Decentralized Economies

We get asked a lot, "Why bother to build onchain?". There are big-picture answers like immortality, the creative power of decentralization, the long-term value to users of truly owning their own assets, enabling UGC - all that optimistic stuff with soul. All these things motivate our team.

But at the same time, the reason why we're confident that these decentralized games are worth betting our careers on, is that decentralization enhances everything about the economic side of MMORPGs.

Let us put this in context. Digital currencies existed before blockchains - they just weren't taken very seriously, because they weren't trustless or decentralized. The additional robustness and security added by decentralization, originally with BTC, served to let people view these digital assets as a store of value. Now our space has a market cap measured in trillions.

We think truly decentralizing an in-game economy can do the same. If a game is truly onchain, if the assets in it can truly be viewed as being held trustlessly on a system that will last, everything about that game becomes more concrete, more serious, and potentially more fun. This is why we are one of the only studios in the world betting on 100% decentralized digital economies - because we believe that if we build them right, they become something completely different to traditional videogame worlds in character, capable of holding exponentially more value.

We think this will create a new form of gaming that is more fun. We also think it will result in exponentially larger sums of money moving in-game than ever before.

We dream of a world where MMORPG auction-house arbitrage is more profitable than trading commodities. We dream of a world where a man remortgages his house to buy an in-game artifact and bets everything on entering a tournament. We dream of in-game battles that destroy 8-figures in value. We dream of virtual worlds where the stakes are real and actions matter - because for many of us it's no longer possible to find those stakes, that stimulation, that competition in the real world.

This is what we are building with Asphodel. A virtual world where the stakes are real and your actions matter. And eventually we hope to create the first digital economies that are capable of reaching trillion-dollar GDP scale.

But... does it really need to be on the blockchain?

Yes. There is no other practical way to maintain game state in a decentralized manner, and no other way to safely and realistically scale digital economies of this kind.

Let us be clear: cryptocurrency and blockchains are technical tools. We are cypherpunks, game designers, and engineers with a vision who need to use blockchain technology to make that vision real.

We do not consider ourselves to be in "Web3" - that concept has been dead since 2024. That said, crypto as a store of value, and crypto as infrastructure, are doing perfectly well and we expect them to have a long and healthy lifespan.