Layer 2 is hot, which is designed to provide solutions for scaling up applications. zkTube utilizing the power of Zero-Knowledge Rollups of Layer 2 turns out to be the best scaling solution for Ethereum Layer 2. Recently zkTube established a special investment fund in collaboration with Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), with a fund size of $10 Million. The fund is established to focus on unicorn excavation and incubation in the GameFi field. Realizing the importance and future of the GameFi market, many institutes showed their great interest and more than ten of them have invested in this fund.
There has been significant development in the blockchain industry in recent years, transforming many sectors, including the financial industry. NFTs and GameFi are new digital sensations with massive adoption worldwide.
Why NFTs are So Famous?
NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a digital asset that has a unique digital signature. All kinds of digital items can be turned into an NFT, such as images, music, videos, text, video games, tweets, Metaverse, etc.
NFTs have become so famous because they cannot be reproduced, which means they will be only one of a kind. Users can buy and sell them for large price. Anyone can view the NFTs, but the only buyer is the official owner.
Increasing Trend of NFTs in Gaming Industry
NFTs for the gaming industry is getting acceptance rapidly by developers and players for the past few years. NFT games are almost the same as virtual games. The difference is, in conventional virtual games, players earn coins and collectibles, achieving several milestones, but they cannot use the same character and earned items outside the game. Whereas, in NFT games, the players can transfer their collectibles to another game or exchange them with another player with cryptocurrency.
In regular games, players collect in-game items, but they are not the owners of these collectibles. In contrast, players own NFTs, and they can also sell them later on.
NFTs Adoption & Marketplace
Due to unique features, NFTs adoption surged in 2021, that the monthly sales on OpenSea- a New York-based NFT marketplace founded in 2017, hit $95.2 million in February 2021. The total NFT trading volume on the Ethereum blockchain was over $400 million.
As of August 2021, OpenSea has become the first NFT marketplace to cross the $1 billion monthly trading volume. Its trading volume increased 286% from July 2021 to August 2021, achieving the highest NFT trading volume. OpenSea has reached $1.23 billion trading volume in August 2021, while the entire marketplace earned $1.27 billion.
GameFi-Another Sensation
GameFi- the combination of DeFi and Gaming, is also increasingly gaining attention. Its growing trend has changed the conventional gaming system through its “Play to Earn Model.” Gaming is no longer a waste of time but changed into making money because of GameFi. GameFi offers numerous in-game opportunities to players to earn. Players are rewarded with cryptocurrencies to attract more users blurring the line between games and the financial sector.
Axie Infinity, CryptoBlades, My Defi Pet, Crypto Kitties, Decentraland, Roblox, etc., are among digitalized projects taking the crypto industry by storm.
Axie Infinity, designed by Sky Mavis, is a Pokémon-inspired video game in which players battle with other players, collect cartoon pets, and build farming kingdoms. The game characters and farming lands are encrypted as NFTs, which can be sold. In July 2021, Axie Infinity has generated a revenue of $220 million, surging 600% just in one month, which was higher than Ethereum and Bitcoin, also highest among all GameFi projects.
Crypto Kitties, developed by Dapper Labs, is a blockchain game based on Ethereum that allows players to purchase, collect, breed, and sell adorable virtual cats. People spent around $1.3 million real money on the Crypto Kitties within few days of its launch.
Roblox is another child-friendly gaming platform where users can program and play games. It has 43 million daily active users. Users can earn by making and selling customized items giving 30% of each sale to Roblox. In 2020, Roblox generated $920 million in revenue.
Problems that NFTs & GameFi Markets are Facing
NFT and GameFi markets offer a broad range of applications and benefits to users and are promising industries with bright futures. But still, they are facing numerous problems such as congestion, transaction fee, transaction time, etc.
For example, Crypto Kitties tweeted that they were facing network congestion. Around 15% of Ethereum network traffic was using the game, making it the most popular project on the network. But this increased traffic made it difficult to play Crypto Kitties smoothly. Most of the transactions for buying and selling kitties were taking longer than usual for processing. Users had to make multiple attempts to process the transaction.
This congestion happened in 2017, and many solutions were implemented to improve the shortcomings. But still, there is a need for a system to address all the issues efficiently.
High Gas Fees & Delayed Transactions on Ethereum
Scaling problem is the real concern that the Ethereum network faces. The blockchain games do not make any sense with the current transaction time. The transactions can be delayed when the network is busy, making the entire process unnecessarily expensive. Because when the traffic increases, the user experience is badly affected, and to cope with this, users have to pay high gas fees.
Gas fees are incentives paid to miners for processing and validating transactions on the blockchain. Most of the NFT markets charge gas fees on buying, selling, and minting NFTs. The fees depend on the number and computation complexity. The more complex computation required to verify the transaction, the higher will be the gas fee.
With the massive growth in DeFi projects, the gas fees have also increased significantly, becoming a severe damper. Users have to pay high gas fees, losing a part of their profit margin, or even have to face loss.
According to a report published by Insider, some buyers have paid a $200 gas fee for buying an NFT of price only $30 in Ether.
zkTube-The Best Scaling Solution on Ethereum
People are increasingly interested in NFTs and GameFi, but the problems in this sector need to be addressed. Currently, the best solution on Layer 2 that can tackle the above-mentioned problems on the Ethereum network is zkTube.
zkTube started in 2020, came out to be the best scaling solution for Ethereum Layer 2. It is the first Layer-2 protocol that is based on the PLONK algorithm powered by ZK-Rollup technology.
It uses Zero-Knowledge proof to enhance scalability by transferring batch transmission to a single transaction. It can easily solve problems of congestion, capacity expansion, data availability, and privacy. zkTube runs on top of the Ethereum network. To deal with the problem of network congestion, it transfers some of the workloads to off-chain.
zkTube is using SNARK proof that undergoes quick transaction verification with significantly reduced transaction cost. The network throughput is 2,000+ Transaction Per Second (TPS), 100 times higher than Layer 1.
Users can enjoy swift transactions with real-time transfer & payment receipts without paying high transaction fees. But, at this point, security also becomes the concern. zkTube is considered the most preferred secure platform for users and dApp developers, ensuring 100% security at Ethereum mainnet level.
zkTube Investment Fund to Support NFTs & GameFi
zkTube not only has the potential to help these projects get out of the jam (congestion, high transaction fees, etc.) with its technical support but is also helping them grow.
zkTube is primarily spearheaded an investment fund to focus on the investment and incubation of potential startups in the field of GameFi. zkTube has teamed up with Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, ONEUNI Capital and many other investors to create the seed funds. Its purpose is to empower the developers to use their imagination to create outstanding GameFi projects and use tokens to increase its adoption.
ONEUNI Capital is a blockchain eco-fund founded by entrepreneurial alumni of the University of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario, and the University of Toronto in Canada. Vitalik Buterin has been leading ONEUNI Capital in building a local blockchain ecosystem in Canada. The main focus is to empower the early emerging projects in the entire blockchain ecosystem.
zkTube is confident about the future of the GameFi market, considering it to be the next central scenario for DeFi, NFTs, and complex cryptography. The infrastructure of zkTube with high throughput guaranteed security and a cost-efficient transaction rate makes it a perfect platform for developing Metaverse projects. zkTube is also hoping to build a GameFi Layer 2 ecosystem that will be accessible globally.
The craze of GameFi and NFTs is unstoppable, and zkTube will be supporting the blockbuster games and Metaverse both technically and with seed funds.
