BreederDAO expands with AI-generated NFTs for the metaverse

It seemed like a good idea at the time: building software that produces high-quality, non-fungible tokens for Web3 games.

Prices for good NFTs – those that could actually win rewards and earn cash – had soared into the thousands of dollars in 2021 due to the play-to-earn (P2E) mechanics of those titles.

Gaming guilds, which would rent out the NFTs to players who could not afford to buy their own, had difficulty meeting demand.

BreederDAO’s game assets in production / Photo credit: BreederDAO

BreederDAO, which bills itself as an NFT factory, was launched near the end of that year to fill the gap. It created software that mass-produced NFTs using Axie Infinity‘s “breeding” mechanics.

While the factory worked for a while, demand for gaming NFTs tumbled shortly after it launched. The tokenomics behind many of the P2E games, including Axie Infinity were hyperinflationary.

Players, bored by the basic mechanics of the games, left when they discovered they couldn’t make any money. BreederDAO went from mass-producing NFTs for guilds to selling them directly to players.

As the P2E craze faded, the factory actually had to slow and even stop production, says CEO and founder Renz Chong.

“When Axie Infinity first came out, we were taking advantage of the momentum that they had and so were producing Axies in hundreds of thousands,” he recalls. “When Axie Infinity started experiencing that decline, there was a three-month period where we kind of slowed down on developing Axie assets.”

New games such as Pegaxy and Crabada helped prolong the P2E trend, but by February, the market for game NFTs was in decline. A few months later came the crypto winter. Chong calls the market for gaming NFTs over the past year “pretty bad.”

Web3 games haven’t completely gone away, though. BreederDAO still makes hundreds of dollars a week from its digital assets, the CEO says. However, the games themselves have begun moving away from NFTs.

Axie Infinity, the title that was once synonymous with P2E, has relaunched as a mobile app that no longer requires players to purchase NFTs. Pegaxy too is in the process of relaunching with the freemium model.

It seems clear that NFTs are no longer the driving factor in Web3 gaming.

Pivoting to a new market

BreederDAO’s response to the decline? Retool the factory.

Controlling your identity

Product placement has entered the Metaverse