Two years strong: How does Alien Worlds stand the Play-To-Earn test of time?

You don’t hear about Alien Worlds in the mainstream media. And, if you look into Play-To-Earn Top 10 lists, this game shows up occasionally. However, Alien Worlds’ usage statistics tell another story. This NFT metaverse has an engaged community behind that constantly plays, interacts with the app, and makes profitable transactions. Their Discord is active in 18 languages, with more languages to come.

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Where Play-To-Earn games come and go, Alien Worlds remains relevant and active. 

German game developers Dacoco GMBH created Alien Worlds in 2020. The company is based in Zug, Switzerland, in a place commonly known as “Crypto Valley.” Alien Worlds is the first game to introduce liquidity mining into its dynamics. And recently, with the release of the “Binance Missions,” the game provides a creative variation on staking. Currently, Alien Worlds runs simultaneously on three blockchains: WAX, Ethereum, and the Binance Smart Chain. 

Alien World’s native coin is Trillium (TLM) and, using Metamask, gamers can transport their funds from one chain to another. Alien Worlds is a SciFi Metaverse where everything is tokenized and the cost of entry is low. New players receive some NFTs to start, and they can begin mining with zero investment. That said, it’s much more fun to put your money where your controller is.

In the COVID era, the game’s background story has an eerie-but-familiar feel to it. Quoting Alien Worlds’ official site:  

“It’s 2055 — some of Earth’s inhabitants have discovered a way to escape the raging pandemics on Earth.

The most advanced bitcoin mining community — the Federation — noticed a pattern in its algorithmic solutions. An advanced Alien race was sending messages through bitcoin mining algorithms, and the messages led to a big discovery.

A wormhole that allowed humans to travel to far flung exoPlanets….”

However, playing games isn't the primary reason we're here.

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How do you make money in Alien Worlds?

In this multiverse, there are several ways to earn TLM or get in-game NFTs. These are the most common ones: 

• Mining is at the core of Alien Worlds. At the very beginning, each player gets an NFT shovel. Your ability to mine crystals and Trillium will not be great, though. Depending on whose land it is, you might have to pay a percentage to do it. Lucky gamers might mine NFTs that will help them in the game.
• The game rewards participation. Organize or take part in activities and get TLM or NFTs.
• Win the in-game battles to earn TLM and/or NFTs.

• Gamers choose one of six planets in which to stake TLM. The more you stake, the better the rewards. Your stake  also contributes to the planet’s overall rewards.
• The “Binance Missions” require another kind of staking. To send a ship on one, gamers have to stake a Trillium deposit. The longer the mission, the higher the stake. At the end of the mission, each player receives the staked TLM plus the mission’s earnings.
• Each planet is a DAO. A player’s stake affords proportional voting power, and you can participate in the governance process and be rewarded for doing so. You can also influence the direction of the Alien Worlds universe as a whole.
• Each of the six planets contains 500 plots of land. Buy an Alien Worlds land pack and become a landlord. You can rent it and earn commissions on the mining that takes place there.

A note about planet governance. Each planet is independent, and every player can nominate him or herself to be a member of the Planetary Council. If successful, you get greater influence in the game. 

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Stats and Trillium (TLM) tokenomics

The game as a whole is in great shape. According to Dappradar, Alien Worlds is the second most popular Play-To-Earn game, topped only by Splinterlands. And despite Splinterlands having many more users, the total asset value in Alien World’s smart contracts is far superior. And the game has almost 170K active wallets and moved more than $500K on May 7th.

The problem, though, is the Trillium. Showing exhaustion after two years of trading and making money from users, TLM is near its all time low. As of this writing, it trades at $0.072 and it has never been below $0.070. 

According to Coinmarketcap, Trillium’s circulating supply is 914,030,370, and its maximum supply is 10,000,000,000 TLM coins. At the time of writing, its 24-hour trading volume was $77K, which means its down 11.09% since the day before. Trillium’s total market cap is almost $66M.

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To finish this off

Even though Trillium is not in its best shape, Alien Worlds’ heart is still beating strong. In this game, players can create real businesses and games of their own as well as connect with other users in a real way. It’s as the company said in a recent Medium post titled “How Has Alien Worlds Changed Your Life?“

“Many players have jumped headfirst into the Metaverse and found real opportunities to thrive using unconventional methods. People from around the world are coming together and forming meaningful relationships around common, social and professional interests.

Some of these players started their journeys by sharing tools and strategies in the community and have gone on to create their own games, further bolstering the entire blockchain gaming ecosystem.”

We can’t guarantee that the game will survive in the long term – the economics doesn’t look great.  And, let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what everyone is there for. But Alien Worlds does have one of the strongest communities behind it – where gamers have skin in the game, investments, and relationships built around it – suggesting this may very well be the place to play.