You may have heard of the “Exeedme” blockchain-powered gaming tournament platform and the XED token. In short, Exeedme is a blockchain gaming platform that seeks to revolutionize the industry by giving gamers, developers, and organizers a place to monetize their skills. They plan to do this through the power of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Furthermore, with over 3.24 billion gamers worldwide, that means that one out of four people in the world play video games. It also means that the gaming industry is twice the size of the movie and music industry is combined.
That makes for a vast marketplace, but the creators of Exeedme believe many things are still lacking in the space. They want to give gamers a place to exercise a real sense of ownership and earn money when they play. The team has laid out a list of inadequacies with outdated game monetization models. Let’s take a look at some of the problems and how Exeedme hopes to overcome them.
The Problems With Modern Gaming
Firstly, it’s almost impossible for gamers to make money (much less a living) playing video games. Even in the growing world of esports, only professional gamers make any real money. And it’s far from easy to reach that kind of level of play. Becoming a professional gamer requires a significant amount of skill and time investment. Fierce competition and high barriers to entry keep the average player separated from gaming income.
Even those who turn pro still see the winnings congregating in a few hands at the top of the winners’ circle. Streamers can also profit, but again, it takes a lot of time and effort to build up a following. So, overall, it’s tough for non-professional gamers to make money doing what they love.
The Free2Play Model
Another problem is the “Free2Play” model. It has been the dominant business model in the gaming world for years. However, market research has shown that gamers are increasingly frustrated with the predatory monetization schemes practiced in Free2Play.
Above all, it’s the way that aggressive marketers select strategic points in the game’s progression to place annoying popup ads. These ads appear at the most inconvenient times for the player. And some research indicates that over 60% of gamers experience buyer’s remorse after making an in-game purchase.
So, until now, the big winners have not been the gamers themselves, but the streaming services, event organizers, and the predatory publishers with their relentless advertisements.
Exeedme’s Solution
One of the goals for Exeedme is to create a platform for gamers to make a living at it. That’s what it’s all about. Exeedme wants to enable gamers to get paid regardless of their skill level. No longer will gamers have to rise to the professional ranks to earn money.
Therefore, rather than just top players making “bank,” Exeedme wants to create a world where gamers of all levels can make money. Their plan to pull this off utilizing the latest innovations in cryptocurrencies, DeFi, and NFT’s.
To clarify, if you’re not sure what DeFi is, please read our introductory article on the subject. Or, better yet, check out the DeFi 101 course at Ivan on Tech Academy.
NFTs are non-fungible tokens. They are unique and rare assets that counterfeiters can’t duplicate. To learn more, please read our article on non-fungible tokens.
So, the Exeedme solution seeks to build a blockchain-based economy where all gamers can monetize their skills and make a living doing what they do best, playing video games. This economy will be skill-based, where developers can create entire game ecosystems for any skill level, while Exeedme provides the framework.
In this ecosystem, crypto assets and open market dynamics will help ensure that the big winners will be the gamers and developers—in short, those who create and engage.
Virtual Assets
Another problem with today’s gaming environment is that players can purchase and earn virtual assets or in-game currency, but they can’t monetize them or transfer them outside the native ecosystem.
Exeedme wants to change all that by using their native XED token along with NFTs. On their platform, players can transfer game items between the different game universes on different blockchains resulting in an interoperable digital multiverse. If you’ve read our other articles on DeFi development, then you know that interoperability is key to any DeFi system.
Innovations from the world of DeFi and NFTs are pre-built into Exeedme. And they will allow for peer-to-peer gamer economies to emerge. These economies will be gamer-centric and focused on rewarding players rather than the side chain advertising industries that normally pop up alongside.
How Exeedme Works
On Exeedme, gamers can:
- Pick their favorite game to play.
- Determine the stakes and fund them with crypto.
- Challenge friends, other opponents, or use the “matchmaking” system to auto-match players of similar skill levels.
- Bet on themselves to win.
- Collect their winnings from the prize pool when they succeed.
The matchmaking feature lets Exeedme find a match between players of equal skill level.
Ways to Earn
The three main ways to get paid on Exeedme are to:
- Win
- Participate
- Progress
Exeedme is creating new revenue streams for gamers to earn XED tokens by betting on themselves and winning. Winning is the obvious way to get paid. However, even when a player fails, they can still earn by participating and progressing. Are you interested in blockchain game development yourself? Learn more by visiting Ivan on Tech Academy today.
Better Than a Participation Trophy
Remember that time you got a participation trophy in football even though you committed that dreadful “back pass” that gave the opposing team the winning goal? If you played soccer at a school that rewards students for participating, then you’ll understand. But even if you don’t “get” the analogy, know that XED tokens are better than participation trophies because you can spend them. Even if you get a shellacking in your Esports match, you can still earn XED tokens.
That’s because any time there is a bet on your chances to win, you are mining XED token rewards. That means you get paid whether you win or lose. Pretty nice. Exeedme wants to encourage usage by rewarding gamers for participating in their platform. Win or lose, gamers can get participation rewards in XED token form.
