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The team behind WAX has been quite busy these last few months developing the Worldwide Asset eXchange™, expected in late 2018. While you may have followed our regular updates regarding participation in industry events, new items tradable with WAX Tokens, our ever-growing presence in the ERC-721 Crypto Collectibles market, media mentions and more, we’ve compiled a comprehensive project update and overview of what’s next. Let’s jump right in:

Timeline: the first 90 days

Below is a summary of notable events since just prior to token distribution in December 2017, including product release, partnerships, community development, and participation in industry events.

WAX Timeline — December 2017 to March 2018

WAX cements its presence in the rapidly growing Crypto Collectibles™ market

The trading of ERC-721 tokens for Ethereum blockchain-based games, also known as the Crypto Collectibles™ market, has experienced rapid growth since CryptoKitties exploded onto the scene at the end of last year. As a result, more than 120 ERC-721 token companies have announced their launch in the last 90 days alone. More than 150,000 of these non-fungible tokens have sold per week according to DappRadar.com, amounting to a total of 2,400 ETH over the last seven days.

And OPSkins is becoming the go-to marketplace to trade them, including with WAX.

Notable features of Crypto Collectibles? Blockchain. Video Games. Cryptocurrencies. Peer-to-peer trading. Is it any wonder OPSkins and WAX dove full-force into this market? OPSkins added CryptoKitties to the marketplace in December 2017, and we’ve since announced partnerships with Etherbots, Fishbank, and CryptoBots. Several more are in development and will be announced in the near future.

You may be asking yourself why gamers would choose to purchase their Crypto Collectibles on OPSkins rather than directly from the game. Right now it’s approximately a 10-step process to purchase Crypto Collectibles from the game, and Ethereum is the only acceptable form of payment. For example, see the process below for purchasing a CryptoKitty.

Buying Crypto Collectibles directly from games

It’s cumbersome, time-consuming, and not user-friendly to players unfamiliar with purchasing Ethereum.

But on OPSkins, a simple four-step process gets you your CryptoKitty. And — perhaps most importantly — you can pay with WAX, bitcoin, dozens of fiat currencies, and several other payment methods offered on OPSkins.

Buying Crypto Collectibles on OPSkins

The addition of Crypto Collectibles to OPSkins not only simplifies the process for existing players of these games, but also introduces the many millions of customers using OPSkins regularly to a new category of online video games. We anticipate Crypto Collectibles to continue its rapid growth and massive popularity throughout 2018, and OPSkins to be the go-to marketplace for buying and selling these items outside the games themselves.

Crypto + virtual item marketplaces on the rise

WAX and OPSkins are part of a growing worldwide trend combining cryptocurrencies and virtual item marketplaces. More than $500 million has been raised by projects in this space over the past few years. Combine this with strong year-over-year growth in revenue from companies like OPSkins, and it’s clear that money will continue to flow into this category.

When comparing transactional volume with financial resources, OPSkins is clearly the dominant player, outperforming all others in both categories. Many point solutions for the virtual item blockchain ecosystem are in development by dozens of different companies, including in data/analytics, asset tokenization, marketing, payments, merchandising and more. WAX is at the center of all these solutions, offering elements of each category in the ecosystem.

Delivering the WAX blockchain in 2018

What’s next for WAX? Below you can see a infographic showing our ultimate goal — a complete virtual item platform — followed by a more detailed roadmap for the Worldwide Asset eXchange.

The timeline below aligns with our ultimate goal of creating a complete virtual item platform: a global virtual item repository, accessible to anyone, that provides a complete catalog of all items available for sale in real time. This provides users of WAX with access to a worldwide market, with all the advantages of blockchain technology.

We’ll be announcing development updates on our social media channels as well as in our newsletter, so stay in touch to learn the latest news. Links to our channels can be found at the bottom of this post.

Media mentions

WAX has been mentioned in a variety of publications these last few months, notably Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, the New York Post, The Merkle, CNBC, and more. Our media coverage during the last 90 days has reached millions of online readers, generating thousands of social media shares.

WAX Media Mentions

Additions to the WAX team

WAX is continuing to aggressively hire the best talent to build out our team in all areas of the company. In the last 90 days, we’ve added 14 new hires including senior level developers and engineers, customer support, community, and G&A positions, for a total of 23 people now supporting WAX.

WAX recruiting at Tech Fair LA in March 2018

Survey results show gamers’ pent up demand for using cryptocurrencies in video gaming

Lastly, we’ll close with results from a recent survey that contextualize the use case for cryptocurrencies in video games.

WAX surveyed 1,000 video gamers in the United States who have previously purchased, sold or traded virtual items online. Of those surveyed: