A recent Reddit AMA with Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal explores the promising prospects for the crypto gaming industry. Combining Nailwal’s responses with industry facts and figures together, he makes a comprehensive analysis of the burgeoning relationship between gaming and the Web3 sector.
In this lively Reddit AMA, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon (MATIC), has laid out a grand vision for a buoyant future for cryptocurrency in the gaming sector.
Polygon, a layer 2 network based on Ethereum (ETH), is making waves in the gaming space with its recent announcement of scalable web3 gaming infrastructures.
While the main applications of cryptocurrency are often limited to trading and payments, Nailwal suggested that gaming may be the true dark horse of blockchain technology.
Games, as he aptly puts it, “embrace new technology into objects.” His enthusiasm is evident as he has announced that some of the web3’s best games will be released in the next six to eighteen months.
Polygon’s grand vision also seems to have captivated the investment world. More than $2 billion was poured into financing web3 games in the previous year alone. Polygon and its ecosystem partners received a large share of this money.
Nailwal’s optimism doesn’t end at the intersection of crypto and gaming. According to him, Polygon is currently one of the largest projects and could take the lead in terms of developer traction across all segments.
He also reported on Polygon’s ongoing work on innovative solutions in the zero-knowledge (zk) space, which would enable scalability on a massive scale.
On the decentralized finance (DeFi) front, Polygon has 417 protocols worth $982.78 million, making it the fifth largest network by total value locked (TVL), according to DefiLlama.
Bridging games and cryptocurrency
The synergy between Polygon and the gaming industry is becoming increasingly apparent. Polygon Labs and zkMeta recently join Forces the creation of a custom game pool on the Polygon network.
With South Korean mobile game company Delabs Games launching on the net and partnering with AQUA, a Web 3 marketplace for gamers, Polygon’s gaming ecosystem is thriving.
The gaming industry, as a whole, is on a meteoric growth trajectory. A recent study by Zion Market Research estimated The gaming market will reach approximately $435 billion by 2028, at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 12.1%.
The “shell” phenomenon in cryptocurrency
Sandeep Nailwal agrees that centralized applications, such as some exchanges and yield generators, have unfortunately given them somewhat tarnished reputations.
This is because these applications, which he characterizes as fintech rather than true crypto, are often seen as an integral part of the crypto landscape.
They are described as ‘wrappers’ on cryptocurrencies due to the nature of encapsulating crypto assets while not adhering to the principles of decentralization, transparency, and immutability.
Nailwal stresses the need for education among policymakers to understand the difference between these “wrappers” and actual encryption and Defi implementations.
Promote engagement through NFTs
Nailwal expresses his enthusiasm for the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as collectible avatars in the Reddit community.
He sees Reddit as a major tech company that has successfully harnessed the potential of NFTs to drive user engagement. To boost traction for this initiative, Nailwal proposes additional features such as a secondary marketplace for trading NFTs and a launching pad for artists to launch their collections for the first time.
Balance between web2 and web3
Despite the excitement over the switch to web3, Nailwal doesn’t envision it replacing web2 completely. He asserts that there are many applications where decentralization, distrust and resistance to censorship, the hallmarks of Web 3, may not be necessary.
However, in areas such as finance, gaming, social media, and media in general, where these features can benefit greatly, he predicts the dominance of Web 3 applications over their Web 2 counterparts.
Progressive decentralization in cryptography
To address doubts about the current level of decentralization in cryptography, Nailwal accepts that apart from Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), most blockchain ecosystems are not fully decentralized.
It also introduces the concept of “progressive decentralization”, emphasizing that protocols and applications need not be fully decentralized from the start. Instead, they should decentralize gradually as their importance grows.
Nailwal’s responses during a Reddit AMA emphasized Polygon’s long-term vision of becoming the “value layer of the Internet.”
