Congrats to the winners of the YGG Play Casual Degen Game Hackathon:

• 1st Place: Bank or Plank - 3D multiplayer board game

• 2nd Place: Dungeon Raising

• 3rd Place: Gas Wars - 2D Arcade Blackhole survivor

What’s Bank or Plank?

“The game features 2-4 players racing yachts around a lagoon to gather, plunder, and bank gold before a negative turn of events or the five-minute time limit causes them to lose their haul. With its high-pressure mechanics, the project successfully remixed familiar formats for a competitive crypto-native audience”

Sponsored by YGG Play

TLDR :

• Cambria introduces Dungeons

• RealGO raises $3.5M

• 93% of crypto gaming is dead (Caladan report)

🗞️ NEWS

CAMBRIA DEV UPDATE: DUNGEONS

• Yesterday, Cambria shared a new development update, covering Dungeons, Genesis (the full release), Islands, and much more. Let’s talk about it

• Firstly, there’s the new Dungeon feature, the next major release, coming to mainnet in May. Dungeons are designed to be “the first touchpoint a new player has with the Cambria universe”, a more accessible gameplay loop (short, understandable, streamable, and juicy) to attract a broader audience:

  • Deposit → get into a Dungeon → kill mobs → level up → find new gear → extract loot

  • The closest reference to the gameplay is “a cross between Diablo x roguelike dungeon crawlers”. Dungeons also borrows the best elements of Gold Rush (Luster, Stress/Sanity, etc.?), but with some key twists

    • Interesting to see this re-emergence of the dungeon-crawling genre within crypto (see Maze of Gains and Unchained). Arguably, one of the best formats for a risk-to-earn model

• Ben says: “key goal w/ design - distilling down best parts of Gold Rush loop into a sit & go experience, w/o the 10hr+ MMO ramp up time.”

  • The docs mention the key principles that shaped its design:

    • Built for scale (hard to solve, easy to expand), easy to onboard (“sit ‘n Go format”), streamable (short and punchy sessions), surprisingly deep (easy to learn, hard to master)

  • Since it’s built for streaming, Cambria will likely focus heavily on short-form (UGC) content to drive growth. We talked more about the topic in Sidelined Alpha 91

• The V0 of Dungeons won’t have PvP, but the team has plans to introduce Hardcore Dungeons in a future version: “a fast paced Dark & Darker-style PvPvE mode that is a winner-takes-all”

• Moving on to the development of Genesis, Cambria shares that the goal is to have Dungeons, Islands, and Gold Rush live inside a single world:

  • Gold Rush is becoming a “macro-PvP-centric experience,” centered on extraction and competition between groups of players and guilds. Part of its design will be a combination of a standard league + season-based structure:

    • “The intent is to give serious players fresh resets at the competitive level while also creating long-horizon progression tracks”

  • Historically, Cambria had a seasonal wipe model (with 0 progression carried over). In Genesis, some things will become permanent, changing the meta-progression of the game (we talked about seasonal models with Skarly as well)

• Furthermore, it’s worth noting how Cambria is approaching Island NFTs: “We think of continued Islands development as centered around enhancing the value prop of Islands as mini-communities inside of Cambria…”

  • So, Islands are becoming a deeper social retention layer for these mini communities to congregate and participate in a game (Supply Drives) that benefits them in the other parts of the game

• Lastly, there are more interesting updates on NFTs (incl. Cores), Renown, and more. But this segment is already becoming too long

  • It’s interesting to see the Cambria universe piecing together: Dungeons are top-of-funnel, the Duel Arena and Gold Rush are more in the middle, and Islands are at the bottom

REALGO RAISES $3.5M

• This week, RealGO announced that they raised over $3.5M in funding in an early investor and strategy round, backed by Animoca*, Cogitent Ventures, X21 Digital, Notch Ventures, and Becker Ventures to build out its “Meme 3.0 ecosystem bridging gaming and onchain utility for Meme IPs”

  • *I’m uncertain what round Animoca was part of, nor was I able to confirm the involvement of the VC through its social media channels

• RealGO is turning crypto-based memes into assets that can be “captured, collected, battled, socialised, and truly owned” through an AR + AI + Web3 lbs-game. Think Pokémon Go, but for memes

  • Players explore the world → capture meme pets (DOGE, PEPE, PNUT, etc.) → collect resources → battle → and earn rewards

  • Something that isn’t new in crypto, as we’ve seen with games like GenoPets, Coin Hunt World, SpaceCatch, and I would even put STEPN in that category of games

• So, why memes? RealGO aims to solve the gap that memes lack in tangibility and experiences that make them last. Turn memes “from speculations to participations”

  • Gaming is just a pillar of RealGO’s “Meme 3.0 infrastructure”, which the founder sees as a type of media that can educate Web2 users about crypto and memes, and onboard them

    • I do question whether RealGO is able to do so. Why would anyone play this game (Play Store) over Pokémon Go?

  • After watching an interview with the founder of RealGO at HK Consensus and on the Blockchain Game Alliance, it became apparent to me that this team is likely just oblivious to what’s actually happening, based on quotes like:

    • “A game should be fun first” (a classic 2022 - 2023 quote), “the gamers are still there (in crypto)”, and “our users are actually craving to get our tokens, not because they want to sell, actually because there’s a usage in game”

• Currently, the team is running a loyalty points program (airdrop campaign), in which players can earn 5% of the total supply of RT tokens. Points can be earned through in-game and social actions

  • According to its dashboard, there are 41K “active loyalty players” (S2 participants?), and the campaign is ending in 37 days

  • TGE is scheduled for Q2 2026 and will likely happen close after S2 concludes

• Overall, I don’t see this attracting a Web2 audience, nor do I see it being interesting enough for a crypto-audience, let alone meme-coin holders. But who knows, maybe I’m overlooking something, and their TGE turns out to be a success

“93% OF WEB3 GAMING PROJECTS ARE DEAD”

• Today, CoinMarketCap (CMC) felt the need to remind us that crypto gaming is “effectively dead” (93% of games). The headline comes from a Caladan report, stating that token values are down 95% down from 2022 peaks, and studio funding has collapsed by 93% by 2025. So, let’s get into the details of this report….

  • Daniel made a good point on the failure rate, questioning the methodology that resulted in the 93%, saying that ATHs are a hype metric, tokens can fall while game metrics rise, DAUs vary by genre, among other things

• The report starts by mentioning how $12 - $15B in VC capital and token and NFT sales have flowed into crypto gaming between 2020 - early 2026 (VC accounted for $8 - $9B)

  • Most of that (VC) funding came in in 2021 ($3.5B) and 2022 ($4B) in 2021 - 2022, and since then, funding has taken a nosedive ($0.36B in 2025).

    • What’s important to note here, but isn’t mentioned in the report, is that VC funding in traditional gaming also peaked during COVID, and has declined since

• The slide “The Decline Across Every Dimension” details how key metrics across funding, users, tokens, and capex, such as quarterly VC funding, annual funding, average token ATHs, gaming share DAU, and DAWs, fell significantly from their peak

  • Notably, 62.5% of all crypto VC investment in 2022 went to gaming, while in 2025, it only captured 7.2%, and capital moved to AI, RWA, PMs, etc.

• As mentioned, 93% of projects have failed, which are put into 5 buckets, each illustrated by a case study:

  • Pre-product capitalization, metaverse vaporware, unsustainable tokenomics (P2E), corporate governance failure, and perpetual development

    • Some of the taglines: “P2E economics required perpetual new capital inflows to sustain existing player payouts”, “hundreds of millions spent for virtual worlds with fewer users than a mid-tier Minecraft server”, and “Always building. Never shipping. A sector-wide pattern of scope expansion without product delivery”

  • You could make the argument that the failure rate in traditional gaming is similar. Which was surprising to me, considering that until a few years ago, there wasn’t even “a goal to shoot on” in crypto gaming

    • On the other hand, you could question whether this comparison is the right one to make, as the business model sustaining traditional gaming and crypto gaming (thus far) is quite different

• The report adds additional cultural signals of sector exhaustion, including:

  • Lily Liu’s quote about gaming on the blockchain (which backfired), Axie’s co-founder leaving, and the BGA 2025 Survey, in which 36% of professionals rank scams/fraud as the #1 threat

    • But the same BGA report says 65.8% of respondents have a positive outlook on the industry in the next 12 months

• Moving on to “what survived”, the report highlights what has worked, including Cambria, Pixels, and Web 2.5 Studios (Wemade and Fumb Games)

  • “Player retention for quality web3 titles has improved 35 - 45% monthlu, approaching web2 benchmarks of 40 - 50%. Gaming accounts for 25% of all dApp activity (up from 20.1%), but this is a growing share of a shrinking pie…”

• Lastly, the report states how there’s a disconnect between token price recovery and the operational reality of gaming studios, and whether this is an indicator of genuine re-emergence or another speculative cycle

  • Then, 5 variables are stated that determine the outcome of crypto gaming: game-first replicability, institutional publisher entry, Animoca Brands’ Nasdaq IPO, Web 2.5 trajectory, and token rally sustainability

    • For now, I question the impact of institutional publishers (“crypto AAA gaming is dead”), and on the last point, maybe the future of crypto gaming is less about volatile (utility) tokens

• Overall, the Caladan report provides an interesting overview of the sector. Even though you might disagree with some of the methodology, we can’t deny the hard numbers showing that the industry is starving, but we have to believe “the remaining 7%” will prevail:

FLASH NEWS

• SuperTrip (FPS game) is coming to Abstract

• MegaETH TGE on April 30

• Nectar AI (Love Island x AI) raised $5M and is now live on MegaETH

• Xeet is migrating to MegaETH

• GensoKishi Online (GENSO Meta) is returning

• Big Time’s new game, Pet Time, is having its first playtest

• The Beacon’s token is going to be BCN

• Ronin is coming home to ETH (migrating) on May 12th

  

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: Pebble Mayhem

Join our Telegram for daily updates & alpha as well: https://t.me/sidelinedco

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A new Waifu Sweeper Waifu Rush leaderboard event went live. This week, with 3 different leaderboards:

• 50x MP Waifu Rush: 250,000 energy (Top 3)

• 20x MP Waifu Slayer: 250,000 energy (Top 10)

• 2x MP Waifu Slayer: 150,000 energy (Top 30)

Start sweeping (with Waifus) today: waifusweeper.fun

Sponsored by YGG Play

TLDR :

• Limit Break launches Puzzle Panic!

• Pixel Heroes Adventure is shutting down

• Hytopia pauses development, awaiting a tax refund

🗞️ NEWS

LIMIT BREAK SOFT LAUNCHES PUZZLE PANIC!

• Last week, Gabriel Leydon surprised us with the announcement and (soft) release of Limit Break’s first title: Puzzle Panic! A 3D arcade puzzle (match-3) game for mobile, with a waifu theme, making for an “interesting” blend

  • It’s a novel approach to the puzzle genre, as JACL points out, calling the market for this game “puzzle-loving gooners”. But is there an audience for this type of game? The players of match-3 games are usually moms (70% female, 35-55+)

• It seems that Puzzle Panic! is an attempt to break this genre open to a younger demographic. Not only through the “motivational animations” (taking up 1/3rd of the screen), but with a game formula that feels more fast-paced and closer to the design of dopamine-infused gambling experiences:

  • A comment from Leydon: “Yes I studied L&W (Light and Wonder) very closely! We brought on talented pachinko effects artists in Japan to get the look right”

  • It’s worth noting that over the past few years, we’ve seen a broader trend toward the “goonification” of mobile games. NIKKE is a very successful example of that

• The game looks very polished (animations, effects, sfx, level design, etc.) and has apparently been in a playtesting phase for over a year. A handful of creators were able to play (under NDA)

  • Puzzle Panic! uses the waifus from the DigiDaigaku IP. This IP came together in August 2022 through a free mint, followed by an additional 17 NFT collections over the next couple of years

    • So, seeing people lose hope for “a game” to ever come out of Limit Break more recently wasn’t surprising. I also remember that there were some rumors last year of the company working on a gacha game

  • On the crypto integration of Puzzle Panic!, Leydon mentioned:

    • “For this phase, we’re focused on gameplay first. The current build doesn’t include Web3 features, our priority is delivering a great core experience and learning from real player feedback. In parallel, we’re continuing to build our infrastructure and upcoming testnet.”

      • The use of “current” here makes me optimistic that there will be a crypto integration at some point. My best guess would be something around the in-game collectibles, and it’s likely going to have an Apptoken

        • The question is: how can you leverage crypto here to enforce existing behaviors?

    • Limit Break has the funding (and so time) to take this slow and build something lasting here. So, I’m really curious about what they come up with, and if it can change our views on integrating crypto in games

      • Do note that the argument against Apptokens remains, as some perceive the tool as restrictive and against the ethos of crypto

• Overall, “the return” of Limit Break to crypto gaming is not something to be understated, considering a good number of people already wrote them off. If Puzzle Panic! can be a success (with a crypto integration) remains to be seen, but it’s a win the industry desperately needs

  • And, if someone of Leydon’s caliber can’t make this work, who can?

PIXEL HEROES ADVENTURE IS SHUTTING DOWN

• In more unfortunate news, we got a “shutdown announcement spree” this week, and Pixel Heroes Adventure (PHA) is one of these games. The Discord announcement says: “Due to unavoidable circumstances, our studio is shutting down, and as of today all members of the Z5 team have been laid off” (~10 employees)

  • Not many details were shared on the reason why, but we can assume that the studio ran out of money, right? Or is that the reason…

  • Z5 Games, the studio behind PHA, was founded in 2020. The game started as Meta Toy City, and was rebranded to its current name in May 2024

• Bearington (the founder) shared an update on Friday: “I am currently in discussions with multiple parties regarding a service transfer for Pixel Heroes Adventure to keep the game going”

  • Furthermore, there will be more details that will be shared on a refund: “Regardless of the outcome of these discussions, we will be accepting refund requests soon”. What will be refunded remains unclear at this point

• Interestingly, the studio was acquired by Nexus (Cross Protocol) not too long ago, in September 2025. As part of the deal, Kim (Z5’s founder) joined Nexus to oversee the tokenomics of its games

  • Nexus paid 3B KRW (~$2.2M) for the takeover, and Z5 became a subsidiary

    • Unofficial sources report (a Korean recruiting page) that PHA made ~$360K in revenue in 2023

  • As part of this acquisition, the game expanded from Ronin to Cross, becoming multi-chain. Just like Ragnarok: Monster World (ALPHA #72)

    • Post-acquisition plans included content expansions, new NFT systems, enhanced PvP, and a broader integration of PHA in CROSS’s other games. However, not many of these changes were shipped

• An article by Chosun on the closure of the Z5 studio sheds more light on the closure and some of the team’s “shenanigans”:

  • “There are suspicions that internal officials at Nexus and Z5 Games obtained information before the decision to terminate the service was made and sold a large number of MGT tokens and NFTs, etc.”

  • “Nexus officials said “employees who have already been confirmed to be involved in the transaction have resigned. It is planned to conduct additional investigation and action”.

