A Filipino-led decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Yield Guild Games (YGG) is now offering “scholarships”, a setup where an account owner or “manager” lends a “scholar” with non-fungible tokens needed on most blockchain-based play-to-earn games, in response to the sudden uptrend of these activities in the country.
One example is Axie Infinity, a prominent game in the country to date, which requires new players to have at least three NFTs to build a team. Each NFT costs upward of P35,000 and players earn the in-game currency Smooth Love Potion (SLP) during gameplay — a currency that can be exchanged for real cash.
Since not everyone can secure more than P100,000 in order to start playing a game like Axie Infinity, managers lend teams for players while profit is shared depending on the agreed upon terms. In what is essentially a middle-man party that takes a 10% cut in the overall profit, YGG ensures smooth operations and interactions between the two since a major disconnect in communicating happens most of the time.
In this manner, instead of the usual 50-50 or 60-40 negotiations, players earn a large 70% of the SLP sales. Managers take 20% while 10% goes back to YGG to help sustain its business and help more scholars in the process. More than half of YGG’s current 4,700 scholars are residing in the Philippines.
“Anyone can be a scholar, as long as you have an internet connection, a mobile phone or a computer that can support the game, and time to play. While we do accept anyone interested in earning an income through play-to-earn games, YGG prioritizes the unemployed and the marginalized,” said YGG country manager Luis Buenaventura.
With enough time spent playing and wins in-game, scholars have the opportunity earn higher than the national monthly minimum wage without the risk of being scammed out of untrusted scholarship programs. The nature of play-to-earn games also mean that the work hours are flexible and can be accomplished from virtually anywhere especially for mobile-friendly titles.
