Aethir and Magic Eden team up on Web3 NFT gaming projects

Aethir, a distributed GPU cloud computing company, has teamed up with Magic Eden, the leading multi-chain non-fungible token (NFT) platform globally.

The aim is to revolutionize Web 3.0 gaming by creating a unified gaming ecosystem that combines Aethir‘s enterprise-grade GPU infrastructure — dubbed GPUs as a service — with Magic Eden‘s NFT platform, establishing Magic Eden as the go-to NFT platform for Aethir’s gaming clients.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of modern gaming, blockchain gaming projects rely heavily on NFT core mechanics. The goal of NFTs is to tokenize in-game equipment, objects, avatars, and more, offering more interactivity and value to players. Magic Eden, which touts its versatility in the NFT industry, plays a role as a hub for blockchain gaming projects, providing essential support to gaming ventures across various segments.

However, as blockchain gaming continues to gain traction, the demand for GPU power has escalated significantly. Recognizing this challenge, Aethir steps in to provide the raw GPU resources needed to power the next generation of blockchain games. Leveraging Aethir’s decentralized cloud infrastructure, gaming projects operating in the Web3 space can ensure a seamless and immersive gaming experience for users worldwide.

Daniel Wang, CEO of Aethir, “Magic Eden is a true NFT powerhouse with an unprecedented experience in supporting blockchain gaming and Web 3.0 innovation. As an industry leader among NFT marketplaces, their role complements Aethir’s disruptive GPU cloud infrastructure as a revolutionary DePIN framework for powering cloud gaming. Aethir’s partnership with Magic Eden is about blockchain gaming scalability and providing NFT gaming studios with the resources to seamlessly integrate millions of new users worldwide. Our GPU infrastructure and Magic Eden’s NFT marketplace are a combination for the next generation of Web 3.0 gaming.”

Chris Akhavan, chief revenue officer of Magic Eden, said in an interview with GamesBeat that Aethir’s compute infrastructure has the potential to address critical distribution issues for Web3 games. Akhavan underscored the opportunity for Web3 studios to reach gamers beyond the confines of major app stores, offering instant accessibility to Web3 games without lengthy download and install times.

“Magic Eden is now officially by far the biggest NFT marketplace in the world, covering Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Bitcoin. And we just launched on Base. We’ve also got a multi-chain wallet. And then from a gaming perspective, the primary offering we provide game developers is our launch pad,” Akhavan said.

That means a game developer can mint an NFT collection on Magic Eden and launch it for NFT collectors with smooth and seamless transactions. Magic Eden can get the NFTs in front of the most gamers and enable a secondary market where they can trade with each other.

Paul Thind, CRO of Aethir, emphasized the partnership’s role in accelerating innovation in the rapidly evolving space of Web3 gaming. Thind highlighted the synergistic combination of Aethir’s distributed GPU cloud platform and Magic Eden’s community-centric NFT marketplace.

“We’re seeing a lot of folks that just want to be able to get in and play, have a quick game session, and then move on [and discover more games]. The partnership with Magic Eden really allows for that because they might have NFTs that they bought,” Thind said.

A significant step

The partnership between Aethir and Magic Eden represents a significant step towards the realization of a seamless, scalable, and immersive Web 3.0 gaming experience, promising to reshape the gaming landscape for years to come, the partners said.

Aethir said it is revolutionizing DePIN with its advanced, distributed enterprise-grade GPU-based compute infrastructure tailored for AI and gaming. It is backed by leading Web3 investors like Framework Ventures, Merit Circle, Hashkey, Animoca Brands, Sanctor Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC), and others.

Aethir has generated about $105 million through its own note sale and it is integrating its GPU-as-a-service cloud gaming tech with a number of different games, giving those games access to its decentralized GPU cloud infrastructure platform, Thind said.

It’s all enterprise grade, focused on AI and gaming, to make GPUs-as-a-service available so game developers can reach players more easily using cloud gaming tech that can simplify the Web3 onboarding process, Thind said. That, in turn, lowers costs for game developers, he said.

“We thought his is a natural collaboration,” Thind said.

Akhavan noted that the major app stores have some serious restrictions around how game developers can build and design Web3 games.

“And so that makes it really difficult to distribute games. Oftentimes, if you want to create a truly Web3 game that relies on interaction with blockchains, you probably have to find ways to distribute that directly yourself,” Thind said. “Having a 10-gigabyte client download is a massive friction point, and Web3 already has enough friction points.”

In spite of that friction, Akhavan said that Web3 is taking off again as the price of Bitcoin has surged and there is a feeling of optimism that the market will be able to take off with the mass market better this year than in past years. Akhavan believes that Magic Eden is a trusted site for buying NFTs and it is helping with discoverability for games, which has been in jeopardy in recent years with Apple’s focus on privacy over targeted advertising.

The Web3 market is thawing?

Asked what he thought of the Web3 gaming market, Akhavan said things are better than last year.

“Last year was definitely rough in the crypto bear market. A lot of the investors disappeared, and so basically left a lot of the game startups that raised early funding unable to raise more and then just grind it out. And what we’re now seeing is the startups are resurfacing. They’re starting to get real traction,” Akhavan said.

He added, “We’re showing some real traction in terms of like revenue and users and all the typical things that we look for when investing in games. Those startups are now are able to tap into new funding, which is huge. That’s a huge validation that Web3 gaming is now back on another wave where we’re going to see a lot of games launch in fully playable form.”

Ubisoft is moving back into Web3 games, and Maplestory is making good progress, as are the Parallel and Pixels games. Eve Online is working on its Web3 project. And GFAL, a Web3 gaming company, raised money from Supercell and Mitch Lasky and it gained support from gaming pioneer Trip Hawkins. With the growth in activity, both Aethir and Magic Eden can expand beyond Asia and grow around the globe more easily, Akhavan and Thind said.

“A lot of Web3 games are gaining traction in this cycle, and they’re not spending a lot on user acquisition,” Akhavan said. “They’re finally actually able to tap into what I think was one of the big promises of Web3 technology, which is that you can actually make your players participate in the economy in such a way that that becomes a major source of user acquisition. That’s one of the reasons a lot of us got excited about Web3 as it is similar to the free-to-play space.”