• Furthermore, a (former) PHA ambassador, called Ramen, put together an extensive expose with his guild mates, which provides more details on insider trading, Z5 lying about developer-owned accounts, and more:

  • “Cutyboy, Flea, Dontkillme began to list PHA NFTs in the beginning of April 2026 suggesting frontrunning potential devastating news.”

• On a similar topic, Z5 admitted to manipulating its gacha roll system back in 2023, when the game was still called Meta Toy City. Showing that the company was acting “shady” for a long time

• It’s interesting to see how the core community stays loyal to the game till the end, which is a testament to the game’s fun. But it’s unfortunate to see that employees abused the game for their personal gains

HYTOPIA PAUSES DEVELOPMENT AWAITING TAX REFUND

• Hytopia was one of the other “gifts” that crypto gaming presented last week, as the company’s X account announced the following: "HYTOPIA is currently waiting on a large tax refund from the IRS. Without these funds, we are unable to continue covering the operational costs required to keep the project running in its current state”

  • Adding that they are “forced” to pause the infrastructure of the game, and services will be taken offline for the time being to reduce overhead. The expected downtime is 1-3 months

  • These issues also created an ongoing dispute with the HY Foundation (a separate entity) regarding unpaid invoices, resulting in “token-related activities” (e.g., token emissions) being delayed

• In a reply to the question whether HYTOPIA can make it beyond the “tax problems,” Arkdev (the technical co-founder) said the following:

  • “We tried really hard to raise more venture capital but no one in VC seems to want to touch web3 and/or gaming right now unless it’s a clear cex launched token for a quick ROI for them.” and “With proper capitalization, there’s still an opportunity. Without it there’s not a clear path forward”

• Interestingly, Temptranquil (co-founder and COO) also posted the following:

  • “If we don't make it through this tough spot with HYTOPIA. I'm going to release a long deep video on the history of HYTOPIA, including all the industry and community dirt.”

    • A strange thing to post as a founder? And telling that there’s more going on behind the scenes than we’re aware of

  • On the topic of “community dirt” (as in HYTOPIA doing the community dirty), Grail chimed in, pointing out how this team fumbled the bag, mentioning how the token and NFT pivots “rugged” all of the utility out of them:

    • “Three token name changes, 3 pivots in 3 years, 99% of all the NFT utility from each mint replaced with diminished versions or no utility at all”

• Temptranquil replied to Grail’s post, leading to an interesting back-and-forth about whether HYTOPIA acted according to the community’s best interests, or whether we all got played:

  • One of Grail’s main criticisms is the intellectual dishonesty behind the feasibility of their pivots: “The default was you guys would spin your wheels for a year, hit another dead end. Make a bunch of excuses, throw out another pivot and another mint, then proceed to do the same thing again.”

    • For context, HYTOPIA started as NFT Worlds in 2021, a blockchain layer on top of Minecraft, but had to pivot to building its own engine due to Microsoft’s NFT ban (Duncan wrote about it in 2023)

    • In 2023, it rebranded as HYTOPIA, focusing on becoming a UGC gaming platform (Minecraft x Roblox creator tools), which also came with the HYCHAIN L2

    • After years of trying to build an engine compatible with Minecraft, they scrapped the work and pivoted to a browser-based client in late 2024

    • In 2025, it changed its tokenomics, with the introduction of HYBUX

• Of course, the community isn’t happy about HYTOPIA “dying”, especially because their money largely kept the lights on. The 2024 node sale (as part of the HYCHAIN) raised a total of ~$8M. Furthermore, they raised $3M in a seed round in 2023, plus there were a couple of other paid mints

  • It seems the platform itself wasn’t making any (or barely any) money, because it couldn’t keep the lights on

• Overall, it doesn’t look too good for HYTOPIA here, and unless they raise (which seems unlikely), it looks like it’s “joever”, the tax refund aside

  • In a way, it feels like we’re in the last leg of shedding the dead weight of this industry. But the question is, whether anything remains…

FLASH NEWS

• The League of Kingdom Games and Arena-Z Network is shutting down

• OTG is planning a complete rework of its economy, marketplace, loadouts, etc.

• Xociety is pausing its live service and Web3 activities

• 77-Bit’s development is being paused indefinitely

• Gigaverse announced Gigling Racing, a high-stakes onchain racing game

• PUMPCADE announced a $5M seed round, just after closing a $1M pre-seed

• GameStop launched its new TCG (gacha) product: Power Packs

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: None

Join our Telegram for daily updates & alpha as well: https://t.me/sidelinedco

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As part of our liveshow Sidelined, we interview founders in crypto consumer (mostly gaming) every week. And if you’ve been reading this newsletter, you must be familiar with some of the quotes we shared from these builders over the last couple of months.

Today, we will be sharing the insights and sprinkling in some takeaways from two founders we spoke with more recently, including:

1. Payton (Kizuna)

2. Luke Barwikowski (Pixels and Stacked)

YGG Play is in Korea this week with YGG Star, where you can experience the Casual Degen universe live at JBK Convention Hall, including:

1. Live Waifu Sweeper Tournament

2. A GIGACHADBAT Challenge cage

3. Build games with Verse8

🗓 Saturday, April 18 | 5:30–9:30 PM KST

Sponsored by YGG Play

Payton Kaleiwahea

Payton is the co-founder and CEO of Kizuna, a new Discord-based analytics tool, “that helps community-driven brands convert audience into action, not just reach.” During this conversation, Payton shared his insights from years of community-building:

1. “Community…is the interaction between people, and that is also your responsibility as a community leader. Not for them to cling to you as the driving force, but also to push into relationships…”

   1. The strength of a community lies in the density of member-to-member connections. Not in the leader-to-member connections. For this reason, you want to create an environment where members form relationships with each other.

2. “You were part of the Bored Apes, but now you’re not part of it, because you don’t have this NFT. There’s a big issue within the NFT community, that it’s the only way to be part of it…”

3. “There are a lot of benefits of community that aren’t solely monetary: just drive KPIs down […] There are a lot of things within community that you can have, like marketing, ambassadorships, hiring pools, product-feedback loops…types of things that don’t really have a good connection to money or costs.”

   1. If you treat the community like a KPI, you will miss how it multiplies everything else.

4. This is where people have a hard time with Discord, because they just think of Discord or Telegram as a chat message platform, when in my opinion, it’s more like Gen Z email.”

   1. Using the Gen Z email framing helps you understand how to approach it: Discord = inbox, Channels = folders, Notifications = emails, Reacting to pings = open rate.

5. If you look at it (pinging users excessively) from an email perspective, you’re going to get blocked (muted). And your power over a person in terms of broadcasting things to them is now very low.”

Luke Barwikowski

Next, we spoke with Luke about Pixels’ new rewarded play platform, Stacked: “AI-powered rewards infrastructure”. During the conversation, we touched upon P2E, UA, growth, and more.

1. “Part of the problem (in response to extractors and spenders in Pixels being 98.8% overlapping) is the UA problem. A lot of crypto has not reached an audience of gamers, who are important, in addition to the people playing crypto games right now.”

   1. For your game economy to function, you need to attract an audience that is less EV-sensitive, and essentially “pays for fun.” Unfortunately, the data shows that there’s only a handful of players in crypto that play because of intrinsic motivations.

2. “If you go and analyze every game in Web3 […] Even in those that are doing $1M in revenue. There are maybe six spenders that that $1M of revenue […] It’s a shockingly small number of users that drive the spend in these games.”

   1. We have known for a while that the space has been held up by a small userbase of high LTV players. But if it is as bad as Luke says, that’s concerning. Especially considering the space continues to shrink.

3. “I’m strongly feeling that if we give people the option to cash out via PayPal or crypto. And PayPal, if it takes 1-3 days, and crypto is instant, I have a feeling that a lot of normal people will still choose crypto.”

4. “As a founder, it’s really easy to think that other people are wrong: ‘These people are wrong, there’s this thing that they should like’. That’s just not how the world works. You do have to build around consumer expectations. If you offer them something that surprises them, that’s genuinely better, that’s great, but if you try to force it down their throats, they’re just going to avoid the product in the beginning stages”

   1. If there’s a feeling that the user has to be educated a lot to understand the value proposition of the product. You’re likely building against consumer expectations instead of around them.

5. “Are they going to move the needle for the user experience and for Stacked as a company? The reality is: I’m not so optimistic about Web3 games right now. So, what do we really need for Stacked to work? One, we need our first-party titles to work well, or we need Web2 games that have the economics to fit this into”

   1. This was a response to how Luke is thinking about growth for Stacked, as the infrastructure can only be as good as the games being built on it. If Stacked can attract Web2 games and execute, this might spark an interesting wave of crypto gaming adoption through rewarded play.

6. “You can almost consider this thing they did (Cash App’s Cash Apples) as a playable ad […] These apps, do you know how much they pay per user? Their CAC is often $20 - $100, so if they give out $5 in rewards, and somebody new joins Cash App, because of it. That saves them so much money”

Closing

And that’s another week of gaining valuable insights from builders in crypto (gaming). We thank Payton and Luke for coming on the show, and look forward to having Jihoz (Ronin) and Kohei (Pandemic Labs) on later this week.

For more builder insights on topics ranging from growth to tokens to liveops, and much more, I recommend checking out “24 Lessons from People Actually Building Crypto Consumer Apps”.

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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GIGACHADBAT is introducing a new Degen Mode, exclusively for $CHAD stakers.

→ To access the Degen Mode, you need at least $100 of CHAD staked.

Start staking: Yggplay.fun

Sponsored by YGG Play

TLDR :

• Gunzilla Games didn’t pay?

• Giggles raised pre-seed funding

• (No third story this week, sorry…)

🗞️ NEWS

GUNZILLA GAMES DIDN’T PAY EMPLOYEES?

• A few days ago, a piece from Insider Gaming came out titled: “Developers accuse Gunzilla Games of not paying salaries for months.” The article details how both current and former employees have yet to receive salaries and how they have been ignored regarding more info on outstanding wages, according to LinkedIn posts

  • Employees who shared the “wrongdoings” held various roles, including talent acquisition lead, principal artist, senior QA engineer, and senior VFX animator, so it’s not as if entry-level employees weren’t being paid

    • The (now retired) animator shared in the Insider Gaming piece: “Gunzilla Games has not paid its employees for many months but still expects them to work. I have personally not been paid since October 2025. Some have had their pay delayed even longer.”

• Kate Irwin (former Blockworks) added how there’s more to the story, as she started investigating the issue last year after a dozen OTG game testers posted on Steam alleging that they weren’t being paid:

  • “When I was reporting at Blockworks, I spoke with 6+ different game testers in Ukraine who told me they were hired to play and find bugs in Off The Grid, but claimed they were not getting paid or faced weeks or even months of delayed payments.”

    • It’s important to note that all testers were hired through a third-party intermediary, and it remained unclear whether the payment issues were caused by this intermediary or Gunzilla

  • Interestingly enough, these posts on Steam were made almost 2 years ago, as Inhuman pointed out on June 14, 2025. Plus, there seemed to be delays in players receiving their Clash for Cash prizes (the daily $3,000 prize pools)

• In 2025, Gunzilla had two rounds of layoffs as part of its restructuring. The same year, they also acquired Game Informer to save the company. A business decision, which many, including myself, still cannot comprehend

• Yesterday, Vlad (CEO and co-founder of Gunzilla) responded to the “FUD”, addressing that OTG is doing well and why some payments were made late:

  • He claims that: “Every single day, 3,000 new players join OTG.” And they’re happy to set up a live dashboard with the player numbers to prove it (accessible with a 100K GUN, or ~$1,600)

    • The only (now) publicly available metric is the game’s Steam numbers, which peaked at 15,247 CCU 19 days ago and a 12,896 CCU 24-hour peak. Not much different from what their numbers looked like in the 1st week, so I assume most of their (supposed) growth comes from consoles?

      • OTG’s Steam CCU might even be “manufactured”. The game has also (purposefully?) delayed its mainnet migration for many months. We can guess why…

  • Furthermore, Vlad says that “haters” are spreading a false narrative of Gunzilla incorrectly laying off contractors and delaying payments, which he describes as a matter of “cashflow optimization”

    • Yet, their actions seemed more telling, as the talent acquisition lead’s payment issues suddenly got resolved

  • The whole message from Vlad reads bitter, boastful, it’s AI-slop (“Off The Grid today is not just part of web3 gaming — it defines it”), and desperately tries to prove they’re relevant today, instead of directly addressing the issues at hand and taking some accountability

    • I highly doubt any comms or PR person read this letter before posting it. Gunzilla, I recommend you read “Ilkka’s long texts” to understand how to put out a founder message

• Overall, I remain sceptical of OTG’s “success” and believe they handled this situation quite poorly. Wouldn’t be surprised if the studio had to shut down in the next 12 months either, because the math doesn’t math

GIGGLES RAISES PRE-SEED FUNDING

• This week, Giggles shared that they raised $1,234,567 (why? because memes) in a pre-seed funding round led by 1KX. A new social media app that combines short-form content with trading/prediction markets

  • With Giggles, all content becomes tradeable. Inside the app, you place bets on internet trends (buy shares), which you can then trade. You’re essentially investing in a meme’s viral potential, much like the X meme: “investing in this Tweet at 54 likes”

• Memes are viral moments in internet culture, and since Pump democratized launching memecoins, these moments have been “coinified” en masse. Giggles is trying to shorten the meme → memecoin loop of packing the essence of virality, memecoins, and owning a stake in internet trends into one (consumer) platform:

  • Giggles’ website says: “…the price discovery of all asset classes are becoming downstream of doomscrolling, and vice versa. With meme coins, we saw the emergence of a new social and financial behavior that have only captured <0.1% of its global potential.”

• The founding story of Giggles is “interesting” to say the least. According to the TechCrunch article, the idea started as a joke, a meme about a replacement for TikTok, a platform that wasn’t real at the time. One day, one of the founders made a landing page for a fake app, which managed to accrue 100,00 visits in one day. That’s when Jin called his friend Wang to build the app (the co-founders)

  • An innovative way to find PMF before building anything, I suppose?

  • Both founders are less than 20 years old. The two started working together as Minecraft YouTubers with a dropshipping business, and later had businesses in media + a food deliveries

• The beta for Giggles launched in August 2025 and accumulated over 150K users so far, with 10,000 videos posted. In the next few weeks, there will be a public launch, with over 400K waitlist signups. This will be the first time users will be able to start trading with real money (instead of the “Aura Points” currency)

  • According to SensorTower, Giggles had fewer than 5K downloads on iOS last month

• Unfortunately, the founders of Giggles made the mistake of launching a token early on. In May 2025, the GIGGLES token was launched on Believe to kickstart the idea for the app. But last December, it was decided to sunset the token, now trading at ~$40K market cap

  • At the time, a snapshot was made of the existing holders, and the team burned their own tokens, meaning that there might be a (proper) future token launch in the books

• We’ve seen similar projects to Giggles, like Zora, that blends social media with tradable “creator or content coins” in which users bet on internet memes and share the upside. However, Zora focused more on crypto users, while Giggles is targeting the consumers (e.g., it saw much of its initial growth in American colleges)

• Overall, I think Giggles has an interesting consumer angle. Yet, succeeding with a new social media platform is no easy task

FLASH NEWS

• Animecoin is launching a collectibles (gacha) platform powered by Phygitals

• Kaito Studio’s first content contest is in partnership with Axie Infinity

• In S1 of Rugpull Bakery, players got $76,000, but $173,000 was spent on GAS fees

• My Pet Hooligan shared the tokenomics for its HOOLI token

• Chandler Thomlison (founder of Sparkball) says it’s time for the next chapter

• Atia’s Legacy playtest #2 is now live

• bRON is now live in Moku’s Grand Arena (+ an airdrop for eligible players)

• Fishing Frenzy announces chapter #3, focused on going after new audiences

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• Early Games: None

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We’ve entered the bear market. Your portfolio is in shambles, and it’s not only your (“worthless”) altcoins that are suffering. Your majors are too. Gaming isn’t exempt from this massacre, as the total market cap of gaming (according to CMC) has nearly reached the bottom of 2023 of ~$5.9B in January. In comparison, the total market cap of crypto since then is up roughly 2.8x.

