TL;DR

• With cheap ETH L2’s and now smart wallets — the cost to reward gamers with in-game NFTs is so low that gaming companies will able to subsidize them to $0.

Full Story

“It’s hard to get people to pay for something they’re used to getting for free”
— MKBHD, 2023 AD.

This has been one of web3 gaming’s biggest sticking points.

Sure, we’re used to paying for games — but not every time we collect an in-game NFT-based item, and definitely not on a sliding scale of cost…

Cause (ICYMI), in the last bull run (when NFTs first reared their head), most of the trading activity was taking place on the Ethereum network. Which, at the time, was seeing transaction fees ranging from $10, to $7k — to as high as $44k.

(Seriously).

But with the advent of cheap Ethereum layer 2 chains and now smart wallets — the cost is so low that gaming companies will able to subsidize any transaction costs.

Which means players will now be able to:

1. Collect items for free

2. Sell them in the in-game marketplace (profiting from a game they love)

3. While game makers can take royalty cuts from the marketplace’s sales (generating a new form of recurring revenue)

The takeaway:

No one is as bullish on smart wallets as they should be.