Why is AI+game a very sexy crypto narrative?

Author: Rain in the Rain

From my understanding, the combination of Crypot x AI is nothing more than two ideas, namely:

• What can Crypto do for the AI ​​industry?

• How can the AI ​​industry empower Crypto?

I will write another article to talk about AI+ computing (computing power) later. Today I mainly want to talk to you about the sub-track under "AI+ application": AI+ game.

The AI ​​game with the largest market value at present should be $PRIME. Parallel is a sci-fi themed card game, similar to Hearthstone (this game has nothing to do with AI and is deployed on Base). In the future, the team will launch another mobile game called Colony. Colony focuses on two concepts: Solana + AI Agent. An AI game built on a mobile phone, and superimposed with the concept of Solana (mobile phone), probably noting.

Parallel has completed two rounds of financing before. The first round was led by Paradigm, raising $50 million, and the second round raised $35 million, with Solana Ventures participating.

In addition, Wayfinder, an AI protocol launched by Parallel, is also worth paying attention to.

Another AI game invested by Paradigm is AI Arena (led by Paradigm and Framework Ventures, raising $11 million).

AI Arena is a PvP fighting game. Simply put, users can fight in the game by training their own AI characters. The battles in the game are similar to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros.

I think an interesting point is that AI Arena's main goal is to improve players' ability to use AI through gamification. In addition, AI Arena attaches great importance to NFT (AI training) assets created by players, hoping to build an IP asset market and match bilateral markets.

Currently, we can go to the official website and complete social tasks to earn points: https://hub.aiarena.io/ref/284ZA79Y

There are also two AI+ game projects from the BN system. One is Xterio, which raised $45 million and launched an AI pet game. Another one is Ultiverse, which raised $13.5 million and launched Bodhi Protocol. Bodhi Protocol uses a large language model and a Stable Diffusion model to generate a variety of content in the game.

However, these two PUAs have been around for too long, and I am a little ed about these two projects.

For details, you can take a look at Mint Ventrues's "Project Overview: Ultiverse, an AI+ Game Project Backed by Top Institutions": https://mirror.xyz/mintventures.eth/-c9ZT6hvE7taPk4lcmhNnD2rE1jif9WjKIjjRmCJWEs

Xterio and Ultiverse are both platform infrastructure protocols. We can understand them as game distribution platforms. Xterio launched an AI game, and Ultiverse uses the underlying infrastructure to support AI game teams to build on it. From this perspective, Ultiverse has greater potential than Xterio.

Another AI game infrastructure protocol is $DYM Staker's first hair $NIM. $NIM is a RollApp built on Dymension, with EVM as the execution environment, Celestia as the DA layer, and Dymension as the settlement layer. Although it did not go into detail, my understanding of it is that it also wants to provide convenience for AI game developers by building AI infrastructure services. At present, NIM Network has launched an AI game alliance, and protocols such as Avail and Ocean Protocol have confirmed to join the alliance.

From a macro perspective, making AI+ games is a very sexy narrative. The development of AI is the general trend, and games are one of the important application areas of the Web3 industry. Presumably, there will be more projects like the ones mentioned above in this track in the future (or old projects will force narratives).

How to make money?

Participate in the early free points event, or buy the expectation (for example, $PRIME will launch the Colony Alpha version in Q4 of 24/Q1 of 25). In terms of token speculation in AI games, I only consider $PRIME and Avatar (NFT).