With that in mind, it’s time again for another update on what new tokens have popped up recently, specifically in Q1 2026. The goal is to get an overview of what tokens have launched, how they have performed, and what we can learn from the data.

For reference, we will use some of the 2025 EOY token data shared in Sidelined Alpha 79 (December 2025). Do note that the price data has been updated to make an accurate comparison for the new TGEs in 2026.

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Q1 2026 Overview

As you can see, the number of TGEs in Q1 2026 is low, with only 10 new launches. Because of the size of the sample, the findings might be surprising (skewed) in comparison to 2025, but it’s also telling of the reality of the market.

Overview of the data:

Number of Launches

As said, there were a mere 10 launches (N) in Q1 2026. In comparison, we had over 2x as many N in Q1 2025, with 23 new tokens. However, we’ve seen an ongoing downtrend of N from Q3 (N=28) to Q4 2025 (N=17), and Dec 2025 (N=3) specifically, as a result of the worsening market sentiment and conditions.

Regardless of whether market conditions determine a TGE’s success, they clearly influence projects’ willingness to launch, resulting in a decline in N. Probably not a surprise.

Furthermore, using the data from 2024, we can get a broader picture of how N is slowing down:

• 2024: (N=100) | Q1 (N=19)

• 2025: (N=87) + Q1 (N=23).

• 2026: (N=?) + Q1 (N=10)

Average Performance

The average performance of gaming TGEs in 2026 is -73.6%. This is based on the opening price of the tokens according to CMC, Coingecko, and DEXScreener. So, do note that these differ from token listing prices (in the case of listings on CEXes).

Previously, I have used X-day market cap/market cap ATH to measure performance. However, the above measurement is a more accurate presentation.

Nonetheless, the numbers are similar, as the average drawdown of all TGEs in 2025 today is -80.5% (based on the old methodology). Do note that over time, a dozen or so tokens have been deprecated (e.g., listing has been removed). Moreover, a significant number of tokens have close to zero volume and so retain their value, because nobody is either buying or selling.

The largest enemy of these token charts? It remains to be time.

Average Market Cap

The average market cap of Q1 2026 TGEs is a mere $6.5M. This number is also inflated by Moonbird’s BIRB token launch, which is more of a “brand token” than a gaming token, yet should be included in this list, due to its business in gaming. When excluding BIRB, the average market cap is $2.4M (-63%).

The average market cap at the EOY for all TGEs in 2025 came out to be $19.6M. Today, that number has shrunk to $11.5M (-41%). Excluding the top 5 tokens (by MC), that number further shrinks to $3.4M (-70%). In combination with the median only being $0.47M, it illustrates how top-heavy the distribution of tokens is.

Top 20 Tokens by MC

After merging the 2025 TGEs with 2026 and only displaying the top 20 tokens by MC, we get the following overview (2025 = blue, 2026 = red):

The bar chart shows the dominance of tokens that were minted in 2025 compared to 2026. Thus far, 2026 seems to be underperforming in creating new “winners”, but considering the bearish market conditions, that isn’t surprising.

Larger projects in terms of revenue, investments, and users (e.g., OpenSea) are also often more hesitant to launch in bearish conditions, because they want/need a higher opening valuation. Of course, this is much more difficult to achieve in bearish than in bullish market conditions.

Average 24H Volume

The average 24h volume of new tokens is $0.98M. As shown in the chart below, volume is dominated by BIRB. When excluding BIRB, the average becomes $0.35M (-64%). Notably, 5/10 tokens on this list have less than $1,000 in 24h volume. These include a combination of projects that already failed (e.g., CASH and CROWN) or completely flopped (e.g., WC).

Unfortunately, the average volume for gaming TGEs in 2025 isn’t (and wasn’t) looking great either. At the EOY, the average was $14.9M, but today it’s only $1.9M (-87%). It’s important to add here that these numbers were heavily skewed by the outliers, as by excluding the top 5, the respective 2025 numbers are $1.34M (at EOY) and $0.85M (today).

Top 20 tokens by Volume

We can merge the 2025 and Q1 2026 data and get an overview of the top 20 tokens by volume (2025 = blue, 2026 = red):

Despite the lower number of new launches (i.e., less competition), new tokens still struggle to attract liquidity. Likely, both a result of the lack of liquidity in the market right now, and the lack of appetite for (new) alts, including gaming tokens.

Conclusion

Based on the data, we can make the following conclusions:

• The market cap of gaming continues to shrink

• New TGEs slowed down due to worsening market sentiment

• Time remains the worst enemy of any token

• 2026 isn’t creating new “winners” thus far

• Trading volume is a better indicator of reality than market caps

• Trading volume is down as a result of less liquidity and a lack of appetite for alts, including gaming

Overall, it’s a bunch of “doom and gloom” (like usual…), and I believe not only the market environment, but a handful of other factors and trends will slow down the number of new TGEs this year.

The Slowdown of Tokens

In 2024, we saw 100 new gaming tokens. In 2025, there were 89, and in 2026, I think there will be fewer than 50. This development will be multifactorial:

• The first reason is the most obvious one: there will be fewer games that’ll launch in the first place. Over the past two years, much of crypto gaming’s “dead weight” has been shed through failures. And there are simply not that many teams left developing games that have yet to launch a token.

• The “TGE massacre”, as laid out in the previous sections, will start to make more teams reconsider whether they need a token or can adopt stablecoins instead. Or at least, makes teams battletest their systems with a stablecoin before introducing their own token.

• On a similar topic, I foresee more teams adopting “game-branded stablecoins”, like Gigaverse’s GIGABIT and Apptokens (like bAXS) to gain greater control of the in- and outflows of a token. This will lead to a decrease in traditional (utility) token launches.

• Another development that I believe will lead to less traditional token launches and larger stablecoin adoption is the increasing need to go after audiences outside of crypto. For these audiences, playing to earn a “digital dollar” (e.g., USDC) makes much more sense than playing to earn tokens named after tickers they’re not familiar with.

• Lastly, there will be consolidation, as the larger gaming companies (with sizeable treasuries) will seek other builders to build in their ecosystem, on their infrastructure, in an attempt to revitalize their tokens, e.g., Pixels and Stacked. This means more games will integrate existing tokens, and fewer will launch their own.

Overall, token fatigue has peaked, so I see fewer new tokens being launched as a net benefit, instead of an indicator that the space is dying.

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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TLDR :

• Pixie Chess annouces $5.2M raise

• Pumpcade raises $1M

• KTTYWORLD is shutting down

🗞️ NEWS

PIXIE CHESS LAUNCHES AND ANNOUNCES ITS RAISE

• Pixie Chess, “magical chess for real money”, announced it raised $5.1M in a round by Paradigm (the big P) with participation from Seed Club and a handful of angels. The announcement was made just before the official game release (you can try it out now)

  • I believe the round was closed in 2025, as they have been in talks with Paradigm for every 2 years now, according to the founder, Joshua Harris. Harris used to be a former entrepreneur-in-residence for the firm

• So, what’s Pixie Chess? It’s a spin on the game of chess. Instead of the traditional rules, the chess pieces have certain abilities (different movesets, knockbacks, resurrection, etc.). There’s also an element of collectability to it:

  • Every day, new pieces with special abilities are auctioned. The funds from these auctions are then used to fuel tournament prize pools. However, the catch is that you have to burn a piece to activate them and enter to earn your share of the pool

    • Players can enter with more pieces (depending on the tournament) to increase their chances of winning, but at the same time, this increases their cost of entry. It’s essentially a risk-based pay-to-win mechanic

  • “The Bouncer” piece, for example, is around $20 now. Other than buying specific pieces, players can open Mystery Packs (gachas) to earn a random piece. According to the website, 1279 pieces (10.6 ETH) have been sold so far today

• Tournaments run every day, in different sizes (players and prize pools), and have different rules. The largest tournament so far, the “Silicon Prix”, had a 2 ETH prize pool with 42/256 players, and funnily enough, was won by someone with the name Magnus Carlsen

  • I don’t think it’s the real Carlsen, one of the best chess players in the world, but it’s funny nonetheless

• If you’ve been around in crypto gaming, you also know that the “chess 2.0 pitch” isn’t new. Remember Anichess? The idea is very similar, although the execution is different, as Anichess uses a spell-based overlay and resource-management, plus it isn’t as financialized

  • Anichess went for the approach of opening up the genre. They have big partnerships, including Chess.com, Magnus Carlsen has a stake in the company, and they tried larger Web2 GTM efforts

  • Pixie Chess’s approach rather focuses on the degen and plays into the emergence of financial nihilism. From the founder: “Pixie Chess. It carries the elements of a game, but that game is a language for financial warfare”

    • Additionally, in the 11/AM interview, I didn’t get the impression that Pixie Chess has any Web2 GTM plans

• On this topic, Chev, the founder of Anichess, shared that the two will be collaborating through Anichess pieces and tournaments

• While I see the viral potential of streams and clips, with chess and stakes on the line. I still have some concerns about why this wouldn’t take off:

  1. Onchain users are “lazy”, and most of the CT-focused games that have taken off are idle or require low time-investment. Chess has so much depth to it, and introducing these new mechanics increases complexity. It requires time, effort, and understanding to get good at it

     1. At the same time, you don’t appeal to the more serious chess players, because the ruleset kind of “kills the purity” of the game

     2. DUPER is a game that is in a similar genre, but it never took off because the game is too complicated

  2. Because of the stakes at hand and the available tools, the game will trend toward fully agentic play, I believe. Even if the new pieces add elements of randomization, chess is (theoretically) solvable. Playing as a human will put you at a disadvantage, which means the incentive to risk your assets this way will go to zero

     1. This will suck most of the fun out of the game, and only the players who want to play the game of optimizing their AI will remain

• A cool and exciting product, but can it scale? I’m uncertain

PUMPCADE RAISES $1M IN A ROUND LED BY PUMP.FUN

• In other news today, PUMPCADE (PC) announced they raised $1M in an oversubscribed round led by Pump.fun with participation from Foundation Capital and Radio Salace

  • Less than a month ago, Pop Punk (the founder) won $250K in the Pump Fund Hackathon. Pop shared that right after he won, he was able to raise: “Within a matter of days, I filled this round with massive oversubscription... WITH A LIVE TOKEN”

• PC has an interesting founding story, as it started with a one-man team (Pop Punk), only 6 months ago through Pump.fun streaming. Originally meant as an “autonomous arcade” (a game controlled by a livestream chat), it evolved into a “new model for prediction markets”

  • The prediction markets (PMs) on PC are fast (60 sec to 30 min), instantly resolvable, and internet-native. It essentially works as a layer that allows users/creators to embed a PM on any type of stream, whether that be gaming, sports, politics, etc., on various platforms

  • Interestingly, Pop Punk left his job as an engineer at Limit Break to pursue his then side-project full-time. The trading fees he captured from the $PUMPCADE token managed to fund the project (i.e., pay him for his time)

    • Pop is also a great example of the founder-first marketing approach

    • Similarly, we talked about how Pandemic Labs managed to build its first game using trading fees through the “ICM-model”

• PC uses a “parimutuel market model” in which all predictions go into a single pool, all you need is one bet on both sides, and winners split the pool pro rata. This is different from Kalshi and Polymarket, which have longer-to-resolve predictions that require order books with deep liquidity and market makers

  • From Radio Salace, on the raise: “It is hyper-focused on the long-tail side of the market - the fast-paced, embedded, micro-duration predictions on anything. Literally, anything.”

• During the 11/AM show, Pop Punk shared how PC’s format plays into the rising degeneracy and shrinking attention span of the audience: “ Prediction markets need to get faster.” and “ They want an instant gratification, they want their dopamine receptors to get hit like as many times as possible in a short time period.”

• How does PC work? From a high level, it works as follows:

  • Install the browser extension → create a market → predict while watching → timer hits 0 → market pulls data from API to verify result → automatically resolves → users that won can claim rewards

  • Either the creator/viewer can create these makers. And I believe there’s a fee split for the maker as well, creating an incentive for creator adoption

• A few months back, there was this prediction market based on when iShowSpeed and Kai Cenat would finish their Minecraft marathon. Now imagine these types of markets, but they resolve every 60 sec to 30 min

  • It adds a financial layer and so a stake for the viewer, increasing their engagement

• PC rides a few interesting narratives at the same time: pms, financial nihilism, and streaming. Sounds like a recipe for success to me, and I look forward to the product finally going live

  • I have to add here that I have held some PUMPCADE tokens (NFA) since November

KTTYWORLD IS SHUTTING DOWN

• There’s also some unfortunate news today: KITTYWORLD (KW) is shutting down. According to the Discord announcement, the underlying reasons are the changing landscape of Ronin, the lack of opportunities, and the underperformance of RON, which affected their balance sheet

  • “When we started, Ronin was around $2. Today, it sits closer to $0.08 representing roughly a 96% drop which has had a significant effect on our balance sheet and our ability to sustain the project”

• KW was a developer of “the next economic layer for Ronin”. It was building infrastructure for digital economies. The flagship product was the RONHUB (released in Dec 2025), an aggregator of the games on the Ronin Network, including project discovery, token and NFT analytics, trends, insights, apps, and more

  • Frankly, much of this information and functionality is already provided by the Ronin Wallet. So, I wonder what people used the platform for

  • Most of RONHUB's functionality was free, and it didn’t seem to have any strong monetization mechanisms. It reminds me of DappRadar, which had to shut down in November last year, due to a lack of ability to monetize sustainably

• KW has a token called KTTY, which launched in February 2025, on the Ronin-based Tama Meme platform (shut down in July 2025). Holders were able to use the token for discounted mints, staking, and there were plans for in-ecosystem spending

  • In January 2026, they sunset the KTTY utility as they shifted their focus toward the RONHUB. I assume because it hindered their ability to monetize

• KW also has 2 NFT collections:

  • KTTY World Tamers is a 6,666-supply collection that was launched in April 2025, minting at 45 RON

  • KTTY World Companions is a 10,000-supply collection that was launched in October 2025, minting at 35 RON

  • There was a “game” attached to the NFTs as holders could stake them in return for materials, reputation points, and rewards

• Outside of raising through the launch of the token and the two NFT sales, KW didn’t raise capital. Going off the Discord announcement, it also seemed most of the company’s treasury was held in RON

  • I don’t believe they had much capital to work with in the first place, but to me, this seems like a case of poor risk management

• To add, there’s some interesting lore (beef) between KW and Cagy. A few months ago, after joining Ronin through his project Silly Kitties, he claimed that he was “met with intense and at times malicious treatment from the kttyworld community” to the point where they returned a $20K grant from Ronin

  • In November, he mentioned it was because of “recent backlash from some Ronin builders and community leaders” that they gave up the grant. They returned it to avoid favoritism

  • Were people upset because another “cat-centered project” received a grant?

