Searching for Alpha: Battle Showdown

The rapid expansion of the Web3 gaming sector has catalyzed the development and launch of numerous games, each with its unique mechanism and token economics. We have seen the rise and fall of the X-to-Earn model, where popular applications like Axie Infinity and Stepn witnessed a meteoric rise in their token prices before crashing due to the unsustainable emissions of rewards. 

This research piece examines Ethlas’ latest game, Battle Showdown: Gambit, which reintroduces play-to-earn features with a significant modification: instead of rewarding all players, only the best players in the game are rewarded. Players are fractionalized into on-chain assets known as Bits and anyone can purchase these Bits permissionlessly on the Base blockchain. By enabling the trading of players’ Bits, Ethlas aims to democratize gamers’ incentives via a concept referred to as Skill-Fi.