Gamers can also earn XED and newly crafted NFTs by progressing through their matches. That means you can earn NFT collectibles and in-game assets by winning tournaments and league events or completing missions, milestones and achieving higher ranking levels. In short, anytime you progress, you earn. The best part is, these earned assets can be traded or monetized.
And the more XED you earn, the more doors will open up for you to the higher leagues with higher stakes. To check things like ranking levels, gaming stats, how much XED you’ve generated, or just overall player performance, you can visit Exeedme’s dashboard.
Tournaments and Leagues
The Exeedme ecosystem offers centralized games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and LOL and decentralized games such as F1:Delta and Skyweaver. Leagues and tournaments will be divided and filtered by skill to keep the playing field level. That way, less skilled players will not be dominated and eliminated early by the top players. In these leagues, users can get a chance to compete with gamers at their level, improve their skills, and develop at their own pace.
Furthermore, to prevent cheating, Exeedme will use Video Referee, and game state data to ensure gameplay is kept fair at all times. The platform will also offer various gaming modes, such as Solo, Party, Teams, and Pro-Seasons.
XED Token Launch
Exeedme listed the token price and distribution as follows:
- Seed sale price: $0.0125
- Private sale price: $0.025
- Pre-public round price: $0.03
- Uniswap listing price: $0.05
Polkastarter and Uniswap
Exeedme’s Initial DEX Offering (IDO) of XED on Polkastarter met with enormous success. The fortunate 400 owners of the whitelisted addresses granted the opportunity to snatch up a total of 1,500,000 XED tokens for $0.05 per token did so quickly.
The rest of the crypto-verse had to wait for the open trading day on Uniswap on December 30th. After selling out on Polkastarter, XED achieved over $18 Million in trading volume and snared more than 3,300 holders of XED in less than six hours on Uniswap.
At the time of this writing, XED’s token price is $0.40 on Coingecko. So those who got in early did quite well. The successful token sale will help Exeedme to further its goals in 2021.
Internal testing and audits are well underway, including Anti-Cheat for the top esports title Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. And the beta is moving along faster than expected. Speaking of beta testers, some early adopters will get to test the Exeedme platform in the first week of January. A reward system is also in the works to pay testers for their feedback.
The Power of the XED token
Certainly, gamer rewards will depend on how much XED they stake. By staking, gamers get access to these prizes that will grow in exclusivity and rarity through active participation and ranking growth.
But staking is also for gamers who wish to help govern Exeedme’s ecosystem. Staking gives players the right to vote on which new games the platform will deploy, new features, and reward distribution.
Exeedme designed its governance system to be led by gamers since it wants them to be a part of the creative journey. Consequently, staking XED is the best way for players to help drive the platform’s future.
By staking XED, gamers also earn privileges such as lower fees, and they get a cut of the match fees, which could go as high as 50%. Moreover, stakers get early access to free tournaments, entry to special tournaments, and access to high stakes games. They also get access to exclusive NFT launches and other digital perks like enhancing their player profile, gaining access to unique avatars, exclusive badges, and more specific performance statistics.
Staking Pools
Exeedme will deploy community pools to fund general improvements to the protocol, while developers can obtain funding by various methods depending on their project. For example, the NFT Rewards and XED Rewards Pools will receive fees from tournaments along with mints and melts of both fungible tokens and NFTs.
Tournament Organizers
As mentioned, with XED, players get special access to exclusive opportunities. Thus, for those who wish to become organizers, they can stake XED to build new communities and create leagues and tournaments. The larger the stake, the bigger the event.
Anyone can become an organizer. However, the user will have to stake a specific amount of XED to do so. The cool thing about becoming an organizer is the opportunity to build communities by setting up tournaments and introducing things like new games and chat features.
Exeedme will assist these fledgling communities in bootstrapping their ecosystem with the necessary NFTs and fungible token assets. They will also provide the blockchain logic that can include many use cases such as achievement rewards, collectibles, tournament access, and gaming items. Creative minds can go wild on this platform.
Furthermore, the platform will deduct staked XED to organize such tournaments, grow the player base, deploy Anti-Cheats and Video Referee, and mint NFTs for trophies. When the staked XED drops below a certain level, the organizer must buy and stake more XED.
Fees
- Tournament Fees:
Exeedme tournaments do charge fees with 50% going to the organizer.
- Platform Fees:
These fees fund XED Reward Pools, NFT Reward Pools, platform development, and help maintain daily operations.
- Minting Fees:
A portion of the fees will go to the XED Rewards Pool and NFT Rewards Pool.
Partnerships
Exeedme has also signed Richard Pacheco “Fox” as their gaming ambassador. Fox is a professional gamer who started his career in 2006 and is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player. Further, they have lined up other essential partnerships that they will announce soon.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are lots of game theory mechanics at work here to drive participation on this platform. And if you noticed the low initial sale prices of XED in their IDO, you can see the early adopters did quite well.
Exeedme describes its platform as being powered by NFTs and DeFi and built on Polkadot.
The gamer universe is genuinely massive, so if Exeedme can capture even a small slice of it, they should prosper. And if their gamer-centric mission stays on course, players, organizers, and developers will also prosper. Do you also want to become a blockchain developer? If so, visit Ivan on Tech Academy and get started today!
Author: MindFrac
