Helô Passos, from gamer to CEO of Sp4ce Games.
Heloísa Passos de Sousa, Helô Passos, is today a reference in the gaming scene in Brazil. The reason? Vision and ability to overcome obstacles, one by one. Thus, it reached its most recent feat, the idealization and foundation, with two more partners, of Sp4ce Gamesplatform for blockchain games with non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The paulistana who went from gamer to blockchain entrepreneur got to know cryptocurrencies in 2017. The contact was through the developers of the credit startup where she worked at the time. The CEO of Sp4ce Games didn’t understand all the details of digital currencies, as she doesn’t come from the exact area, economics or finance. But she understood that there was something very innovative there.
But after a few years and with the evolution of blockchain to areas such as NFTs and games, his training in multimedia animation design with a postgraduate degree in management in creative economy, all from Belas Arte de São Paulo, fit like a glove.
“I was the first person in the family to go to college and travel abroad,” Helô told blocknews, which already indicates the obstacles you managed to jump. Throughout her career, she has had experiences as a creative director and consultant for important companies such as Magalu and Stone. And in her personal life, the co-founder of Sp4ce Games has always been into games.
By getting into cryptos after many people in the ecosystem, at first Helô had a feeling of not belonging. “However, that changed when I took over the space, studying, as they saw me as an authority”. The blockchain universe, she recalls, “is masculine and that’s difficult. Still, there are women doing great things.”. This tends to be a barrier to entry for women, as people “use to explore the territories where they can see each other more”, she adds.
Sp4ce wants to be an ecosystem for games
In this way, overcoming obstacles, it entered its current phase of blockchain games in 2020. This is because it helped to prepare the marketing material for the Nexus Class, educational project about cryptocurrencies, with Bruno Henrique. Structuring the business model, they looked at the game Axie Infinity, the most successful NFT project in the world so far and which exploded into use in 2021. “At the time, there was cardano (cryptocurrency). I liquidated everything and tested Axie”, recalls the CEO of Sp4ce Games.
Thus, they tested Axie Infinity’s play to earn system and the scholarship system (scholarships). In the current model, the player buys and then trades, sells, collects, or battles creatures that are NFTs. There are those who give away bags (the NFTs) to players and what they earn, they share the owners of the tokens. That was the model that Nexus adopted. And that was Helô’s entry into one of the most recent frontiers of blockchain.
Together, Helô and Bruno then created the Axie Infinity community, which ended up becoming the second largest in the world on Instagram. It totals about 30 thousand people. In size, it is second only to that of Vietnam, where Axie was born. Bruno continued with the scholarships at Nexus and Helô took over the management of the community. And decided to create Sp4ce Games.
The initial idea was to create a gamer ecosystem with a bank for the segment and initiatives such as a game marketplace and partnerships with stores, for example. But in the decentralized world the idea of a bank is not usually well accepted.
Now, Sp4ce Games includes a financial application to intermediate the user and an exchange to facilitate the financial settlement of tokens, which should come out of the oven at the end of this semester. In addition, it includes its own game, scheduled for launch in August, tokenization, education, scholarships and game solutions.
First blockchain esports team in Brazil
The venture began to get off the ground at the end of the first half of 2021. And in it, Helô has as partners João de Angeli, owner of Angeli Filmes. He also joined Alexandre Gonçalves, a partner at the Select investment fund, to whom he presented the project.
Select invested BRL 35,000 and Gonçalves invested BRL 400,000 when buying a stake in the Boom Bungers game. Helô started developing the game from a scientific initiation project at Belas Artes and is now part of Sp4Ce Games.
And how to monetize Sp4Ce Games right from the start? Again, for the bag system that Helô had already tested and approved with Nexus. In addition, starting the startup in this model allows you not to need big checks from investors, which can put pressure on startups in terms of launch time and revenue.
And so, to put the exchanges into practice, it created the first blockchain gaming e-sports team in Brazil. In the beginning there were 10 players, but now there are 35. The main team, which represents Sp4ce Games in competitions, is still ten people. Half are now women, as Helô tries to diversify her teams.
Now, the project already pays for itself with actions such as the exchanges for games like Axie and Tetham Arena, the mining of tokens such as the Gala game, sponsorship of the e-sports team and staking, that is, leaving a cryptocurrency in a protocol and receiving reward for it).
game diversification
The anticipated economic change in Axie Infinity, announced in early February, should not impact Sp4ce Games’ business model, says the CEO. The change provides for less token earnings and more focus on rewards for those who play in the arena. This is due to the fall in prices of tokens linked to Axie at the end of 2021, due to the excess of tokens on the market, the Smooth Love Potion (SLP), which players win. And that came after the game’s success sent prices soaring in the middle of last year. Axie’s NFT sales have now reached $4 billion.
“I never based Sp4ce Games on Axie because that would be basing my business on another business that is not ours.” So much so that in addition to other games, there will be proprietary Boom Bungers.
According to Helô, the need for the project to have educational actions and the financial application is due to the fact that many people do not understand the digital world. “Taking money from the wallet, sending it to the broker, selling it for dollars, reais, sending Pix .. is very complicated”, he says.
“We created a business model to promote the blockchain games ecosystem in Brazil and this took a proportion to not focus only on that. But on blockchain for people to play and participate in that world, facilitating access to the cryptoeconomy”, says the co-founder of Sp4ce Games.
She says that an app driver, for example, asked for information about the game. That’s because the neighbor was making money. Another, from Acre, won a PC from the community to play games and earn money. These are people who can be or become casual gamers, not high-performance athletes. But they can even walk towards it.
Internet for those who don’t have it and want to play
And as equipment without internet doesn’t solve anything, Sp4ce Games wants to help solve this problem. “If one of our businesses is blockchain games, we need to make the internet available”, explains Helô. For this, the startup wants to encourage the use of the internet network that startup Helium created here.
Helium is the first peer-to-peer (P2P) wireless network that rewards whoever becomes an operator. And it does so using blockchain. Through antennas, the hotspots, which are installed at home or in an office, it is possible to operate the network for devices with the Internet of Things (IoT). There are already antennas in Brazil, but they are few. Each one has a range of about 1 to 2 kilometers connected to the network and with validator nodes. However, the main focus is on businesses and markets in the United States (USA) and Europe.
With so many initiatives at stake, as Helô says, at Sp4ce Games “everything is very close to the goal”.