When you start your career as a web3 developer, you may need a guide on the main tools. At Mighty Block, we’ve put together this Web3 Tech Stack, which can be a good option to get started.
What do you think? Would you add anything? Would you remove anything?
One of the most common questions I get is, What is the difference between web2 and web3? What is Mighty Block doing to onboard users to web3 ? What is the road to web3?
As an introduction I gather information and wrote the following summary:
Web2 and Web3 are two different generations of the World Wide Web. Web2 is characterized by a greater emphasis on user participation, collaboration, and sharing. Web3 is characterized by a greater emphasis on decentralization, user control, and the use of new technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Web2 has had a profound impact on the way we use the internet. It has made the web more interactive, collaborative and social. This has led to a wider range of possibilities for how we can use the web to learn, communicate, and share information.
Web3 is still in its early stages of development, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way we use the internet. It could make the internet more open, transparent, and democratic. It could also lead to the development of new and innovative applications that we can’t even imagine today.
So, what is the road to web3 from web2?
The term web2 is used to describe the second generation of the World Wide Web, which is characterized by a greater emphasis on user participation, collaboration, and sharing. web2 websites allow users to interact with each other and with the website content in a more meaningful way than was possible with earlier web technologies.
Some of the key features of web2 websites include:
Some of the most popular web2 websites include:
Web3 is the third generation of the World Wide Web, which is characterized by a greater emphasis on decentralization, user control, and the use of new technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Web3 is still in its early stages of development, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way we use the internet. Some of the key features of web3 include:
Web3 has the potential to make the internet more open, transparent, and democratic. It could also lead to the development of new and innovative applications that we can’t even imagine today.
Here are some examples of web3 applications:
| Feature | web2 | web3 |
| User-generated content | Yes | Yes |
| Collaboration | Yes | Yes |
| Social networking | Yes | Yes |
| Decentralization | No | Yes |
| User control | No | Yes |
| New technologies | No | Yes |
| Early stage | No | Yes |
| Complexity | No | Yes |
| Security | No | Yes |
Overall, web3 has the potential to be a more open, transparent, and democratic internet. However, it is still in its early stages of development, and there are a number of challenges that need to be addressed before it can reach its full potential.
There are a number of things that need to happen to build the road to web3, and in order to accelerate the process of moving from web2 to web3. These include:
If these things happen, then the road to web3 will accelerate. web3 has the potential to revolutionize the way we use the internet, and it is important that we do everything we can to make it a reality.
Here are some additional things that could help accelerate the process of moving from web2 to web3:
The move from web2 to web3 is a complex process, but it is one that has the potential to make the internet more open, transparent, and democratic. By taking the steps outlined above, we can help to accelerate this process and make web3 a reality.
Despite these challenges, web3 has the potential to revolutionize the way we use the internet. By addressing the challenges that need to be addressed, we can help to make web3 a reality.
At Mighty Block our focus is to help onboard the next billion users to web3 and we are building the road to web3 to do so.
Let me know if this summary has helped you understand the differences between web2 and web3 and has brought you one step closer to travel the road to web3 !
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
The blockchain world can be overwhelming at first. Having a deep understanding of the basic concepts will help you better organize your learning process. Here are some definitions we have crafted to help you get started with, we introduce you: “The Mighty Block Web3 Glossary”.
(in alphabetical order)
Airdrop : Describes token distribution methods used for introducing new cryptocurrencies or tokens to specific wallet addresses. Web3 projects can use airdrops as marketing initiatives by facilitating airdrops to users completing tasks such as app downloads or referrals.
Altcoin: Any of various cryptocurrencies that are regarded as alternatives to established cryptocurrencies and especially to Bitcoin.
Arbitrum: Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution that reduces fees and network congestion by computing transactions outside of the Ethereum Mainnet. Arbitrum’s rollups use multi-round fraud proofs to verify contracts were executed correctly. Blocknative currently does not support the Arbitrum L2 blockchain.
Arbitrage: Arbitrage in the world of web3 is the same as in traditional finance and is a natural mechanism for markets to achieve equilibrium. Whereas arbitrage in the real world is usually possible due to differences in physical realities (the price of a widget is 20% higher in Country A than Country B), arbitrage in web3 is made possible by the value of assets within different web3 ecosystems. Consider a situation where the price of Ethereum is $2000 on Uniswap, but at the same time, it is $1990 on Sushiswap. An arbitrager can take advantage of this gap by buying ETH on Sushi to resell on Uniswap, instantly pocketing $10 per ETH (minus gas fees). Arbitrage is a key factor in MEV.
