Original title: "Adventure Island's Crypto Adventure: NXPC Creates Wealth Effect, Will the Spring of Chain Games Return?" 》

Original Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

Do you remember the "Adventure Island" that accompanied you to farm monsters, form a team, and change costumes? Younger P players may not have experienced it, but this 20-year-old game masterpiece carries most of the memories of Internet cafes in the post-80s and post-90s, and it is also one of the marks of the era when online games entered China after the millennium.

now, it's become a blockchain game upstart. On May 15, NXPC, the governance token of MapleStory Universe, a blockchain game version of MapleStory Universe with the same IP, was launched on Binance, Upbit, Bithumb, Gate.io, Bybit, Deepcoin, Bitget, Weex, MEXC and other trading platforms. The price of the project's token, NXPC, directly crossed $3, and FDV soared to $3 billion.

Along with the price spike is the talk of NXPC large airdrop pork knuckle rice. Under the current Binance Alpha points system, users who meet certain rules will also receive NXPC airdrops; According to the price of NXPC at the time of publication, the average user can get more than 600 U of revenue per account, which can be called the most fragrant "airdrop benefit" at the beginning of the year.

many players joked that there is still a chance to return to BSC now, and the wealth effect has refocused attention. "MapleStory Island" itself represents the feelings of veteran players, and at the same time, it also brings some light to the chain game track that is lagging behind the version. Chain game, this track that has actually been falsified by the market, is it okay again?

Is NXPC really going to work?

We can look at the current NXPC hurricane from two directions: whether the project itself is good or not, and whether it is good compared to the predecessors of the chain game track. NXPC is the governance token of the MapleStory Universe, launched by NEXPACE, the blockchain subsidiary of South Korean gaming giant Nnexon. As a classic MMORPG that has been in operation for 20 years, MapleStory has accumulated more than 180 million players worldwide and has a historical revenue of up to $4 billion, making it one of the evergreens in the gaming industry.

Now, Nexon has moved this IP on-chain in an attempt to create a community-driven digital economy ecosystem through the MapleStory Universe. According to the project whitepaper, the total supply of NXPC is 1 billion, of which 16.37% (about 163.7 million) will be unlocked immediately through airdrops, and 80% will be used for subsequent ecological rewards, aiming to incentivize the long-term participation of players and creators. NXPC also has a sister token, NESO, which is used in in-game trading scenarios and is freely convertible with NXPC to form a dual-token model. This design tries to find a balance between the game economy and the value of the token, but it also makes many investors smell the opportunity to "strike gold".

From the perspective of this economic model, this is still a circular routine of "main coin -- sub-coin -- NFT asset", that is, a token acts as a platform currency, has governance or staking functions, and at the same time obtains various rights and interests in the game rule design; The other token is consumed purely as in-game currency in the game, and the two tokens are consumed together to support the economic cycle of NFT equipment and props in the game.

This is not fundamentally different from the gameplay of most chain games in the past. If you compare the smash hit projects in the previous chain game track, it seems that you can also carve a boat to find a sword to calculate a fair price range.

Has NXPC's current price of more than $3 hit the ceiling? Based on NXPC's current circulating supply of 16.37% (about 163.7 million), and referring to the current market capitalization and historical highs of top projects such as Gala Games, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and Mobox, we can make a theoretical calculation:

Current market capitalization benchmark: At NXPC's current price of $3 (at press time), it's already higher than Mobox's $0.24 and Axie Infinity's $2.17, and comparable to Decentraland's $3.4. If you benchmark the market caps of Gala Games and The Sandbox at $703 million and $691 million, NXPC's price is expected to hit the $4.06-$4.13 range.

But compared to Mobox's low valuation, NXPC's current price seems to have contained high market expectations.

All-time high benchmarking: Looking back at the 2021-2022 chain gaming bull market, Gala Games and The Sandbox had market capitalizations of $6.9-7 billion. If the market capitalization of these projects were estimated at the all-time high market value in the market environment at the time, their prices could hit the $15-40 range. But only if NXPC replicates the ecological activity and market boom of these projects. From a fundamental point of view, the game track itself does not have any particularly big narrative and technological breakthroughs, and it is a bit too optimistic to rely on a single old "MapleStory IP" to pull the price to this range.

Instantaneous effectJudging

from the current data, NXPC is more like a change in the capital side. The funding rate for the Binance NXPC/USDT trading pair perpetual contract was once as low as -2% and is now at -0.7%, meaning that shorts need to pay long fees. This negative premium is often a precursor to a short squeeze – a large number of short positions are forced out, pushing the price up further.

At the same time, NXPC was listed on Binance and other major exchanges on the first day, ensuring short-term trading depth and liquidity; The continuous launch of contracts on many trading platforms has further stimulated the influx of speculative funds. The speculative sentiment is evident in the 24-hour trading volume of NXPC, according to MEXC data.

Returning to the fundamentals, NXPC's value realization is also challenging. First of all, the game is currently in open beta, and the player retention rate and the stability of the economic model have not yet been tested by the market. The lesson of Axie Infinity is that blockchain games that rely too heavily on speculation and ignore player experience and economic balance will ultimately not be sustainable. Second, the value of NXPC is highly dependent on the activity of the creator economy.

NXPC emphasizes the creator economy, not just the "gold" model. The MapleStory Universe allows players and creators to produce content, such as designing unique rigs or levels, through Synergy Apps, and minting them as NFTs through NXPC to trade. If creator engagement is insufficient, or the NFT item trading market is illiquid, demand for NXPC could drop significantly. The shift from "Play-to-Earn" to "Create-to-Earn" is nothing new, and it has been seen in our previous observations of blockchain game projects.

Judging from the reaction to crypto Twitter, the NXPC boom has indeed benefited from the dual blessings of MapleIsland's IP appeal and wealth effect, but the community's focus is more on short-term gains than on the long-term value of the gaming ecosystem. It's also important to note that this is a Korean game, and it's an indisputable fact that young Koreans are loyal to the coin, and the market has the potential to drive NXPC's rise, and the change in metrics on Upbit may be more likely to influence NXPC's fate.

However, you can't conclude that just because one flower blooms well, the whole garden is better again. The fate of the chain game is still unresolved. MapleStory restarts its adventure in the crypto world, but it is facing more teenagers who have already left the market due to losses in the chain.

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