What is cryptocurrency?
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency or virtual currency secured by cryptography which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Cryptocurrency is designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Individual coin ownership records are stored in a digital ledger, which is a computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, to control the creation of additional coins, and to verify the transfer of coin ownership.
Cryptocurrency does not exist in physical form (like paper money) and is typically not issued by a central authority. Cryptocurrencies typically use decentralized control as opposed to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). When a cryptocurrency is minted or created prior to issuance or issued by a single issuer, it is generally considered centralized. When implemented with decentralized control, each cryptocurrency works through distributed ledger technology, typically a blockchain, that serves as a public financial transaction database
A cryptocurrency is a tradable digital asset or digital form of money, built on blockchain technology that only exists online.
What is a blockchain?
A blockchain is a distributed database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. Blockchains are best known for their crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, such as Bitcoin, for maintaining a secure and decentralized record of transactions. The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party.
What is crypto gaming?
Crypto gaming is like traditional gaming, but the games are on the blockchain. This opens up a lot of new opportunities for players to earn rewards through the play to earn model and this guide will help you select the best play-to-earn crypto games.
Play to earn is emerging as the go-to gaming model in crypto gaming and players are earning their rewards in cryptocurrency coins, tokens and NFTs. This is only possible through decentralized blockchain technology.
Traditional games have always been centralized, which means that items and experience (XP) gained while playing them could not be transferred over and used in other games. Crypto gaming is different. Players can now use their rewards and items across different crypto games.
Players can earn rewards in a variety of ways. Take Axie Infinity for example — users can buy characters called Axies, level them up, and then sell them at a higher price. Players can also battle with their Axies to earn SLP and AXS, which are Ethereum based crypto gaming tokens. These tokens have value that can rise and fall in relation to the games popularity and the tokens volatility in the open market.
This opens up a whole new frontier in the gaming industry. Gamers can earn crypto while gaming! The play-to-earn crypto game revolution has arrived!
What is an NFT (What are NFTs)?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token.
Non-fungible tokens are unique digital assets that are not directly replaceable with another digital asset. Many physical assets are also non-fungible. Paintings and artworks, for example, are non-fungible since each piece of art is unique from another. Fungible tokens are divisible and non-unique.
Top NFT trading platforms
OpenSea is the world’s first and largest NFT marketplace where anyone can discover, collect, and sell the NFTs they earn from playing the best play-to-earn crypto games. Many other crypto games have their own trading marketplaces that can easily navigated to through each games homepage.
What is play-to-earn?
Play-to-earn games are video games where the player can earn rewards with real-world value. These rewards can be anything from real fiat money, cryptocurrency coins and tokens, NFTs and more.
With regular games, there’s no incentive to play other than pure enjoyment. The relationship is one-way. Players pay for the game, and unless they are a professional esports player or a streamer with a big following, they will never be able to monetize their playtime.
By contrast, play-to-earn gaming offers players the opportunity to earn real rewards.
Blockchain technology adds an additional benefit. It enables players to transfer value and be paid to play irrespective of who they are, or where they are in the world. Yes, play-to-earn crypto games are changing the game!
Play to earn crypto games list
The best up to date resource I have found for a list of crypto games is on the PlayToEarn site, which can be found at: https://playtoearn.net/id/blockchaingames
Rather than go through the entire list of best play to earn crypto games , I have selected the top 10 to discuss in further detail.
Top 10 play to earn crypto games
Axie Infinity
Source: https://axieinfinity.com/
Axie Infinity is the most popular non-fungible token (NFT) game right now and was the first Ethereum-based NFT game to hit US$1 billion in sales. The game has more than a million active users. It is the current king of play-to-earn crypto games.
Axie Infinity is a Pokemon-inspired game where players can battle, collect and earn! Players can build a team of creatures called Axies, and use them to battle players in the Arena mode or fight enemies in the Adventure mode.