• Overall, it’s unfortunate to see another Ronin project bite the dust. The space hasn’t been forgiving lately. However, is it surprising? In hindsight, it doesn’t, as KW simply didn’t have PMF

FLASH NEWS

• Golden Tides addresses its move away from crypto

• Fishing Frenzy is teasing a new update

• BGB shares founder insights on key metrics for sustainable web3 games

• Onchain Heroes launched World’s Eve

• Decentraland is now live on Epic Games and Google Play

• Fugz announced it is moving the Genesis collection away from Abstract

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: Pussycat

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In the past few weeks, you have probably seen a take like Ico’s on your timeline about “CT being dead”. Crypto posts are getting less engagement, various crypto accounts have pivoted to AI, and more worrisome is the lack of retail. While the latter is influenced by the bear market, the institutionalization of crypto and lack of “dumb money-generating events” (NFT-cycle, memecoin-cycle, etc.) play a role as well.

If you’ve been paying attention to crypto gaming over the past 2 years, you can also sense the disappearance of retail and the shrinkage of CT through the participation numbers of P2A campaigns. In 2023 - 2024, it was “easy” to attract 10s of thousands of players (and bots) to a campaign, but from 2025 and beyond, it’s hard to attract more than a couple of thousand players.

The audience that “lives onchain” isn’t growing, and it seems growth inside of CT is exhausted. The next pockets of growth for crypto (gaming) will be found outside of this bubble. So, where does that growth live? I believe it’s short-form content on the normie platforms (primarily TikTok).

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The Old Playbook

When I talk about short-form content and crypto gaming, your mind might wander to the (yet) unsuccessful examples we’ve seen from a handful of crypto games that have already tried with this format.

A glaring (and painful) example of this was AOF Verse’s TikTok strategy, which included building a library of short, relatable, and relevant videos centered around their character “Frog Pikeman”. This frog accrued millions of views, which led to millions of likes and followers.

Other crypto games, which achieved similar numbers, include:

• Gigaverse

• Superchamps

• SuperTrip

These examples all used similar character IP-building strategies (except SuperTrip) to amass engagement. However, the more important question is: What does this brand awareness lead to? The videos don’t have any reference to the games that are tied to these IPs. You can’t capture interest in a game without showing gameplay. I.e. no funnel captures this massive amount of engagement and translates it to game success.

Introducing more game-focused content after building a following around a character is an option. However, the chances that someone who likes your character also likes your game enough to go through the hoops of playing it seem slim. It seems like a backwards process of trying to find your audience in an audience you already established.

Even though the costs of generating these videos are going down significantly with the usage of AI, it remains a costly operation, with seemingly little ROI. Unless you reach a large enough scale to subsidize production costs with creator payouts.

Pudgy Penguins

It’s important to note here that this is different from why Pudgy Penguins is doing it, the one who coined this strategy (in crypto). For them, an IP-building strategy with a focus on brand awareness makes sense because it’s one of the first touchpoints of the Pudgy IP, which can translate to an interest in a range of consumer-facing products later down the road.

Pudgy doesn’t directly advertise Pudgy World on its page, but the plushies in Walmart and Target have QR codes on them with in-game redeemables that might convince fans of the brand to try out the game.

I want to add here that Pudgy’s page did start to advertise its products more on its page recently, but these are collectibles, merch, and board games. I.e. products that make much more sense to market towards an audience that’s a fan of your IP than a game is.

The “New” Playbook

The “new” playbook isn’t actually a new way for apps to market themselves and convert views into users. Traditional (mostly tech) apps have been using it for years now, and in 2025, this form of advertising saw significant growth (popularized by Cluely). However, seeing it work inside crypto is new, and only started rising recently with the success of Polymarket and fomo.

This video taught me a lot when I started learning more about the topic:

So, what is this playbook? It’s about UGC-ads. With this approach, creators don’t post content on their own accounts, but under brand-owned ones that resemble them. All they do is make (“organic”) content in the brand’s vein. The videos (or technically ads) need to feel like someone is genuinely sharing this app, in a way that a friend would text you.

As part of the UGC-ads, the viewer shouldn’t be able to detect that it’s an advertisement, because if they do, the video loses credibility and will be turned off. From an ethical standpoint, this is tricky because they’re technically a paid partnership, but “game is game”, I suppose?

Here’s an overview of some of fomo’s UGC-ads:

According to the co-founder of fomo, the platform has added an average of 3.3K users per day in 2026 (with ~900 being funded). He says that “probably most of these users” are coming from social platforms through referrals. Important to add is that almost all the accounts in the above example have referral links in their bios, which the creators actively use for the CTAs.

Fomo’s revenue numbers, according to DefiLlama:

Crypto Consumer

For years, there’s been a limiting belief and stigma that apps in crypto can’t scale beyond CT. But that idea is finally starting to crumble with apps like fomo (essentially Pump-fun with a better UI and UX) becoming a breakout success. It’s about positioning and applying crypto-based solutions that everyday people (consumers) care about. I.e., instead of talking to crypto nerds, you need to be relatable.

And don’t forget, that consumers are just as degen as we are:

High-level Approach

From a high level, here’s how the UGC-ad approach works:

• Establish an ideal customer profile (ICP)

• Find a hook that works (steal and repurpose from your niche)

• Find a network of creatives

• Systemically test and post on TikTok and Instagram

• Double down on the winners

• Push winning formats through partnerships with larger creators

In writing, this playbook sounds easy, but the difficulty lies in the execution side of it (note: I’m still actively learning about it myself). According to my research, getting good results requires rigorous testing, finding the right creators, actively evaluating them, etc. If you want to learn more about the nuances and execution side of it, I can recommend this video by PlayKit.

The Playkit Report

The System Behind 10M+ Views/Week

Before you dive in…

Listen now

3 months ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · Julia Pintar

Paraphrased from the video: “Treat UGC as an operating system, not a one-off creative project. The bottleneck is not “finding viral creators.” It is sourcing, briefing, reviewing, incentives, publishing, feedback, and tracking working as one loop.”

Applied to Crypto Gaming

There isn’t a crypto game that has figured out this playbook yet, or at least I’m not aware of it (let me know if you have seen it). What we can do is look at examples in adjacent niches, such as rewarded play platforms, like KashKick, Snakzy, Swagbucks, and others. The videos talking about these apps frame earning as “making money while being on your phone”.

In a similar vein, here’s a semi-viral example (600K+ views) of somebody playing Cash App’s Cash Apples game (essentially a P2E game). See how different this piece of content is from a typical video on crypto gaming. Have you ever seen so many emotions from someone earning a single dollar?

@realkatiebCash Apples will be live March 23rd - March 25th 4pm ET daily! @Cash App

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If I were to figure out a “consumer angle” for Cambria, for example, I would start by looking at formats and hooks used in performing YouTube Shorts of OSRS’s Duel Arena or in high-stakes PKing. Consumers aren’t familiar with terms like “Risk 2 Earn”, but they understand the gravity and thrill of risk and reward. Just look at the popularization of watching gambling and gacha (soft-gambling).

Any crypto game out there has a similar Web2 title that one can learn from. And the winning formula might be found in combining the best of two worlds.

Frankly, I think the biggest appeal to push crypto gaming is still through the lens of financialized entertainment. But that doesn’t mean growth shouldn’t be tested with different hooks, formats, and value propositions that are less money-focused and in line with your ICP (strategy games → strategy aspects).

Note: The average gamer is more anti-crypto than the average consumer. This is still a hurdle to overcome.

“Adapt or Die”

If I am being blunt and dramatic, it’s probably not an option anymore to solely focus on CT for any game that seeks beyond a couple of thousand players (games like Maze of Gains are the exception). This is also not new, and something people have been shouting for years, but only now we’re starting to see the urgency of it, due to the shrinking TAM (of CT).

Whether short-form video content focused on (non-crypto) consumers can be a viable growth strategy for crypto gaming remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it’s something you should start experimenting with.

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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A reminder to join the Verse8 x YGG Play Casual Degen Game Hackathon.

How to participate:

1. Vibe code your game idea to life on create.verse8.io

2. Publish it with the #YGG tag

3. Submit your game on BuidlHack 2026 Ludium Portal before April 16th

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TLDR :

• Psychedelic Games raises $3.5M

• Verse8 raised $5M in a Seed round

• Rugpull Bakery launches on Abstract

🗞️ NEWS

PSYCHEDELIC GAMES RAISES $3.5M

• Psychedelic Games (PG), the makers of Golden Tides (GT), announced they raised $3.5M in a strategic round by KRAFTON (PUBG), FlyQuest, and Arbitrum Gaming Ventures

  • According to the SEC filing data (Form D), this was an equity deal

  • PG started in 2021 and has largely been operating as a self-funded studio. Only in 2024, it held a private + public NFT sale (more on this later)

• One of the investors, FlyQuest, is an esports organization that worked with championship teams across LoL and Valorant, among other titles. The partnership between them and GT extends beyond capital in a long-term collaboration through competitive expertise and a creator network

  • So, it looks like breaking into the competitive scene will be a larger part of the game’s GTM. But it’s quite different from your usual MOBA…

• GT is a pirate-themed 4v4 MOBA “that breaks the genre wide open” through open-world exploration, dynamic objectives (treasure hunting), naval combat, and deeper progression and player agency. You can watch the Golden Test Playtest Trailer here

  • "The MOBA genre created some of the most beloved competitive games of the past fifteen years, but the formula has grown stale…" ~ Devin Richman, CEO at Psychedelic Games

    • I don’t think GT will appeal to the hardcore MOBA players, but it can to the more casual ones. Additionally, the “adventure” elements (open-world, treasure hunting, etc.) of the game open it up to players of other genres like BR and extraction, and pirate-themed games (e.g., Sea of Thieves)

  • The game reminds me of Sparkball, which is also an innovator of the MOBA genre, and it only raised funding after years of being bootstrapped

• PG claims to be an indie studio (on Reddit at least), but the team is larger than someone would define as an “indie” with 50+ (previously even 70+) developers. Leadership is based in the US, in Dallas, Texas, but it seems they largely outsourced development to Asia (Indonesia or China, I believe)

  • Frankly, it would also be impossible to build this game with a “shoestring budget” in the US

• Regarding the crypto side of the game, there is an NFT collection that was launched in 2024, but the game “shifted away from their focus” on crypto:

  • The Golden Tides Gen1 Skins is an 11,000-supply collection that minted in March 2024. There was a private sale for communities and KOLs with discounted pricing. Golden Packs sold for 0.09 ETH each (containing 3 heroes) during the public sale

  • These NFTs will be cosmetics in the game, but won’t have any value beyond that. Some people expected a token allocation for holding these NFTs. However, the team clarified that “there will be no earning nor tokens”

• Overall, I’m happy to see Psychedelic Games raise to bring a cool title that innovates on the MOBA genre to life. However, is this still a “crypto game”? Not anymore

VERSE8 RAISES $5M IN A SEED ROUND

• In other fundraising news, Verse8 announced they raised $5M in a seed round backed by Story Foundation, NEXPACE, Neowiz, MARBLEX, and NEXUS to accelerate the expansion, creator tools, and creator growth of their AI-game development engine

  • It was notable to see NEXPACE (makers of MapleStory Universe) on this table, and I assume this investment was part of the $50M Ecosystem Fund they announced in late 2025, focused on AI, builder tools, and UGC

    • This is likely part of their ecosystem expansion strategy of getting more Synergy Apps (derivative MapleStory experiences)

• So, what’s Verse8? It’s an “AI-native creation layer that turns your ideas into interactive games and stories”, closely connected to Story Protocol. Through this partnership, Verse8 kind of functions as the AI-game creation frontend, while Story is the onchain IP backend

  • As we’ve seen with its competitor Remix (more on this later), becoming a co-creation and IP proliferation platform is one of the major ways to grow. So, there seems to be a lot of synergy here with Story

  • If you’ve been reading Sidelined, you must be somewhat familiar with Verse8, as we mentioned it a couple of times, as part of the news + we have mentioned the “Casual Game Hackathon” with our partner YGG Play a couple of times, including today

• According to Verse8, it achieved the following numbers so far, since its stealth launch in July 2025: 3.5M+ MAUs, 5,000+ monthly active creators, and 25,000+ games created

  • Growth is driven by initiatives such as its creator partner program, Kaito Guild + build challenges, a points campaign + referral program, and its IP partnerships

    • Remix reports they have 954K total players and 29K live games in comparison

  • I assume that the funding that will be used for “creator growth and creator tools” is their lever to get more creators on the platform/convert more users into creators

    • What I’m curious about is whether there will be any strategy for Web2 growth, through a creator or short-form content strategy. There’s definitely a larger market for these AI tools than just CT

• But let’s put my “sceptical hat” on for a minute and look at the defensibility of these platforms. The tech is cool, and the tooling is probably only getting better from here, but at this point, both platforms are simply churning out hypercasual titles and not much more. I’m unsure whether this genre can work (monetize) in crypto (excl. direct games of chance/casino-adjacent)

  • So, you have to go Web2 to monetize (through ads mainly) and scale, but to compete in this space, you’d have to spend heavily on UA

  • To add on to this, these tools will likely become democratized in the (not so far) future. So, the only moat that’s left is distribution and UA. Do note that this puts Verse8 in a stronger position, as they have an (Web2/3) IP-pipeline

• Overall, it’s great to see Verse8 gain initial traction, but again, whether the platform (and business model) can succeed is something that remains to be seen

RUGPULL BAKERY LAUNCHES ON ABSTRACT, BUT…

• Just yesterday, a new title launched on Abstract called “Rugpull Bakery” from Onchain Chemists. An onchain game about collective strategy in which you’re tasked to bake the most cookies with your clan

• The game loop works as follows: Join or create a bakery (clan) → start baking cookies (onchain) either manually or automatically → reinvest cookies to buy (temporary) boosts to increase output or “rugs” to hinder the competition → at the end of the season, the best clan divides wins the prize pool (distributed pro rata among members)

  • Important to note here is that you pay a gas fee for every cookie you bake. With the “auto-cooking” feature, this can rack up a good amount of fees quickly, around $10-$15 an hour

    • For this reason, people have already started calling it a “transaction farming app” (it probably already crossed 1M transactions by now). A delicate subject within the Abstract community, after recent changes to XP put more weight towards onchain transactions, and nerfed holding

  • There’s a referral mechanic that rewards the referrer with a +1 cookie for every 20 the referred one bakes

  • The prize pool started at $2,500 and grows each time a new clan is created or someone joins a clan (0.02 ETH fee). Today, around 14 hours later, it climbed to $5,955

• I played around with the app for a little while myself, and while the app is “cute”, I lost interest rather quickly. It (kind of?) positions itself as a Ponzi game (it’s literally called “Rugpull Bakery”), and it’s mostly idle. The gameplay features that try to introduce depth fall flat. But then, the earning potential is far from a Ponzi-like game, so what is it trying to be?

