In an exclusive interview with Madeira, Co-founder of Matr1X Fire, we dive deep into the rapid growth of the platform, their ambitions for the future, and the evolving Web3 gaming landscape. Matr1X is at the forefront of the Web3 gaming revolution, creating a pioneering ecosystem that blends game development, publishing, and a thriving community hub. With a mission to deliver community-driven, high-quality gaming experiences, Matr1X leverages its advanced blockchain infrastructure to propel the next generation of games into the mainstream. As they continue to push boundaries in esports and digital content, Matr1X is poised to reshape the gaming industry.
Can you give me an overview of the Matr1x ecosystem for our readers?
Matr1x is an innovative cultural and entertainment platform combining Web3, AI and Esports. Matr1x strives to revolutionize the global game and digital content industry via blockchain and AI technology. Make the community safe and happy.
Matr1x currently has two in-house highly popular shooting titles Matr1x Fire and Matr1x Battle, which respectively portray classic first-person shooter (FPS) and battle royale gameplays, to be respectively launched during the first half and before the end of the year. The games incorporate Esports, gaming mechanism, AI technology, and the idea of an open-world and metaverse to provide users with a completely new entertainment experience.
In addition to this, Matr1x is preparing a number of Web3 game products. Castile, the AAA ARPG card game, and Evermoon, a 5vs5 3-lane mobile MOBA game, solely distributed and co-operated by Matr1x, are the first 3rd party game products in Matr1x portfolio, implying the start of the Matr1x platform. Matr1x has also performed extensive R&D in intelligent Esports, AIGC, and dynamic content generation.
In the future, Matr1x will continue to innovate with its diversified entertainment products, Esports, AI technology, IP development, and underlying infrastructure to contribute more to the Web3 industry.
What inspired the creation of Matr1x?
I used to work in traditional finance, and got into the crypto industry 7 years ago and started investing in some high-profile ICO projects, getting very good financial returns. At this time, I attended a crypto seminar hosted by a well-known industry OG in early 2017, and got to know ICO for the first time, but I had not been in the crypto market until June. I traded well and liquidated all my crypto portfolio at the debut of May 2021 before the market collapse, and did not return to the market until the end of 2022.
After my liquidation, Hana financial group, our strategic investor and one of the top 3 financial players in South Korea, asked me for advice about investing in Metaverse. I noted the popularity of avatar technologies and IP at the time, and eventually we decided to do something big in the gaming sector. When I read the report of Delphi on AXS in June of 2021, from there I knew this could be the start of a new form of gaming – Web3 gaming. I advised Hana to invest in web3 gaming, leading to the incubation of Matr1x in December 2021. I personally bought AXS tokens with a small portion at 3 USDT, and sold one month later at 30. I never imagined it could rise to 150.
But anyway, after that, I successfully created the current team and convinced them to start a new project – a Web3 gaming platform. Our goal? To promote Web3 industry values, such as data sovereignty, privacy protection and decentralization. Finally, Hana seeded us and became lead investor for the second round of fundraising during Q1 2022. We got a new round of fund raising in August 2023, bringing us to a total of more than $20 million investment from Hana Financial Group, Folius Ventures, SevenX Ventures, ABCDE Capital, OKG Ventures, Find Satoshi Lab (Stepn), Jambo phones and initiate capital. Recently we got a new investment from Makers Fund, a top US gaming fund.
How does Matr1x aim to transform the gaming and esports industries, particularly with the integration of Web3 technologies?
We always cherish decentralization and creator economy, and believe community-driven games and esports will be the future. We do not love to talk about the future of Web3 gaming, but the future of gaming, as we believe Web2 gaming and Web3 gaming will ultimately converge. Now most games are driven by developers rather than the community, but the potential of developers is limited, and community-driven games have the potential to be more creative and sustainable.
We also target the transferability and interoperability of NFTs and game items across games. This could only be successful when we prove it is possible within the Matr1x ecosystem. So, we will firstly build a successful Matr1x ecosystem before ultimately reaching the destination of a community-driven integral ecosystem.
Can you elaborate on Matr1x’s long-term vision for the Web3 gaming space, especially as it relates to community-led gaming?
We always cherish decentralization and creator economy, and believe community-driven games and esports would be the future. We do not love to talk about the future of Web3 gaming, but the future of gaming, as we believe Web2 gaming and Web3 gaming will ultimately converge. Now most games are driven by developers rather than the community, but the potential of developers is limited, and community-driven games would be much more creative and sustainable.
We also target the transferability and interoperability of NFTs and game items across games. This could only be successful when we prove it is possible within the Matr1x ecosystem. So, firstly we are putting our focus into building a successful Matr1x ecosystem before ultimately reaching the destination of a community-driven integral ecosystem.