There are two tokens in the game, the main one is the Axie Infinity Token (AXS) and the other, the Smooth Love Potion (SLP). Players can get AXS by making it onto the game’s PVP leaderboard, while SLP is earned by completing adventure mode levels and winning arena matches. Both tokens are required to breed Axies, and to do so players need at least two Axies.
Each Axie is an NFT and has a unique set of body parts that determine its skills and rarity. Extremely rare Axies have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars!
While Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game, it still attracts NFT collectors because Axies can sell for a lot of money.
At the time of writing, the Axie Infinity Token (AXS) price is US$66.87 and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) price is $0.02908303
Decentraland
Source: https://decentraland.org/
Decentraland is a DAO powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Players can create, explore and trade in a world that is owned by its users.
What is the Decentraland DAO?
DAO stands for “Decentralized Autonomous Organization”. The Decentraland DAO owns the most important smart contracts and assets that make up Decentraland — the LAND Contract, the Estates Contract, Wearables, Content Servers and the Marketplace. It also owns a substantial purse of MANA which allows it to be truly autonomous as well as subsidize various operations and initiatives throughout Decentraland.
At the time of writing the MANA Token price is $3.181 USD
The Sandbox
Source: https://www.sandbox.game/en/
The Sandbox is a community-driven platform where creators can monetize voxel assets and gaming experiences on the blockchain. It is one of the world’s largest independent user-generated content and gaming platforms, with millions of downloads and over one million monthly active users. The new voxel-based blockchain version of The Sandbox adds many new creative and commercial possibilities which make it stand out among play-to-earn crypto games.
3D user-generated content is created through VoxEdit, a voxel editor software where artists can create their own assets. Up to this date, existing voxel games have been highly centralized, thus not allowing voxel artists to receive the full value for their work. The Sandbox is taking a unique decentralized and user-centric approach to offer more to artists and players. Thanks to this design, anyone can make or import their own 3D voxel objects, animate them and turn them into NFTs.
SAND is the utility token used throughout The Sandbox ecosystem as the basis for transactions and interactions. It is an ERC-20 utility token built on the Ethereum blockchain. There is a finite supply of 3,000,000,000 SAND.
At the time of writing, the SAND Token price is $4.670997 USD
Plant VS Undead
Source: https://plantvsundead.com/
Plant vs Undead is quite versatile in the world of play-to-earn crypto games. It’s on the Binance Smart Chain and players can both farm and fight. In farm mode, players can manage their farm and produce the in-game currency known as Light Energy (LE). Managing the farm consists of completing daily tasks and quests such as watering the plants and harvesting seeds. These Light Energy tokens can be converted into the cryptocurrency token known as Plant vs Undead Token (PVU) and this token can then be traded on various decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
Players can also make money by pitting their plants against the undead, in the form of NFTs.
NFT plants can be sold in the open market, where common NFT plants sell for around 10 PVU tokens, and rare ones can go for more than 100 PVU tokens.
At the time of writing, the Plant vs Undead Token (PVU) price is $0.079432.
Gods Unchained
Source: https://godsunchained.com/
Gods Unchained was created by the same team behind the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, Immutable X.
This means that the game runs on Ethereum and uses Immutable X, where decentralized applications (dApps) can trade peer-to-peer without fees. Also, up to 9,000 transactions can be processed per second (TPS) which is high even amongst the best play-to-earn crypto games.
Gods Unchained is a trading card game where players fight with other players using a deck of cards. The deck consists of core cards and genesis cards.
Players earn core cards for free while playing the game but there were also card packs that players could buy if they wanted to expedite grinding. Each card has different stats and rarity. The rarer a card is, the more it is worth. These cards were sold before the game launch and are no longer in production.
This means that if players want to use them, they need to buy them from another player. Cards can be bought and sold in the immutable X marketplace which uses Ethereum as a currency, so players will need a MetaMask or similar supported wallet.
The Gods Unchained token (GODS) is an ERC-20 token. Players can use GODS tokens to craft NFTs, purchase packs from the Gods Unchained Marketplace, and earn even more rewards through holding the tokens in Immutable X. GODS token also represents voting power and enables players to participate in governance proposals that influence the game’s future development.