  • Let’s do some napkin math on the earning potential. At the moment, the clan that’s in the first spot, “Cockring Cakehouse” (S/O to Skarly), has 271 members. Furthermore, a season takes ~14 days, and let’s assume that at the end, this clan hits ~500 members, and the prize pool reaches $50K

    • If my fictional contribution to the total of my clan is 1%, it means I earn $500. That means, I need to reach a 1% contribution rate by running my bakery for a maximum of 40 hours, assuming $12,50 in fees per hour (40 x 12,50 = 500). And it also means that my bakery (clan) needs to win

      • At this point, I might as well play other games of chance on Abstract

  • Other napkin math says it’d cost you ~$6,048 to run your bakery 24/7

• Rugpull Bakery uses the IP from three different NFT projects on Abstract, including RUYUI, Fugz, and Bearish. However, surprisingly, both Bearish and Fugz reported that they didn’t permit the usage of their IPs in the game

• Lastly, I’d add that Abstract has been under a lot of scrutiny lately, and whenever “shit happens,” an already unsatisfied community will shout how “terrible Abstract has become”. When/how will ABS win back its community?

FLASH NEWS

• Wildcard launched its WC token, but it’s already trading under a $1M MC

• Volt is now live on Ronin, a TCG collectibles platform for SEA

• Proof of Play launched its new title, Shiba Story Go!

• Abster released a new game on Abstract called Dropster, but did an “oopsie”

• Anichess’s CHECK token is getting listed on Coinbase

• Pixels officially introduced the Stacked App

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: None

Join our Telegram for daily updates & alpha as well: https://t.me/raidenalpha

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“Also, gaming on a blockchain is not coming back”.

This QRT came from Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, in direct response to Meta announcing the shutdown of the Metaverse. CT’s reaction was a mixed bag of agreement, confusion, and thankfully plenty of pushback.

But before we dive any deeper into Liu’s controversial take, let’s get into the headline itself: Meta’s decision to shut down the Metaverse. Was it actually important to crypto gaming? And if so, by how much?

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What’s the Metaverse?

When you hear the word “Metaverse”, you might think about The Sandbox, Decentraland, or any other empty virtual world that raised significant amounts of money through the sale of “digital land” in 2021–2022. Outside of crypto, people will probably think about Facebook and how it was renamed to Meta.

Here’s how Matthew Ball, one of the largest investors (and shillers) of the Metaverse, described the term in “The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, and Who Will Build It”:

“A massively scaled, interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an unlimited number of users, featuring an individual sense of presence and continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, and payments.” ~ Matthew Ball 2020

Crypto’s version of the Metaverse never achieved the vision described above, and frankly, traditional gaming didn’t either. Ball’s description was simply “hopium”. However, that’s not to say that Roblox is probably the closest title to the idea of the Metaverse we have ever had. Ball often describes Roblox as a foundational example of a Metaverse platform, rather than a complete Metaverse in itself.

How does the Metaverse tie to Crypto Gaming?

While the Metaverse and crypto gaming aren’t as connected anymore, the industry gained footing based on this idea in 2021–2022. At the time, Zuckerberg described the Metaverse as the “embodied internet” in which everyone would use AR/VR devices to be connected, changing how people interact with each other and the world.

Much like the (dystopian) state of the world in WALL·E, or more in a VR/AR context in Ready Player One.

The Metaverse as the future would also mean one’s “digital being”, which I describe as a persona and its possession, would be incredibly important. So, how does someone, seeing the gravity of the importance of this shift, bet on it? Digital real estate.

The pitch (in crypto) was simple, and along the lines of:

• Obtain full control and ownership of a digital piece of land

• Monetize the land by building games, casinos, shops, events, social hubs, etc.

• Land is scarce, with only X amount of plots with location-based value

• There will be a secondary market to tie in economic incentives

Decentraland was one of the first to successfully commercialize this opportunity, as it raised $26M through its ICO and first sale of digital land in 2017. This was years before Zuckerberg used the word “Metaverse” publicly.

“Decentraland provides an infrastructure to support a shared virtual world, also known as a metaverse.” ~Decentraland’s Whitepaper in 2017

In a sense, Decentraland was one of the frontrunners of the Metaverse cycle that followed (note that the term “Metaverse” is 33 years old and stems from a book called “Snow Crash” from 1992). This fact adds to the idea that crypto gaming is deeply connected to this movement.

Other projects, early to the sale of digital real estate, were Cryptovoxels (now Voxels) and The Sandbox. In 2021, after “The Zuck” legitimized the Metaverse, retail barged in, and these sales exploded. Examples include Axie Infinity, Otherside, Star Atlas, Bloktopia, and many others. Primary sales of virtual land exceeded $1B.

Today, now that the Metaverse has “fallen” (and frankly been dead for a couple of years), it’s comical to look back at the mania behind it. The tweet from Peter Girnus below is a great shitpost with a good amount of satire, capturing the irrationality of it:

“A guy in my Discord paid $2.4 million for a 618-parcel estate in Decentraland. Prime district. High foot traffic. I asked him what "foot traffic" meant when the platform had 38 daily active users.”

The Metaverse was the largest driver behind speculative capital entering crypto gaming to date (and to be frank, we can largely attribute the success of NFTs to it). Yet, today it’s a burden. Even though the industry moved away from building empty virtual worlds with hefty land sales, the two are still closely associated in the eyes of (non-gaming) crypto and retail. We’re essentially fighting against the stigma of still being the same “multi-billion-dollar-fugazi-real-estate-fiasco.”

Was the Metaverse a good thing?

This brings us to the next chapter of this conversation: would crypto gaming look better or worse today if the Metaverse cycle were not happening? Let’s look at both sides of the argument.

Financial Bubbles → Misaligned Incentives

A financial bubble is a period in which asset prices detach sharply from their intrinsic value and are driven instead by speculative demand. The gap between these two prices is the “speculative premium” that accounts for the potential future value of that given asset.

The euphoria behind the Metaverse led to a huge wave of speculative capital flooding in, long before the underlying idea, product, or asset class had proven itself (found PMF). We saw this with the astronomical increase in the prices of digital land in 2021–2022, even though the worlds themselves were boring and empty.

The fact that these soulless experiences were able to raise $10Ms through retail and/or venture capital created a huge incentive for other projects to turn to a land sale, without having to care much about game development. To hop on the bandwagon, projects started to frontload sales, years before they could realistically release a playable product.

A good example of this is The Otherside’s Otherdeed sale, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars in April 2022. The persistent live version of the game only launched in November 2025, over 3 years later. Have you ever met someone who likes to play the Otherside without being financially incentivized?

Rippling Effects

This funding spree of venture capital (as shown below) not only reached the Metaverses but also expanded to the whole sector of “GameFi”. For instance, I believe that Axie Infinity never would’ve achieved the size it did without the Metaverse. Note that the term was thrown around loosely as well, as any virtual world could be considered a Metaverse if you looked at it from the right angle.

A couple of years back, it was relatively easy to raise a sizeable round ($5M+) through only a pitch deck if you used the right cluster of buzzwords. We all know now how much of that capital was put to use to push this industry forward (close to 0%).

“Zombie Companies”

Companies like The Sandbox still have considerable treasuries, simply because they raised such enormous amounts of capital through venture, NFT, and token sales. Many of these projects are now operating more like mini hedge funds, trading off their own balance sheets rather than building games. Daniel Paez described them as “Zombie Companies”.

Reputation Damage

As mentioned, crypto gaming as a category and term is still fighting the stigma of “empty worlds, capital misallocation, and scams.” A recent experiment by Luke Barwikowski (CEO of Pixels), which I mentioned in this newsletter before, illustrates how much friction crypto introduces.

Furthermore, one can sense this negative connotation by reading through the reviews of the majority of Steam pages for crypto games. Even though the pages don’t mention the words “crypto” or “NFT”, players will often find out and center their review around its connection to blockchain. I would add that it is the worst with PC games built for Western audiences, as in the example of Off the Grid.

Metaverse Funding made Crypto Gaming Possible

An argument in favor of the Metaverse being a positive outcome for crypto gaming is that the bubble-sized injection of funding justifies its existence as a category today. Without the Metaverse, billions of this speculative money wouldn’t have flowed into (adjacent) projects, infrastructure, and tooling that keep up this industry today. Investments that sped up the adoption curve.

The strongest example of this would be Sky Mavis’ $152M round in late 2021 at a $3B valuation. Without the success of Axie Infinity, fueled by the broader Metaverse wave, this wouldn’t have been possible. This money was later used to develop Ronin. Even if you question Ronin’s existence today, you can’t downplay its overall importance in contributing to what crypto gaming is today.

Note: while the upcoming P2E can be attributed to a mixture of novelty and timing (during Covid), its existence is closely tied to the Metaverse. Axie Infinity didn’t lead with it, but embraced it, and used the label in their own words as part of their GameFi positioning.

Furthermore, there are still a handful of studios building today that were only able to raise because of the trickle-down effects of the Metaverse funding spree. Even though we have yet to see most of these “survivors” make a notable contribution today, and this cohort is shrinking, it’s “the last stronghold” of crypto gaming.

Overall, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that crypto gaming would be considerably smaller if it weren’t for the Metaverse. But I’m sure people would disagree with me here.

Funding → Attracts Talent

The billions of dollars poured into the industry legitimized it, which attracted bad actors, as mentioned, but also talented developers from Web2. Despite many of these teams’ contributions being “unfruitful” (e.g., Homa Games, Ubisoft, Pirate Nation, a handful of Korean and Japanese legacy studios, and many more), there are still teams with veteran gaming experience building here today.

Additionally, headlines such as “Ubisoft is the First Major Gaming Company to Embrace In-game NFTs” helped to grow the pie of Web2 developer interest by making them look at what’s going on in this industry.

Expensive “Learning Money”

Another way you could look at Metaverse funding is as expensive “learning money”. The funding came in at a speed and scale that organic growth couldn’t ever have replicated. Post-crash, the failures were so enormous and obvious that the industry was forced to confront what didn’t work (note: to what degree some of these learnings were applied is another matter). Similar to how other bubbles have led to breakthroughs in R&D.

Some of the largest areas of learning include:

• Incentive design

• Tokenomics and game economies

• UI and UX

• Crypto-abstraction

• Scaling

Crypto gaming is a “graveyard of failures.” And without these failures (accelerated by the Metaverse cycle), I believe the industry wouldn’t have progressed as far as it has today. It forced technical innovation.

The Bottom Line

If the Metaverse cycle had not happened, crypto gaming would likely look “less big” but “more credible” in 2026. Here’s my interpretation of it:

• The Metaverse hype justified crypto gaming as a category, attracted talent, and forced technical innovation. However, it did so by funding and publishing many projects that had misaligned incentives, which led to a reputation we’re still dealing with today.

• Without the Metaverse cycle, crypto gaming’s path would likely have been slower, P2E would’ve been much smaller, but there would be less self-inflicted pain as well. In this scenario, the outlook for the industry would’ve likely been better.

“Also, gaming on a blockchain is not coming back”

Now, we’re back to where we started, with Liu’s (infamous) quote. We looked at what the Metaverse is, what it means for crypto gaming, and what it would look like today without its existence. So, let’s address Liu’s commentary that focuses on what’s beyond.

I don’t know whether her post is rage or engagement bait or whether she actually believes this. Nor do I understand the incentive or need to shoo away and discredit game developers on Solana. However, for our own sake, we can reframe the statement into: “Gaming on a blockchain as the only value proposition is not coming back” (I stole this, but can’t find a source for this quote anymore, sorry, anon).

So, what can we look forward to when it comes to crypto gaming in a world where the Metaverse is now (completely) “dead”?

The Financialization of Gaming

When speaking of the future of crypto gaming, there’s a view in which gambling and gaming don’t disappear, but rather continue to converge.

At first glance, this sounds similar to the Metaverse cycle, a future that’s still driven by speculation. However, the key difference is that speculation was the product. In the next wave, it becomes part of the experience, designed to enhance the experience, rather than replace it.

In response to Liu’s post, Beanie replied with a contrary view, which included the following quote: “Got a secular gambling tailwind. Financialization of gaming is a mega trend.”

This points to a broader shift towards more speculative, risk-taking, and betting-like behavior (long degeneracy!). In this context, crypto gaming is aligned with this trend to become the “frontier of financialized entertainment”.

The difference is in what gets financialized:

• The Metaverse financialized land (assets)

• P2E financialized time (grind)

• The next wave, financializes behavior (from bug → feature)

But why gaming? When looking at gambling (-adjacent) products such as prediction markets, memecoin launchpads, and perpetuals, we see a common behavior. People continue to use these products, not because they’re winning, but because they believe they can win (believe they have an edge).

Statistically speaking, if every user churned after the 1st time of losing money on Pump Fun, the platform wouldn’t have any users left. Prediction market traders are also losing their stakes at a higher rate than sports bettors.

My point is, the fun lies in the competition to make money, not “only” winning money. And this doesn’t even mean the most rewarding, but the loops that make this competition engaging, skillful, repeatable, and socially meaningful. Gaming is the best wrapper to capture that competition.

From Ben in his piece “The Thesis For Degen Gaming”: ”With financialized entertainment, there’s no obligation to create any tangible value outside of the fun, especially since the underlying economics of these products are zero-sum, by technical nature (wHo iS ThE mArgINAL buYeR).”

I recommend reading Ben’s thesis if you want to read up on a compelling bull case for gaming’s position within financialized entertainment.

Rewarded Play

One of the clearest examples of the above already exists, just not in crypto.

“Rewarded play” is a form of financialized entertainment that’s (eerily) similar to P2E, but lives in Web2. In Web2, this mostly looks like: play 5 different games and reach certain milestones, watch a couple of dozen ads, and when you have enough coins, you can convert them into a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

It’s financialized gaming at its core, but in a controlled environment. The rewards are capped and predictable, giving the developers a clear picture of what the return is on the reward spend (but in this case, ad or partner revenue).

Since the hook of crypto gaming is virtually the same (but better), my thesis is that this is “the” potential pocket of growth for crypto gaming to expand to the normies.

A recent example of “rewarded play” we discussed in detail is Cash Apples, from the (non-crypto) wallet app Cash App. After the second day of the game being live, it had to shut down since 350K players tried to get in (the game has since relaunched). Cash App could’ve given away $500K in rewards through many ways, but perhaps they believed that a (simple) game would be the most engaging format to do so.

The TAM of normies that would play to earn something (with a dollar value) is much larger than that of crypto gaming. And again, they’re both P2E. Yet, crypto gaming’s stigma lingers here and has limited its growth in Web2, as shown by the aforementioned experiment of Pixels.

