YGG x Coins.ph AMA: Gaming Guilds Are the SMEs of Web3
YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon and Wei Zhou from Coins.ph joined YGG Pilipinas campaign director John Sedano for a chat on how gaming guilds are the SMEs of web3 .
Just as small to medium enterprises (SMEs) depend on stable financial institutions to help get their businesses off the ground, so too do guilds in web3. Web3 gaming guilds that are looking to scale can benefit from services provided by a locally licensed centralized exchange (CEX), allowing them to store and trade their digital assets, and seamlessly move between crypto and fiat, all on a secure platform.
YGG’s recent partnership with Coins.ph is an example of how CEXs can plug into the web3 gaming ecosystem to help make transfers easier and cheaper for guild leaders running their own SMEs — particularly when cross-chain bridging is required.
For example, many SME guilds in the Philippines had earned YGG tokens on Polygon through YGG initiatives such as the Guild Advancement Program (GAP). When the YGG token became available on the Ronin network in March 2024, transferring from Polygon to Ronin could have been an expensive and time-consuming task which required multiple stages of bridging, significant gas fees, and possibly more than an hour to complete. However, thanks to Coins.ph facilitating native support for Ronin, this process is now as simple as transferring YGG tokens to a Coins.ph wallet on Polygon, and then withdrawing the YGG tokens straight to the Ronin wallet.
YGG Pilipinas Campaign Director John Sedano sat down with YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon and Coins.ph CEO Wei Zhou to expand on why they decided to collaborate. Over the course of their conversation, Wei and Gabby discussed their motivations for partnering up, their bullishness on the Philippine web3 market, the strength of their shared user base, and the crucial roles that YGG and Coins.ph will both play in empowering guilds to grow and scale within the Philippines and beyond.
The following is an excerpt from YGG Pilipinas’ AMA livestream with Wei Zhou from April 8, 2024. Listen to the full recording on Facebook.
YGG Pilipinas: Coins.ph X YGG AMA
Wei (29:46): We haven’t had a technology that connects everybody at the same time, where you can actually do stuff and make money together as a community. That's what's really cool about guilds. It actually brings a community together and helps you make money. We'll help Coins be the wallet to help you do that. We're going to offer you the biggest selections and we can actually help you spend and manage that money down the road.
With regards to the Philippines, we want to be able to list more homegrown projects and companies. Maybe today it's just a utility token, but tomorrow, once we get all of our ducks lined up from a regulatory perspective, we can list up more startups.
I'm not Filipino myself, but they've completely adopted me because I run a business in the Philippines. You guys can support this community globally. That's something that I'm really excited about. Let's just engage more and see what we can build together.
Sedano (32:23): You touched a bit on my next question. What is the ideal relationship between gaming guilds and Coins.ph? In this case, it's not only gaming guilds. It's those earlier projects that you're supporting and opening your doors to. Maybe in three, five, or 10 years, when these projects are fully grown, you're looking at a very healthy and strong ecosystem that complements each other.
Going back to Gabby here, what do you think will be the relationship between gaming guilds in general and Coins.ph? Like all our subguilds around the Philippines, maybe even all around the world when Coins.ph is finally released there as well? How does that relationship look on a macro level?
Gabby (33:13): The way I think about our gaming guilds and guilds in general is that they're like the small to medium businesses of web3. And that's how it starts, right? It might be a few friends getting together to play some games, then they might start to be more organized. They may put up a corporation, like Kookoo has, for example.
But as these gaming guilds grow, they're going to have more needs for scale. For example, where do I store the money? How do I transfer the fiat and back? How do I interface with the real world? I do think this is where exchanges like Coins.ph can be a really good partner for us. As these businesses scale, they're going to need the kinds of financial services that a growing business will need. It's a very strong partnership.
Sedano (34:10): What do you think will be the effect of this collaboration between Coins.ph and YGG? How do you see Coins.ph helping the growth of YGG?
Gabby (34:28): We're doing co-marketing together. Coins is joining us for our Roadtrip. We're bringing a lot of financial education to a lot of Filipinos from all over the country. What we're doing is we're providing them access to global opportunities, in the form of play-to-earn or other crypto opportunities. I think it's very important for all Filipinos to know what they can actually do in crypto markets, because now you're not limited to what you can earn in your city, whether you're in Manila, or Batangas, or Davao, or Cabanatuan. In crypto or in web3, you have the opportunity to earn with your skill the same as anyone else from around the world, Whether you're here, in the US, or Europe. I think that's incredibly empowering for Pinoys. Between YGG and Coins, we're here to bring the opportunities together to all Filipinos.
You can listen to the full recording on Facebook.
Follow Gabby and Wei on X to learn more about YGG and Coins.ph’s partnership.
Learn more about the YGG Pilipinas Roadtrip on X.
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