PLAY Research Report

Context

Most web2 game developers lack the technology needed to transition their games to web3 or to build web3 games from scratch. Players face numerous obstacles, such as being required to connect or create wallets outside the gameplay, lacking on-chain player profiles, and dealing with upfront costs, all of which contribute to a significant drop-off rate.

Statistics show that asking a player to create a wallet or perform any action outside the game experience can lead to a 99% drop-off rate.

Furthermore, AI Agents are poised to be the largest next disruption within gaming being a 100x improvement over old gaming bots. AI Agents don't have bank accounts, and integration with web3 accounts is the natural way to allow them to freely interact within games.

To address these issues developers require robust chain, wallet and gas abstraction features, as well as game infrastructure, native AI agent integrations, backend support, analytics, dev ops, and monetization features to allow them to port their best web2 games into the web3 space seamlessly, securely, time-efficiently and without jeopardizing their business models.

PLAY’s all-in-one tech stack provides the perfect solution for all of this, allowing web2 games and their users to quickly and sustainably adopt blockchain & AI technologies in a completely streamlined fashion, abstracted from all complexities inherent to the lower level utilization of blockchain technology.

Mission / Vision

PLAY’s mission is to lead a mass migration of gamers into Web3, in the same way that ETFs and centralized exchanges are onboarding TradFi to DeFi, PLAY is onboarding traditional game studios and gamers into Web3.

PLAY is also the onramp to blockchain, AI & social gaming, becoming the easiest way for game studios to futureproof the games. PLAY is already a first mover in AI Agents integration, distribution via Telegram games and quick expansion into every social channel (Whatsapp, Discord, Line, Youtube, and more).

PLAY is chain agnostic, already live in Base, Sui, Aptos, BNB, ARB, ETH, Solana and with expansions already in movement to Monad, Berachian and more.

PLAY is challenging the current industry efforts: instead of turning 3M cryptonative users into gamers, PLAY is a bet that 3B gamers will be onboarded onchain and 3T AI agents will be integrated on games.

Value Proposition

PLAY is building an ecosystem of developers, creators and players to facilitate and scale the adoption of web3 games. PLAY is growing at a fast pace, having achieved cashflow positive status in 2023 and already serving over 60 gaming studios in their transition to the web3 ecosystem.

PLAY’s value proposition can be summarized as follows,

• For developers: simple integration of web3 gaming elements, saving time, money and other resources; leading to higher player engagement, payment conversion metrics, and overall ARPDAU.
• For gamers: experience fun games without any UX bottlenecks, grow your player identity and earn valuable collectibles that can be used accross diferrent game titles. Get rewarded by your game actions.

For creators: design game items for sale, collaborate with developers on the creation of virtual goods economies.

Traction

• Partnered top mobile game publishers: Gameloft, TapNation, Wanin, Mini Juegos
• 6050+ gaming studios acquired in 6 months, representing over 2000+ games and 300+ million MAU.
• Pilot with 53**% conversation rate** from free to paying players, with increase of 58% in ARPDAU.
• Most complete web3 development tools in the market, enables porting web2 games to web3 in under 30 days.
• Pre-approved Apple Store and Play Store integration.
• Completely abstracted gamer profiles and wallets using Layer 0, play on any chain.
• Already available for integration in leading and upcoming ecosystems like Solana, Base, Monad, Aptos, and TON
• Projected 20M MAW+ (monthly active wallets) with current pipeline for Feb. 2025.
• Partnership with [REDACTED] to accelerate the adoption of AI Agents in games.
• Proprietary dataset of onchain player data from 2.6M unique wallets
• Backed by Bitkraft, IOSG, Hashed, Spartan, GSR, Polygon, ZkSync, Fundamental Labs,
• CoinList’s first gaming infra token

Product Overview

Product Suite

PLAY’s product suite is tailored to meet the needs of both developers (B2B) and users (B2C), offering the following features:

B2B:

For developers, PLAY facilitates the onboarding of users with seamless web2-style.

Developers can use this to monetize their games within web3: fully interoperable NFTs, smart contracts, on-chain quests, and player profiles.

B2C:

For players, PLAY represents the easiest possible way to participate in web3 and take ownership of digital goods.

With one account, players can start earning rewards from the games they play to show off their skills, dedication, and loyalty. These rewards can be sold, rented, or moved across games, genres, and blockchains.

Web3 games powered by PLAY

What is PLAY for developers

The API / SDK

The PLAY ecosystem for developers aims to simplify the development of web3 games, offering traditional web2 gaming studios to adopt web3 tools via the straightforward integration of PLAY’s API and SKD components; no smart contract development knowledge is required.

The following scheme represents the interplay among different components of the technical stack on which developers will base their products.