Furthermore, Ben shared the following with us from a Sidelined interview in November: “Crypto is almost like a bad word…to a lot of people, it means Ponzi scheme”. He added that at this point, Cambria isn’t a “crypto game” anymore, and now has to use terminology closer in line with real-money trading (more familiar to the OSRS audience).

Blockchain “Solving” Gaming

On the other hand, we have the view of the underlying blockchain tech pushing adoption for crypto gaming. Within this view, the value will largely shine through in solving existing macro challenges in the broader gaming sector.

A “return to the fundamentals,” as one might say:

One of the major unlocks is blockchain-powered payment rails. In short, these rails reduce the costs of transacting, which improves margins for the developer and, in turn, leaves more money for development or UA.

Furthermore, token rewards have proven to reduce CAC and increase LTV (LTV > CAC is essentially “the gaming success formula”), plus boost engagement and retention numbers. For example, Bitcoin Miner’s 30-day retention rose by 1,000% after adding BTC rewards to the game. ZBD’s reward rails increased the ARPU of PlayEmber’s games by 380% on D14. While this area is exciting and promising, it’s not fully solved, yet, as many games still struggle to achieve a positive return on reward spend (RORS).

From our interview with Ethan (Arbitrum Gaming Ventures) on the topic: “When developers see […] hey, I’m building a product, and I’m building it on Web3, I can “make more money”. Because there’s more margin, it’s more efficient, it’s cheaper, I think that has to be the focus that blockchain can solve for gaming…”

On the topics of Bitcoin Miner and payment rails, the Lightning Network enables developers to pay out sub-1-cent nanotransactions, something that simply isn’t possible through traditional fiat rails (and the majority of blockchains).

Other primitives include solutions such as LimitBreak Apptokens, a programmable token standard that gives developers more influence over how their tokens behave. With Apptokens, developers can set customizable rules for how a token is earned, spent, or sold, creating more intentional and balanced economies. I won’t go into it too deeply here. You can read a piece I wrote last year called “Apptokens: The Answer to Solving Broken Incentive Structures?”

On a similar topic, there are stablecoins, which function like Web2 currencies, but with some added benefits (and some downsides). A core challenge with traditional game tokens is auditability, as these systems aren’t built to answer how tokens were created, how they were spent, who touched them, and who used them. Stablecoins on the blockchain provide this source of truth. We talked about “BGA’s Stablecoins & Gaming Report” in the newsletter below.

The Convergence

Overall, the fundamentals are more about “Web2.5 solutions” than something that is purely Web3 or aligned with crypto’s decentralized ethos. Yet, it isn’t an opposing vision of the “financialization of gaming” view. I see them as complementary.

Financialized experiences will drive demand, while better infrastructure and economics (“the guardrails”) will make that demand sustainable. The Metaverse failed because it had the former without the latter (note: neither did it have the products).

The next wave of crypto gaming will be financialized differently, as explained by this section of Dith’s article:

Conclusion

So yes, Liu is right in the sense that the old “empty world + land sale” (Metaverse) version of crypto gaming isn’t coming back. But that doesn’t mean the whole category of “gaming on the blockchain” is dead. It’s simply changing.

The next wave of crypto gaming will be defined by financialized entertainment that’s actually entertaining, yet wrapped in infrastructure that makes economic sense for both players and builders.

The Metaverse made crypto gaming possible and gave it life, but we’re still fighting the stigma from this period. Now, we need to prove that blockchain-enabled gaming can be more than what the Metaverse showed.

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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TLDR :

• OpenSea delays its SEA TGE

• AlphaTon acquires a majority stake in GAMEE

• Azuki’s TCG: Gates Awakened

🗞️ NEWS

OPENSEA DELAYS SEA TGE

• Devin Finzer, the CEO of OpenSea (OS), shared that the foundation (fdn) is pushing back the SEA TGE timeline. Finzer said: “the reality is that market conditions are challenging across crypto right now, and $SEA only launches once”

  • Of course, this begs the question: Does launch timing matter? We’ll get into that later….

• As part of the announcement, a couple of key changes were made to OS’s airdrop campaign:

  1. There will be no more waves (reward cycles)

     1. For context, as part of the airdrop campaign, users completed Voyages (quests) by trading, buying, and selling NFTs and tokens on OS. In turn, they gained XP, which leveled up their Treasure Chests (rewards), which were fueled by a reward pool

  2. Users can claim an optional fee refund for wave 3-6

     1. On NFT sales, OS had a 1% platform fee (raised from 0.5% in September) and 0.85% fee on token swaps. 50% of all platform fees fueled the reward pool. The other 50% went to OS

     2. However, users were critical of the refund because wave 1 - 2 were much more significant in terms of fees, and so revenue for OS. You can see this by checking the Dune Dashboard

        1. This also wasn’t the first time people were disappointed about the campaign. Back in October, after Wave 1 ended, users showed their disappointment on the TL as the Treasury Rewards were underwhelming. The rewards didn’t match the fees they paid

           1. But, of course, the future SEA airdrop could compensate for that

  3. Existing Treasures are honored:

     1. The announcement says: “they will be meaningfully considered by the Foundation at TGE”

  4. 0% fees for 60 days:

     1. OS wants to reel in people with a 0% fee incentive to try out their new platform and trading products, including perps. After this period, there will be a fee in place that’s “significantly more competitive” for traders

• Naturally, the delay and these changes weren’t received well by many, because of a couple of reasons:

  • The first one is the same as what we talked about with Abstract: it feels like there’s no end in sight (Voyages launched in May 2025). Initially, the team gave a soft TGE period of around Q1, but as we know now, this has been pushed

    • Waiting for market conditions to turn around for TGE is ambiguous and creates uncertainty

  • Secondly, people have been using OS for years, as it launched in December 2017. During these years, and especially during NFT mania, the platform generated significant amounts of fees and revenue

    • According to DeFiLlama, OS collected $2.8B in fees and generated a cumulative revenue of $917M

  • Thirdly, the timing of the Vanity Fair piece, “Crypto’s True Believers Demand to Be Taken Seriously”, featuring Finzer, was just the cherry on top. The article features a quote describing his elitist lifestyle, with private suites, a personal team of assistants, security, designer clothing, etc.

    • In February 2024, OS also posted an image called “Parisian dinner vibes”, featuring a dinner hall as if OS leadership were part of the bourgeoisie

    • Finzer responded to the criticisms, but seemed “tone deaf” in terms of how users actually feel, one commenter pointed out: “At a moment when so many of your users are down bad, what everyone wants to hear from you is "we're going to win, and I'm not going to rest until we all win together”

• Lastly, before this gets too long, does launch timing matter? According to Haseeb (managing partner at Dragonfly), it doesn’t. His conclusion was based on an analysis of ~200 tokens that launched on Binance. Do note that we can question the methodology here and the incentives of pushing this narrative, as it’s coming from a VC

  • I’d say launching in low vs. high market sentiment, both have its up- and downsides. In low sentiment, it’s easier to dominate mindshare and launch at a lower FDV to allow more organic price discovery. During high sentiment, there’s more liquidity available, and launch valuations are higher

    • It ultimately depends on what you’re optimizing for…

• That’s not to say that you can’t launch at a (relatively) high FDV ($1B+) in a bear market. It seems OS is just aiming for something higher. However, I don’t believe it’s just about timing the market, because OS’s revenue in 2026 so far is telling me it’s not there yet to support the SEA TGE

ATON ACQUIRES MAJORITY STAKE IN GAMEE

• Just yesterday, AlphaTON Capital announced it is acquiring 60% of GAMEE, the mobile and Telegram gaming ecosystem owned by Animoca Brands. Outside of the “controlling interest”, AlphaTON is acquiring 51% of the treasury holdings of both GMEE and WAT + will acquire an additional $2M of GMEE on the market

  • Earlier, in September 2025, AlphaTON showed intent to acquire GAMEE

  • GMEE is GAMEE’s ecosystem token, while WAT is the native token of the “Watbird Universe”, a casual game that was incubated and launched on the GAMEE platform

• Sidenote: there was a larger KOL campaign to amplify the news, including names such as Wale, StarPlatinum, Jampzey, moritz, Sanjay, Elisa, Loki, etc. An attempt to revitalize GAMEE?

  • The funny thing is that there’s a good chance you would’ve missed this news altogether if you’re using an adblocker or Brave

  • Although the above is not surprising, since AlphaTON went on a space with Mario Nawfal before. A good indicator for questionable marketing spend

• Animoca became the owner of GAMEE through a full acquisition in July 2020. Originally a Web2 social/casual game platform, Animoca made the company pivot to crypto post acquisition

• AlphaTON Capital is a NASDAQ-listed company under the ticker ATON. Interestingly, the company was called Portage Biotech (ticker PRTG) from 1973-2025, and pivoted hard under new leadership from Brittany Kaiser in August 2025

  • They changed the name of the company, the ticker, and the strategic focus from biotech to building a TON token treasury and scaling the Telegram ecosystem. Additionally, they raised $71-$100M through private placement and custody deals to buy TON, run validators, and invest in TON projects

  • What AlphaTON did is called a “public vehicle” strategy, essentially a fast-track ot get publicly listed without having to go through the whole process of getting listed and doing an IPO

    • It reminds me of Animoca’s plans to list on the NASDAQ this year through a reverse merger with Currenc Group Inc. (CURR). We talked about it in Sidelined News 144

  • Notably, since the leadership change of last year, ATON stock has lost significant value. Today, ATON is trading around -92% YoY, at an $8M market cap. In 1999, it was trading at $15K a stock. Today, it’s a penny stock at $0.34

• GAMEE claims to be one of the “most established Web3 gaming platforms” with 119M+ registered users, of which 61M+ (51%) are on Telegram. Of course, the real question is how many of these are real users. Discounting these numbers by at least 90% isn’t too outrageous. So, what’s the actual value of that distribution?

  • Over a year ago, I interviewed someone in the Telegram games world, just out of curiosity. This person confirmed to me that UA on TG is largely a pyramid scheme, as apps (games) were continuously “reselling” their audience to the next app through the ad network. The “player numbers” were astronomical, but the LTV of this audience was often close to 0 (post-airdrop)

    • There were millions of “real” users coming for the rewards, but over 90% of this audience were probably bots, too

• So, where’s the value for AlphaTON in this acquisition? Well…outside of being a gaming platform, GAMEE is one of these ad networks I just mentioned

  • GAMEE’s “Attention Network” works as follows: games act as a delivery channel (largely in TG) → advertisers buy campaigns by paying in GMEE tokens → payments are performance-based, on user actions/engagement → users get rewarded in GMEE or points

• Overall, I believe this acquisition is mostly about the adtech, data, and maybe about the distribution. AlphaTON will likely leverage this tech for growing its own ecosystem of apps on TON

AZUKI TCG: GATES AWAKENED

• In February 2025, Azuki announced they’re building a TCG. This week, they officially introduced their TCG Gates Awakened (GA)

  • Unlike most TCGs in crypto, which are either only digital or phygital, GA is only a physical card game. There are digital elements to the overall experience, with a mobile companion app and commemorative NFTs. However, the game itself is completely physical

    • The game seems largely like an IP-extension to reach the TCG player/consumer, instead of the crypto crowd. The TAM of (physical) TCG players is small. However, the TAM of TCG collectors is large

      • Azuki is also making an anime called Bucketman, which will come with collectible figurines

• GA lends systems from familiar TCGs such as One Piece TCG and Final Fantasy, while adding a unique twist through the Gate Portal (moves units and scales card effects), a strict IKZ-cap (mana-cap), and a two-row battlefield. Matches are also relatively fast, with around 20-minute games

  • From The Team Behind The Azuki Trading Card Game post: “The gameplay had to be deep enough for competitive players and intuitive enough that someone picking up cards for the first time could learn it in a few minutes.”

  • The same post details that former talent from Blizzard, Riot, Ubisoft, Pokémon TCG, and more are working on this game

• As part of its GTM strategy, Azuki has focused on hosting tournaments. In January, it held an invitational with a $10K prize pool. This March, it held an NYC Tournament, and for S1 (the next 18 months), it allocated a $100K prize pool

• With the announcement trailer, GA also launched its first official set of cards, a limited presale of cards (starter decks and cases), and collectibles (posters, uncut sheets, and playmats) that come in 6 Tiers, ranging from $80 to $35,000

  • Within the first hour, it sold out its Tier 6 (8 supply at $35,000). In the first 2 hours, over 300 orders were placed. And within ~5 hours, 25% of the supply was sold out. After the first milestone was hit, a new promo card was unlocked and included in every order

• Among Azuki NFT holders, the sale received some pushback due to the lack of perks, like priority access or discounts

  • One user said: “Honestly this can't be the way. ~70M raised directly from mints, 100M+ in Revenues including royalties. And then a pivot to the model of 'If we become big brand, surely our NFTs will be worth something as a collectible”

    • It highlights an important shift and tension we’ve seen with other NFT brands, moving away from community-first to brand-first

      • Holders want the companies they hold NFTs of to be successful, but for any consumer brand that’s paired with expanding beyond CT. In that process, choices have to be made to favor mass-market and monetization over the “eternal pleasing” of holders

      • The dynamics are difficult, because on the one hand, these people brought you were today, but on the other hand community is not a scalable marketing and monetization solution

• The TCG market is a competitive space with huge IPs and cemented player bases (switching costs are high). So, whether Azuki can succeed here with their gameplay innovation and anime art-style is something I’d remain sceptical of

FLASH NEWS

• Animoca Brands invested in AVAX + partnered with Ava Labs

• Wildcard’s WC token is getting listed on the 26th of March

• Farm Frens launched a new gardening game called Seedy Frens

• Pixie Chess is launching on the 2nd of April

• Pixels’ Stacked App released its beta

• Maze of Gains crossed $1M in total volume

• Cash App is bringing back Cash Apples

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: Unchained

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Today’s newsletter will use a different format than you’re used to. Let’s call it an experiment to keep improving Sidelined. We hope you like it…

Abstract XP

Designing an incentive system is “easy”. Designing one that survives in practice is much harder. Abstract (ABS) XP is a living experiment in that challenge, an evolving system that has been trying to crack the code of rewarding “real participation” instead of behavior that simply farms the metric (in this case, XP).

What inspired this topic?

Last week, we had the chance to speak with Raj on Sidelined, the Ecosystem Lead at ABS. During the conversation, we touched on the topic of XP. After the interview, I went down the rabbit hole and found that it’s a controversial yet complex issue within the community.

So today, we’ll walk through the what, how, and why of XP, the changes behind, and the criticisms to understand what we can learn from large-scale incentive design.

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Incentive Design and Goodhart’s Law

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” ~Charles Goodhart

Like almost any incentive system in crypto, Abstract XP couldn’t avoid becoming “the target”. After all, the majority of ABS users’ goal has been to increase their weekly XP rewards since the start.

Note that I don’t believe you can fully solve this, because motivations in crypto are primarily extrinsic (financially driven). Targeting and attracting a less EV-sensitive (Web2) crowd at a later stage of your product is one of the few ways to reduce how aggressively the measure becomes the target.

