Superverse (SUPER)
Sep 02, 2024Superverse, in simple terms
Superverse is a project that aims to solve a lack of interoperability in blockchain gaming.
To understand the interoperability problem, one needs to understand the importance of true ownership.
An important feature of web3 games is that gamers can have true ownership of assets such as skins, characters and other items.
Most games let you trade these assets using a local token.
For example, the native token of the popular game Axie Infinity is AXS.
The problem is that games don't "talk" to each other.
If you want to sell an NFT in one game so that you can afford to buy something in another, you have to use a decentralized exchange.
Using a DEX is complicated and a roadblock against mass adoption.
Most people want just want to start the game, play, and trade.
Superverse aims to address this lack of unity.
They describe their mission like this:
They want to unify web3 gaming using their token SUPER to address the lack of unification in video gaming and NFT marketplaces.
So the question is, how will they do it?
How does Superverse work?
Concrete information about Superverse is about as scarce as Bitcoin, so bear in mind that this is our interpretation of the project.
The lack of info might be due to the project still being in an early phase.
What we know is that:
- Superverse launched as "Superfarm" 2021, but later changed its name and aim.
- Superverse is built on Polygon, a layer 2 on Ethereum.
- The SUPER token is an ERC20 token and is the core of their solution.
- The project has some impressive partnerships with Immutable, Polygon and Beam.
As we understand it, Superverse will use the SUPER token to unite web3 gaming.
However,
They don't necessarily want to replace tokens that are already used in games such as IMX, BEAM or AXS.
Instead,
They want SUPER to be integrated as a means of exchange and liquidity.
Now, I'll describe a scenario to show how this could work.
Let's say you play Guild of Guardians, a game hosted on Immutable:
You own a sword in this game as an NFT and want to sell it to afford something in a game on another platform, Beam for example.
As of now, this process is too intricate. You have to:
- Sell your NFT to get the native token in Guild of Guardians (GOG).
- Use the token to buy a universal token like ETH using a DEX like Uniswap.
- Use your ETH to buy tokens in the game hosted by BEAM, for example, Forgotten Playland.
- Buy the NFT in Forgotten Playland with the native token.
If the SUPER token was integrated, the process could look like this:
- Sell your NFT for SUPER within Guild of Guardians
- Buy NFT in Forgotten Playland using SUPER
The SUPER token is unifying because every platform that is integrated instantly knows your balance.
So if you get more SUPER in one game, it is "known" by every game in the ecosystem.
As long as you connect the same wallet to all the games, you can seamlessly interact with them.
Adoption and future outlook
As said, the project is still in an early phase and we haven't seen the SUPER token integrated in more than 14 games yet.
However, if they reach mass adoption, they solve a very important problem.
And as of now, it seems like there are few other projects whose main focus is exactly this issue.
Portalcoin for example, wants to solve the same problem, but only has a market cap of $64M which is only a fraction of the market cap of Superverse ($600M+ as of October 2024).
In other words: they don't have much competition, and the upside potential is huge.
We also note that Superverse has partnered with heavyweights in the industry, Immutable and Polygon:
In addition, they recently announced a partnership with Ton Station, a platform with millions of users.
Ton station is available on Telegram, which has more than 900 million users.
If they manage to attract only a fraction of these users, it would give Superverse a huge advantage.
Let's speculate on a couple of future scenarios to see what might happen to Superverse.
Right now, Superverse has a market cap of about $600M:
This accounts for about 2% of the current total gaming market cap.
When the gaming sector peaked in 2021, the total market cap was about $50B.
Let's use this to make three scenarios. All of them assume that the next peak will happen in 2025:
Scenario 1: Web3 does not reach mass adoption. The sector only reaches the same market cap as in 2021.
Scenario 2: Web3 reaches a large number of players. The sector 2x'es the market cap in 2021.
Scenario 3: Mass adoption achieved. The sector reaches a market cap of 5x the 2021 high.
In all the scenarios, we will make two cases for Superverse, a high and a low.
The high indicates that Superverse succeeds in its mission to integrate gaming and increase its share of the total market cap to 4% of the gaming sector.
The low indicates only partly success. Their share remains at 2%.
This leaves us with potential market caps:
Scenario 1: Low Adoption
Low market share: 0.02 x $50B = $1B
High market share: 0.04 x $50B = $2B
Scenario 2: Some Adoption
Low market share: 0.02 x $100B = $2B
High market share: 0.04 x $100B = $4B
Scenario 3: Mass Adoption
Low market share:0.02 x $200b = $4B
High market share: 0.04 x $200b = $8B
To calculate the price, we have to take inflation into account. As of now, 48% of all SUPER tokens are circulating.
In 2024, the circulating supply has increased by roughly 8%. Let's assume it grows another 10% for the next 12 months.
That would take the circulating supply from 485M to 530M.
To calculate the price, we just divide the predicted market cap by the assumed future supply:
Scenario 1: Low Adoption
Low market share: $1B / 530M = $1.88
High market share: $2b / 530M = $3.77
Scenario 2: Some Adoption
Low market share: $2b / 530M = $3.77
High market share: $4b / 530M = $7.54
Scenario 3: Mass Adoption
Low market share: $4b / 530M = $7.54
High market share: $8b / 530M = $15.08
The thought experiment indicates that the worst-case scenario is a price target of $1.88 and the best-case scenario is $15.08.
