Folius Ventures: After the launch of blockchain game Gas Hero, several reasons to be bullish on GMT
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Folius Ventures: After the launch of blockchain game Gas Hero, several reasons to be bullish on GMT
Gas Hero, a Web3 game launched by the Stepn development team, appears to be a strong catalyst for the rise of GMT.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: MapleLeafCap, Founder of Folius Ventures
Translation: Felix, PANews
On January 3, Gas Hero, a Web3 game developed by the Stepn team Find Satoshi Lab (FSL), officially launched its public beta version. The game uses Stepn's GMT token and features its own marketplace and player voting system for decentralized decision-making. Since the game’s launch, the GMT token has surged, reaching a high of approximately $0.444. MapleLeafCap, founder of Folius Ventures, published an analysis explaining how Gas Hero could drive sustained growth in the GMT token. Below is the full article:
Note: Folius Ventures holds a significant amount of GMT tokens, and its founder serves as an advisor to FSL.
It has been four to five days since Gas Hero (GH) launched, and now it's safe to publish this piece—reality matches my model. GMT is reversing its historically poor issuance dynamics (daily sell pressure of 1–1.5 million GMT). Going forward, every additional 10,000 DAU (daily active users) in Gas Hero will lock up 1–1.5 million GMT per day at current prices. If Gas Hero scales toward 100,000+ users while maintaining current asset valuations, the FSL ecosystem could achieve daily locking of 15 million GMT, recreating the momentum seen from March to May 2022. With strong market expectations around this new game, I believe GMT can re-enter the top 25–75 crypto market cap rankings within 2–3 months, with a short-term price target of $1 (a 3x increase from current levels).
Current GMT Sell-Off Dynamics
Prior to Gas Hero, we estimated monthly GMT issuance at about 115 million, declining to 109 million starting in December. One-third was allocated to investors and advisors, one-third to the team and treasury, and one-third to M2E rewards. The team does not sell, advisor allocations are small, and treasury issuance is controlled. Thus, the primary sell pressure came from M2E (assuming 80% of 1 million issued daily is sold, with roughly half burned internally in Stepn, resulting in net sales of ~300k/day) and investor selling.
Before October 23, approximately 75% of GMT tokens received by private investors were sold. Including advisor sales, nearly 1–1.1 million GMT were sold daily.
Therefore, since March 2023, daily sell pressure averaged 1.5–1.6 million GMT (~$500,000). No wonder the GMT/BTC and GMT/USD ratios declined.
However, recent events have significantly impacted the GMT/beta ratio:
Since the start of a minor bull run in October, investor sell rates have slowed—from 75% previously to about 40%. Daily sales thus dropped from 1.6 million to 1.1 million. This directly improved liquidity conditions and positively impacted the ratio.
Additionally, around December 1, 20 million GMT were transferred from FTX to Wintermute—all completed before December 15. This added ~1 million GMT in daily sell pressure. During that period, the ratio was visibly suppressed but began recovering after the transfer concluded.
Assuming only 40% of investor-held supply will be sold over the coming months, we expect around 1 million GMT sold daily—but here we conservatively assume 1–1.5 million GMT in daily sell pressure.
Everything changed when FSL launched Gas Hero on January 3, 2024.
How Does Gas Hero Work?
In short, players must purchase BCV trucks and heroes to begin mining resources (which are NFTs, not tokens). Heroes can carry weapons and pets (providing stat buffs), all of which must be soulbound to enter battle (non-transferable once bound), and expire after 20–60 days (except Genesis Heroes—only 2,084 exist). All resources can be traded in the in-game market. There are three ways to obtain resources: farming (through combat), bidding auctions (buying directly from the system), and purchasing on the marketplace (P2P from other players).
GMT serves as the base currency for key functions (breeding, upgrading, etc.) and pricing across transactions (marketplace, auctions, prize pools). Crucially, 50% of GMT used for functional purposes is burned (the remaining 50% goes to FSL), 2% market royalties go to FSL, and 50% of auction proceeds split evenly between FSL and burn. These in-app taxes, combined with initial prize pool emissions, should drive massive GMT locking shortly after launch.