That said, I do think there are a lot of valuable takeaways from how ABS designed XP.

What’s Abstract XP?

To answer this question, let’s start with what the goal of Abstract XP is, according to Raj: “We want to incentivize users to come in and actually explore the ecosystem […] we want to make sure that we’re rewarding people who are actually participating onchain”.

We understand that XP is tied to a (potential) airdrop at ABS’s TGE. Therefore, it functions as the chain’s “carrot” to seed attention and encourage users to explore apps, bridge over, and spend, similar to other L2 incentive programs that have launched, like Blast Points and Gold.

At a high level, here’s how XP works:

• Weekly XP is earned based on your (onchain) behavior, including using apps, minting NFTs, swapping tokens, streaming, and holding assets in your Abstract Wallet based on the past 7 days.

• Holding specific Discord roles or Pudgy Penguin-related assets (NFTs or tokens) grants XP bonuses.

• As users gain XP, they progress through three ranks within XP Tiers.

  • For example, I’m ranked Gold Tier 1. If I surpass Gold Tier 3, I’ll level up to Diamond Tier 1.

• Users can obtain badges to showcase on their profile and collect extra XP. Badges are essentially chain-wide quests, and come in 3 types:

  • Flash Badges: require users to complete a task within a limited time.

  • Normal Badges: always achievable and visible, such as connecting your Discord account.

  • Hidden Badges: not visible but can be earned by completing specific actions.

• More recently, the Perks feature was rolled out. Perks are app-specific offers (incentives) presented to users of a specific Tier.

  • For example, Ruyui granted a free 7-day Guild Pass from Roots of Embervault to players in the Gold Tier and above.

• They also recently introduced an Upvote Streak mechanic, which grants users an additional XP boost after achieving a 30-day streak.

XP → Social Cards

An aspect of XP we shouldn’t overlook is the shareability of the reward through social cards. Within the ABS profile, users can easily generate an XP card to share with their friends and followers. The higher this number, the more “flexing value” it creates for the user. It’s social capital that drives awareness around ABS and adds a competitive layer to earning more XP than your friends/followers.

XP: A Monetization Layer

While XP is an incentive system, it also functions as a monetization layer. Users are willing to spend to gain additional XP because they believe this spend will outweigh the future rewards, whether XP (i.e., an ABS airdrop) or app-native rewards.

The underlying assumption is that these pre-TGE incentives will eventually translate into a higher return on spend. In other words, users are effectively “spending to earn more.”

A good example of this is Gigaverse, as illustrated by Hunter’s post:

A useful datapoint to contextualize this comes from Pixels LiveOps: “Extractors and spenders in Pixels are 98.8% overlapping - the real divide is between pure extractors and power users”.

The takeaway is that spending players aren’t fundamentally different from farmers. They’re still optimizing for extraction, but simply have more capital to do so.

Takeaways from Abstract XP:

Some takeaways from XP that can be applied to other incentive programs:

• XP is rewarded on a weekly cadence, based on the user’s activity over the past 7 days. Within this activity log, the amount of XP rewarded per action is unknown. If it were transparent, users would simply optimize for what generates the most XP. That’s why this type of black-box design is necessary. At least part of your incentive program should function similarly.

• Everyone who’s ever played video games is familiar with XP as a progression mechanic. Calling it XP, instead of something more direct like “points,” creates a layer of abstraction between XP and a (future) reward. This makes it feel more integral to the platform.

  • The Tier progression system is a vital component of XP. It creates short- (Gold 1 → Gold 2) and long-term goals (reaching Obsidian Tier), which make the platform stickier. Furthermore, Perks can feel like complementary rewards for achieving certain Tiers, reinforcing the joy of progression.

• Create systems that enforce habit formation. ABS’s example of this is the Upvote Streak, which functions similarly to a daily login streak. A user who returns every day is more likely to spend more time on the platform, try out more apps, and spend more.

• Badges disrupt existing behavior and incentivize users to use the ABS portal and its apps outside of their usual hours and set of apps. It’s a strong cross-ecosystem distribution mechanic that also works at an app level to incentivize usage of specific features.

• Make progression and achievement easily shareable through social cards. They might feel overused, but social cards are social capital because they often translate into engagement. That will always have value.

• As mentioned, XP is both an incentive system and a monetization layer. Start thinking about how these can amplify each other, and how this allows you to introduce monetization to your game or ecosystem at an earlier stage (to extend your runway).

Another source I can recommend on incentive design is Hunter’s “Do’s and Don’ts for Play-to-Airdrop Campaigns.” While this resource is almost two years old now, it still holds many valuable insights that can be applied to any reward program today.

Hunter's Edge

Do’s and Don’t For Play to Airdrop Campaigns

Ideas → Demos → Games…

Read more

2 years ago · 5 likes · Hunter

Changes to Abstract XP

The ABS team has made it clear from the start that XP “is an evolving system.” This is part of its (initial) strategy to “smoke the farmers”, i.e., disincentivize users from min-maxing XP rewards through more sophisticated, evolving, and value-aligned reward design, rather than direct and predictable incentives.

Since ABS’s launch, various changes have been made to what behaviors are rewarded and by how much. Here are some examples:

• Initially, XP was highly curated and granted to a small set of apps, NFTs, and streamers.

• In July 2025, XP was updated to better reflect memecoin holdings.

• In October 2025, they introduced XP incentives for LPing to major pairs.

• Also in October 2025, another overhaul was made to Abstract XP scoring.

More recently, a major change shifted XP rewards from general chain participation to primarily onchain activity (app interactions, trading, and DeFi). This decision was driven by the fact that offchain transactions have no costs attached to them and therefore get “botted to death,” as well as the goal of bringing more users onchain.

Last week, the team decided to double down on this change. As Cygaar put it: “We are going to further scale up teams that are building onchain and reduce those that are not.” To further align XP with the value brought to the chain.

XP for Holding NFTs

One of the more controversial changes (more on this later) in these XP updates is the nerfing of rewards for holding NFTs. In the clip below, Raj explains what drove this decision.

"It was a user saying: I've done nothing on Abstract for the last 8 - 10 weeks, but I still get around 80 - 100K XP, because I just keep my assets there […] This is doing a disservice not only to the user, but also to the apps we have..."

The misalignment of incentives here not only led to shallow engagement but also distorted where attention flows. From a value perspective, there’s relatively little value for a chain in a user who passively holds an asset. Other than “protecting a floor price” and, in a few rare cases, building community, it doesn’t create any new volume or attention.

Cygaar added that holding is now far more balanced, as they previously allocated a lot of XP to teams (with NFT collections) that don’t even exist anymore. This signals that XP is gradually shifting from holding to activity, because that’s what better aligns users with the ecosystem.

Retroactive Analysis

Cygaar has said that the team will conduct a retrospective XP analysis at some point. This includes reviewing XP amounts, badges, time spent on the chain, apps and activities used to earn XP, and tracking Sybil activity.

To add, it’s in their best interest to align XP as closely as possible with the value brought to Abstract, because it’s tied to a (potential) airdrop. Teams often underestimate how important the quality of users receiving this initial token distribution is relative to TGE performance.

Criticisms of Abstract XP

Note: I understand there are more criticisms of XP, including unpredictability, bots, unfairness, and more. However, the two issues discussed below seem the most relevant.

Misalignment about NFTs

The tweet below is a quote from Ely, reflecting on how XP has evolved since October. Luca shared the following in this video (as shown below):

"Holding is the most +EV thing that users on the chain can do for us. I reward holding more than anything"

Naturally, this prompted users to accumulate and hold (more) tokens and NFTs on the chain, with the expectation that their “loyalty” would be rewarded more than if they sold (especially if they were in profit).

It’s a behavioral bias of loss aversion. By selling today, users feel they are “giving up” potential future gains, which are often believed to be higher than they actually turn out to be. For this reason, many have “round-tripped” their gains (myself included).

While XP was heavily rewarded for mere holding in the past few months, as we talked about, that system is now changing (and being reduced). With the majority of these asset prices down, often significantly, this hurts bagholders even more.

Of course, we don’t know whether these users will be compensated with a larger airdrop for accumulating, say, hundreds of thousands of additional XP. However, some napkin math suggests that it likely won’t, especially if they could have made thousands of dollars simply by selling earlier.

Cygaar offered a counterargument, stating the following:

“The market has also changed significantly since this video was recorded, we would be foolish to not adapt to what's happening in real time. I've mentioned many times that the XP system is dynamic, none of this should be a surprise.”

What’s the takeaway here? It’s best to be careful with what you promise and communicate, because that shapes expectations. These expectations are further inflated by what we’ll talk about next.

A Lack of a Clear Timeframe

Let’s start with a quote from Hunter’s article we referenced:

“One major pitfall is running campaigns for an undisclosed amount of time. It is wise to let people know upfront what kind of time commitment you’re asking from them. It can create a lot of frustration if teams keep farming their community endlessly without any indication of when it will end.”

I believe a lot of frustration from the ABS community comes from waiting without an end in sight. After a year of using the portal and its apps and spending on them, combined with no clear timeline for a TGE, users begin to feel fatigued. For comparison, Blast’s campaign took 3–4 months.

This frustration is further exacerbated by the fact that an initial (soft) TGE timeframe of Q4 2025 was pushed back, driven by the team’s unrealistic expectations of going for a “$20–$30B home run.”

As time passes, ABS continues to accrue “expectation debt”: the longer a promise (TGE in this case) takes to deliver, the larger the gap between reality and expectations becomes. In turn, this creates significant execution risk.

Furthermore, this gap only widens as you get players to spend (in their eyes, “invest”). Interestingly, users also begin to feel entitled to an airdrop or compensation in the form of rewards once a project starts generating revenue.

Closing

Abstract XP shows that incentive design isn’t something you perfect in one go. It’s a continuous process of adaptation to maintain alignment between users and builders.

Here’s everything we talked about in a compressed format:

• Every incentive program will be gamed. Design with that assumption from day one

• Don’t over-reward passive behavior (holding), reward actions that create value

• If users can see the optimal path to farm rewards, they will optimize for it

• Make the incentive program feel like a game, in which users can progress

• Make achievements visible and shareable. Status is a powerful motivator

• Short-term goals drive engagement, long-term goals drive retention

• Monetization and incentives should reinforce each other, not exist separately

• Incentive systems must evolve to adapt to how they function in practice

• Align rewards with value creation, not just activity or retention

• Be thoughtful in what you communicate, as users will optimize around your messaging

• Time-box your campaigns or clearly communicate timelines to avoid expectation debt

• The larger the gap between expectations and reality, the higher the execution risk

• Your early users will shape your token distribution, meaning quality matters more than quantity

• In crypto, incentives don’t just shape behavior, but also shape expectations

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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TLDR :

• Cash App launched a P2E game?

• Amigo: “the next Friend Tech”

• Pudgy Penguins’ Pudgy World launches

🗞️ NEWS

CASH APP LAUNCHED A “P2E GAME”?

• A couple of days ago, Cash App surprised us with the announcement of a game called Cash Apples (CA). The game is extremely basic, the graphics are pixelated, and players could earn real cash by playing, making it awfully reminiscent of crypto gaming in 2021 - 2022. So, you’d probably wonder: “Why Cash Apples?” Here’s my attempt to make sense of it…

  • For context, Cash App is one of the largest digital (non-crypto) wallets in the US. It’s mainly used for sending and receiving cash (fiat), and users can also buy Bitcoin and invest in stocks on the app

    • As of Q1 2025, Cash App had 57M MAUs, making it larger than Robinhood with 27M (funded) customers as of January 2025

• So what is CA? “Cash Apples is a web game where you walk through a virtual orchard, shake trees to find Golden Apples, and earn real cash sent straight to your $Cashtag”.

  • After shaking a tree, the rarest drop would be a Golden Apple, but most often, you would find random collectibles (without cash value). The more Apples you collect, the higher reward tier you hit:

    • Apple to $ ratio: 1:$1 - 5:$2 - 15:$5 - 30:$40 - 75:$100

  • The game was scheduled to run for only 5 days. Every day, it was open for a limited amount of time (only 4 hours). Plus, the cash pool was limited, so it could run out before the time lapsed

    • When giving out $ directly, it seems like the companies start acting sensibly and understand that earning has to be limited. Unlike the early crypto games, in which this sensibility didn’t apply to their native game tokens

  • When playing, players could see the prize pool for every day, plus how much cash was already collected on the day they were playing. The prize pools were pretty significant as well: D1: $80K, D2: $85K, D3: $90K, D4: $95K, andf D5: $150K (total: $500K)

    • However, because the turnout was so significant (more on this later), the pools got diluted, and most people earned peanuts. People shared that they only earned $1 or $2 after an hour, while some shook 1000s of trees without finding a single Golden Apple

    • Rewards were sent to players a day after, directly to their cashtag (usertag). Users were free to use this cash as they pleased

  • As said, it’s a pixel game. Ben jokingly said it looked like a mix of Cambria and Pixels

• CA was supposed to run till the 13th of March. However, the game had already shut down after its second day, due to 350K players trying to get in:

  • “What was designed as a lighthearted online orchard quickly drew a crowd large enough to overwhelm the experience, leaving hundreds of thousands of hopeful harvesters refreshing the page from outside the gates.”

  • Funnily enough, they spun up a new website called “The Appleton Post” to bring the announcement, including that it’s uncertain whether CA will return

• So, why would Cash App launch CA and give out $500K?

1. It’s making use of the “house money effect”. It’s a behavioral bias where people see gains (cash rewards in this case) differently from their own money. In a sense, it feels like “free money”, meaning they’re more likely to take a risk with it and buy stock and Bitcoin with it (on Cash App)

   1. This can lower the barrier to users making their first investment. A bridge to start interacting with more of Cash App’s investment products (likely where they make more margin than on transactions)

2. This is probably a bit far-fetched, but it could have been an attempt to increase mindshare among the crypto crowd, because you can also buy Bitcoin on the platform

3. If every user got $1-$5, that would be a cheap acquisition channel (for a fintech company) to attract new users, plus a way to (re-) engage existing users

   1. The campaign also reminds me of this time when some DeFi apps launched a Telegram game in 2024 - 2025

4. It associates Cash App with money gains, creating positive reinforcement around the brand

   1. However, whether this activation achieved that is something I’d question, considering the many bugs and server issues

• Lastly, this experiment from Cash App reinforces my thesis that the audience that is interested in “rewarded play” is much larger than just crypto. The opportunity for crypto gaming to expand in financial entertainment is huge imo

AMIGO: “THE NEXT FRIEND.TECH”?

• After 7 months since its first announcement, the “new” SocialFi app, Amigo, has launched on Abstract. Luca Netz QRT’d the announcement and said: “Amigo is what Friend Tech could’ve been”

  • I vaguely remember criticisms of Amigo at the time, after its first announcement (now deleted) of being a Friend.Tech (FT) copy. So, let’s compare the two

• To start with this comparison, we’ll take a look first at why FT failed, and then move on to how Amigo compares. So, why did FT fail? Grok says:

  1. FT failed to deliver beyond meaningful features to retain users beyond speculation

  2. The revenue model and economic design were flawed. Most revenue came from a 10% fee on key trades, a 50/50 split between the platform and creators, but this zero-sum structure led to extraction over value creation

  3. There was a huge database leak in August 2023, which led to a huge loss of trust and user churn

  4. In May 2024, FT returned with V2.0 and the FRIEND token airdrop. However, the app was still clunky, new features such as social clubs underdelivered, and the token price crashed post-airdrop

  5. FT’s team was anonymous, plus had a questionable past. The platform generated $44M in revenue, but little was done to improve the product itself

• How does Amigo compare?

