Written by: Xiaobai Navigation Coderworld

Do you still remember the "MapleStory" that allowed you to kill monsters, form teams, and change clothes?

Younger P players may not have experienced it, but this 20-year-old gaming masterpiece carries the Internet cafe memories of most people born in the 1980s and 1990s, and is also one of the marks of the era when online games entered China after the millennium.

Today, it has transformed itself into a new blockchain game star.

The English name of MapleStory is MapleStory. On May 15, the governance token NXPC of the blockchain game version of MapleStory Universe with the same IP was launched on Binance, Upbit, Bithumb, Gate.io, Bybit, Deepcoin, Bitget, Weex, MEXC and other exchanges; the price of the project token NXPC directly exceeded US$3, and FDV soared to US$3 billion.

Along with the surge in prices, there was discussion about the NXPC large airdrop pork trotter rice.

Under the current Binance Alpha points system, users who meet certain rules will also receive NXPC airdrops. According to the price of NXPC at press time, the average user can earn more than 600 U per order, which is the best "airdrop benefit" at the beginning of the year.

Many players joked that there is still a chance to return to BSC now, and the wealth effect has refocused attention. MapleStory itself represents the feelings of old players, and it also brings some hope to the blockchain game track that lags behind the version.

Is blockchain gaming, a track that has actually been falsified by the market, popular again?

Does NXPC work?

We can look at the current surge of NXPC from two perspectives: whether the project itself is successful, and whether it compares to the predecessors in the blockchain gaming field.

NXPC is the governance token of MapleStory Universe, which is owned by the Korean gaming giant Nexon.BlockchainLaunched by subsidiary NEXPACE. MapleStory is a classic MMORPG that has been in operation for 20 years, with more than 180 million players worldwide and a historical revenue of up to 4 billion US dollars, making it one of the evergreens in the gaming industry.

Today, Nexon has moved this IP onto the chain, attempting to create a community-driven digital economic ecosystem through MapleStory Universe.

According to the project white paper, the total supply of NXPC is 1 billion, of which 16.37% (about 163.7 million) are unlocked immediately through airdrops, and 80% are used for subsequent ecological rewards, aiming to incentivize long-term participation of players and creators.

NXPC also has a sister token, NESO, which is used for in-game transactions and can be freely exchanged with NXPC to form a dual-token model. This design attempts to find a balance between the game economy and the value of the token, but it also allows many investors to smell the opportunity of "making money".

From the perspective of this economic model, this is still a circular routine of "main currency - sub-currency - NFT assets", that is, one token acts as a platform currency, has governance or pledge functions, and at the same time obtains various rights and interests designed in the game rules; the other token is consumed purely as game currency in the game, and the two tokens are consumed together to support the economic cycle of NFT equipment props in the game.

This is actually not fundamentally different from the gameplay of most previous blockchain games.

If we compare it with the projects that were popular in the blockchain gaming field in the past, it seems that we can also calculate a fair price range.

Has NXPC’s current price of over US$3 reached its ceiling?

Based on the current circulation of NXPC of 16.37% (about 163.7 million pieces), and referring to the current market value and historical highs of leading projects such as Gala Games, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and Mobox, we can make a theoretical calculation:

Current market value benchmark: Based on NXPC’s current price of $3 (at press time), it is already higher than Mobox’s $0.24 and Axie Infinity’s $2.17, and is comparable to Decentraland’s $3.4.

If compared with the market capitalizations of Gala Games and The Sandbox of $703 million and $691 million, NXPC's price is expected to hit the $4.06-4.13 range.

But compared with Mobox's low valuation, NXPC's current price seems to have included higher market expectations.

Historical highs benchmark: Looking back at the blockchain game bull market in 2021-2022, the market value of Gala Games and The Sandbox was as high as 6.9-7 billion US dollars. If the historical highest market value of these projects is estimated based on the market environment at that time, their prices may hit the range of 15-40 US dollars.

But the prerequisite is that NXPC must replicate the ecological activity and market enthusiasm of these projects in those years.

From a fundamental perspective, the gaming track itself does not have any particularly big narrative or technological breakthroughs, and relying on a single old "MapleStory" IP to drive prices to this range is a bit too optimistic.

Transient Effect

Judging from the current data, NXPC is more like an abnormal movement on the capital side.

The funding rate of the perpetual contract for the Binance NXPC/USDT trading pair was as low as -2%, and has now reached -0.7%, which means that shorts need to pay longs. This negative premium is usually a precursor to a short squeeze - a large number of short orders are forced to close, pushing prices further up.

At the same time, NXPC was listed on major exchanges such as Binance on the first day, ensuring short-term trading depth and liquidity; the continuous launch of contracts by many exchanges further stimulated the influx of speculative funds.

MEXC data shows that NXPC's 24-hour trading volume reached US$6.85 million, which shows the speculative sentiment.

Back to the fundamentals, NXPC also faces considerable challenges in realizing its value.

First of all, the game is currently in the public beta stage, and the player retention rate and stability of the economic model have not yet been tested by the market. The lesson of Axie Infinity tells us that if a blockchain game project relies too much on speculation and ignores player experience and economic balance, it will ultimately be difficult to last long.

Secondly, the value of NXPC is highly dependent on the activity of the creator economy.

NXPC emphasizes the creator economy rather than a simple "gold farming" model. MapleStory Universe allows players and creators to produce content through Synergy Apps, such as designing unique equipment or levels, and mint them as NFTs for trading through NXPC.

If creators are not sufficiently involved or the NFT item trading market has low liquidity, the demand for NXPC may drop significantly. The shift from pure “Play-to-Earn” to “Create-to-Earn” is nothing new, and it is also common in our previous observations of blockchain game projects.

Judging from the reaction on Crypto Twitter, the craze for NXPC has indeed benefited from the dual blessing of MapleStory's IP appeal and wealth effect, but the community's focus is more on short-term gains rather than the long-term value of the game ecosystem.

Another important point is that this is a Korean game. It is an indisputable fact that young Koreans love to speculate in cryptocurrencies. The market also has the potential to promote the rise of NXPC. Changes in indicators on Upbit may have a greater impact on the fate of NXPC.

However, you can’t conclude that the whole garden is well again just because one flower blooms well. The fate of blockchain games is still undecided.

MapleStory restarts the adventure in the crypto world, but it faces more young people who have already left the game due to losses in blockchain games.

The article comes from the Internet:The crypto adventure of MapleStory: NXPC creates a wealth effect, will the spring of blockchain games come back?