The last crypto bull market has left GameFi at a cliffhanger — the older experimental apps have been losing users and lost most of their appeal, while the new ones, more traditional gaming-like, did not gain much traction. The ending felt a bit anticlimactic, to say the least.
Now that a few older narratives, such as memes and SocialFi, have become hot again during what seems like a new crypto mania, we see the outline of where GameFi might rediscover itself in MemeFi, an idle gaming project getting at the heart of the question: “Why the hell do you need crypto in games anyway?
This is where MemeFi comes in, a new idle gaming ecosystem that has attracted more than 6.5 million users in its Web2 native Telegram game and is releasing some of the most peculiar Web3 apps.
Financializing Gaming
GameFi has been a bit of a trainwreck since the very start. Why build games around crypto? If you go beyond adding a simple payment method via crypto, the obvious answer is to reward users. This seems like a faulty one because it is: if you need to pay users to play your game, you’d better not launch it at all.
The answer provided by MemeFi is to treat financials as if an element of the game, similarly to how the economy is seamlessly integrated into EVE Online. Money is gameplay.
MemeFi Web3 Game
MemeFi takes idle gaming and builds a competitive crypto economy around it. Players engage in boss fights, reaping rewards for their successes and spending their energy in case of failures. Their daily raiding activity defines their performance and profitability.
What makes this system interesting is the system of “keys”, similar to friend.tech. Players’ rewards are partly distributed to their keyholders in the form of keys: this means you do not actually have to be a crypto whale to win lots of rewards — just find the right keys.
This creates a competitive environment, where players seek to get rewards via keys, with a variety of economically optimal states. The whole process is “spiced up” with loads of social features and a quadratic bonding curve that governs key prices.
Users & Telegram
The MemeFi ecosystem features another app from the sphere of idle gaming. The MemeFi Coin Telegram Clicker has galvanized an audience of a whopping 6.5 million players, with 1.5 million daily active users.
The immense potential of clicker apps was first shown by Notcoin, a simple idle gain that has attracted millions of users. Players tap regularly and collect virtual Notcoins, which they expected to materialize and rightfully so — $NOT has been listed on May 16 on top crypto exchanges. A simple free activity turned out to be extremely lucrative for some of the players.
The engagement of MemeFi Coin users is monetized via an Ad Network, which, contrary to what the name suggests, is rather a single source of highly active traffic channeled through incentivized activities in the app.
This harmonic advertising ecosystem may very well be craving crypto. For this reason, MemeFi is seeking to integrate crypto solutions into the app, leveraging the social power of Telegram.
Building on Linea
The prospects of both the Telegram app and its Web3 counterpart seem to have been realized by Linea, a layer 2 blockchain for Ethereum closely associated with Consensys. The project backed by Metamask founders saw value in the MemeFi ecosystem early on, suggesting there’s a partnership on their social media.
The support of Linea may enable something a lot of blockchain developers dream about — a mass conversion of Web2 users to Web3 through a real product.
At the same time, the Web3 app seems to be an ideal resort for Web3 natives, who are degening their ways to the top of the leaderboard, hoarding keys and outcompeting each other on a financial PvP battle arena.
MemeFi has released at a very peculiar moment, mixing together the hottest narratives of today’s crypto: memes and Social Tech. And while the hype train is still there, it is indeed a novel way to do crypto in gaming that might actually work.