AAG Roadmap Update: Building the Future of GameFi and the Metaverse

9 min readMay 17, 2022

Following up on the hustle-and-bustle of our IDO and Q1, we’re taking a moment to plot out the remainder of the year for AAG Ventures.

In this article, we will share an executive summary, our beliefs about the future and our overall product plan
We will post two additional product articles this week on the AAG GameFi Portal, AAG Wallet and other products and efforts later in the week
Separately, we will host a Zoom Conference to answer any questions on the direction of AAG with CEO Jack Vinijtrongjit and Chief of Product David Liu. This event will be on Wed May 25 7:00 AM / 3:00 PM UTC / 10:00 PM PHST. Seats are limited so click here to reserve yours.

Executive Summary

We start with an executive summary that covers of all 3 articles being posted this week.

On our Northstar — in order to increase clarity and conviction, we updated our Northstar to:

“AAG makes software that enables economic opportunities worldwide through the Metaverse.”

In particular, we focus on software and use a broad definition of Metaverse that comprises all online communities with economies mediated by digital assets. See more below.

On the GameFi Portal — After a precipitous drop in SLP over the last 9 months, The GameFi sector is going through a soul searching process. With new versions of Axie Infinity coming out and at least 200 blockchain games in development, we believe that the best of these games will be successful and define the future of GameFi. We have instantiated a comprehensive game monitoring process and are positioned to be the first-to-know which games will host sustainable economies, what players and communities of these games will need and how our software can best serve them. We continue development of our GameFi Portal, increasing our focus on data-driven performance management — which we believe will be critical both now and in the future — and coverage across guilds, players and games to capture network effects.
On AAG Wallet: The Wallet and Gateway to the Metaverse — We’re also diversifying outside of GameFi. We’ve noticed the emergence of several application classes related to but distinct from GameFi that “could only thrive” in a world with digital assets (e.g., Learn-And-Earn, Move-And-Earn and Virtual Worlds). Along with these apps is the emergence of a new user segment — the Metaverse Crypto Novice — who cares less about the technicalities of cryptocurrencies and NFTs and more about the opportunities that are enabled by them. For them, simplicity and security come first. Unfortunately simplicity and security are hard to come by in the crypto space. As such, we are launching a new product, AAG Wallet, which is a Wallet and Gateway to the Metaverse, which will allow Crypto Novices a simple and secure interface for managing digital assets as well as discovering crypto-enabled apps.
On our roadmap — We have an ambitious roadmap that puts both products above into an external beta by Q3 / Q4 2022 and into general availability by Q4 / Q1 2023.
On our other products & efforts — we are also making initial progress on three other product efforts: a search engine for indexing digital assets across blockchains, a GameFi SDK to accelerate Game Studios’ entry into blockchain gaming and a Learn-And-Earn prototype. While our focus will be on the main products, we may accelerate progress on these other products if that is best for the company. In parallel, we continue to expand our partnerships in the GameFi / Metaverse world and expand the games available to scholars of the AAG Guild.
On Utilities for the $AAG token — each of the products above will create utility for the $AAG Token:

The GameFi portal will charge a subscription fee to Player and Guild users in the form of $AAG
The AAG Wallet will charge fees for asset swaps (fiat-to-crypto, crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto trades) in $AAG and reduce those fees for people who hold $AAG
The search engine will charge $AAG for data access / API calls
The GameFi SDK will charge fees for API calls as well as additional fees for allowing the lending and fractional ownership of NFTs.

In the remainder of the article, we will deep dive into our:

Updated Northstar
Observations and beliefs on GameFi / Metaverse
Overall product plan

Updated Northstar

Through reflection, we updated our Northstar to make it more crisp. Here is what we came up with:

“AAG makes software that enables economic opportunities worldwide through the Metaverse”

Here are rationales for various components of this statement:

software (what we produce) — we chose “software” because it is our team’s core competency. Our team has extensive experience in software, including in enterprise software, blockchain / web3 and experience from big tech.

enables (our verb) — we chose “enables” to indicate that our impact will be in collaboration with other ecosystem partners and not in isolation.

economic opportunities (what our software enables) — we chose “economic opportunities” to be inclusive about what the Metaverse can offer to participants. This includes enhancement both in the form of economic freedom as well as generating side income. We define an economic opportunity in the Metaverse as an interaction where goods (e.g., an NFT) and services (e.g., an experience) are rendered in exchange for cryptocurrency.

worldwide (geographical scope) — we emphasize that our focus is on developing countries, where we believe the lion’s share of impact will be.

Metaverse (application scope) — we chose “Metaverse” to indicate that we are transcending Play-To-Earn or Play-And-Earn and enabling all X-And-Earn opportunities (e.g., Learn-And-Earn, Move-And-Earn and opportunities of Virtual Worlds). We define a metaverse as an online community mediated by digital assets. We chose capital “M” to indicate the union of multiple “metaverses” that are concurrently being developed.

Our updated Northstar gives our team clarity and conviction on our focus and how we relate to the broader GameFi and Metaverse industries. We hope that it gives the same to our community.