Blockchain: A blockchain is a distributed database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. Blockchains store a continuously growing historical ledger of information (e.g. accounts and transactions) into blocks. Blocknative builds APIs for blockchain developers, including mempool monitoring tools, blockchain notification tools, and gas estimation tools.
Bridge: The list of essential terms in web3 would also draw attention toward bridges, which have emerged as promising answers to concerns of interoperability. The bridge is an effective tool tailored for transferring assets from one blockchain network to another. It is also important to note that all bridges do not feature the same design and have different functionalities.
Centralized Exchanges: Centralized exchanges have evolved as one of the popular applications in the web3 ecosystem with promising value advantages. Centralized exchanges are cryptocurrency exchanges run by third-party agencies to sell and buy cryptocurrency. One of the distinctive highlights of centralized exchanges is the fact that they are custodial in nature. Notable examples of centralized exchanges include Gemini, Kraken and Coinbase.
Decentralized Exchange (DEX). This type of crypto exchange enables users to transact in a direct peer-to-peer manner without any intermediary
ERC: Ethereum Request for Comment is the proposal for modification to the Ethereum ecosystem, which has passed the approval stage. It points out a collection of standards used for a specific operation on the Ethereum network.
Gas: Gas is a unit of measurement that represents the computational effort required to complete a transaction. How much a user spends to complete a transaction is determined by the total amount of gas multiplied by the gas price.
Gas Estimator: Gas Estimator is an ETH gas fee tracking tool built by Blocknative that inspects every pending transaction in Ethereum’s mempool to probabilistically estimate transaction fees to get included in the next block.
Gas Fees: Gas fees are the fees users must pay in Ethereum’s native currency, Ether (ETH), to complete a transaction. Gas fees are used to compensate miners for providing the computational work required to process and validate transactions.
Gas Price: The gas price is the amount of Ether (ETH) a user is willing to pay for every unit of gas required to complete a transaction (denominated in Gwei).
Layer 1: refers to the main blockchain in a multi-level blockchain network. For example, Ethereum and Bitcoin are layer one blockchains. Many layer two blockchain offload resource-intense transactions to their separate blockchain, while continuing to use Ethereum’s or Bitcoin’s layer one blockchain for security purposes.
Layer 2 (L2) refers to a secondary framework or protocol that is built on top of an existing, layer one blockchain. Layer 2 blockchains typically improve transaction speeds and cost efficiency. As Layer 2s continue to scale, mempool data gives builders looking to migrate or build new Dapps the tools to create the best user experiences.
Liquidity Pool: Is a smart contract containing large portions of cryptocurrency, digital assets, tokens, or virtual coins locked up and ready to provide essential liquidity for networks that facilitate decentralized trading.
Oracles: Are entities that connect blockchains to external systems, thereby enabling smart contracts to execute based upon inputs and outputs from the real world. Oracles provide a way for the decentralized Web3 ecosystem to access existing data sources, legacy systems, and advanced computations.
POH: Proof of Humanity (or PoH) is a social identity verification system for humans on Ethereum. PoH combines webs of trust, reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans.
Smart Contract: The smart contract is written in virtual language and has the power to execute and enforce itself, autonomously and automatically, based on a series of programmed parameters. With blockchain technology, its main value lies in reinforcing security, transparency and trust between signatories, avoiding misunderstandings, falsifications or alterations and dispensing with intermediaries.
Staking: Staking is the locking up of cryptocurrency tokens as collateral to help secure a network or smart contract, or to achieve a specific result. Staking is a term often used to describe the locking up of cryptocurrency as collateral to help secure a particular blockchain network or smart contract protocol
Swapping: An agreement between two parties that exchange different token types (say token 𝐴 and token 𝐵). In a token swap, one party will pay a certain amount of token 𝐴 to the other party and receive the agreed amount of token 𝐵 in return.
Wallet: A Web3 wallet is a software program that stores private keys, which are necessary for accessing blockchain networks and conducting transactions. Unlike traditional wallets, which store physical currency, Web3 wallets store digital assets such as Bitcoin, Algorand, and NFTs.
Zero-Knowledge Proof: A zero-knowledge proof is a method of verification in which a “prover” shows possession of secretive knowledge to a “verifier” without revealing the sensitive information itself. This encryption scheme can ensure data privacy and confidentiality on a public blockchain.
