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The Rise of NFTs in Gaming and the Metaverse: From CryptoPunks to Axie Infinity
Ethereum, which introduced a series of token standards, facilitated the steady movement of NFTs onto the blockchain. The token standard informs developers about implementing new tokens.
The success of the Rare Pepes was followed by Larva Labs, a software development company that launched CryptoPunks, its own generative series of NFTs, created by John Watkinson and Matt Hall. Inspired by London’s punk culture, the project features 10,000 unique pieces, with no two characters that look alike. CryptoPunks became a huge success and was the basis of many other NFT projects, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club, one of the largest NFT collections.
The next major launch was CryptoKitties, which took place during the ETHWaterloo hackathon, in October 2017. The game allows players to buy, sell, and create NFTs that represent virtual cats with desirable traits on Ethereum. After CryptoKitties, NFT gaming became more and more popular.
NFT gaming combined with metaverse projects to formulate a new momentum. An important project from this era was the Ethereum-based Decentraland, a virtual world where players can explore games and build and collect assets.
In October 2018, Axie Infinity, an NFT-based fighting game, was released. It set the ball rolling for play-to-earn (P2E) games, which allowed gamers to earn in-game rewards as they played. It is a breakthrough video game on the Ethereum blockchain featuring Axies, creatures that are rare NFTs with unique properties. Gamers fight battles with Axies and build more attributes into them.