Yumerium is building a crypto layer for online gaming. This would help new games and game developers easily add a layer of crypto in their existing games, and also simultaneously be a part of an ecosystem.

The idea is that Yumerium builds a crypto token, called YUM, which can then be integrated by existing online games into their products. This is easier when the game is being developed, but developers can also do this integration after the fact, i.e. after the game has already been developed.

Advantages of Yumerium

So why should online games add Yumerium? There are many reasons for this. Firstly, games can use the YUM token to create incentive structures for influencers. This will help them reach a wider audience than without their help. They can also pay people in YUM to play their games and share it with their friends, thus helping the peer to peer aspect of gaming and marketing. They can also pay people to write about their experience, thus reaching out to the broader gaming community.

But why use YUM for this? The answer lies in the network. If Yumerium can create a thriving ecosystem of players, developers, and influencers, then YUM becomes valuable. This is because you have access to this network. It is no longer just a payment means now.

Game development is a competitive endeavor, and therefore developers look for an edge to promote their game. A crypto layer is another advantage for the game. Gamers can pay in crypto, i.e. YUM token for in-game items. This is a huge revenue source for games already.

New Market Potential

The idea behind Yumerium is that of a network. The network, powered by YUM, could do better than an individual game can. If this proves to be true, what Yumerium is building can become very valuable for game developers.

In addition, don’t forget the new frontiers. We already know that crypto is heavily dominated by the young people i.e. Millennials and Gen-Zers. This is also the prime demographic for crypto. Therefore, gaming and crypto can easily benefit each other. New games can appeal to the crypto community specifically. This is beneficial because the crypto community tends to have money to spend for in-game assets as well. If you don’t believe me, check out the prices of digital cats on Crypto Kitties!

Yumerium plans to build a network of games that can collectively benefit each other just as networks tend to do. Gamers can explore new games, write about them, and share with their friends and get rewarded for it. New games have a community to build into.

To learn more, check out the Yumerium website. They are doing an ICO, so if you  want to invest, be sure to read the whitepaper and understand that investing in token sales can be very risky.

Photo Credit: xmodulo

We are generally interested in niche applications for crypto. This is the best way to capture the market, after all. Get the first initial users who are passionate about the product and also see great value. Then expand beyond the initial use case. This is the tried and true model for startups, and should be adopted more by blockchain/crypto startups too.

Today, let’s look at one such company – Wemark. It is a project in a very specific niche – photo licensing. And that industry could definitely use some new technological disruption. After all, photographers hardly made a third of the revenue these companies generate! It is a huge oligopoly because it is a two-sided marketplace. The big ones – Shutterstock and Getty Images, have cornered the market for paying clients, so photographers are left with no choice but to play ball and go with whatever they offer.

There are all sorts of competitors in the space, as is expected, given these profit margins. However, none has succeed in replacing these behemoths. Could a crypto startup do it?

Wemark provides 85% of the revenue to the photographers. That’s around 3 times what they can share with the larger companies. The sell for photographers is a no-brainer. The biggest question is, will Wemark be able to attract the commercial deals that these large companies specialize in? We’ll have to wait and see how that turns out, since it is only now beginning to operate and offer photos to such clients.

Wemark offers payments to photographers in its own native token, which may be an issue for more mainstream photographers down the line since it would be harder to convert into fiat, but as a first step in acquisition, it should be manageable or the company itself can run some sort of informal exchange for the photographers.

We originally talked about dominating one industry and then going on from there. If Wemark is successful in the photography business and can actually provide value to both sides of the marketplace and more importantly actually see parties on both sides of the marketplace, then there is no reason why it cannot go beyond. The company already plans to enter the digital asset space using a similar model. This can be anything – doesn’t need to be photos, after all.

How the company performs in the photography market remains to be seen. The company also needs to provide value and utility to its native token, since that is what is being used for payments, and shouldn’t have too high of a velocity, which would cause the market cap to remain small.

Overall, the photo licensing industry is one that is definitely in need for some disruption. Wemark approaches this using a crypto token for payments and providing a higher percentage of payment to photographers. Whether these are enough to attract buyers remains to be seen.

To learn more, check out the Wemark website and whitepaper.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Kennedy

Essentia is one of those projects that benefits the entire crypto ecosystem if it were to succeed in its mission. In fact, not just crypto specifically, but the entire ‘decentralized web’. Today more than ever, the importance of a decentralized web cannot be overstated. We should do everything in our power to make the move away from centralized behemoths – the Facebooks of the world, towards a decentralized web where users are in control – the Blockstacks of the world.

Problem of ‘Too Much’

So where does Essentia fit into this picture? On the user and adoption side. To start off, just think of just the crypto-asset space, i.e. your favorite tokens. If you were to hold the keys, which is how you should do crypto, how many wallets do you need to download? What if a new crypto interests you? Is each of them secure enough to download on your own computer? What a user experience nightmare! No wonder people just don’t bother and leave their coins on an exchange, which has been a terrible idea throughout the short history of this industry.

To be sure, this is a big problem. People who are new to crypto for example cannot be expected to download a hundred wallets and store them safely on their computers with appropriate backups. It is just not feasible for mass adoption.

The Essentia Solution

Now, what something like Essentia does is still let the user be in charge of all the crypto, data, apps, etc. but through a single master seed. Everything else flows deterministically from this seed. The user has the seed and keeps that one single seed secure and backed up. This would automatically keep everything else the user does secure and backed up as well. No need to trust a third-party to manage keys or data anymore.

Already, Essentia has integrated several of the most prominent crypto-assets and crypto-applications into its platform, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, IPFS, Status, Gnosis, etc. This means that a user who wants to transact in Bitcoin, pay for a DApp in Ether, store some data in IPFS and participate in some prediction markets can do all of that via a single entry point through Essentia.

This is a powerful way to interact with this new and emerging decentralized web, because the user doesn’t need to follow every single isolated app in isolation. Instead, for the user, they can just log into their Essentia, with their ID, and everything else just flows naturally from there. It brings down the user experience gap between centralized and decentralized applications.

If you’re interested to learn more, check out the Essentia website and their whitepaper.

Photo Credit: Georgie Pauwels