ZK-Rollup: A ZK or “zero-knowledge” rollup is an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution that bundles transactions off-chain into a single cryptographic proof. This transaction is then submitted back to the main chain for validation. ZK-rollups utilize validity proofs to confirm transaction legitimacy.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
As you may know, Ethereum is the leading blockchain for implementing smart contracts. Despite notable progress made in enhancing scalability through the implementation of the Shanghai update, the Ethereum network supports a limited range of 20-40 TPS (transactions per second). This capacity falls short in meeting the demands of its expansive user base, leading to high transaction fees and sluggish processing times. In light of these challenges, the introduction of Arbitrum Ecosystem offers a promising solution to address these concerns and reshape the Ethereum landscape.
Arbitrum is a Layer 2 (L2) solution for Ethereum that enhances the user experience by enabling faster and more cost-effective transactions, with the capacity to handle up to 40,000 TPS. Is composed of two distinct chains, Arbitrum Nova and Arbitrum One, each chain serves specific real-world use cases.
Arbitrum One uses a rollup protocol, wherein the correct behavior of the Arbitrum Virtual Machine (AVM) is ensured by a single honest node. This chain offers a versatile platform for running Ethereum-compatible smart contracts, providing scalability and cost-efficiency. By employing optimistic execution, Arbitrum One considers all transactions valid unless a node identifies suspicious activity. Validators can participate by running the required software and staking Ethereum.
On the other hand, Arbitrum Nova adopts the anytrust protocol, catering to applications that prioritize high transaction throughput over complete decentralization (for example web3 games). While sacrificing some decentralization, Arbitrum Nova delivers enhanced speed and reduced transaction fees under the management of a 20-member Data Availability Committee (DAC), responsible for expediting the storage, batching, and posting of L2 transaction data to Ethereum’s Layer 1 (L1).
Since its launch on the Ethereum mainnet in August 2021, Arbitrum has experienced remarkable growth. Many users have started using it, and there are now 525 projects using Arbitrum’s network.
Arbitrum made a significant change by becoming a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). As part of this shift, they launched an airdrop program in March of this year. Users and community members had the opportunity to complete certain tasks and interact with the network to qualify for the airdrop. The main goal of the airdrop was to encourage more people to join and strengthen the community.
Today, Arbitrum has become one of the top projects in the cryptocurrency world, showing impressive growth. The following image presents some important numbers that highlight the achievements of the Arbitrum ecosystem:
These numbers demonstrate the success and growth of the Arbitrum project, showing its increasing prominence in the crypto industry.
Even though Arbitrum has made significant progress in attracting new developers and users, it faces tough competition from other platforms. Let’s take a look at two of its main rivals:
So while Arbitrum faces strong competitors like Polygon and Optimism, its unique features and capabilities, such as the AVM, set it apart from the rest and could prove advantageous in the evolving landscape of blockchain technology.
Arbitrum Bridge allows users to transfer their assets from Ethereum to Arbitrum Nova or Arbitrum One. Assuming you already have Metamask installed, follow these steps to get started:
Network Name: Arbitrum One
New RPC URL: https://arb1.arbitrum.io/rpc
Chain ID: 42161
Currency Symbol: ETH
Block Explorer URL: https://arbiscan.io
That’s it! You have successfully transferred your assets from Ethereum to Arbitrum One. The process for withdrawing assets follows the same steps, with the only difference being the selection of the “From” and “To” networks.
In conclusion, Arbitrum Ecosystem has emerged as a promising Layer 2 (L2) solution within the Ethereum ecosystem. It offers significant improvements in transaction speed and cost-effectiveness, addressing the scalability challenges faced by the Ethereum network. Since its launch, Arbitrum has experienced impressive growth, attracting a diverse range of projects and establishing itself as one of the top players in the cryptocurrency world.
However, it is crucial to acknowledge that Arbitrum faces stiff competition from platforms like Polygon and Optimism. Polygon’s higher transaction speed and independent consensus mechanism, coupled with Optimism’s compatibility with Solidity, pose significant challenges to Arbitrum’s quest for dominance.
While Arbitrum has unique advantages, such as its AVM and seamless compatibility with Ethereum, it still has room for further development and refinement. It needs to address these challenges head-on and continue to innovate to secure its position as the go-to solution for scaling Ethereum effectively. It will be fascinating to see how it evolves and competes against its rivals in the race to become the number one project for scaling Ethereum.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
It’s common to hear about web3 initiatives incorporating or aiming to incorporate ZK-proofs for increased privacy. The notion of Zero Knowledge proof (ZK-proof) is not a modern concept; it was first introduced in a paper named “The Knowledge Complexity of Interactive Proof-Systems” in 1985. In this article we will see what a ZK-proof is, offer an intuitive explanation and explore several use cases.