Observations and beliefs on GameFi / Metaverse

In the last few months, we’ve made a few key observations and derived associated beliefs (see Figure 1), which drive our product strategy:

There has been a significant decline in the profitability of Axie Infinity. The price of SLP, Axie’s primary in-game currency, dropped by 93% from Jul 2021 to Apr 2022 [data]. While this correction is a negative indicator for the sustainability of Axie Infinity’s original in-game economy, the adjustments and launch of Origin demonstrates that SkyMavis will continue to evolve the game in search of long-term balance. Axie Infinity was the first game to demonstrate that blockchain gaming could have a significant impact on the real world economies of the developing world. Now, Axie Infinity represents the first real-world experiment on whether a blockchain game can host a sustainable long-term virtual economy. We believe there is a decent chance that SkyMavis will discover a sustainable GameFi economy in Axie Infinity, though it will look very different than it did in 2021.
At least 200 new blockchain games [list] have emerged. These include new concepts such as move-to-earn (e.g., Genopets) as well as existing concepts such as Multiplayer Strategy Combat Games (e.g., Heroes of Mavia), 1P / 3P Shooters (Gunzilla) and MMORPGs (e.g., Ravendawn). We believe that at least a fraction (1–4%) of the new blockchain games will succeed in discovering sustainable economic models and define the future of GameFi. AAG is systematically monitoring the entire ecosystem and intends to be the “first to know” when sustainable ecosystems emerge and the first-to-launch key technologies that support those ecosystems.
The emergence of new metaverse apps (e.g., Learn-And-Earn, Move-And-Earn, Virtual World experiences). We define a metaverse app as an online community with economies mediated by digital assets. Axie Infinity and GameFi showed the world that crypto could enable applications that are more than just about crypto (i.e., token speculation and DeFi). Now, we’re seeing additional models inspired by GameFi, including Learn-and-Earn (LnE), Move-and-Earn (MnE), as well as services in Virtual Worlds. We believe there will be the emergence of many metaverse apps (online communities with economies mediated by cryptocurrencies) outside of GameFi, including Learn-And-Earn, Move-And-Earn and services in virtual worlds.
The emergence of a new user segment, the Metaverse CryptoNovice. Many in the world will be drawn to participate in these economies, as they were drawn to participate in Axie. These new Metaverse participants, however, will need an experience that is simple and safe (e.g., kids or seniors). Our observation is that today, digital asset and metaverse access is neither simple nor secure. We believe there will be a new class of customers, the Crypto-Novices, who will want simple and secure access to Metaverse Apps and management of digital assets. They will care about the Apps first and digital assets second.

**Figure 1.** Key beliefs about GameFi and Metaverse

Overall product plan

Based on the 4 beliefs above, our best path forward is to continue our investments in GameFi where we have significant strengths (beliefs 1 and 2) as well as diversify outside of GameFi and address the emergent opportunity in apps outside of GameFi and Crypto Novice users (beliefs 3 and 4).

As such, AAG will be making two primary pushes in 2022: (Figure 2)

A: We will continue building the AAG GameFi Portal — the software backbone for guilds and players to connect to blockchain games, further expanding the number of guilds, games and features that we support. We will evolve the product to support the needs of the future GameFi industry

B: We will launch a new product (included in our original roadmap) called AAG Wallet, which will be a Wallet and Metaverse Gateway for Crypto-Novices.

This approach will both allow us to capitalize on our existing competences in GameFi as well as build for what we believe will be an expansive Metaverse in the future.

**Figure 2.** AAG will focus on 2 key products, the AAG GameFi Portal and the AAG Wallet.

Here are high level descriptions of our roadmaps for each product (Figure 3):

A: AAG GameFi Portal — our aim is to build a portal that allows all players (and guilds) to improve their enjoyment and earnings on all blockchain games. The portal will feature two login interfaces, one for scholars (Scholar Portal) and one for guild managers (Manager Portal). We have already launched the scholar portal for AAG Guild scholars on Axie Infinity. In Q2 / Q3, we will launch the manager portal for AAG Guild managers on Axie Infinity. We will also beta test the scholar and manager portals with 2–3 beta guilds during the same period. In Q3 / Q4, we will make our Axie Infinity integration available to all guilds and launch integrations with additional games for the AAG Guild (and other guilds if possible). In Q4 / 2023+, we will make integrations with all games available to all guilds.

B: AAG Wallet — we will launch an internal alpha with foundational features and support for 4 blockchains (v0.1a) in Q2 / Q3. We will add additional features to enhance usability, perform a security audit and launch a beta (v1.0b) in Q3 / Q4. Finally, we will add advanced features and expand to 10 blockchains in Q4 / 2023+.

**Figure 3.** Overall roadmap across both of our main products.

That’s it for our overall update. As previously mentioned:

We will post two additional product updates this week to drill down on our AAG GameFi Portal and AAG Wallet products
Additionally, we will host a Live Zoom call to answer any questions on the direction of AAG with CEO Jack Vinijtrongjit and Chief of Product David Liu. This event will be on Wed May 25 7:00 AM / 3:00 PM UTC / 10:00 PM PHST. Seats are limited so click here to reserve yours.