YGG co-founder Beryl Li
Yield Guild Games (YGG) is a Web3 guild protocol that enables players and gaming guilds to find their community and discover games. It allows people to earn rewards by playing Web3 games and participating in the global decentralised digital economy. It has a network of gaming guilds focused on Web3 games, reaching over 7 million players globally,
The company recently launched Future of Work, a programme that matches AI and DePIN’s (Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks) training and growth needs with a global talent pool.
In this interview with e27, YGG co-founder Beryl Li shares more insights into the Future of Work programme.
Edited excerpts:
YGG started with the play-to-earn (P2E) model during the pandemic. How did this evolve into the Future of Work programme, and what inspired this expansion beyond gaming?
In late 2020, YGG spearheaded the P2E movement, allowing people to earn rewards by playing Web3 games and participating in the global decentralised digital economy. This was a lifeline for those locked down amid the COVID-19 pandemic and otherwise unable to work.
Today, YGG represents a diverse and globally dispersed decentralised community with extensive experience completing in-game tasks and quests for rewards. Gamers have an intrinsic desire to improve their skills, demonstrate achievement, and level up, reflecting their pursuit of mastery.
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As such, expanding beyond gaming into other emerging technologies that offer similar opportunities to learn, earn and grow was a natural progression for YGG.
In a press release, you mentioned that 1,000+ YGG community members have participated in Future of Work’spilot activities. Can you share more details on the types of tasks they’ve worked on and the impact these tasks have had on both participants and AI training?
In the last iteration of one of YGG’s questing initiatives, the Guild Advancement Programme (GAP), we introduced AI Bounties, a set of quests with our AI partners FrodoBots, Navigate and Sapien.
We successfully onboarded our community into these AI platforms through GAP, with 3,095 participants signing up for the quests. Questing adds a layer of fun to completing microtasks like data labelling. It challenges them to test their skills and reach milestones on these platforms while rewarding participants for their contributions. Above all, these activities are something they can do together as a community.
We are also partnered with Synesis One, another platform that trains AI models. It is opening up new types of tasks on its platform, and it started by working with us to deliver a pilot programme in which a small group of people were selected to complete a range of tasks.
For this group to be successful and provide helpful feedback, we needed to provide a level of training and upskilling, which we deliver through our onboarding and educational programme, Web3 Metaversity.
We are very intentional about the types of AI training opportunities we introduce to our community. We only partner with projects whose vision aligns with ours. Our partners are driven to democratise data and sincerely want to uplift our community and improve the world.
You also noted that human input is crucial for AI training. Why is it crucial? How does YGG ensure that its members’ contributions are valuable and aligned with AI systems’ requirements?
Human input is crucial to AI training algorithms and refining data sets. It is also crucial to AI labelling because it ensures the accuracy, relevance, and contextual understanding of data that machines lack.
Additionally, human input enables the continuous adaptation of AI models to evolving real-world scenarios, cultural sensitivities, and ethical standards. Likewise, in DePIN, resources like spare GPU or CPU capacity are in demand.
Gamification can be an effective strategy to encourage more people to contribute specialised knowledge for training AI models by making the process engaging, rewarding, and accessible. By incorporating elements like points, leaderboards, challenges, and rewards, contributors are motivated to participate in tasks like labelling data, identifying patterns, or correcting errors in AI systems.
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This approach transforms a typically monotonous task into a fun and competitive experience, attracting more participants, including experts in specialised fields. Gamification also fosters a sense of community and purpose, allowing contributors to feel that their input is valuable and impactful. Thus, it improves both the quantity and quality of the data used to train AI models.
YGG has a vast global network of gamers. How are you attracting non-gaming participants to the Future of Work program, and how do you help them transition into these roles?
Our community is always keen to try something new. We’ve already introduced our community to a few Future of Work partners through GAP and Web3 Metaversity, and we see a lot of traction from gamers trying out our AI bounties.
GAP quests and bounties are a great way to onboard the YGG community to new partner platforms while welcoming newcomers. GAP incentivises participants to explore new products from our partners by rewarding them with soulbound tokens (SBTs) and YGG tokens for every quest they complete. It’s a lot of fun for the community because they are working on their quests together while sharing tips and strategies to support each other.
The SBTs they collect enable them to build their on-chain reputation. Our community feels a greater sense of fulfilment because they understand that these are the skills of the future that will open them up to all sorts of economic opportunities.
We also have comprehensive education programmes to bring to our community at in-real-life (IRL) events. For example, Web3 Metaversity was a highlight at the YGG Pilipinas Roadtrip, where we travelled to six cities in the Philippines and onboarded new members to our Filipino community. We partnered with schools and universities to educate students on emerging technologies and teach them the skills they need to take on those opportunities.
How does YGG’s Web3 Metaversity equip its members for the future workforce?
To ensure equal access, YGG provides onboarding and educational guidance to its community members through initiatives such as its Web3 Metaversity programme, which conducts learning activities to equip community members with skills needed in the web3 ecosystem.
Participants hone their community-building skills through the programme, and our graduates can eventually pursue careers as community managers or moderators, events organisers, media analysts, content creators, and more.
Web3 is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, and there is a huge need for skilled and knowledgeable people to fill a range of roles. We aim to help the YGG community be in the best possible position to take advantage of these exciting new job opportunities and career pathways.
How has YGG’s Future of Work programme impacted the lives of participants, especially those in emerging economies?
Our collaboration with Web3 Metaversity has allowed us to empower people from remote places who may not haveaccess to all the education and job opportunities more widely available in the city centres. We’ve seen this in the Philippines, where locals from far-flung provinces would travel together in groups to attend the YGG Pilipinas Roadtrip, which visited five major regional locations, including Batangas, Baguio, Davao, Cebu and Bacolod, as well as Metro Manila.
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This demonstrates the great value our growing community attributes to the upskilling opportunities we can provide through our online and offline programmes and events.
As I previously noted, more than 1,000 people have participated in our pilot programmes. Each has had fun and earned rewards while learning in-demand skills in AI and DePIN. These pilot programmes are a springboard for participants to uncover more earning opportunities in emerging technology industries through YGG and beyond.
How do you see AI, DePIN, and Web3 technologies shaping the future of work globally? What role do you believe YGG will play in this evolution?
The popular sentiment around AI continues to be that it will destroy jobs and take away people’s livelihoods. Similarly, while we’ve seen tremendous progress in Web3 over these past couple of cycles, we are still quite early, and the industry continues to face scepticism and pushback. New technology may elicit fear and anxiety, but societal and economic advancement cannot be made without technological disruption.
YGG has always been at the forefront of emerging technologies. We’re cultivating a global community that doesn’t fear disruption but embraces it as the key to growth and progress. We are developing our initiatives to bring these opportunities to as many people as possible.
We want to show that while emerging technologies like AI may phase out some jobs, they will also create new and better ones.
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Image Credit: YGG.
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