Whether you are a developer or a user, it’s important to understand the core concept behind ZK-Proofs because it will help you understand not only what the product is trying to achieve in matters of security and privacy but also how they are trying to achieve them.
ZK-Proof is protocol that involves a Prover and a Verifier and enables the Prover to demonstrate the truth of a statement to the Verifier without disclosing any additional information beyond the veracity of the statement. Essentially, it allows the Prover to prove to the Verifier that they possess knowledge of a specific piece of information, without disclosing it.
The Ali Baba cave is a well-known story used to give an intuitive explanation of how the ZK-Proof protocol works. This story is based in a circular cave with one entrance and a magic door opened by a password located in the middle of it. It involves two actors, Bob the verifier and Alice the Prover.
Alice wants to prove to Bob that she knows the password that opens the door placed inside the cave without telling him the word itself. To do that they follows three simple steps:
If Bob screams A, and Alice returns using A it can mean two things: either Alice entered the cave through B and knows the password or entered through A and cheated. After all, there is a 50% chance of getting it right.
The key is to iterate this process until it becomes highly improbable for Alice to have cheated in every repetition, given that each time Alice is correct, the probability of cheating is halved.
Any scenario where someone needs to demonstrate the validity of some statement without giving up the information that validates it is suitable. In web3, ZK-Proofs can enhance privacy. For instance, they can be used to anonymize transactions between peers, as done in the ZCash z-address to z-address transactions, or to enable anonymous voting for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Given the fact that the ZK-Profs are a general cryptography concept, applications can also be found for web2: financial institutions could leverage ZK-Proofs to demonstrate that a person’s income falls within a specific range, without disclosing the precise income amount or or as a proof of identity, demonstrating that the possession a valid government issued document, without giving it up.
ZK-Proofs are perfect for this kind of scenario because they can provide strong privacy guarantees without compromising the integrity of the data managed by the system.
Zero-Knowledge proofs have the potential to make the web3 space a more private and safer environment for the users. But as Uncle Ben said in the best Spider-Man movie: “with great power comes great responsibility”. We can’t ignore the fact that these tools can also be used by bad actors to perform illicit activities such as money laundering and illegal transactions. As we continue to develop and apply this technology, it is crucial to consider methods for combating its misuse without sacrificing its benefits. As web3 enthusiasts and developers this can’t be ignored and should be discussed along with the development of ZK-Proof based solutions.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
Polygon has released its Layer 2 blockchain built with zero-knowledge technology, becoming the second company in four days to make a so-called ‘zkEVM’ available to the general public.
Polygon zkEVM remains in beta, and the company stressed that it should be used with caution – a fact that will change in the coming months, according to co-founder Mihailo Bjelic.
Its release, nevertheless, marks a turning point in Ethereum scaling, he insists.
“If we can maintain the security of Ethereum, achieve scalability, and do not sacrifice developer and user experience — that’s basically all we need, right?” Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic said in an interview with The Defiant before the launch of Polygon zkEVM. “And zkEVM is, to the best of my knowledge, the only solution that offers all three things simultaneously.”
Polygon’s MATIC token is down around 2% over the past 24 hours, according to data from The Defiant Terminal.
Layer 2 blockchains built with zero-knowledge (zk) technology have been called the “holy grail” of making Ethereum cheaper and more performant. On Friday, Matter Labs released ZkSync Era, marking the first public launch of an Ethereum-compatible rollup secured by the technology.
Matter Labs, Polygon, and others have raced to bring their rollups to market and storm a Layer 2 field dominated by optimistic rollups Arbitrum and Optimism, which together account for 88% of the crypto assets deposited on rollups, according to L2BEAT.
Ethereum is slow, and the simplest transactions typically incur a fee of $1 or more. That fee can surge when the network is congested — last May, during a hyped NFT sale from Bored Apes creator Yuga Labs, users incurred an average transaction fee of $474, according to DappRadar.
Layer 2 blockchains, also known as “rollups,” batch and compress user transactions before appending them to the Ethereum blockchain. Doing so dramatically reduces the per-transaction cost and increases the number of transactions Ethereum can handle.
Rollups are considered the most promising technology to scale Ethereum. As such, the companies building them have been valued in the billions. But the field has been dominated by rollups built with so-called optimistic technology, which assumes submitted transactions are valid and provides a seven-day period during which one can dispute potentially fraudulent transactions. This means withdrawals take a week when using the official bridge.
