Why did Uniswap, a deep DeFi player, suddenly acquire a game? A brief analysis of the on-chain version of "The Hunger Games" Crypto: The Game

Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | Azuma

On the evening of June 10th, Beijing time, Uniswap Labs officially announced the acquisition of Crypto: The Game (CTG), an interactive encryption survival game based on the Base blockchain. The specific amount was not disclosed. Dylan Abruscato, Tyler Cagle, and Bryan Lee, the three co-founders of CTG, will all join Uniswap to jointly promote the development of the third season of CTG.

From the perspective of positioning, CTG is a blockchain-based "Battle Royale" type game, which can be simply understood as an on-chain version of "The Hunger Games" or "Squid Game".

In CTG, players need to purchase entrance tickets to obtain limited game participation qualifications (410 people for the first season, 800 people for the second season, and the third season is undecided). The entrance ticket is in the form of NFT, with an initial sale price of 0.1 ETH, and subsequent free trading allowed—this means that players can indirectly obtain participation qualifications through the secondary market, including those players who hope to "make a comeback" after being eliminated.

After the game starts, players holding NFT tickets will be randomly assigned to 10 different tribes, and then the battle royale officially begins.

During the game period (with a maximum time limit of 10 days to ensure timely completion of the game), all players will participate in daily 'Immunity Challenges' as tribes. The challenges come in various forms (such as arcade games or treasure hunts, etc.). The tribe with the highest daily challenge score will have a 'Safe Night' (i.e., everyone is safe), while other tribes must vote internally to eliminate one player.

When discussing the screening criteria for voting, a player who has actually participated in the game once said to UnChained: 'We consider various factors when deciding to vote someone out, such as whether the X account associated with the player looks like a bot, or how active the player is in team chat, or even whether the NFT avatar chosen by the player is likable - in my tribe, a Moonbird NFT holder was voted out as soon as they appeared.'

When eliminated, the NFT tickets held by players will also undergo a change—from player identity to juror identity, to vote for the final winner on the last day of the longest time limit in the game. The ultimate winner will then exclusively enjoy all the amounts in the prize pool.

In the past few months, CTG has successfully held two seasons of games.Among them, the first season of the game had a total of 410 players participating, and the total prize pool was 41 ETH. In the end, an anonymous player named MFL won the game; the second season of the game had a total of 800 players participating, and the total prize pool was 80 ETH. Player number 733 won the game.

When talking about his winning experience, MFL told Decrypt that he believed most other players were smarter than him. Since he did not form alliances privately, he initially expected to be eliminated early. Therefore, his attitude towards this game was to "enjoy the game," such as making some interesting internet memes for other players or writing poetry to express his views on the game.

However, the reality is that MFL never received an elimination ticket from start to finish, and eventually won the grand prize. CTG co-founder Dylan Abruscato stated that MFL's actions won the favor of other players in the game, proving it to be a successful strategy.

In short, the appeal of CTG lies in its successful combination of competitiveness and human interaction. Additionally, it is worth noting that CTG will provide daily real-time match commentary through official podcasts to fully engage external audiences, enhance social media discussions, and build up excitement for the competition.

Speaking of Uniswap, as the absolute leader in the DeFi field, Uniswap has also expanded its business in other non-DeFi areas in the past, such as the acquisition of the NFT aggregation trading platform Genie and the development of mobile wallet services. However, this is the first time they have directly entered the gaming field (there have been some indirect collaboration cases before).

When talking about the transaction, Uniswap described it as follows: "This year has been very busy for Uniswap. We released UniswapX, submitted v4, launched the Uniswap Wallet, added support for more chains, and we have more plans. Uniswap's goal has always been simple - to create products that provide the best on-chain experience for users. That's why we are very happy to welcome the addition of CTG."

As for whether the entry of Uniswap will affect the game mechanism of CTG, Uniswap also explained that fans don't need to worry, the game mechanism will not change, but there will be some new designs, and the specific content cannot be revealed too much, but it is believed that the third season will be the best season so far.