Understanding FTX IEO in One Article: What is IndiGG? Targeting the Indian Market? How is the Progress?

FTX will launch the initial exchange offering (IEO) presale of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) IndiGG on March 8. What is IndiGG? What is its business model? How does it work?

IndiGG is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) under the gaming guild Yield Guild Games, which invests in blockchain games, subsidizes players, builds a virtual world economy, and introduces the Play-to-Earn (P2E) Web3 gaming ecosystem to the Indian market to create economic opportunities for India's 400 million gamers.

The three key features of Web3 games can promote capital circulation:

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1. Establishment of property rights: Items in Web3 games can be considered as NFTs.
2. NFT trading liquidity: Web3 creates peer-to-peer trading of virtual treasures, while also creating a secondary market to increase trading liquidity.
3. Establishing human rights: Everyone has the right to legally earn game tokens, and everyone is a first-class citizen of Web3 games, without discrimination based on wealth or occupation.

According to the official website, IndiGG has already partnered with several games, including Axie Infinity, Pegaxy, Fancy Birds, Cyball, Wonderhero, Synesis One, Epiko Regal, and other games.

The Driving Force Behind the Popularity of Axie Infinity: YGG

Playing-to-earn (P2E) is not a new concept. Early online games like Lineage, Ragnarok, and World of Warcraft had players selling in-game tokens, items, and weapons through offline transactions. Blockchain games combine elements such as cryptocurrency, NFTs, and token economics to enhance the P2E model; coupled with virtual assets, they have even developed the concept of the "Metaverse."

One of the most successful examples is the blockchain game Axie Infinity.

The game became the number one NFT game in Q2 last year, with active users surging from 38,000 to over 270,000. The governance token AXS, which started at $0.5 early last year, skyrocketed to a peak price of $160, with a total market value now exceeding $3.1 billion.

Axie Infinity's economic model is quite ingenious. Players need Axie creatures (NFTs) to battle. Users must purchase Axies before starting the game, spend AXS and in-game token SLP to breed more Axie creatures, and the platform attracts users to stake by rewarding them, thus creating a circular economy.

In addition to its economic model, behind the success of Axie Infinity is the Philippine gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG).

YGG has designed the "Axie Scholarship Program." YGG will lease 3 Axie creatures to players applying for scholarships. Players can request to cash out the SLP tokens earned in the game using these "production tools," and smart contracts will redeem these tokens, distributing them in a 70% player, 20% manager, 10% YGG ratio.

At the same time, YGG will use the earnings to purchase new assets in the game and distribute them to guild members.

Why the Indian Market?

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 severely affected the economy, hitting many vulnerable groups hard. The emergence of YGG and Axie Infinity brought timely relief to tens of thousands of families and small businesses, allowing them to survive this period by earning income from playing games, and even achieving better earnings than before.

IndiGG targets the Indian market for two main reasons: the massive size of the Indian gaming market and the severe wealth disparity in India.

According to "Invest India," India had about 250 million gamers in 2018, which grew to 400 million by Q2 of 2020, with 100 million players willing to purchase game treasures or apps.

As per the "Research And Market" report, the Indian gaming market was valued at $1.02 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $4.88 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.84%.

The gradual maturation of the Indian gaming market can also be seen in the increasing number of game developers. In the past three years, over 200 game studios have been added. The COVID-19 pandemic has also accelerated the development of online gaming in India. According to the Indian Broadcast Audience Research Council report, during the pandemic, Indian players increased their weekly spending time on games by 44%, from an average of 151 minutes per week to 218 minutes.

Another reason why Web3 games have business opportunities in India is the severe wealth disparity in the country.

According to a Credit Suisse report, the COVID-19 pandemic has further widened India's already severe wealth gap. By the end of last year, the top 1% of India's richest held 40.5% of the national assets, up from 33.5% in 2000. India's Gini coefficient has soared from 0.747 in 2000 to 0.823 last year.

P2E Model Proven Feasible, YGG Price Rises 62%

The P2E economic model has proven viable over the past two years, and with game guilds like YGG, Web3 games can be rapidly introduced to a country's market. Moreover, the governance token economy of game guilds plays a crucial role.

The current token empowerment includes:

1. Submitting proposals and voting through YGG
2. Liquidity mining: Staking YGG for rewards
3. Membership certificates: Purchasing game items at a discount or obtaining exclusive items

According to CoinMarketCap, YGG's price has risen from its launch price of $1.7333 in July 2021 to $2.82 currently, a 62% increase. In Q4 last year, the price even soared to $10.51 at one point, a more than 500% increase.

Current Progress of IndiGG

IndiGG is supported by the two leaders in the Web3 industry, YGG and Polygon, making it the largest game guild in India.

YGG is the world's largest play-to-earn game incubator, with over 15,000 players, funding of over $250 million, and a valuation of $2.5 billion; Polygon is an Ethereum scaling solution providing AWS-like solutions for blockchain, with over 2 million monthly active users. Through Polygon Studios, Indian players can enter the GameFi ecosystem to experience environments like Zed Run, Skyweaver, and Decentraland.

According to IndiGG's official blog, its investment list includes prominent capital firms such as Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed, Variant Fund, Animoca Brands, Dune Ventures, and Jump Capital.

IndiGG has not only received support from the Web3 sector but also from the traditional gaming market.

This includes support from the founders and CEOs of India's largest gaming companies—listed company Nazara Technologies, esports platform MPL (Mobile Premier League), Hungama, which recently announced a collaboration with Asia's largest film production company to launch NFTs, and WinZo Games, dubbed the Netflix of gaming.

Furthermore, IndiGG has already partnered with the FTX gaming platform.

According to the official blog, FTX Gaming will provide infrastructure technology to help integrate crypto assets into games from the studios collaborating with IndiGG. Through this partnership, game companies invested in by FTX's venture fund also have the opportunity to integrate with IndiGG and launch games in the Indian market.

IndiGG can identify promising Web3 games early based on market characteristics. Once discovered, the IndiGG DAO model becomes the marketing engine for the game, guiding players to the game through governance token rewards, creating "player liquidity."

This player liquidity helps with the deployment of new games in these virtual worlds, increasing the likelihood of game success.

As the gaming market continues to expand, new revenue sources and opportunities will increase. Through the governance mechanism using INDIGG tokens, these revenues will undoubtedly return to token holders. INDIGG token holders indirectly become early investors in the Indian market.