BlackPool Quarterly Report - Q4 2021

BlackPool is pleased to announce the release of the Quarterly Report for the end of 2021. It is a look at what we built, what we invested in and what we spent in the last quarter of last year, as well as what BlackPool is preparing to do in the coming year.

For the full report, have a look at this link.

BlackPool's Q4 2021 in Brief

• BlackPool’s Revenue accounted for over 530 ETH in the last quarter of 2021. Net earnings reached 411.5 ETH, marking a 77% net margin.
• The DAO raised $6M from all-star gaming VCs.
• BlackPool executed 15+ investments ($1.7M) in the most promising projects in the ecosystem, partnering with them and building long term relationships.
• As of December 2021, Assets Under Management represent 5,132 ETH, distributed across the main verticals and other investments.
• BlackPool distributed ~70% of the DAO’s revenue, representing 200,000 BPT of the 352,000 BPT staked over 7 months, corresponding to a 70% APR.
• BlackPool Treasury lies at slightly more than $9M.

For a more in-depth take, let's have a look below.

State of the BlackPool Treasury

During the last quarter, BlackPool's revenues have steadily increased, marking an average 50% growth month over month. The majority of the revenues came from the Sorare vertical, although we expect this to change in the following months, due to the implementation of automation tools for Scholars and the birth of other promising verticals.

Net margins over the last four months have been averaging at 70%, ranging from 40% to 90% on the basis of incurred costs.

The main costs items can be summarised as follows:

● Core Team Rewards: rewards for the team of 20 to 30 contributors
● Infrastructure: costs linked to running and maintaining validators and servers, and other infrastructure expenses
● Liquidity Incentives: Costs related to BPT incentivisation of the BPT/WETH liquidity pool on Comethswap

Assets Under Management

AUM accounts for the illiquid digital assets (mainly NFTs), which power different verticals. The total AUM has been increasing steadily during the last four months to over 5,100 ETH. Sorare still represents the biggest chunk of the AUM, with 3.2k ETH and around 60% of the whole.

• Assets: $8,892,171
• Deposits: $146,023
• Debt: $78,053
• Other Assets (LPs and LP tokens): 13,430

Now, let's have a look at the dominant verticals for Q4 2021 and what happened there.

The continued flow of positive corporate news and improvements attracted consistent new users to a platform that offers fun, a thriving in-game economy fuelled by strong demand and sustainable, attractive play-to-earn rewards.

With the exception of a slight retracement in player card values in April (after the market attracted influencer attention following their $50mil capital raise) consistently strong tournament performance, smart trading and general market sentiment combined to increase the valuation of our Sorare NFT cards by over double (in ETH terms).

If you then factor in the rise in ETH vs USD, this compounds the verticals return up to over 1000% for the year.

This year has been a volatile year for an emerging blockchain game. The vertical has performed well with our exposure to Axie steadily increasing via reinvestment of all yield derived from the scholarship model that we utilise.

We have seen a 10x increase in the number of scholars and changed the percentage share of scholars to factor in managers wages. The investment of Axies lands that were purchased also saw a similar multiplier at the ATH’s of mid-year and by year's end are still performing well based off of very conservative figures.

At BlackPool, Aavegotchi has been growing on us since this summer. We were impressed by the steady pace at which the PixelCraft team was unrolling its roadmap while catering to a stronger and stronger community.

We took  our first leap in mid-September, right after the Haunt 2 Raffle, investing up to 15 ETH into GHST, and buying as many portals as we could, while staking the rest of GHST to earn some FRENs for future raffles.

During the last quarter we partnered with the Aavegotchi team through a token swap of 66,037 BPT for 336,539 GHST.

Below, the breakdown about our current in-game assets:

The past year has been eventful for the Lab with many iterations occurring behind the scenes before being eventually presented to the public in October 2021. The idea was to structure the research around NFT projects to identify the most solid ones for long term implications.

Over the course of the year, over 80 projects have been scrutinised. Our team of experts looked into key aspects such as tokenomics, game design, team members and structure, community involvement, partnerships, potential for growth, etc.

Out of the ≈ 80 projects examined by the Lab, only 17 of them managed to convince our board of experts in one way or another, and 3 are still being tested. The community voted 2 of them, Curio Cards and Gods Unchained, both in collaboration with Lab. 6 have been voted by the Lab core team members and officially announced, namely Guild of Guardians, Aavegotchi, Big Time, Treasure, Metasoccer and CryptoPets. Another 6 partnerships have been secured but not revealed yet and 3 joined the incubator, Footium, Tiny Bones and Panda Dynasty!

The 2022 Perspective, in Brief

We look forward to 2022 and all the challenges, obstacles and opportunities that will follow. In short, our perspective can be summarised as:

• Continuation of investing in promising projects in the blockchain gaming and NFT spaces.
• Launch of veBPT, highlighting the strong financial innovation BlackPool is striving to push for in the blockchain gaming landscape.
• Implementation of a new in-house automation for onboarding scholars in the Axie Infinity Troop. The system has been built to be replicable and will be implemented in other Troops, as well.
• Reform of the current Scholarship model to ensure financial stability to our professional gamers and an enjoyable experience for all gamers within the BlackPool community.
• Bring more transparency and accountability about BlackPool revenues, costs and profits.

And that's it for this edition of the Quarterly Report, the full rundown of what's been happening at BlackPool last quarter with much more data attached is available at this link.