Corey Wilton, CEO Shards.Tech, is a well-known figure in the gaming community. Shards.Tech is a platform that enables game studios to fractionalize in-game teams, allowing users to co-own and share revenues. The platform’s first campaign generated over $300K in trading volume.
Wilton discusses Shard’s inspiration, inner workings, and future in this exclusive interview.
About Corey Wilton and the Team
Hello Wilton, welcome to our interview today. Please introduce yourself, and please tell us about your role at Shards.Tech.
Hey, thanks for having me! I’m an Aussie leading a SEA-based team and one of the co-founders and CEO at Shards.Tech.
Please tell us about the team and how you came up with the idea to start Shards.Tech.
In 2021, we built one of the world’s largest web3 games, Pegaxy. That massive success taught us many important skills, including trend and opportunity recognition. By 2023, we were ready to release our games in beta for our community. We asked ourselves, “In this new era of web3 gaming, how do you actually make money?” We observed a protocol generating significant revenue in the bear market and felt it was better suited to gaming. We executed a 30-day sprint to integrate it into our game Petopia, and the rest is history!
You are also the CEO and Co-founder of Mirai Labs; how are the two related?
Core Mirai alumni created Shards.Tech. Some of Mirai’s most significant leaders in development, design, and leadership stepped up to lead Shards, and I committed to leading alongside them as CEO.
About Shards.Tech
Shards.Tech is a product for non-gamers, gaming teams, and game developers. From a financial standpoint, how does each stand to benefit from the platform?
The flywheel we built for Shards impacts all three.
- Game developers receive 4% of all trading volume, so their job is to stimulate competition and make the game as fun as possible!
- We provide a business model for team founders. They don’t need to win inside the game to earn; they need to become popular and have people buy and sell their fractions. They then earn 5% of all trading volume associated with their team.
- Finally, players are given a new sustainable earnings model because they share a percentage of the guild’s revenue. The team founder can allocate from 20% to 90% of the team’s earnings to the players.
Please explain. What are Guild Fractions?
Guild fractions are fragmented pieces of a guild that anyone can purchase! Each fraction represents a piece of the guild, and users can freely speculate on their price movement on the Shards.Tech website or natively inside the game.
Competitors and Partnerships
Who are some of your competitors in the space? How is Shards.Tech unique?
Currently, there isn’t a direct competitor that is a 1:1 match to us. However, there are efforts within games to replicate similar effects, such as Pixels. They have a speculation mechanic for guilds, but their method is not as refined as ours and is not designed for all game studios.
Any partnerships you would like to mention?
We have many strong partnerships, particularly with YGG, Shrapnel, Blocklords, Captain and Company, plus many more major players in the web3 gaming space.
Future Plans and Predictions
Which game and feature are you particularly excited about?
We are most excited for Captain and Company, alongside Shrapnel! Captain and Company because it has Blast Gold rewards, and Shrapnel because we have always wanted to see Shards inside of a world-class shooter!
What upcoming games or features should users be excited about?
There are countless games to be excited about! The area to focus on is games that push the limits and innovate wherever possible. Independent of the game type, size, or popularity, innovation is what helps us identify future opportunities.
Many play-to-earn games integrate a native token to incentivize their community. Do you have such plans?
The Shards token will be the heart and soul of the Shards community. Due approximately June/July ‘24, we confidently believe the utility—including memberships, consumables, voting, and more—will be able to drive actual demand.
How do you see Shards.Tech evolving in the next 3 to 5 years?
Three to five years in crypto is a long time, but I foresee Shards as a bucket of SDKs and the go-to location for games (web2 and web3) that want to give users the most unique blockchain-enabled experiences. The product suite will undoubtedly expand and give game studios everything they need to succeed in web3.
While Shards is the first of its kind globally, it has proven itself in the first two integrations, showing the world that it provides a unique experience. Beyond that, with the momentum, support, and energy surrounding the Shards product suite, we are deeply excited to see what the future holds. See you out there!
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Cryptopolitan reporting by Brian Koome.
