Introduction

Web3 games have always been a track closely watched by Mint Ventures. Although the concept of Play 2 Earn brought about by the last bull market is no longer mentioned, it is now seen that both Axie and StepN, which fell dramatically during their peak, had millions of highly sticky daily active users, marking the first time the crypto industry has come so close to "Massive Adoption." Compared to another social product category with the potential for Massive Adoption, games naturally have a richer and more complex economic ecosystem, and teams have more precise control space to tax from multiple angles, coupled with the experiential value brought by the games themselves and irrational consumption based on clever design, making it more likely to maintain the relative balance of the ecosystem for a longer period of time. In addition, web3 games can also more effectively utilize the convenient assetization pathways brought by Crypto, making investors generally optimistic about the prospects of web3 games.

Since Axie and StepN, web3 games have also had the following favorable conditions:

• Further improvement of infrastructure. Today in 2024, game projects have a richer selection of chains to choose from: whether it is directly based on existing L1 (such as Solana) or L2 (such as Arbitrum), or using one-click chain deployment services provided by L1 or L2 (such as Avalanche subnets and OP Stack), or following the modularization trend for free combination, game developers have many high-performance and low-cost options. In terms of wallets, the solutions provided by MPC and AA wallets are mature enough for commercial use, solving the headache of private key issues for ordinary users.
• The market has gradually improved, and the recent approval of the BTC ETF has brought about a strong rebound in the overall crypto market, causing Crypto as a whole to once again attract more attention from the general public, providing a larger potential user base for games.

Compared to traditional Web2 games, Web3 games still have very obvious advantages:

• In the typical lifecycle of web3 games, "NFT sales-FT issuance-game launch," there are many sources of income such as NFT royalties and FT transaction fees even before the game is launched, helping game teams to generate income from the first day of game development, which can offset the long development cycle and substantial development costs. At the same time, after the game is launched, the taxation at various stages of the game is much more flexible compared to web2 games. Earlier and more diverse commercialization options are key factors in attracting game teams to enter the world of web3.
• Web3 games do not have dominant distribution channels, which also means that the high user acquisition costs in web2 games do not exist in web3 games. In other words, web3 games are not "rolled," waiting for capable teams to explore the wilderness.

We also see many experienced game development teams entering the world of web3 games, building a large number of well-narrated, well-experienced, and highly playable games. The supply side of web3 games has seen significant development, which also constitutes the "people" of web3 games.

For these reasons, Mint Ventures has been continuously paying attention to the game track. Ultiverse is a game project that Mint Ventures has been continuously following since the previous bear market phase. They have been continuously building during the bear market, enriching their product matrix, actively expanding the narrative contained in the products, and have an excellent investment background. They have recently launched multiple airdrop activities aimed at attracting new users, and are worth keeping an eye on.

Disclosure: Mint Ventures participated in the Builder Round minting of Ultiverse ElectricSheep NFT and still holds ElectricSheep NFT.

Introduction to Ultiverse

Ultiverse is a blockchain-based metaverse world deeply integrated with AI. Its architecture is divided into 4 layers:

Protocol Layer: Ultiverse uses the Bodhi Protocol as the foundation of the entire ecosystem. According to official documentation, the Bodhi Protocol uses large language models and Stable Diffusion models to generate various in-game content, using AI to assist various stakeholders within the ecosystem, such as helping the game generate more intelligent NPCs and creating rich background content.

Infrastructure: Ultiverse abstracts the series of infrastructure required for games into SDKs, which can be used by other developers in the future. These infrastructures include MPC wallets, AA wallets, built-in trading markets, and DID systems. In addition, its user-facing live platform, Ultiverse Live, has attracted 350,000 fans and nearly 40 million likes on Binance Live, bringing considerable exposure to its partners. Ultiverse's infrastructure also includes its own task platform, Mission Runner.

Core Assets: Ultiverse's core assets currently include Electric Sheep NFT, Meta GF NFT, and World Fragment.

Electric Sheep NFT is the first asset in the Ultiverse ecosystem and its core asset, with a quantity of 7000. It was minted in July 2022 at a price of 0.5 ETH, and its current floor price is around 2 ETH, bringing holders 4 times the profit in ETH terms and 8 times in USD terms, also helping to build a solid community. Electric Sheep provides holders with priority access and reward amplification privileges in many projects within the Ultiverse ecosystem, and can receive airdrops of the Ultiverse governance token $ULTC.

Historical floor price changes of Electric Sheep

Meta GF NFT was issued at the end of 2022, positioned as an AI companion that supports custom face shaping and can accompany players in exploring the Ultiverse world.

World Fragment NFT has not yet been issued and will be airdropped to holders of Electric Sheep. According to the official documentation, players can combine world fragments to create worlds, and holding different world NFTs can provide completely different game experiences supported by AI, including different storylines, characters, world objectives, and core conflicts. In other words, holding different NFTs can provide completely different game experiences.

Dapp: Dapps within the Ultiverse ecosystem are also called "Micro Worlds." Dapps in the Ultiverse ecosystem can be divided into two categories: those with cooperative relationships with Ultiverse, such as the previously launched casual development game Meta Merge and the upcoming racing game BAC on Blast. These ecosystem projects have a higher level of trust and asset exchange with Ultiverse, such as Meta Merge airdropping its token $MMM to Electric Sheep holders, and Meta Merge's NFTs can also receive partial airdrops of the upcoming $ULTC. The other category includes Dapps developed by Ultiverse itself, mainly including Ulti-pilot, Terminus, and Endless Loop, which were just launched at the end of February.

Terminus was launched in March. It is the core platform within the Ultiverse ecosystem, built using the UE5 engine, and includes both PC and VR versions. According to official documentation, Terminus is a virtual world where, unlike traditional games, NPCs are driven by highly intelligent AI, allowing for multi-path, highly interactive conversations and interactions with players, which may ultimately affect the game's experience and outcome. Characters can also be driven by AI, so even when players are offline, their characters can continue to evolve, making Terminus an always-online game world.

Screenshot of Terminus

Ulti-pilot was launched in February and serves as the gateway for users to experience the Ultiverse world. Users can dispatch their characters to explore the Ultiverse world and can also receive substantial Soul incentives (which can be used to exchange for the governance token $ULTC).

Endless Loop is an MMORPG game within Ultiverse, also built using the UE5 engine. The game has not yet been launched.

From the product architecture, it can be seen that Ultiverse is not just a game; its goal is to become an AI-driven metaverse platform: on one hand, it connects a massive number of C-end users, and on the other hand, it connects various stakeholders in the web3 industry, ultimately realizing its Meta-Fi vision.

In terms of the future roadmap, Ultiverse's main task this year is to fully launch its products, including the PC and VR versions of Terminus, and to introduce more game partners. They plan to launch the Game Launchpad in the second half of 2024 and launch their own Rollup to better serve game partners and realize their vision for a web3 game platform.

Investment Background and Partners

Ultiverse has completed a total of three rounds of financing, with an excellent lineup of investors:

On March 18, 2022, Ultiverse completed a $4.5 million seed round at a valuation of $50 million. This round was jointly led by Binance Labs and Defiance Capital, with participation from Three Arrows Capital and SkyVision Capital.

On March 25, Binance Labs made an additional investment of $5 million in Ultiverse, in the form of equity acquisition. Nicole Zhang, head of Binance Labs, stated that this investment was made to ensure that Binance Labs has a say in the future development direction of the Ultiverse team.

On February 14, 2024, Ultiverse completed a $4 million strategic round of financing at a valuation of $150 million, led by IDG Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures, MorningStar Ventures, Taiko, ZetaChain, Manta Network, DWF Ventures, and others. In addition, a series of NFT industry KOLs also participated in the strategic round, including Dingaling, Grail.eth, Christian2022.eth, and 0xSun.

Investors in Ultiverse

Overall, Ultiverse's investment background is excellent, encompassing top VC firms, market makers, exchanges, public chains, and influential KOLs, which can help drive various aspects of Ultiverse's development.

Founder Frank graduated from CMU and is a passionate gamer. The team currently has over 200 members, many of whom have previously held positions at major game companies such as Gameloft, Blizzard, Ubisoft, and Tencent, and have been involved in the development and design of well-known games such as Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed, and Prince of Persia.

Due to its goal of becoming a platform that connects players and games, Ultiverse has numerous partners and extensive collaborations with various projects and communities within the gaming ecosystem.

For example, in March, the "Terminus finding your path partners" event was jointly launched by Ultiverse and public chains (Zetachain), other games (Ainchess), infrastructure service providers (Rpggo, Particle Network), game guilds (N9Club, GuildFi), NFT communities (Weirdo Ghost Gang), and others.

Source: https://twitter.com/UltiverseDAO

In addition, Ultiverse has just announced partnerships with over 300 web2 and web3 AI and game teams, covering almost all top web3 games, which will help realize its game platform vision.

Token Economy

Ultiverse has announced the use cases and economic model of its governance token $ULTC:

In the Ultiverse ecosystem, $ULTC primarily serves the following three purposes:

• Governance
• Dapps that want to enter the Ultiverse ecosystem need to pay $ULTC, and a portion of these $ULTC will be given to users.
• $ULTC is the payment method for assets within the Ultiverse ecosystem.

The total supply of $ULTC is 10 billion, with the distribution as shown in the following diagram:

Source: https://docs.ultiverse.io/ultiverse-tokenomics/token-structure-overview

It is worth noting that 8% of the total token supply will be used for airdrops, which will include holders of Electric Sheep NFT and MetaGF NFT, Soul holders, and holders of other assets within the ecosystem.

Electric Sheep NFT currently has a floor price of around 2 ETH, with a total market value of 14,000 ETH, approximately equivalent to around $47.6 million. If we calculate the corresponding fully diluted market value of $ULTC based on the 2% reward from Electric Sheep NFT, it would be $2.38 billion, which is comparable to the valuation of the previously listed Game+AI project Portal on Binance, making the valuation reasonable. Of course, in addition to receiving $ULTC, Electric Sheep NFT has many other functions within the Ultiverse ecosystem, such as obtaining the World NFT mentioned earlier.

Soul is currently the "points" within the Ultiverse ecosystem, initially obtainable through staking Electric Sheep NFT as a reward for early holders. The team had previously announced a Soul to $ULTC exchange ratio of 100:1. After releasing the token economic model, Ultiverse has started multiple activities to attract new users, hoping to further promote the Ultiverse brand with the help of Soul. The Ulti-pilot activity, which started in late February, will release 10 billion Soul (equivalent to 100 million $ULTC, accounting for 1% of the total supply), attracting many users to participate.

Summary

Ultiverse is a project worth paying attention to for several reasons:

• The web3 gaming track has the right timing and advantages in this cycle, and is expected to explode during the bull market period.
• The Ultiverse team has continued to build during the bear market, delivering impressive products and building a cohesive community.
• The rapid development of AI in the past year has attracted global attention, and Ultiverse has deeply integrated AI throughout its architecture. In the future, when the concept of AI + gaming receives market attention, it may perform well.
• The project has a strong investment background.

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