At the time of writing, the GODS token is trading at USD $2.23
Illuvium
Source: https://www.illuvium.io/
Illuvium is a 3D RPG Open World game on Ethereum Blockchain with auto-battle gameplay. Like old-school RPG gameplays, the primary task for players is to win battles, complete quests, and upgrade ranks. Rewards are earned in ILV Tokens.
Players can collect and upgrade Illuvial NFTs and use them to battle or trade them in the Illuvium marketplace.
At the time of writing the ILV Token price is $679.78 USD
Age of Rust
Source: https://www.ageofrustgame.com/
Age of Rust is a story-driven, first-person action adventure puzzle play-to-earn crypto game set in a dark sci-fi future where AI has taken over the galaxy. To succeed where others have failed before, players need to fight back against mechs and those plotting against them. Explore the different environments, find clues, and solve challenging puzzles that unlock the way forward. Survive and uncover the key to stopping the Mechs… fail and the hope of humanity will be extinguished forever.
The game is based on Ethereum-blockchain, built under the ENJIN Protocol.
Some game items or puzzles can only be accessed by having special tokens in your Enjin Wallet. Players can get these tokens by solving some of the puzzles or from other players through the Enjin Marketplace or OpenSea. The mission card tokens are important tokens to acquire for unlocking access to more puzzles.
Rustbits are the primary tokens for Age of Rust. They are radioactive rust scraped off of the hulls of abandoned ships that are in orbit around a dying star. The star is so radioactive, it damages ships and is deadly if players venture too close to it. Getting bits of rust off of the stranded ships is difficult and is prized. The rust carries a quantum cryptographic signature and is stored in shielded linear chips… also compatible with Enjin wallets on Earth.
In order to make the game more eco-friendly and have free transactions for players who own Age of Rust NFTs tokens, the game and its tokens are moving to Enjin JumpNet. This innovation makes it so that players can get NFT’s from Age of Rust without having to pay any transaction or minting fees.
This update will be included in the main release for the game coming
in 2022. We’re looking forward to being able to move the adventure
on to JumpNet for your Age of Rust NFTs and tokens soon.
Gala Games
Source: https://app.gala.games/about
Gala Games is a blockchain gaming platform with a number of play-to-earn crypto games such as The Walking Dead Empires, Last Expedition, Mirandus, Spider Tank, Town Star, Fortified, and Echoes of Empires.
The GALA coin is earned as a reward and a utility token for players’ in-game transactions within the ecosystem.
In-game items can be traded in the Gala Games’ NFT marketplace.
Like OkLetsPlay (www.okletsplay.io) integrating Gala Games with other play-to-earn crypto games in the future will allow players to transfer NFTs from game to game.
UFO Gaming
Source: https://ufogaming.io/
In a nutshell, UFO gaming aims to collaborate with traditional gaming companies to integrate them onto the blockchain and develop new blockchain gaming features.
UFO Gaming ($UFO) is a fully decentralized gaming platform bridging traditional games onto the blockchain and giving players the ability to earn while playing. Blockchain. P2E. Metaverse. Virtual land. NFT. Gaming.
$UFO will be the primary utility token of the Dark Metaverse. In The Dark Metaverse, each game that UFO gaming release will represent its own planet.
An ever-expanding realm and infinite ecosystem that will consist of P2E games, breedable in-game NFTs, earning virtual land, and a Metaverse Launchpad that will continually require UFO tokens.
The first game or planet that they are due to release in the Dark Metaverse is Super Galactic.
At the time of writing the ILV Token price is $0.00001494
OkLetsPlay
Source: https://okletsplay.io/
There are other businesses moving into the blockchain gaming and play-to-earn crypto games space that aim to help enhance the blockchain gaming experience and offer players additional rewards for engaging more with their favorite games.
One such company at “the top of the pile” is OkLetsPlay, who have a segment of the market cordoned off with their patented intellectual property.