Zero-knowledge technology makes it possible to prove that a statement is or is not true — that John Smith is a millionaire, say — without revealing any of the information that would typically be required to do so — in this example, John Smith’s bank account or employment history.
Many privacy-enhancing protocols leverage zero-knowledge technology, but the first Ethereum-compatible zk-rollups to hit the market will not preserve user privacy or obfuscate their transaction history.
Proponents of ZK rollups have long argued that they would be more secure than their “optimistic” competitors while providing instantaneous transaction finality — no seven-day dispute window required.
“It is not possible to execute malicious transactions” on a zero-knowledge rollup, Bjelic said. “You just rely on mathematics.”
But they’re fiendishly complex, and building one that is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine — the EVM in zkEVM — has proven difficult.
“People familiar with the matter have been estimating that it’s gonna take roughly three to five years to build a zkEVM when we started a little bit more than a year ago,” Bjelic said. “This has been really an exciting journey during which we were able to achieve several important breakthroughs from the engineering and cryptography side.”
Polygon zkEVM has been available for developers to test since October. Monday’s release marks its jump to Ethereum’s mainnet.
On the test network, developers are playing around with “test Ether, test MATIC tokens, whatever, there is no real value there,” Bjelic said. “When you’re on mainnet, you’re bridging actual assets. It’s the real thing.”
Beta is developer shorthand for “work in progress.” Some long-running blockchains are still officially in beta, including Solana and Polygon’s original proof-of-stake sidechain,” Bjelic said. Nevertheless, users should exercise caution in Polygon zkEVM’s first couple of months.
“It’s a bleeding-edge technology that has never been built before,” he said. “We will keep auditing it internally and externally. We have bug bounties etc. It’s a process of the network maturing, and it will take some months, if not a year.”
ZkSync Era was released Friday in alpha, the software development stage before beta.
The race to launch the first Ethereum-compatible, zero-knowledge rollup has been contentious, with rival teams sniping at each other on social media over the past several months. Last year, a developer working on a competing zkEVM said Polygon’s zero-knowledge rollup did not meet the criteria to be called a zkEVM.
Bjelic attributed the “Twitter brawls” to the prestige that would come with delivering the first true zkEVM, and brushed off the criticism.
“I think it always, obviously, boils down to the facts,” he said. “Vitalik [Buterin, the founder of Ethereum] helped introduce some clarity when it comes to the concept of zkEVM, and what is, and what is not.…and Polygon is very obviously a zkEVM, I think that’s not a question.”
Polygon is most famous for its long-running blockchain, Polygon Proof-of-Stake. Polygon PoS is popular – with its speed and low fees, it has grown to become the fifth-largest blockchain as measured by total value locked, according to Defi Llama.
While Ethereum-compatible, it is an entirely separate blockchain and does not append its transaction data to Ethereum. Last year, Bjelic said Polygon was working to turn Polygon PoS into a “true” Layer 2 that inherits its security from Ethereum.
Which raises the question: having built the “holy grail” of Ethereum scaling, a true rollup, where does that leave Polygon PoS?
“I think there’s definitely room for both,” Bjelic said. Because rollups submit transactions to Ethereum, they have inherent limitations in terms of throughput and how low they can push down transaction fees.
“Polygon PoS chain still has very low fees and can have higher throughput than any rollup, including the zkEVM rollup,” he said. Some applications, such as DeFi lending platforms, which process a relatively small number of high-value transactions, don’t need the speed of PoS but could benefit from the security of a zkEVM. Blockchain-based games, on the other hand, might need fast and cheap transactions, which PoS is better positioned to deliver.
Bjelic said he was happy to release a zkEVM during a period some consider to be crypto’s darkest, with asset values still well below their all-time highs and heightened regulatory scrutiny in the US that has some entrepreneurs looking to move abroad.
“The climate is generally kind of negative, I would say, and we now more than ever need some excitement,” he said. “And I think the zkEVM is really the technology that can reignite this interest. In some way, it can be kind of like a chatGPT for crypto.”
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
Web3 games offer new opportunities for developers — but also new challenges. therefore, This article will cover the Web3 user acquisition challenges and secrets for games, along with tools and past real launch cases.
Free-to-play games are all about acquiring players at a reasonable cost and making sure the Average Revenue Per User (aka ARPU) exceeds it, producing a profit. Hence, this article we’ll cover everything about the CAC and LTV challenges and secrets.
