It’s impossible to ignore one of the biggest names in blockchain gaming guilds, at least, if you’re a gamer in Southeast Asia.
Gabby Dizon, the founder of Yield Guild Games (YGG) gaming guild has seen a gold mine in Philippines gaming industry – right back when the Axie Infinity hype began and lured tens of thousands of Filipino gamers into dipping their toes into NFT gaming.
Dizon began by leasing his Axies to players on scholarship with a 70-30% agreement. Their own DAO gets 10%, with community managers taking 20% of all earnings. Today, they tout themselves as a Play to Earn (P2E) gaming guild that are “the settlers of new worlds”.
So are they worth joining for the newbie or the uninitiated? Perhaps. We take a look at some aspects of YGG and why they might be a choice of guild to ally yourself with.
YGG in a nutshell
Like many guilds, YGG is built as a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) for investing in NFTs used in games or virtual worlds, or in emerging Metaverse ecosystems.
The way we see it, there are three circles of economic activity in the YGG world: the physical circle (which includes things like jobs), virtual worlds, and blockchain games. YGG has found success by combining these areas into one space- which they call The Metaverse Economy. It’s made up primarily of digital assets such as NFTs used within video game economies or those traded on cryptocurrency exchanges but also contains real money too!
The most important aspect of YGG is that of allowing members to produce income by leveraging and renting out valuable in-game NFTs. The concept is simple: to gain the most income, you need the most valuable NFTs. So if one guild member has it, they can rent it out to others to give them an earning advantage.
Community
Currently, they boast quite a following on Discord, with just under 80,000 members currently active and chatting for games like Axie Infinity or Sandbox, among others. Of course, that has fallen somewhat from a peak of near 100,000 members at the beginning of 2022, but given the conditions of NFT gaming and P2E titles, it’s still a hugely respectable amount of friends and gaming colleagues.
It’s also pretty active, with the distinct presence of Philippine gamers ensuring you get almost a daily boost of what food and life looks like for the average gamer over there. So if it’s a sense of camaraderie you’re looking for, you’ll probably find YGG fits the bill.
What’s in it for the gamer
You’re likely here because you’re looking to earn from blockchain gaming, so we’ll get right into the meat.
Income in the YGG DAO correlated directly to the ownership of YGG-owned NFT assets. It’s a win-win situation for both guild and players in this case, as if the game they play has economic value that appreciates, this should also reflect in the price of its NFTs on the market.
As a member of YGG, you will be able to use these NFTs (or rent them), using them to extract rewards from the games played. It really is as simple as that.
So your main source of income will be to farm NFTs from games or from rent, but be aware that all of these functions remain within YGG control with an internal smart contract architecture that issues ownership tokens into a database, all the while monitoring and tracking ownership and rentals – the good side of this is that it’s all off-chain, so no gas fees.
By renting YGG-owned NFTs and participating in gaming, users will receive native YGG tokens. So if you’re playing Axie Infinity, you might use a YGG-owned Axie NFT to cultivate Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens within the game. All the SLP you earn from that is returned to the DAO, and in return you receive a predetermined share of YGG tokens.
These YGG tokens are also utility tokens, as you can use them to engage and vote in governance, it being a DAO.
The YGG Token
Despite having Assets Under Management (AUM) include gaming NFTs from a plethora of P2E protocols including Axie Infinity, League of Kingdoms, Sandbox, Illuvium, F1 Delta Time and many more, the YGG token is probably something that’ll put off any speculator, because it is currently down 99% from its ATH, reflective of the entire NFT gaming industry. Many guild members were also investors so you can forgive them for spattering the Discord channel with FUD these days.
The lesson to learn? Guild tokens, or any native tokens for that matter, of any gaming project, is a high risk attempt at speculation. That shouldn’t take away anything from the actual guild benefits, however!