OkLetsPlay is a patented, built and market ready, real money and crypto eSports tournament platform that supports anything from hyper-casual 1v1 mobile gaming matches to large multiplayer professional competitive eSports tournaments on mobile, PC and other online gaming platforms.
With patented tech consisting of a robust and flexible out-of-game peer wagering module patent portfolio, players can seamlessly find opponents, tournaments and launch into a game. OkLetsPlay has optimized the player and game developer experience for real money video game matches and tournaments both in the traditional gaming arena as well as blockchain gaming.
Beta launch saw 9,000 player accounts, over 4,000 PvP matches and 200 tournaments successfully played on AAA titles such as League of Legends, CS:GO and Delivery Dash.
Patent info: OkLetsPlay holds a published patent, continuation applications and PCT filings for it’s Out-of-Game Peer Wagering Module patent portfolio: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9659439B1/en
The OkLetsPlay (OKLP) token is a new and unique cryptocurrency token with immediate utility in the patented OkLetsPlay esports tournament platform. The OkLetsPlay (OKLP) token is minted on the Polygon blockchain, which is a protocol and a framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. Aggregating scalable solutions on Ethereum supporting a multi-chain Ethereum ecosystem.
OkLetsPlay worked with the world class team at Polygon after they announced Polygon Studios.
Through OkLetsPlay, players can enter into special events such as sponsored guild tournaments, with community prize pools on their favorite play-to-earn crypto games, as well as PvP matches and public tournaments. By entering these tournaments and matches, in most cases players will not only receive rewards in each blockchain game’s native token, but also in OkLetsPlays native OKLP token. This means players will essentially double up on their crypto play-to-earn rewards!
This opens up a whole new world of opportunities for gamers, and allows OkLetsPlay and the OKLP token to grow organically, while adding value to the entire ecosystem of blockchain games and tokens alike.
The founder and CEO of OkLetsPlay, Russell Aleksey thinks this is a win-win for players and the blockchain gaming ecosystem alike:
“This is a win-win scenario where we (OkLetsPlay / OKLP token) get to grow by helping the entire blockchain gaming ecosystem grow. By taking a constructive and holistic approach to growth and giving players additional ways to engage with their favorite blockchain games, we add value along the entire chain”
Credit: eSports Now — Trending. Read the full article here: https://medium.com/@esportsnowtrending/the-rise-of-blockchain-gaming-and-the-crypto-play-to-earn-model-ee08e8ad1a2e
Top free play-to-earn crypto games
(Free play to earn crypto games 2021 / Free play to earn crypto games 2022)
Here are my top free play-to-earn crypto games at the time of writing:
How to make money on play-to-earn crypto games
Ok, so now you are up to date on the latest and greatest Play-To-Earn Crypto Games, and everything to do with them, but how do you make money playing crypto games?
The simple answer is by grinding. Find a game that you enjoy, and spend some time getting familiar with it. The best resource for learning about gameplay for each crypto game is Youtube. There are so many great channels that specialize in providing tutorial videos with everything from learning the controls, to the best crypto game strategies to make money. Start small and work your way up. Study the videos and learn the pitfalls to avoid. Each game is a little different and the best ways to make money vary wildly from game to game. The cornerstone of crypto play-to-earn is putting the time in to acquire rewards, and rare NFTs, but you need to do your homework first so that you know what you are aiming for and how best to achieve it.
Find a game you enjoy, watch youtube tutorials, set a clear strategy to meet your goals and then execute on the strategy to meet your self defined deliverables.
Always educate yourself first, and be safe because you can earn money, but you can also lose money, and we don’t want that!
Conclusion
There is an exciting metaverse out there waiting for all of us - full of the best crypto play to earn games. Educate yourself and you will stand the best chance to make money playing your favorite play-to-earn crypto games.
Now that you are armed and ready to take your first steps, I wish you a fond farewell, and godspeed!
Good luck and happy gaming…
Created by Play-To-Earn Weekly
Daniel Abbott 2 yrs
Thank you for this!