The Xai Foundation, the core contributor to the Ethereum layer-3 gaming network Xai built on Arbitrum, announced Wednesday that it has teamed up with venture capital firm Outlier Ventures to help bring more traditional or “Web2” developers into the space.
The Xai Tokenomics Bootcamp is designed to streamline the development process for new blockchain games and help support the transition of existing Web2 games into models that work well with crypto infrastructure. Developers can tap Outlier Ventures' expertise in areas such as game asset ownership, token utilization, player rewards, and enhanced security.
According to the companies, two games have already completed the bootcamp’s pilot phase, including The Lost Glitches—a card-battling game that had previously launched NFTs on rival Ethereum scaling network Immutable X, and was recently announced to be migrating to Xai. The other title has yet to be revealed.
"Part of the issue with building games for Web3 is that most developers are coming from Web2 roots, with virtually no understanding of how to implement a game on-chain," said Tobias Batton, founder and CEO of Ex Populus, one of the core teams supporting Xai. "Thanks to the incredible partnership with Outlier Ventures, our Tokenomics Bootcamp can now provide developers who are new to the space with the tools they need to build the next generation of games."
Xai launched earlier this year with a sizable token airdrop to network supporters and early NFT owners, and has since racked up a number of games that are planned to launch on the network in the months ahead.
This includes Crypto Unicorns and BattlePlan, which are migrating from other chains, plus The Media Indie Exchange (The MIX)—a company that works with indie game developers—said that it plans to launch upwards of 100 games on Xai by the end of the year, including a mix of new titles and converted Web2 games.
"Xai is at the forefront of Web3 gaming and we've been very impressed by their growth in the space over the past several months," said Dimitrios Chatzianagnostou, Head of Investments and Cryptoeconomics at Outlier Ventures. "We're thrilled to partner with Xai to support both Web2 developers looking to start building Web3 games of the future, as well as seasoned Web3 game developers."
Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.