The new aggressive COVID-19 variant discovered in South Africa causes high concern due to the possibility of its rapid spread over the rest of the continent and the whole world — as the previous strains did. In the worst case scenario, this can impose one more lockdown, the second halt of international air links, and further aggravation of traditional labours.
On the other hand, remaining people in their households can boost innovative spheres of economics such as Play-to-Earn. In lots of modern video games, the more time you spend inside conducting specific actions (such as training virtual characters), the more tokens — in-game currency — you can earn and then cash them out into your local money.
For thousands of people in the poorer regions of the Philippines, playing such games as Axie Infinity provides a more stable income than their previous occupation. The most successful of these gamers can earn up to $2000 per month which is almost 10 times higher than the average local salary. To do this you don’t even need a PC: a smartphone or a tablet with Internet access would be enough to play Axie Infinity, raise its virtual axolotl-like creatures and sell off the rarest of them for thousands of dollars just like you would sell a masterpiece of art.
The world’s largest Play-to-Earn guild yet is controlled by Crypto Gaming United, an international startup aimed to provide the opportunity of digitally earning money for people in developing countries. In the last 12 months, CGU has expanded worldwide from the Philippines to Venezuela and now its new arrival point is in Africa. Its unique feature is to additionally provide educational courses for those who want to increase their skills and earn more money within the game. So far CGU unites hundreds of active players in Africa from Zambia to Morocco.
Now, despite the Western sanctions and the turbulent situation over Ethiopia, the co-founders of CGU believe that the second most-populated African country could be one of their most promising sites.
‘As of 2018, only one out of every ten Ethiopians had a smartphone. Or, roughly, 12 million of the over 100 million population’, Sergei Sergienko, the CGU co-founder, emphasizes. ‘At the same time, smartphone penetration in Western countries reaches 60-80%. Which means, Ethiopia has potential for expansive growth of new digital activities such as Play-to-Earn.’
‘Looking at our community in Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and other African countries, we have great optimism’, another CGU co-founder, Marco Selorio, notices. ‘For example, our community in Zambia is growing fast and showing incredible results: some of our gamers began at 20-30 SLP (Smooth Love Potion, the in-game token for Axie Infinity) per day, and after 2 weeks of training one of these guys has hit 106-107 per day!’
Can Play-to-Earn be an adequate response to the pandemic shock and the collapse of previous economic models?
Further information, including how to enter the CGU community and start Playing-to-Earn, is available at its website: https://www.cgu.io/ Moreover, new players can join CGU on its server on the CGU Discord, a gamers’ communicative tool.
Crypto Gaming United (CGU), a blockchain-based Play-to-Earn platform, was established in 2020 by entrepreneurs from different parts of the world: Maurice June from New Zealand; Sergei Sergienko, an immigrant from Russia to Australia; Marco Selorio from Philippines; Mark Carnegie from Australia; Raman Nambiar, an Australian of Indian-Polish descent.
By November 2021, CGU unites over 100,000 community members from more than 30 countries with 5,800 active players earning tokens at the moment.
In October 2021, CGU performed IDO (Initial DEX Offering: a public launching of project’s digital tokens). Thereafter, its $2,5 million worth tokens were sold in record 6 seconds, as Bloomberg reports. This has built CGU into the world’s largest Play-to-Earn platform. Most of its players live in developing countries, where an opportunity to earn in NFT-games (Non-Fungible Token — a blockchain-stored piece of data, e.g. your in-game character) becomes a positive alternative to unemployment.
