Drone Racing League to launch new play-to-earn metaverse game

Drone racing is a pretty interesting competition – though a very recent sport, it has a lot of fans and competitors that enjoy the bright lights, challenging courses and of course the experience of flying the drones in the first place. Despite being relatively new, drone racing is already taking steps to evolve further – in this case, onto the blockchain.

“Millions of fans love crypto, fintech and gaming, and we’re thrilled to partner with Playground Labs to create our first play-to-earn drone racing game on Algorand’s blockchain.” – Rachel Jacobson – DRL

The news of the new blockchain-based game that the Drone Racing League is going to release, came just on the heels of the completion of the finals of the Drone Racing League Algorand World Championship season. Completing in Las Vegas, talented drone racers competed around the T-Mobile Arena there.

The virtual element – the crypto game – will come later. In a partnership with Playground Labs, the Drone Racing League or DRL will build a game hosted on the Algorand blockchain in order to create first play-to-earn drone game in the world. No exact details about the game have been released so far, beyond what the theme of it is, and the parties involved in it.

Drone game of the future

The game will combine familiar DeFi and play-to-earn elements to create a whole drone racing experiences for players. In order to make this game a reality, the DRL signed a reported $100 million dollar deal with Algorand last September. That is also where the name for the current championship series came from – it’s called the DRL Algorand World Championship due to this partnership.

The crypto game isn’t the only way in which the DRL will be branching out – they have also announced plans to establish a sports betting angle to it.

“We’re building a roadmap of so many different things in the next several years. We have to know blockchain because we always want to be 10 steps ahead and first to market. We’re going to be Playground Labs’ crown jewel.” DRL President Rachel Jacobson said.

The company in charge of making the game, Playground Labs, is further affiliated with Hivemind Capital, who pledged last year to invest some $1.5 billions into a fund aiming to build blockchain projects including games, on Algorand.

Like many others, Algorand promises to be a scalable, effective crypto protocol. In other words, it attempts to be a better alternative for the main crypto gaming chain at the moment: Ethereum. Famously plagued by insane gas fees and slow transaction speeds, Ethereum doesn’t scale the way it needs to – so alternatives are cropping up. Algorand is one of them.

Only time will tell if this new title joins our best play-to-earn games list in 2022.