How does the concept of Play-to-Own align with Matr1x’s mission to deliver innovative and engaging experiences for gamers?
Asset owners will be more committed to games and projects, as originally they only own some game items which are completely controlled by developers and asset trading is not really independent. However, with the introduction of NFTs, tokens and Play-to-Own, gamers, traders and asset owners will interact more closely and become active participants of a Web3 gaming ecosystem. If we imagine the case where developers are just hired by the community to further develop a mature gaming ecosystem, the community could become the ultimate owner of the ecosystem which will definitely enhance the sustainability.
Blockchain and NFT-based economies in games often raise concerns about sustainability – how does Matr1x address these concerns?
This is mainly due to lack of real gamers and the infinite supply of in-game tokens. We believe real gamers are fundamental elements for Web3 games and blockchain technology is an important plus and accelerator for a community-driven gaming ecosystem. So we should not rely too much on earning features without building a real user base. This is why we are so committed to the number of downloads and active users.
Regarding play to earn, we also introduced a unique bitcoin-style mining mechanism to address the death spiral issue. Daily mining output of $FIRE remained relatively stable, and mining difficulties depended on the total hash power considering the number of the holders of genesis characters (which are the de facto miners of $FIRE), their level and rarity. Power supply was also introduced as a necessary resource to mine $FIRE. Only holders of our $20 Battle Pass are allowed to provide power supply (4 batteries per day), which could be considered a kind of subsidy from Web3 gamers.
What steps are you taking to make Web3 gaming accessible to a broader audience, especially those unfamiliar with blockchain technology?
We don’t have to educate people to be familiar with blockchain technology. We simply allow Web2 gamers to play for free, and to be our battle pass holders with various in-app purchases. We are making Web2.5 games, which are more suitable to the current stage. Most users will come from the Web2 industry from Google Play and App Store, as well as live streaming of our esports tournaments addressing more than 10 million audiences, while a small portion could come from the Web3 industry with earn features. Sooner or later, web2 users will be gradually converted into Web3 users.
A Web2 application layer plus a Web3 governance and settlement layer could be the best Web3 application form for the next stage.
How does Matr1x look to foster a sense of ownership and empowerment among players through its ecosystem?
Firstly, Matr1x will allow asset ownership, NFT transferability and interoperability within its ecosystem, and will further encourage those features with other ecosystems. Secondly, Matr1x strive to build a community-driven ecosystem in the long term, especially when the ecosystem is mature and stable enough, as we believe community-driven is a better approach than developer-driven in the long term. Lastly, creators can only be empowered by decentralized governance and community-driven approach.
With 3.5 million active players already, what strategies are you using to continue scaling Matr1x Fire globally?
Matr1x Fire accumulates more than 4 million downloads now, and numbers will continue to rise especially with the release of our IOS version. Upon its release, Matr1x Fire was immediately ranked as No. 1 in Thailand, No. 2 in the Philippines and Indonesia, No.9 in Malaysia. With the help of Google play and App Store, we are confident cumulative downloads will reach 10 million soon.
Meanwhile, we will continue to promote Matr1x Fire esports tournaments as well as its livestreaming and short video contents. This is a cheaper approach for us to acquire much more users globally.
We will also cooperate with mobile phone partners such as Jambo, through pre-installments to enlarge our user base.
How do you envision the future of gaming as Web3 continues to evolve, and what role will Matr1x play in shaping that future?
In our view, Web2.5 games would be the best way for the next stage, a transitional period paving the way from Web2 to Web3, which could last for years. That is to say, a Web2 application layer plus a Web3 governance and settlement layer could be the best Web3 application form for the next stage. Mobile games should still be the leading category before other more advanced technologies could really take over, as mobile games are the only way to reach mass adoption among all gaming categories.
Matr1x will be leading the trend through providing a series of quality mobile games, transferrable and interoperable game assets, community-driven governance and creator economy, and especially the mass adoption.
About Matr1x:
Matr1x is a pioneering Web3 gaming and esports entertainment ecosystem, comprising a game developer studio, game publishing studio and community hub. Born out of a movement towards the next generation of Web3 gaming, Matr1x is on a mission to deliver innovative community-led gaming experiences to the masses. With a robust suite of in-house blockchain infrastructure, Matr1x seeks to propel high-quality games to achieve critical-scale and appeal to a diverse audience, revolutionising the gaming and digital content sectors. Matr1x’s Web3 gaming and esports community hub is committed to the growth of the esports industry while providing diversified gaming experiences to players across the globe. For more information, please visit matr1x.io.
