Recently, @Balance_Fun launched a Key Node sales event in preparation for the upcoming TGE. I won't elaborate too much on the rights, investment returns, and necessity of participation enjoyed by node holders. I mainly want to discuss what Balance is doing, why a16z has made two significant investments, and how to link the web2 'companion gaming' platform with the large web3 gaming industry, etc.
1) Balance is a blockchain gaming experience platform launched by the E-PAL gaming companion platform. In the web2 world, companion gaming has become a huge market, where users seek others to improve their gaming skills, find social companionship to enhance their gaming experience, and so on. Ultimately, these individuals come together to create platform scale effects, becoming a potential audience and brand amplifier for other game developers and operators, thus revealing greater economic and commercial value attributes.
In other words, the users of the companion gaming market are inherently part of the 'online earning' crowd, familiar with various points, growth incentives, and other gameplay mechanics, making them naturally potential incremental users for web3 games and Tokenomics, which can be said to possess Mass Adoption attributes.
Balance is E-PAL bridging the gap between web2 and web3, designing a web3 Native gaming service platform based on blockchain. With millions of users from the E-PAL 'companion gaming' platform, any game application and service linked to this gaming service platform can find considerable commercial value, including nurturing early loyal users for them, establishing early game communities, and building a free and open player trading market.
2) YGG (Yield Guild Games) is a DAO gaming guild organization, and everyone remembers the GameFi craze driven by the Play-to-Earn model in the last cycle. YGG's former brilliance and market performance are well known to all.
The operating logic of YGG is also very simple: it invests in some web3 game NFTs and related assets based on the player pool of gaming guilds, and then fosters a positive business flywheel through core asset leasing, $YGG token incentives, etc., ultimately transforming it into a platform full of imaginative space for web3 game traffic entry and an early-stage game community incubator.
Personally, I think the market and brand positioning of Balance is very similar to that of YGG, and in some respects even superior to YGG, as it stands out more in terms of its global user base, product service coverage, and commercial imaginative space. However, YGG is riding the wave of NFTs, GameFI, and the metaverse, while Balance is still waiting for the wind to come. Moreover, the initial investment in YGG by a16z has proven to be very rewarding, and now a16z has made two significant investments in Balance, which speaks volumes about their intentions and ambitions.
Although the gaming track is mostly unremarkable, at any moment a phenomenal game might explode the market; this is the highlight moment that platforms like Balance are waiting for.
3) From what I understand, many platforms, including @Orbiter_Finance cross-chain bridge, @carv_official gaming identity data protocol platform, and @sophon RPC node service platform, have adopted the strategy of node sales. Node sales themselves are also a result of web3 platforms commercializing their prospects after Tokenomics.
Based on this, it can achieve goals such as rapid financing, binding core users, and forming a community of shared interests, which can be understood as an 'internal public sale' before TGE, suitable for projects with clear commercial closed-loop paths, while also having a certain accumulation of potential user bases and market resources.
Balance has accumulated $30M in financing, with investment institutions such as a16z and Galaxy Interactive being among the industry’s top players. Its platform has 12 million registered users, over 2 million daily active users, and has already established partnerships with more than 80 web3 gaming companies, supporting over 180 games, and so on.
Clearly, it is these solid operational data and growth situations that have spawned this node sales plan and the subsequent TGE. As for what kind of answers can be delivered and the heights that the secondary market can reach, it all depends on when the gaming track can attract the main bullish wave in the market.