Web2 businesses are all about investing less to acquire new users (CAC) than the economic value they produce (LTV), in short: CAC < LTV. This is better explained in the diagram below:
Firstly, let’s do a brief refresh of what these metrics mean:
This is how much it costs to get a new user and the calculation depends on the company setup. The most common way to calculate it is to divide costs / new customers acquired given a period:
CAC = Salaries + Revenue share + Fees / # of new customers
This metric is the average amount of money generated per user over a period of time. Many companies use ARPDU for daily check on what is going on.
There are quite a number of ways that you can work this out. As a rough starting point LTV is calculated by multiplying ARPU by the average player lifespan (which you can work out from churn rates).
Consider this example: with an ARPU/month of $5 and a player lifecycle of 5 months, the LTV equals $25.
Comparatively with Web 2, in the Web3 world Wallet addresses are anonymous, all the previous logic changes completely. As a result, we can’t target users based on their social network profile, and this fact changes everything. We’ll cover in the rest of the article the Web3 CAC and LTV challenges and secrets:
Generally, Web2 games introduce no additional friction to new player: just find the desktop or mobile game you want to try and start playing with a brief tutorial and a bunch of free coins.
Comparatively, the Web3 games customer journey is completely different: as you can see in the list below, each steps introduces friction to the user, increasing the CAC for the game:
In case you are wondering how this User Experience can improve, Constanza Caballero, UX Lead at Mighty Block has written about this topic.
A common practice for Web2 companies to acquire users is to define their Ideal Customer Profile and then segment their paid campaigns to find more of them.
As shown above, this strategy is possible because users sign up to social networks and search engines using their personal information and perform activities that are a clear sign of their interest.
Segmenting user profiles in Web3 games (and any web3 company for the purpose) is not possible because the analogous to the user profile is the Wallet address (an alphanumeric string).
Free To Play games are used to calculating the economic value of their paying users, also known as “Lifetime Value”: they have the revenue per user in a long period of time and can calculate an average aggregated revenue per user over time.
Although at first sight it seems simple to calculate a web3 LTV (for example calculating inflows vs outflows of an Address), once one puts more thought into the problem, it becomes clear that calculating economic value entering or leaving the game can be ambiguous and confusing.
Hence, I believe some questions that will need to be answered to calculate a standard LTV across the gaming industry:
My opinion is that the industry will have to agree on what is to be included into the LTV and what is not: a new standard for the Web3 version of the LTV.
Finally, I believe we’ll need tools to help us track all of this activity to calculate the LTV correctly (new article focusing on this coming soon).
Generally, Web2 companies are used to acquiring users through a mix of well established platforms:
All of these platforms allow marketers to segment their campaigns with personal data (user location, age, gender, etc) and user activity within the platform (Post View, Likes, Shares, Video engagement, etc).
The challenge for Web3 games is that the “Web2 segmentation data” is not so relevant. For example: how do you create your campaigns for a new Web3 RPG game when Instagram won’t show 1) if the User has a Wallet and 2) if the user has shown any interest in Web3 games?
Also, some Web3 companies are trying to segment Addresses based on their past activity in the blockchain, emulating Facebook’s Look-a-Like algorithm to send highly targeted Airdrops to be redeemed in the game, acquiring a new user.
To me, it’s unclear if approaches like this will work, although this strategy seems similar to the already successful Web2 user acquisition strategy.
Finally, as any active OpenSea user can testify, if you are interacting with DeFi protocols or just swapping tokens, your Address is a target to receive lots of Airdrops (aka the Spam of Web3) as you can see in this OpenSea account:
One trend that was very strong during 2022 was Free Mints. It is true that selling 10,000 high priced NFTs in 15 seconds was one of the most important reasons for a lot of teams to start developing a blockchain game.
However, everybody realized how unsustainable that was since you needed to justify the incredibly high prices of those NFTs.
The F2P (Free to Play) model was there from the beginning for every game developer, but it seems like everyone was waiting for one successful example which came with Digi Daigaku.
We have finally covered the Web3 CAC and LTV challenges and secrets throughout the article. Do you see any other important challenges and differences between Web2 and Web3 games that we missed?
