We are proud to announce a multifaceted partnership today with Faraway as part of our broader commitment to games on Solana. This blog post will share our perspective on how marketplaces can partner closely with games to help them achieve their growth objectives.
For starters, Faraway is the creator behind Mini Royale: Nations, the first live multiplayer game using the Solana blockchain. Mini Nations is a first-person shooter game that prides itself on being a fun game first and foremost, prioritizing ease of play above having high fidelity graphics. To date, they have over 600,000 monthly active users around the world. These users engage in 92,000 battles daily.
The first time we met with Faraway was in early November during Solana Breakpoint in Lisbon. We still remember when cofounder Alex Paley sat across a table from us and asked, “Who the fuck are you guys?” when we told him Magic Eden was less than 2 months old. We laughed and started spitballing ideas in a corner amidst a busy cafe.
Since then, our team has been so proud of how iterative and organic our partnership has been, including several drops, an event promoting web3 gaming in Miami during Art Basel, powering their in-game marketplace, and embedding Mini Nations gameplay directly onto Magic Eden.
Our partnership with Mini Nations has encompassed:
- Collaborating on collection drops using Magic Eden Launchpad
In early December, we hosted a Launchpad for Mini Royale: Nations for their “Vikings of the MiniVerse” Genesis drop. We helped them mint 2,500 items which sold out in 30 seconds (even with the use of captcha technology, which we deployed for the first time at Faraway’s request). Faraway was then able to leverage the hype and excitement from this drop to host the sale of the remaining 7,500 items a week later.
Beyond the Genesis drop, we’re also excited to support listing of the Mini Nations Loot Collections and to utilize Launchpad for future premium drops (e.g., weapons, buildings, land).
- Powering Mini Nations’ in-game marketplace
We’re thrilled to be powering the in-game marketplace experience for Mini Nations, allowing players to directly exchange items without disrupting their gaming experience. This marketplace will run on the same tech that’s behind the largest marketplace on Solana.
Later this month, we will be releasing an SDK product that will allow any developer to integrate trading experiences powered by us in their own environments. All of the functionality available via the Magic Eden app today will be exposed via our APIs (eg. mint, list, buy now, bid etc).
In the words of cofounder Alex Paley, "We’re really excited to partner with Magic Eden on our in-game marketplace. Our focus at Faraway is building the best possible games and social experiences for our players. Not needing to worry about building our own marketplace tech allows us to focus on what we do best: making games." - Embedding Mini Nations directly within the Magic Eden marketplace
We were the first NFT marketplace on Solana to let users immerse themselves by playing Mini Nations directly on our platform (under the Play Now tab). NFTs, and especially gaming NFTs, should inherently be immersive and we want our users to feel what is possible when they land on Magic Eden. Similarly, we think games will benefit enormously from the distribution + end users that are visiting Magic Eden daily.
- Building community IRL at Art Basel Miami
We decided very serendipitously to go to Art Basel Miami, where we hosted an event on web3 gaming with 120+ people. We hosted a panel discussion where we talked about our partnership and the opportunities for marketplaces to help games build open economies. Magic Eden also hosted a supper club the following night with around 40 attendees. We broke bread with both Faraway and Genopets at the same table, talking about the future for both of their games…and may or may not have gone to a Diplo concert together afterwards.
Our partnership with Faraway is evidence of how we want to partner with games period.
Games can:
- Use Magic Eden Launchpad to drop their in-game items. Launchpad is by far the most robust and sophisticated minting platform on Solana and the best way for games to debut their collections to the widest set of users
- Utilize infrastructure already built by Magic Eden to power the slickest in-game marketplace experiences. We offer this so games can focus on the gameplay
- Leverage the reach and distribution of the largest marketplace on Solana to acquire and engage new users
We aim to grow with gaming partners looking for a long term home and a true partner. If you’re building a game and want to collaborate, reach out to our BD team.
