GM. This is the Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that keeps it as cool as the other side of the pillow.

Flipping the pillow to get the cold side = top 5 feelings ever.

Here's what we got for ya today:

• A Road Trip to Decentral Games

• Numbers of the day

• Meme of the day

A (SPONSORED) ROAD TRIP TO DECENTRAL GAMES

You guys… I did it. I finally did it.

I found… THE METAVERSE 😱

Until now, the metaverse just felt like a random buzzword. Facebook changed its name to Meta. Investors are pounding millions into metaverse companies...

Whenever someone tells me about the metaverse, I imagine some future where we all wear VR goggles and slurp Soylent thru a straw.

Where is this metaverse? Can I see it? Is it real?

But last month, someone told me about a virtual world that runs on the blockchain, makes millions of dollars on NFTs, and has thousands of daily active users.

Wait. That sounds a little meta-verse-y.

Introducing…. *drumroll please*..... Decentral Games. 

It has:

• 8k daily active players

• $36M+ in revenue. It’s the highest grossing NFT project on Polygon this year

• $22M+ in their treasury balance

• And most importantly. It exists now.. Not tomorrow. Not next week

That’s why this month’s sponsored ROAD TRIP is to Decentral Games. 

Road trips are in our manual, right under Milk Road Rule #81:

Burn the manual, go out and do the damn thing.

Instead of boring you with technical details, we’re gonna show you the cool stuff & give you our 2 cents…

Stop 1: Decentral Games’ Marketplace

Playing DG is like going bowling. To play, you gotta have the right shoes.

Except, in this case, it’s an NFT wearable for your avatar. Aka your swag in the DG metaverse that other users will see.

You either buy one from DG’s marketplace / Opensea or rent one from another owner.

Of course, we wanted to look fresh on our first metaverse experience, so this is the sick-ass bomber jacket I got.

It’s called fashion, look it up. 

Stop 2: Decentral Games’ Arena (aka the metaverse)

Most crypto gaming companies spend years trying to build a game (and usually the game sucks).

The smart thing about DG is that they took a game that’s already proven to be fun and played by ~100m people around the world: Poker

Here’s a lil sneak peek of their virtual poker world…

Stop 3: ICE Poker Tables

Decentral Games has a pretty cool setup too. Rather than having to pay to play every day, DG gives you 3,000 free chips.

That's ~7 free games, every day. So even if you strike out, you can still come back the next day to try again. And of course, you can load up on more tokens if you want to pay.

DG has daily challenges (i.e get a straight 2 times, win the hand 10 times, etc). Every time you complete the challenges you earn $ICE tokens (DG's in-game currency).

Think you're a good poker player? Prove it on the DG leaderboard.

It shows the best performing players in all the DG metaverse. The higher you finish, the more your rewards get multiplied.

Plus once you have enough $ICE, you can buy upgrades for even more bonuses or just cash out to a stablecoin like USDC.

Under the hood of Decentral Games

Decentral Games is putting up numbers too. In total, they've made ~$36m.

90% of it comes from 3 main sources: Mints, Upgrades, and Activations.

• Mints: Players buying wearables directly from the DG marketplace

• Upgrades: Players upgrading their wearables (in order to increase their potential $ICE rewards)

• Activations: Players paying to activate a wearable they've bought on a secondary sale

And I spy with my little eyes....a new source of revenue - Ads! Wow. I wonder what Mastercard paid...

But there's still the billion-dollar question... 

Yes, DG has made tens of millions of dollars. But is this sustainable?

The "S" word has been a killer for play-to-earn games…

• Axie Infinity took off…then crashed

• StepN sprinted away… then cramped up and collapsed

Will this just be a repeat?  We talked to the DG team and they gave us some alpha. They have 2 big updates coming out soon:

1/ Play-to-earn -> Play-to-own

• Currently, the utility for $ICE is a bit limited - you can either upgrade your wearable for added bonuses or just cash out

• After the update, players can use $ICE as an in-game currency to buy more wearables. Keeping more $$ in the ecosystem

2/ Tournament Mode

• This new game mode will require players to burn $ICE to play

• Reducing the supply of $ICE will increase its value, allowing DG to continue paying out winners without devaluing $ICE down to 0

Any game (whether it’s Candy Crush or Farmville) needs sources (ways to get virtual currency) and sinks (ways to spend virtual currency) to be balanced so that the game is sustainable.

I’ve seen tons of games fail at balancing sinks vs. sources. But the best teams pull it off.

Jury is out if DG can pull it off. But if they do, this will be huge.

The Milk Road’s Take

I don’t know if Decentral Games is the future of the metaverse. That’s for their founders and Mark Zuckerberg to duel to death about.

What I do know is that DG is a fun way to actually use a metaverse rather than just talking about it.

The game is fun, there are real people playing it every day, and they keep improving it. 

Our philosophy is that the most fun and learning comes from being an early adopter. Trying things out, playing with this stuff is way more fun than just reading about it in the news.

For me, this was my first real “metaverse” experience. That's why we made a whole Milk Road site about it. 

• Buying in-game NFTs

• Playing with thousands of active players

• Making money while playing a game

• Dripping in swag with my new bomber jacket wearable

P.S: We’re hooking all you Roaders up with a free NFT

1/ Gets you free access to their new Tournament Mode (normally costs $$)

2/ A skin that makes your avatar look like the Milkman

All you have to do is reply to this email with your ETH address! 

So stop, drop, and reply to this email. (We’ll airdrop it to you in 3 weeks when the new Tournament Mode drops).

NUMBERS OF THE DAY

$30,000 is the new annual buy limit for most cryptocurrencies on Canadian-based exchanges. Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash are the only exceptions.

All other cryptocurrencies have a cap. Every time you buy something like Solana, you get closer and closer to that $30k limit. 

The only way to add space back to your limit is to sell some of the restricted cryptocurrencies OR wait 12 months for the limits to reset. O' Canada?? 

8 is the number of misconceptions the Ethereum Foundation debunked about the Merge in their recent blog post. They legit went Ethereum Mythbusters on everybody.

Here are a few misconceptions:

• "The Merge will reduce gas fees." - FALSE. The Merge is a change of consensus mechanism, not an expansion of network capacity, and will not result in lower gas fees.

• "Transactions will be noticeably faster after The Merge." - FALSE. Though some slight changes exist, transaction speed will mostly remain the same on layer 1.

• "Staking APR is expected to triple after The Merge." - FALSE. More up-to-date estimations predict closer to a 50% increase in APR post-merge, not a 200% increase.

For all you harcore ETH nerds that wanna read the rest, you can check it out here.

2 million ENS domains have been registered all time. They're the ".com" of Ethereum.

But instead of .com, it's .eth. If you see it in their Twitter profile, you know they're fam.

And ENS has been on a roll lately. It took 5 years to get to 1m names. But took ~3.5 months to get to 2m names.

Pretty impressive 👏

MEME OF THE DAY

Saying crypto inside a bank is like saying bomb on a plane. Big no-no😂

That's a wrap for today. Stay thirsty and see ya tomorrow!

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@MilkRoadDaily)

BTW - If you enjoyed the “Road Trip” into Decentral Games, let us know what other projects you’d like us to partner with for the next one!

A ROADER'S REVIEW

After reviewing the play, the ruling on the field is... they do indeed have a 100% open rate. Therefore, Junya gets today's review of the day. 

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.