This is obviously an open topic, and the gaming industry will evolve these metrics as new products are launched. I expect to see new standards defined, new tools created to measure accurately and a new set of best practices iterate Web3 games.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
In Mighty Block, our purpose is to help onboard the next billion users into Web3. To achieve this, users have to know how to use applications that allow them to connect to the web3, also known as wallets. The problem is that there are different types of cryptocurrency wallets, and even more types of users. Which is the best wallet for each of them? Let’s analyze:
Custodial wallets are those that are managed by a third party. It is the closest thing to a “web2” application (such as a social network) since users will authenticate themselves in the way they do in the applications they use in their daily lives using, for example, their email and a password.
In resume, it’s a centralized solution for a decentralized world.
In these type of wallets, it is the user who must be in charge of storing and securing their private keys. Among these we find: browser wallets, desktop wallets, some apps and hardware wallets.
MPC (for Multi-Party Computation) allows multiple parties to participate in the signing of a transaction. Each part will have a private key and thanks to complex cryptographic algorithms the desired signature is achieved.
These are managed by smart contracts and therefore not only allow to store and transfer but also can execute pieces of code that add functionality such as multisignature.
I believe that there is no silver bullet wallet, but I can give you some clues as to which one is best for you.
Why do I recommend a centralized wallet in some scenarios? Because I think it’s the easiest way to start. And if what we are looking for is adoption, it is important first that everyone can use a wallet, and then become experts and choose the most suitable one.
I hope that with this article you now have a clearer idea about the different types of cryptocurrency wallets that exist.
Which wallet do you think is the most appropriate for you? Let me know in the comments !
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
In my last article, we discussed the challenges a Product Manager has to deal with when they lead a web3 product. One of the main challenges we discussed was the elements of a Go to Market strategy (GTM) for Web3 and how the frameworks we used to know became obsolete.
Could we adapt those go to market strategy elements to be our baseline for building fantastic products that the community needs? Well, spoiler alert, we can.
A GTM strategy is a tactical plan detailing how we are planning to execute a successful product launch, a new market expansion, or a new customer target.
It’s designed to mitigate the risk that includes the launch of a new product.
Or, what we product people usually think, anything and everything which ensures that you build the right product so when you implement the Go-To-Market strategy, it will impact the end user positively and the business, resulting in you keeping your job 😂
Now that we have a clear understanding of what is, let’s see the most common components of a go to market strategy and how we can adapt those to our web3 products:
Having a clear reason, a purpose, and a problem to solve is really important. At the moment that you are formulating the GTM, asking why are we building something is the main thing to ensure that we are not just in love with our product.
Sometimes, we know we believe that we can create needs for our ideal customer, but that it’s not entirely true.
There has to be a deeper reason for people to consume our products, even if it’s not straightforward. Web3 is not an exception.
To understand the product market fit, we need to be embedded in the web3 community, understand what motivates them, what challenges they have and how we can help solve them.
However, if we want to bring web3 to the masses, we need to understand which problems the people outside of Web3 have that our technology can help solve.
But first, we need to define the problem. Don’t try to create a need to be solved with blockchain.
In web3 we are familiar with what we call our early adopters, our community. They are the ones that are going to engage with the product or service even before we release it. Building a community is an essential step in our Web3 Go-to-Market marketing strategy.
A community is going to allow us to perform early validations, confirm our assumptions, test the product, and even participate in the decision-making process.
Who else is doing what you are trying to do?
We used to ask some questions to identify competence such as:
There are several frameworks and tools that can help you to understand your landscape.
The most famous are the SWOT analysis, the Porter five forces, and a BCG (from Boston Consulting Group) matrix.
Are those valid for web3? Well, they have existed for a long time, and they are still valid tools, but in this particular industry, we should ask ourselves some additional questions:
This is the key to how your potential users are going to access our product. For a regular one, we have tho techniques: marketing-intensive and sales-intensive. But in web3, I will say that we can have a new one: Community-centered.
As I mentioned in the previous sections, we need to create a strong community if we want to succeed in this world.
Go to community strategy is focused on building and engaging with a community of early users, that could help us to increase interest in our product as well as have early feedback.
The same as we have MVPs (Minimum Valuable Products), we could have MVCs (Minimum valuable communities). And here we have a couple of steps to start thinking about building a community from the very beginning:
Go to community timeline
Communities are leading the web3 revolution. Having early adopters with influence in the community could help us to bring real engagement to our product.
But to reach the masses, we still need to apply some of the traditional GTM strategies for distribution.
