The 2021 GameFi bubble taught the sector one thing: When game assets are primarily seen as "get-rich-quick investments" rather than instruments of fun, speculators will ultimately ruin the ecosystem.

To remind you of what happened last cycle, here's the token charts of AXS and JEWEL:

These tokens got pumped to the moon by speculators who had no real interest in the game and who caused prices to crash once they extracted 95% of the financial value and left. Meanwhile, real players who bought the token got rekt because they held with the intention of using it to play the game.

In the end, sincere players got rinsed as pure speculators walked away rich, leaving behind a devastated ecosystem and a mob of angry bagholders.

And when the majority of players see their game assets/tokens fall -95% like this, it's over for the project.

Today, smart game devs have learned the lesson. They know pure speculators will destroy their game ecosystem and are taking every precaution to minimize price speculation of their game assets (especially tokens). They want their game assets to be an instrument of enhancing the game experience, NOT an instrument of "getting rich quick".

By the way, this is why the SHRAP token is designed to have no reliable means of profit. Unlike AXS (which was used to produce Axies to make money) or JEWEL (which was used in the gardens to make money), there is no direct way to make money with SHRAP.

The only sure way to make money with SHRAP is if the game becomes a hit and a lot of people participate in the UGC aspect. In this way, the price of SHRAP is aligned with the project fundamentals, NOT whether people can "make money" with the token.

Study the tokenomic structures of the biggest upcoming games and you'll find a similar theme. Game devs today do not want speculators to ruin their games, and understandably so.

Imagine you're a crypto game developer who spent the last 3 years grinding through the bear market with your blood, sweat and tears while the whole sector is continuously dunked on. You've endured tremendous pain, stress, doubt, ridicule, and the fear of going bankrupt the entire time.

By some miracle you beat the odds and create a game that people love to play as the bull market comes around and the price of game assets starts going up.

Which group of people would you rather reward?

Your team, seed backers, players and content creators who contribute to the game ecosystem?

Or the pure speculators who contribute nothing and just want your token to pump so they can dump it and get rich, and destroy your game ecosystem as a result?

The answer is blindingly obvious.

As a game developer, you want to reward those who provide ongoing, real contributions to your game ecosystem; Not to mercenary capital who just want to pump and dump your game assets.

This may seem like common sense but I can assure you - this way of thinking was not common at all back in 2021.