Innovating a Centuries-Old Industry: Lepricon’s Armchair Discussion

Games. All of us are aware of them — some despise it, some cherish it. Depending on the given time and location, people have always had different perceptions of the industry, probably because the involvement in it didn’t mean one universal thing.

Throughout the ages, villagers and farmers would bet their working assets like animals, tools, crops, while urban people and the higher-graders on the hierarchy pyramid would bet a variety of things they find as part of their wealth.

It was understandable that this market and the entire industry would grow into something big, and Las Vegas has shown that some of the most influential cities in the world can be built on the very foundation of risk-taking.

In 2019, it was reported that the online gaming market size was at around 57 billion dollars, which is expected to grow at a substantial rate of 11.5% for the next 8 years. To better imagine the scale of this massive growth, we should mention that in 2016, this market has only been at $6.5B globally.

Gaming in the Age of Information

The internet has opened doors to the wild west of online gaming, allowing people to participate in this widely active environment without setting foot out of their homes. At the same time, since the early 80s, accessible gaming consoles started to take off, then quickly moved on to personal computers and the internet itself.

Just the global PC gaming market has just topped $37B in value, making it one of the largest digital sectors as well.

Games where winning means money have been lurking around the internet, but not larger-scale games with storylines, graphics, or multiplayer features.

The Rise of Crypto

With the rise of Bitcoin and thousands of other cryptocurrencies, mostly ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum network, the light seems to be shining ever brighter for the merger between the two highly interactive and engaging worlds.

Cryptocurrency or just digital money dates back before even the creation of PayPal in the 1990s, although many of them haven’t been successful. However, cryptocurrency itself does not provide the tools needed to integrate financial mechanisms into standard games — this is where decentralised finance (DeFi) comes in, the first beginnings of which could be seen with MakerDAO in 2017.

New Ecosystems of Freedom

DeFi, with continued and innovative developments during recent years, has enabled digital tokens to be implemented in games and online ecosystems, bringing NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to character development and cryptocurrencies as in-game legal tender.

With the rise of decentralised applications, some games now include even the ability for players to lend and borrow crypto to others, creating a completely new infrastructure to be a part of. Cultural approval, legalization, celebrity endorsements, and corporate sponsorships are allowing the immersive space to grow and faster by the day.

Today, with the ability of gaming corporations to take advantage of blockchain and other secure cryptographic technologies, players will have a chance to earn actual money from their virtual entertainment activities via GameFi or Play-to-Earn.

GameFi is one of the new enablements of decentralisation — it is the enablement of blockchain-powered gaming systems infused with next-generation financial mechanisms.

Through games, people can make money by completing in-game quests, winning online battles, trading NFT representations of virtual items with others, and many other in-game efforts they put in.

Where is Gaming Going?

To put the current usage levels in perspective, in 2020 it was reported that 41.9 million gamers own crypto, 38% of them being Millennials. There are opinions floating on the surface of the internet saying that the merger of gaming and crypto couldn’t and shouldn’t work, complaining that “even Steam has discontinued NFT operations”.

However, the traditional gaming market has shown us all that there almost always have been valuable in-game items, starting with Robux from Roblox and going to CS:GO or Fortnite skins. Gamers all around the globe have been eager to trade them with others to extract more value for themselves.

In addition, game developers have been asking to pay for virtual items since the early days of personal consoles, just now, every aspect of the old-timey practices can be decentralised through blockchain, giving power to the players and allowing them to build fun, engaging, and competitive ecosystems that they strive toward.

Games on the Shoulders of Giants

It’s time to discuss the newcomer companies that make the decentralised shifts happen through brilliant-minded innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.

Lepricon is a Hong Kong-based gaming company that was started and led by incredible life-long game developers and gamers themselves like CEO Josh Galloway, COO Stephen Brownie, CMO Phil Ingram, and others.

Lepricon is reimagining entertainment through cutting-edge technology, and that could not be done without inventing new tools.

After seeing that no blockchain provides efficiency, cost-effectiveness, simplicity, and speed, the company has built its own gas-free Ethereum-compatible and highly scalable blockchain called Leprichain that even has a custom block explorer built for tracking transactions.

On this blockchain, Lepricon has built a set of mini-games that have quite a retro fashion to them: Lucky Wheel, Gachapon, Lepricon City, FansPredict, and more. Inside the games, a completely new transaction fee-free decentralised experience awaits.

People involved also get access to a variety of additional features like staking Lepricon’s token L3P and being part of its well-rewarded community. Lepricon has allocated 25% of the total L3P supply to community and staking rewards — this ensures the community is always engaged and the liquidity pool is healthy.

Forward and Around CeFi

Many other companies like Axie Infinity have also seen growth like no other, seeing their token prices increase by thousands of percent. However, the established traditional gaming corporations are having trouble trying to keep up, as most of their resources are allocated to continuing existing traditional games, most of which even the most common consumer has become tired of.

Decentralising news and entertainment is crucial for a sustainable and free internet. This could even have similarities to open source software — every piece of machinery under the hood can be seen by the user and even edited to suit desired needs, but the software can still be sold by a company building it, making it a flexible and free environment for everyone involved.

Players have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on completing levels, and it would be amazing for them to start receiving actual value for their efforts in a given game.