It’s because of that, that Web3 Go-to-Market and Go-to-Community need to be complementary, and we cannot have one without the other if we want to reach a broader audience.
| Web3 Go-to-Market | Web3 Go-to-Community |
| Optimizing lead flow | Hosting meetups and creating educational content |
| KPIs: Conversion Rate, Repeat Rate, CAC | KPIs: growth and retention |
| Strategies like: “Pre-sale”, “Earlybird” | Engaged MVC |
| Feedback: NPS, CSAT, surveys | Feedback: Community |
| How many leads did the forum generate last week? | How many people did we help last week? |
| Value capture | Value creation |
As we saw in the article, one strategy does not replace the other. And both need to coexist if we want to reach a broader audience.
What we need? Conquer a different niche from the tech-savvies and web3 early adopters.
We have to mix traditional go to market strategy components with the new ones, to let them engage with our product but then educate them about this new paradigm.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
In Mighty Block we genuinely believe that people’s learning process has a powerful impact on oneself and on the entire team. Learning is the reason for little and big changes in people and also companies.
According to the Society for HR Management (SHRM), A learning culture “consists of a community of workers instilled with a ‘growth mindset.’ People not only want to learn and apply what they’ve learned to help their organization, they also feel compelled to share their knowledge with others.”
Web3 has a singular environment: every day you are learning something new. We always stay up to date by focusing on cutting edge technology. This is the reason why learning must be present as the foundation of the company. Culture is the principal intangible enabler of learning.
When we designed our Core Values at Mighty Block the open attitude to learn was at the forefront of the process. We called it: “White Belt Attitude”. For us, it means that the learning process never ends. The more we know, the more we acknowledge what we don’t know.
If you want to know more about our core values, our last blog article is here.
Peer Connecting: When we asked the Mighty Block team about the latest topics they actually learnt they answered that it takes place in informal conversations where they can debate and share about the projects that they are working on. No formal training, or tutorials.
It’s possible because of the horizontal communication: On spaces and connections such as workshops, slacks channels, etc. everybody has their own voice, could ask and answer. No questions are silly questions. It helps people bring ideas and perspectives together. The output is always new learning, and the most important reason is the team: experienced and full of “servant heart” attitude. (Servant heart is also one of our core Values: Always ready to help attitude. Serving others makes us all better.)
The challenges of the product we are building: No matter how experienced they are, each new member takes a humble attitude -as a beginner to learn everything about our technologies and product. The kind of product we develop challenges us to be updated and always learning. It makes us reach out to learn, do research, ask questions and look for the best way to perform. It motivates us to be better.
Recruiting Process: To ensure our learning culture over time each new hire should show the White Belt Attitude since the very first interview. Our recruiting process was designed to get to know each other. It means that at the end of the interviews, we will have a clear picture about the cultural fit with our Core Values. The interview set includes: Cultural Fit interview, Technical Interviews, Tech challenges, etc.
Every Friday at 12, Crypto Research meetings take place.
In each session, one team member presents a crypto related topic and shares what they have been researching as well as their findings and learnings. The rest of the team also participates in the presentation by asking questions and debating.
The first crypto research meeting took place within the initial weeks of Mighty Block.
The team investigated and did a lot of research on this topic every week, so we finally organised these meetings to share the discoveries.
Now, these meetings have become the perfect environment to learn something new every week.
As well as developing web3 products, the entire team needs to have basic knowledge about Web3, decentralized protocols, NFTs platforms and token management.
So, we decided to make it fun and challenging. Every quarter a new level starts and it has different tasks to complete such as: Install a non custodial wallet, obtain a ERC 20 token, mint a nft, stake a coin, etc. The winner is whoever holds the most ETH at the time of the final settlement.
We identify a lot of learnings because of our mistakes: We spend unnecessary gass, be scammed, and obtain unuseful tokens. But we help each other when the inexperienced need a guide or a new task is very challenging, we share our learnings and new knowledge.
Since the beginning the Mighty Blog purpose was to generate a space to share the team knowledge and learnings. Is a big opportunity to share with the world our expertise in the Blockchain space, leaving a mark in the ecosystem, and provide help to the community.
But blogging helps us to learn so many new skills and abilities (i.e: Writing for different audiences, choosing a topic). The process when we write and the content we research also builds our knowledge.
We have already published 9 articles from 8 members of our team. On October 31, we reached 999 views on our own content! We are very proud and excited about what’s coming on (new topics, new podcast episodes).
The Mighty Block team loves to learn and we try to identify this attribute in all candidates since the first interview. Our challenge was to design a learning culture and strategies which works as an amplifier that encourages both the love of learning and the opportunity to learn.
Mixing creative spaces and activities with traditional training when needed was the strategy we implemented to keep the flame of curiosity alive.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
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