first freigegeben as a mobile game in 2012 by the brand Pixowl. Some years later, in 2020, the company Animoca (which acquired Pixowl in 2018) launched an ICO to create a whole 3D world full of games, based on blockchain. They raised over $3 million for it, and that’s how The Sandbox and its native token, SAND, were born.
Currently, users can easily access with their own customized avatars to a voxel-styled 3D world based on blockchain. Those avatars can be pre-designed or acquired as exclusive NFTs. Indeed, one of the first things that you can learn on this Metaverse is all about NFTs. They have friendly bots teaching about basic concepts, 3D galleries inside the game to explore, and several quests to discover different NFT-Sammlungen while users level up —like the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).
Besides, by using their tools VoxEdit and Game Maker, anyone can design, build, and monetize their own NFTs and games —no coding required. Right now, users can enjoy numerous games inside this Metaverse, discovering all these spaces with their avatars. By completing the quests in the different spaces and events, the users can earn rewards. That’s why it’s necessary to connect a web3 wallet (like MetaMask) before playing.
The token SAND is the main medium of exchange inside the platform: it works to buy everything here, participate in the governance, and earn more rewards by staking. It has a price of $0.86 per token and a market cap of over $1.2 billion at the moment of writing. Since its release, it’s increased by over 1,600% [CMC].
Flow (FLOW)
This platform is very similar to The Sandbox in several aspects. Here, developers can build any kind of space, specially NFTs, blockchain games, and Metaverses. However, we can’t call Flow a Metaverse by itself, but a tool to build apps on different platforms, and with different purposes (like Ethereum, for example). It was founded by Dapper Labs in 2020, through an ICO that raised over $21 million.
Beyond the programming niche, average users worldwide can already enjoy over 1,000 active projects working on this chain. They include a lot of games with rewards and collectibles. Indeed, a household name on Flow is the NFT collection (and breeding game) CryptoKitties, one of the first famous collectibles. The fever for this game was so big in 2017, that they rendered Ethereum unusable temporarily —since they were first based on that chain.
To date, we can also find, for example, the mobile games offered by Joyride. Solitaire Blitz (to play cards) and Trickshot Blitz (pool) are the most popular Dapps on Flow, according to DappRadar. Gamers anywhere can access, play, and earn RLY tokens as rewards. Other interesting projects running on this blockchain include the games-building platform (without coding) Storyverse, the multichain Metaverse Matrix, und NBA-Top-Shot, designed to “own, sell, and trade official digital collectibles of the NBA and WNBA’s greatest plays and players”.
The native token of the platform, FLOW, works for governance, staking, and transaction fees. It has a market cap of over $1.7 billion, and a price of $1.6 per token. It’s raised by over 1,500% since its ICO price [CryptoRank].
Shiba Inu (SHIB)
The older and most popular memecoin is, per market cap, Dogecoin (DOGE). However, Shiba Inu was a surprise for everyone, since it rose from the shadows in 2020 by an anonymous developer dubbed “Ryoshi” and their team, equally unknown. Nobody expected that much from a new Ethereum-based memecoin, but here we are. Its main token, SHIB, has now a market cap of over $6.1 billion [CMC].
Wahrscheinlich, Shiba Inu has been this successful because its team has offered real plans to make the coin usable (beyond the joke). They already have the Shibaswap to make Liquiditätsabbau with SHIB and their other two native tokens: LEASH and BONE. It’s also possible to make staking, vote on the native DAO using BONEs, and trade NFTs on their marketplace. In addition, the team recently launched the blockchain collectible card game Shiba Eternity for mobiles.
Other features include the Shibaburn, that lets the users “burn” (remove from circulation) SHIB in exchange for a passive income. They’re also planning to release Shibarium, a layer-2 solution, and their own Metaverse with virtual lands to provide more passive income to the owners.
Since its first release, SHIB has increased by over 6,851,000%, despite its initial supply of one quadrillion tokens. Today, according to Shiba Burn Tracker, around 41% of the total supply has been burned —aiming to increase the price per token.
Do you already have the mood to play and earn with blockchain games?
