Talking about the advantages and disadvantages of the current play and earning guild design, and suggestions for improvement

Over the past year, the guild ecosystem in the cryptocurrency space has grown rapidly, from a simple idea to a diverse collection of groups seeking to participate in the economy of ownership. In this post, our purpose is to categorize and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the standard guild design, and present some ideas for improving the existing model. While people have been organized into groups with a common purpose or expertise for thousands of years, in PlayFi the concept of a guild takes a slightly different form, and that's what we'll mostly explore in this article.

Assets from 17th century guilds

Generally speaking, the purpose of a guild is to facilitate a flywheel of asset acquisition and community organization. More influential guilds can be thought of as Kingmakers, as they are able to fund new games, buy in-game assets, and then drive players into the game, ensuring a certain level of success and creating value for the assets. Guilds leverage Treasury assets to enable individuals or groups to play, compete and earn money in the new crypto-economic gaming world, where value is distributed to users.

Currently, we see an ever-expanding ecosystem of guilds competing for membership, assets, and transaction flow. With the rise of PlayFi and the X-to-earn economy, the role of guilds in organizing people around new incentive structures for games, products and services is likely to increase further.



Guild Blueprint


A typical PlayFi guild strives to build a feedback loop of scholar onboarding and asset accumulation. The three main components are Academics (Sponsored Players), Scholarship Managers, and Guild Treasury.

To kickstart the flywheel, guilds buy assets to play PlayFi games, covering players' often substantial up-front costs. The guild then elects scholarship managers, who are tasked with recruiting, training, and overseeing scholars on the guild subcommittee.

Once the resources are in place, scholars will borrow in-game assets from the guild to play various games. In exchange for these services, managers and treasuries receive a share of the value generated (usually in the form of in-game tokens). As the scholar base expands, the flywheel accelerates.

A larger scholar base brings more income to the guild.
As the Treasury grows, guilds are able to purchase more game assets and fund the development of new games.
Guilds can continue to grow the number of scholars by investing in more game assets and private transactions.
Guilds effectively serve as venture funds, holding companies, educational institutions, and personnel services, all in one.