The PLAY ecosystem for developers has two primary components:

1. An API that contains all the methods required to run in-game and inter-game economies.
2. An SDK, compatible with Unity 3D, Godot, and Unreal, that allows for easy access to the API and integration of the ecosystem into the game.

Currently, the PLAY’s API includes:

• Cross-chain account abstraction
• PvP Matchmaking
• Cross platform play (mobile/PC/console)
• Leaderboards
• User Profile Management
• In-Game Chat (audio, video, text)
• Friends List & Invite System
• In-game Social Feed
• Currency System
• Portable Avatars
• UGC Asset Marketplace
• NFT Integration in-game
• Customization System
• Dev / Creator Analytics
• Achievements & Rewards
• NEW. Incorporation of AI agents

Through the API and SDK, PLAY provides a chain-agnostic, app-store-compliant, easy-to-use plugin that allows developers to start building web3 features for their games within minutes

Business Model & PLAY Token Utility

The PLAY token will serve two main functions within PLAY’s economic & business model:

1. Commodity: Premium onchain assets are infused with the PLAY token. Tokens are locked into these items and provide further intrinsic value beyond utility and rarity. An example of this is that developers can generate PLAY-infused NFTs to gamify staking into their games directly.
2. Currency: Everything in the Play ecosystem is priced in PLAY. Games that have assets on multiple chains only need to hold one token to pay for gas: PLAY. For instance, developers purchase PLAY to pay for gas fees associated with creating NFT collections, writing data on-chain, or launching their games. Developers will only be able to access PLAY’s tech stack by purchasing “Fuseblocks”, smart contracts that will enable the described functionality while being infused with PLAY tokens. In addition to that, PLAY captures 5% of the on-chain economic transaction value happening on the games developed on this network.

The high traction achieved in bringing development studios into web3 is enabling PLAY to position themselves as a gaming ecosystem able to achieve remarkable partnerships with Smart Contract Layers (L1s, L2s, Appchains) that have effectively become an additional revenue stream for the business, netting $2M revenue YTD.

It is worth to highlight that through these partnerships PLAY is offering Fuseblocks to chain teams that will be further used on grant programs to attract game studios to integrate their infrastructure. Furthermore, web3 studios working on the PLAY ecosystem will be eligible to access benefits offered by chain teams in the context of the mentioned partnerships.

Regarding the key role of the PLAY token in the ecosystem, the minting of in-game NFTs by any developer using PLAY’s tech stack will require the use of PLAY tokens, that will be infused in the minted assets and imbuing the items with intrinsic value. Notably, minted NFTs will be burnable to retrieve PLAY tokens contained within them (fees will be included in the process).

The main revenue streams for games will be given by in-app-purchases (IAP) such as digital items, collectibles, cosmetics, and battlepasses; all those channels implying revenue generation by PLAY Games. In this context, the PLAY token will be also integrated as white-labelled “soft-currency” (example: in-game gold coins/gems/others) and as such, will be directly purchased by gamers to execute IAPs. Moreover, this will mean that those white-labeled currencies will be interoperable among different game titles.

Additionally, the PLAY token will serve as a coordination tool in the ecosystem, rewarding positive actions from developers, creators and gamers interacting in the ecosystem. These dynamics are detailed in the “Market Making” section of the whitepaper in the following link.

Team

PLAY’s leadership team has been working in the gaming ecosystem for over 15 years; with ample experience in game development, business development, and development of highly scalable systems among other key areas.

Leadership team:

• Christina Macedo, CEO.Bio
• Martin Cormier, CTO. Bio
• John Nash, COO.
• KJ Mercer, Product Design Lead.Bio
• Alfredo Bárcena, Head of Biz Dev Bio

PLAY’s advisory team features leading experts in the web2 and web3 gaming industry:

Strauss Zelnick: CEO & Chariman Take Two Enternainement (Rockstar Games, Zynga and 2K)

Shawn Layden: ex-CEO Sony Entertainment & Playstation

Sinjin Bain: Electronic Arts / The Sims / Tencent,

Sebastien Borget: The Sandbox

Market

Gaming is well understood to be the largest entertainment category globally. Across all categories of global spending, gaming constitutes a $317 billion industry.

The Mobile Games industry alone represents an industry with over $90B market, where main monetization venues include in-app purchases and advertising.

PLAY’s value proposition mainly targets the mobile games industry by offering new monetization, engagement and retention tools for game developers. The blockchain gaming category represents today a 1.5B (growing at 100% CAGR) industry and it is expected to grow up to $50B by 2025.