Typical casual players aim for ROI—recouping hero costs by selling mined resources on the market—while whales primarily compete for prize pools, which are awarded to PvP winners or regional officers. Winning PvP battles requires heavy investment in equipping hero squads. Becoming an officer requires similar setups in smaller regions, but larger regions demand increasingly large donations/votes. The prize pool equals the tax base of the Gas Hero ecosystem (i.e., taxes from markets and auction houses)—critically, Gas Hero generates no additional GMT inflation; it operates under pure net burning.
The economic design should show immediate effects. In the short term, new user inflows + reinvestment from existing users ensure ROI. Over time, whale spending aimed at winning prize pools = increased resource demand = sustains ROI for smaller players. Many repeatedly losing competitors effectively become “consumers” whose sunk costs fund everyone else’s returns. The success of Gas Hero hinges on:
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(a) Accumulating a substantial prize pool, potentially reaching millions of dollars
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(b) Continuously attracting (new) whale players who spend and compete
To some extent, if Gas Hero becomes a 100k–1M DAU game (all players sharing a global state + inherent social nature), the triple satisfaction of global recognition (fame), control over one’s faction (power), and meaningful financial rewards (wealth) should deliver a massive dopamine hit, surpassing any SLG game seen so far.
Its positive flywheel looks like this: Initial FOMO (current phase) → more new users and reinvestment → more transactions and taxes → larger prize pool → more PvP and donation competition + greater attention → more new users and reinvestment (loop continues).
Moreover, the limited lifespan of assets + veteran players restarting economic cycles continuously reduces excess capacity. Assuming relatively stable user attention and wallet share, oversupply + declining ROI can resolve over time (oversupply → lower ROI and prices → heroes die → reduced NFT output → prices rise if demand remains constant). New seasons mean rule adjustments, offering renewed hope and incentives for reinvestment.
With Gas Hero quickly approaching 10k users (currently at 65k) + internal test data + current pricing (all observable on Mooar), I believe the reward for becoming global champion could easily reach $200k–$400k—equivalent to burning 500k GMT per day + 1 million GMT locked by FSL daily. That totals ~1.5 million GMT removed from circulation each day. Current Dune analytics support our estimates. The first batch of prize pool supplies won’t enter the market for at least 14 days; afterward, meta-game dynamics (PvP + regular heroes expiring on Day 20) should further increase burn rates.
Future Outlook
Thus, GMT’s supply-demand balance shifts from a daily 1–1.5 million sell pressure to net “deflation.” As Gas Hero gains more users, this shift will accelerate. If it captures the same excitement that Stepn did from March to early May 2022, GMT burning could accelerate even faster. More users in Gas Hero = more burns = higher GMT price = more attention = more users. A bonus side effect: even Stepn + Mooar may gain additional DAU and increase GMT burning during this process.
I believe Western crypto funds are severely underexposed to GMT. I haven’t seen GMT mentioned in any so-called “game alpha” posts on CT. From conversations with most Stepn private investors, none are actively tracking GMT anymore—some don’t even know what Gas Hero is. Projects like this—still unknown to Western players, DPI-driven, stuck in “auto-sell” mode—are rare. Once Gas Hero captures Western attention, the flywheel should spin much faster.
When Gas Hero reaches 50k+ DAU and GMT price is sufficiently high, the top prize pool could reach several million dollars—that’s when things get interesting. No Web2 SLG game has ever achieved this (outside of game companies themselves, no one truly profits from SLGs). If the FSL team markets this well, the game could gain massive traction from traditional Web2 SLG communities and become the first breakout Web3 game of 2024.
GMT currently trades at $0.35 with a circulating supply of ~1.6 billion, yet its market cap is merely 1/6th of IMX and less than half of AXS/SAND/MANA/BEAM. GMT hasn’t gained much attention from the public test, but it will catch up soon (in my view, this is today’s best Asian game beta; we’ve worked closely with FSL on multiple regional game/app investments). Gas Hero’s launch provides both narrative and fundamental momentum (perhaps slightly ahead of schedule)—Western audiences need to recognize this story (just as Chinese users embraced SOL, or Western users loved Ordinals).
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