Polygon invests in Decentral Games to boost ‘play-to-earn’ games

Polygon, the maker of a platform for blockchain games, has invested in Decentral Games to boost “play-to-earn” games.

Play-to-earn is a model for games where players can earn real money or other rewards by playing. Players of Axie Infinity have been earning nonfungible tokens (NFTs), or one-of-a-kind items that they can sell for real money. Folks in places like the rural Philippines are earning a living at three times the minimum wage by playing Axie Infinity.

And that’s just one of the games that has potential in the play-to-earn space, and that’s what Decentral Games is going after. Polygon, meanwhile, has created a full-stack Ethereum scaling solution. That means that it has created its own layer of technology that offloads transactions from Ethereum, as that cryptocurrency platform is slow and expensive and costly when it comes to environmental effects.

Polygon, started in 2017, built a platform that could process the transactions off the blockchain, the transparent and secure digital ledger that powers cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum. It enables transactions to go through much faster, with low costs, and greater reliability. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with more than 500 decentralized apps (Dapps), more than $500 million in transactions, and six million daily transactions.

Decentral Games has created a gaming decentralized organization (DAO), which is a self-governing company run by its users. Polygon is investing an unspecified amount of money in Decentral Games and staking $DG tokens. Staking is the process of investing in tokens and locking them up for a specified period of time (also called a vesting period). In this case, Polygon is investing in ( purchasing) $DG and staking $DG, the native cryptocurrency of Decentral Games for a period of time. Today, staked $DG generates 19% of APY (Annual Percentage Yield) for the $DG holders.

Decentral Games develops 3D metaverse games on blockchain for both consumer and business markets. The games include NFTs, play-to-earn models, wager-based games, and 3D virtual events games revolving around music entertainment with immersive experience.

Above: Polygon set up a $100 million fund for NFT gaming in July.

Image Credit: Polygon Studios

Polygon is a well-established framework preferred by many decentralized applications and fintech institutions leveraging Ethereum’s ecosystem. The Polygon ecosystem has seen strong growth in the past few months due to increased adoption. Its market capitalization has grown tenfold since February, reaching over $11 billion. It uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain to enable low fees, carbon-neutral, sustainable, and efficient operations.

Decentral Games, built on an Ethereum blockchain, has used Polygon as its “layer 2” solution since 2019. Its contributions have become one of the most significant sources of transactions on the Polygon network. As the third-largest node on Polygon with over $131 million of $MATIC worth of transactions, Decentral Games, backed by Digital Currency Group, generates an additional source of revenue for $DG token holders through running the node. Decentral Games is run by CEO Miles Anthony. In June, Decentral Games said it raised $5 million in a previous deal.

Decentral Games’ announcement comes after a series of successful game launches backed by prominent partners. Earlier this year, in one of the big moves of 2021, Decentral Games revealed a collaboration and launch of a cryptocurrency casino with video game giant Atari.

Shreyansh Singh serves as head of gaming and NFTs at Polygon. Polygon has more than 90 employees, while Decentral Games has 40 including those working on its metaverse and developers.