In recent years, NFT has been widely used in various fields such as gaming, crypto art, virtual land, insurance, and domain names. However, compared to other areas, the rental market in the NFT ecosystem still has enormous development potential. A mature NFT ecosystem requires a market where users can both use NFT to obtain loans and rent out NFT to generate profits. If a platform or project allows users to use assets as collateral for loans to rent out other users’ NFTs on their platform, this will unlock the infinite potential and liquidity of NFTs.
For GameFi, most Web3 game users come from a few top games. As of the time of writing, 7% of the top 100 ranked games support NFT renting, and 18% of games plan to adopt this model. The main reason players use leasing is to reduce costs and increase their chances of winning in NFT games by using or combining NFTs.
The mission of Web3 games is to enable players to truly own and sell in-game assets, but it is not limited to this. As digital assets become more and more like real-world assets, players will be able to engage in various other types of financial transactions with them, starting primarily in the leasing sector.
In terms of users, the top three GameFi projects account for more than half of the total users, indicating that the majority of users come from a small number of top games.
In terms of ecosystem performance, it appears that no single player dominates, but WAX, BNB Chain, Polygon, and ETH seem to be among the leading GameFi platforms.
Of those, 7% have a dedicated NFT rental market or feature, while 18% have expressed interest or commitment to implementing it in the future. The remaining 75% have not implemented or expressed interest in NFT renting.
Although rental games may seem to be a minority, we have studied the share of players in each category, and relative to the number of existing games, rental games have some room for development in the player community (20.4%). To clarify, this means that 20.4% of players belong to the rental game category out of all the game categories that exist.
We have compiled the following advantages of NFT leasing in GameFi compared to purchasing/trading in-game:
- Daily missions: Game players are required to play different factions, but they don’t necessarily have to own enough cards to play each faction. Instead, they can choose to rent card NFTs to complete missions.
- Specific combat restrictions in the game, such as the need to use certain cards or characters, require players to use small cards that they are unwilling to buy, or lease other characters for summoning, synthesis, etc.
- Players have the opportunity to experiment with cards they do not own by using leasing before making a purchase, trying out new skills and combinations.
- Reduce the cost of summoning new characters: The cost of summoning is tied to the generation, so if a player has a higher generation hero, they can always use their character to lease a lower generation character to reduce the cost of summoning.
- Increase the chances of obtaining excellent characters: Game players can rent high-level characters to use together with their own characters.
- Obtain NFTs through loot in daily battles
- Earn Power Points to upgrade game player’s NFTs
- Have the opportunity to participate in special events for specific NFTs.
- For non-blockchain players, they can use fiat currency to rent NFTs within the application when purchasing. This not only lowers the barrier to playing blockchain games, but also provides a more affordable way for users who cannot afford NFTs in certain regions.
Although NFT rentals may not be very popular in games at the moment, it is still an effective way for players to reduce costs and increase their chances of winning. Some may wonder why there are still so many games that have not adopted NFT rental features. In fact, game developers face some difficulties and challenges in establishing their own NFT rental market. For example, they need to invest a lot of resources in designing and implementing NFT rental functions during the development process, while also considering how to ensure fairness and security in rentals, and how to provide good customer service to players.
If you want to experience NFT rentals first, there are actually platforms that offer NFT rentals available, allowing more players to participate in GameFi. Through NFT rental platforms, players can rent out their own NFTs to other players, earning stable income, while allowing other players to use their NFTs in the game and receive more game rewards. This approach can reduce the risks and thresholds for participating in GameFi, and also reduce the costs for developers to build their own NFT rental platforms, as they can simply list their NFTs for rental and start offering rental services.
However, with the continuous development of blockchain technology and the NFT market, more and more game developers may consider adopting the NFT renting function. Once a game’s player base reaches a certain level, game developers will be more motivated or capable of developing towards the NFT renting market, further expanding the game’s audience and market share.
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