Web 3.0 infrastructure company AAG Ventures has announced that it is rebranding as it looks to further expand the Play2Earn (P2E) revolution. The company, which will now be known just as AAG, has enjoyed a successful year providing value to underprivileged people who have used AAG to benefit from the proceeds offered by P2E games. The Singaporean company has seen huge growth since its formation last year, expanding to seven countries across the world.
From a chip and a chair to millions in investment
AAG has a very interesting backstory, and one that has partly led to the name change. AAG stands for “Achip and Achair Global”, which aren’t the names of the founders but instead takes its inspiration from the 1982 World Series of Poker winner Jack “Treetop” Straus. Straus thought he was eliminated after losing a big pot, only to find a lone $500 chip under a napkin. Using just “a chip and a chair”, Strauss fought back to win the main event, and it is this success that resonated with AAG founders co-founders, Jack Vinitrongjit, Jayson Casinillo, Nelly Sutjiadi and Omar Kevin Moscoso.
The four claim that they, too, started with ‘a chip and a chair’ when they launched AAG as a guild for P2E games like Axie Infinity last year, and they too have seen similar success – just seven weeks after the launch of their Axie Infinity scholarship program the platform had onboarded 1,500 guild members or “scholars”. Since then the guild has expanded to seven countries including Brazil, India, Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Argentina.
Following this success, AAG recognised that there were significant gaps in the Web 3.0 ecosystem for mainstream consumers, and set out to build out the P2E environment, including games, guilds and services to support learning. In December 2021, AAG attracted $12.5M in private funding, which it said it would use to launch a platform that helps other P2E guilds engage players at scale, as well as delving into a new environment – Learn-to-Earn – where players earn crypto while learning transferable skills such as maths or programming.
A busy 2022 for AAG
AAG has several releases lined up for the last quarter of 2022 as part of its ambition to onboard 100 million people onto the metaverse economy by 2030. AAG’s next major product launch will be their proprietary crypto wallet, the MetaOne Wallet, which is slated for Q4 of this year. The MetaOne wallet will be targeted at the average tech user looking to enter the metaverse, and will provide a one-stop-shop for the users’ metaverse and blockchain identity. The beta launch for the MetaOne wallet is on track for September, with a new website, more GameFi opportunities and additional exchange listings also planned.
“In order for web3 to reach mainstream adoption, the industry has to reach a certain level of maturity as a whole. Until now, the focus has been mainly on developers and early adopters. We are here to change that. We need to provide a much better user experience while protecting the overall ideas of web3, which means openness, access, and decentralisation.”
Vinijtrongjit explained in a press release what was needed to bring the metaverse to the masses:
Given that it only formed last year, AAG has taken huge strides towards its ambitions, and if this success continues it certainly has the chance to be a market leader in both the P2E and L2E frontiers.