Competitive Advantage:

• Incredible Traction and Adoption Metrics: Probably the most significant competitive advantage for PLAY is the staggering amount of game publishers they already onboarded as clients and adopters of their tech stack, which amounts to 50+ as of today.
• Feature-Complete Developer Tooling: While many competitors provide partial solutions for web3 gaming integration, PLAY offers a comprehensive feature set, alleviating the game developers from the burden and risk of integrating disparate solutions.Among the features is it worth to highlight out-of-the-box compatilibility with major distribution channels like Android and Apple stores.This is they that enables studios to complete focus in developing their game without requiring web3 specific knowledge and complete fast integrations within the 30-days mark.
• Multi Chain Support with no Chain Lock-Up: PLAY stands out for its support for both EVM-compatible chains like Polygon and Lightlink, and non-EVM L1s like Aptos, through an interoperable bridge facilitating cross-functionality between L1/L2s and allowing developers to choose and even transition between blockchain infrastructures seamlessly, catering to their specific needs. Unlike competitors tied to specific L1 or L2 chains profiting from gas fees, PLAY’s multi chain approach minimizes costs and enhances transaction quality for game developers, optimizing the cost of goods sold (CoGS) for digital asset minting and improving ROI.
• No Commercial Conflicts of Interest: Distinguishing itself from some competitors who are game publishers, PLAY operates solely as a software provider, ensuring a "Safe Harbor" for game companies against potential commercial exploitation of their game data.
• Alignment of Economic Interests: Forgoing traditional fees like seat, licensing, or subscription fees, PLAY opts for a 5% share of on-chain economic transactions. This fee model aligns PLAY’s interests with game publishers, charging no fees upfront and emphasizing revenue generation while ensuring cost-effectiveness for developers, especially if a game isn't released or assets aren't sold.

Token Distribution & Funding

Investors:

PLAY has been backed by Bitkraft, IOSG, Hashed, Spartan, GSR, Fundamental Labs, Bitscale, Momentum6, Delphi Digital, Merit Circle, SNACKCLUB, GGG ++ in its prior fundraising round.

Distribution:

• Approx. 25% was sold in prior investment rounds, will be 100% unlocked on day 1.
• 75% to be distributed to community, ecosystem, liquidity pools, team, and advisors. Team and advisors remain vested.

Full tokenomics reveal will be announced shortly and this section will be updated correspondingly.

Previous Rounds:

PLAY’s NFT Sale :

• Hosted at Impossible.finance
• 2000 PLAY CONSOLE NFTs for sale
• PLAY CONSOLE NFTs contain PLAY tokens and offer perks within PLAY gaming ecosystem.
• Implied valuation of tokens 75M, fully unlocked (50% discount over last CoinList round).

Investment Thesis

We think that blockchain tech will be a fundamental tool every game dev will need in their toolbox. In fact, most studios are already experimenting with it.

PLAY is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this trend by offering a comprehensive and accessible suite of tools that enable developers to seamlessly transition from web2 to web3.

PLAY’s succes already stands out and it testimoned by the staggering amounts of traction that it already achieved. Their rapid adoption by over 50 gaming studios, including top publishers like Gameloft, TapNation, demonstrates strong industry demand for their solutions.

We believe that PLAY’s complete abstraction of blockchain complexities, the pre-approved app store integration, and alignment with major blockchain platforms provide a clear pathway for widespread adoption of their SDK and API.

PLAY has got the only platform bringing gaming studios onchain with proven metrics:

• 16% increase in D1 retention
• 58% increase in ARPDAU
• 286% increase in engagement
• Over 440k active player wallets
• Games converting 53% of their users from Web2 to Web3.

If PLAY is able to drive so much value and give better monetization tools to web2 Gaming Publishers, we believe PLAY is ultimately proving the Web3 thesis in a way that nobody else did before.

It is also worth to note that in 2020 alone, gamers spent approximately $54 billion on in-game items.

This figure is projected to be around $75 billion by 2025. All of those items are effectively rented from the game studio, whereas with blockchain, users will have true ownership.

This is a clear market opportunity for PLAY.

In-game items can also be used with other applications and in the real world, such as within DeFi, on social media, and in real-life events. The future of NFTs in gaming is about bridging the gap between virtual achievements and real-world rewards.

PLAY’s robust technology stack, combined with its ability to provide true ownership and interoperability of digital assets, positions it as the best solution for game developers looking to tap into this rapidly growing market. By enabling developers to create, monetize, and enhance player experiences with blockchain technology, PLAY is setting the standard for the next generation of gaming.

Key Risks

The key risks identified for ecosystem participants on PLAY are smart contract risks on their main building blocks and the dependency on messaging/bridging infrastructure to enable interoperability among different blockchains.

PLAY also allows the creation of non-custodial wallets, for which the users are entirely responsible for storing the login information.

About Impossible Finance

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