  1. Amigo’s main mechanic is about buying keys from your favorite creators, which can increase in value as they become more popular. It’s about speculation. The social feature it offers is a gated chat room, which is the same as FT, where “fans” can talk to creators

     1. Instead of being solely based on the bonding curve, keys in Amigo are also priced based on a creator’s social metrics

     2. With FT, people stopped caring about the chatroom feature rather quickly, because speculation was a much stronger motivation

  2. It looks like Amigo uses the same monetization model as FT, revolving around trading fees. On every trade, they charge 8%, of which 3.5% goes to Amigo, 3% goes to creators, and 1.5% goes to a referral pool (potluck)

     1. Again, this system leads to capital depletion (fees shrink the pie) unless new buyers constantly enter. This fee structure could work if there is new value being created, but it seems too similar to FT’s design, centered around speculation only

        1. There’s also a 0.25% referral fee on all trades, which can incentivize growth. But it won’t solve the inherent issues with Amigo’s design

     2. What’s particular here is that Amigo takes a larger cut than the creators. With these platforms, new creators are your main growth lever to pull in new audiences (→ buyers → capital). So, the question is whether the incentive is big enough

        1. Update: They announced they’re lowering the platform fees by 50%, while keeping the creator fees the same. Good stuff

  3. What Amigo does improve on is the UI and UX. Try ES5HVP, LQI6WC, or 753ER4 to check it out. Signing up is simple and happens through ABS Wallet, and the layout is minimal and intuitive

• In terms of onboarding new creators, Amigo is taking a curated approach. There are about 20 creators on there now, including a mix of OF models, crypto KOLs, and Abstract employees

  • More recently, they onboarded a “gaming streamer”, NataaGataa, with 400K followers on Twitter and 3M+ followers on Instagram. She sold a total of 38 keys so far, and earned 0.02 ETH in fees

  • The most-traded key (as of yesterday) on the platform is Luca’s. His key sold 219 times, and he made 1.79 ETH in fees

• Part of their strategy seems to be attracting creators beyond the CT bubble. Creators will be able to connect their Instagram and TikTok accounts soon. The app is easy to use, and the branding is consumer-friendly

  • However, whether it can scale with normies is something I question (other than it becoming a glorified OF)

• Overall, this is just Friend.tech with a better wrapper, and perhaps a slightly improved fee structure. But again, it doesn’t innovate on SocialFi in a meaningful way to make the product move beyond speculation

PUDGY WORLD LAUNCH

• This week, Pudgy World (PW) went live, a social virtual world in a browser, based on the Pudgy Penguins IP. Let’s break down what we know about the “modern Club Penguin”

• In September 2023, we saw the first clip of PW. The fragment shows an early version of the game, with movable Pudgy characters and a largely empty world, which just had an obstacle course. So, the game is likely in dev for ~3 years now

  • The game has been built in partnership with Abeto. This studio has done some impressive browser work with “The Messenger”. It looks and feels quite similar to PW

    • Looking at the timelines of these games, I believe they built The Messenger on top of the custom engine they made for PW. And not the other way around, like some claim….

  • Chef, the co-founder and CCO of Pudgy and Igloo Inc., provided some insight on how PW was built: “We built PudgyWorld from scratch. No traditional game engine. No downloads. Just open your browser and you're in.”

    • Furthermore, he goes into some technical stuff like how they build their physics, camera system, assets, etc.

• So, what’s the game about? The first time you play, you can customize your own penguin. After that, you enter the world, which starts with a quest line about finding the missing Polly. Along the way, you’ll speak to NPCs, fish, visit different towns, and play mini-games

  • There are social features such as a friend chat and proximity (voice) chat

• PW is free to play and monetizes through two currencies: Pebbels and Seashells. Both can be earned in-game, but shells are more premium. Currencies can be bought with a credit card only, no PENGU (and I doubt they will add PENGU as a payment option)

  • Using these currencies, special eggs, fishing gear, and traits (cosmetics) can be purchased. Monetization is light and largely centered around cosmetics

    • For context, Club Penguin primarily monetized through a subscription-based model to access exclusive features

  • In the main menu of PW, there’s a button that says “toy claim”. This will allow players to claim items from their physical toys in the game

• PW is an extension of the Pudgy experience. Most people will find out about Pudgy through the gifs and short-form video content. After a while, they might recognize the Penguins in a Walmart

  • The collectibles have QR codes that lead to this online experience with unique offers (redeemables), hooking people in. It’s a “phygital experience”. Luca Netz calls it: “A massive bridge between web2 & web3”

• So, why did Pudgy build this game? I think it’s simply about IP proliferation. Games can create connections (fandom) to characters that other forms of media simply can’t achieve. It deepens the brand experience

  • And I don’t think the game is too far off from becoming an enjoyable virtual social hangout for the younger generations, just like Club Penguin was, and Roblox now is

FLASH NEWS

• SDF introduces SDFN: the internet’s sportsbar

• BPMG is becoming the joint owner of the crypto game Cooking Adventure

• Genome Protocol lays out why it’s closing down

• Pixels started revealing what their new ad tech layer, Stacked, is looking like

• DungeonCross, a new ARPG, went live on the Cross Protocol this week

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: None

Join our Telegram for daily updates & alpha as well: https://t.me/raidenalpha

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We’re happy to announce the first sponsor of Sidelined: YGG Play!

Across our show, Telegram, and this newsletter, we will highlight what’s happening in the YGG Play ecosystem.

This week, we want to let you know about the Verse8 x YGG Play casual degen game hackathon. A vibecoding competition that allows anyone with a cool game idea to bring their imagination to life.

There are $5,000 in prize on the line, intros to investment opportunities, and a chance to become part of YGG Play’s publishing pipeline. For more info you can attend the BuidlHack 2026 Kickoff AMA tomorrow.

MARKET TALK

BASKETBALL.FUN IS NOT THAT FUN ANYMORE…

• Basketball.fun (BBF) “another rug shilled by KOLs”? This statement was the start of a post from Mando that went viral in the last couple of days, pointing out BBF’s lack of communication and lack of product, despite holding its first pack sale in January

  • Attached to the post was an image of 16 KOLs who were paid to promote the platform

  • Bando added to his Tweet: “The responsibility lies less with the KOLs and more with the marketing agencies…” In this case, the agency Arcadia was behind this campaign

• Naturally, this sparked the conversation around an already hot topic: ad disclosures and paid partnerships. Moreover, the ethics behind shilling and who’s at fault here were part of it:

  • A self-named “onchain investigator” named Specter posted a list of KOLs that were (supposedly) paid for undisclosed promotion. Some of it seemed true. However, the comments were quick to poke holes and point out that some names on this list (1) did disclose the partnership, (2) didn’t get paid, or (3) weren’t part of this campaign all

    • When market sentiment turns worse, people often also get much more hateful when KOLs get paid. Something important to add here

  • And who’s here to blame? Arcadia (like Bando says), the KOLs, or BBF? It’s clear that BBF underdelivered so far, but you could argue that the other two parties could’ve done better DD as well. So, is everyone to blame?

    • Personally, it seemed obvious to me that this was a poor attempt to copy a different product that saw a great (initial) success. On the other hand, you could argue that someone couldn’t predict that this would end up being a “rug” (or is it even a rug?)

• For context, BBF is very similar to FDF. Users buy packs containing player shares to build a lineup and trade. Based on the performance of their players, they gain currency, which they reinvest to buy more packs

  • However, this isn’t a playable loop yet. The marketplace to trade player shares has yet to go live. In many ways, this launch felt rushed, and now they’re paying the expectation debt of making people wait with nothing to show for

    • In contrast, FDF already had a playable product during its soft launch and only sold packs right before the official launch of the platform

  • BBF is also co-founded by Tristan Thompson, a former player in the NBA. Thompson has been speaking about his venture at blockchain conferences

    • But of course, we have learned by now that celebrity endorsement/involvement in crypto ≠ success

• Interestingly, the BBF account responded to the chatter of the last few days. In the post, they went after Adam (founder of FDF), who has been sceptical of BBF: “Ironically Adam and his team have been “trying” to build a basketball product for months with no real momentum behind it.”

  • Furthermore, they suddenly realised they needed to be more transparent and shared what’s coming soon, including multi-chain deposits + the marketplace. The post also included a form for anyone who wanted their packs to be refunded

    • So, it seems like they’re dodging the rug allegations here?

    • I wouldn’t be surprised if 70% or more of the buyers ask for a refund

• Lastly, it seems that there’s a recurring theme of projects failing that largely rely on “borrowed credibility”. Instead of BBF establishing credibility first through showing off a good product, they had to buy it (temporarily) through this larger KOL campaign. A reminder that KOL marketing should be an amplifier, not a starting point

DITH SHARES LESSONS ON MONETIZATION AND GROWTH

• Around two weeks ago, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dith again on Sidelined (our first returning guest). Since we spoke with him in September last year, lots of things have changed for Gigaverse. During our conversation, we spoke about systems, monetization, growth, and tokens. Here are some of my favorite quotes and takeaways:

• Building systems:

  • “From an early point, we recognized that we wanted to build certain things in our product stack that just aren’t available out there. We want to integrate this marketplace into the game, so we built Gigamarket. Then we wanted a way that we can swap offchain for onchain items…so we built our own swap system called Gigaswap. Now we’ve launched GIGABIT…”

    • As a crypto game, you’ll often need custom infrastructure to support your economy, because the tools are not (publicly) available yet. It seems most teams build their tooling in-house and then use it to create an infrastructure moat to support their own ecosystem (e.g., Mythical’s QuickTrade)

• Why teams fail to monetize:

  • “It’s probably a combination of things…for many teams, it’s make or break. If you can monetize enough…even if you make mistakes…even if it’s a bear market or whatever, you can weather the storm […] If you don’t monetize, that’s the fast track to realizing that you’re out of gas here, and now you’ve lost attention too, so it’s even harder to monetize later”

    • Games take years to come to completion, and in crypto, they often don’t even reach a final stage. So, to increase your chances of survival, you need to start thinking about how to introduce monetization into an early stage of your game. I.e., what’s the “minimum monetizable game loop”?

• The design philosophy behind Gigajuice:

  • “One of our most important metrics is getting people who buy Gigajuice to repurchase it…From a design perspective, we had this discussion…Look, from a SaaS best practice, you lock people into long-term subscriptions. He was like…we absolutely must not do that […] We intentionally did not call it a VIP subscription, and we’re intentionally not going to auto-renew”

    • Instead of the subscription-like lock-in, Gigajuice is designed to prove its value every (purchase) cycle. This way, repeat purchases are not a product of users forgetting to unsubscribe, but a measure of real product satisfaction

  • “Gigajuice is not sold from a traditional shop. It’s sold from a vending machine”

• Growth within and beyond crypto:

  • “The game has to reach a stage in which we plausibly can go after mostly normie gamers. The audience that we’re interested in, who are a fit for the game, are real money gamers or high stakes gamers. They like to play games that feel consequential, maybe there is money on the line, or you’re trying to get rare items, maybe there’s a chance of losing items”

    • We often tend to forget that “rewarded play” (i.e., real money gaming) is huge in Web2, and crypto gaming essentially delivers the same premise. Going after these audiences (while leaving out the crypto terminology and friction) seems to be one of the pockets of growth with the most potential

  • “Part of our GIGABIT design was ensuring that we’re set up to reach people where they are and not force people to have to come to Abstract…”

    • Bridging = friction. With multi-chain onramps, you remove that friction and don’t box yourself into a single chain. You’re not just an app on Abstract anymore, but can expand your onchain TAM and reach audiences beyond

• On games and tokens:

  • “Games can still have a token by all means. Games, consumer apps, gaming infrastructure. It just shouldn’t be used as the currency […] It shouldn’t be the central currency that the whole thing runs on, so if the price tanks, nobody cares anymore”

• We appreciate Dith coming on the show again to share his new lessons, and we are excited for what’s next for Gigaverse. Are you building something exciting in crypto gaming/consumer? Then feel free to send Raiden or me a DM to get you on the show

ON THE RISE

• Pudgy Penguin’s Pudgy World browser game is now live

• Thousands, the platform behind Wildcard introduced the THOU token

• KAST raised $80M in a Series A to open access to stablecoin payments to everyone

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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MARKET TALK

“THE THESIS FOR DEGEN GAMING”

• “The thesis for degen gaming” is a new piece by Ben (Cambria) that was dropped last week. It’s an insightful article on the design, behavioral science, future potential, and more behind financialized entertainment, a compelling bull case for degen gaming. There’s a ton of value in this article, so here are some of my highlights + takeaways:

• On financialized entertainment:⁠

  • ”With financialized entertainment, there's no obligation to create any tangible value outside of the fun, especially since the underlying economics of these products are zero-sum, by technical nature (wHo iS ThE mArgINAL buYeR).”

    • I’ve been beating the drum that the crypto apps that make competing for money the most fun will win. That doesn’t necessarily mean the most rewarding, but the loops that make this competition engaging, repeatable, skillful, and socially meaningful

  • “Fading interest in one specific vertical of financialized entertainment often ends up as just being an early signal of the meteoric rise of another. Top Shot / Axie Infinity kicked off the first big bull market. Polymarket did $3B+ in election volume. “SOL shitcoin” is now in ur average normie’s vocabulary.⁠⁠”

    • Financialized entertainment keeps evolving because each new cycle creates a new playground where culture, skill, or information can be competed over. When a meta saturates (the edge disappears), attention often rotates to novelty, because that’s what restores the sense of opportunity

• Common components of financialized entertainment:

  • “There are a few things common to almost all these products:
    1 ⁠⁠- Real Stakes - dopamine/acc

    2 - Fast Feedback Loops - perps, not spot. put ppl into flow state

    3 - Perpetual Content Cycle / Metagame variation - often from PvP

    4 - Asymmetric Upside - 1000x gain porn

    5 - Skill / Luck Ambiguity - players need to believe they have edge

    6 - Social Virality / Community / Identity - stakes create connections”

• The importance of status:⁠⁠

  • ”In these environments, those who take the biggest risks and survive gain the most status. This is why leaderboards in crypto products work so well. People want to create identities online, to be known and seen.”

    • “Social flexing” is status made visible and shareable. If you’re building in crypto, you want to enable this through leaderboards, PnL cards, and reward screens. But systems that support multiple forms of status are more powerful than financial success alone

• What are degen games, and what makes them tick:

  • “⁠⁠What makes a good degen game. At the risk of leaking too much alpha:
    1 ⁠⁠- ⁠Risk-to-Earn - must deposit to play, outside of targeted promotions
    2 - No Skillshots - stat or dice roll checks, not twitch gaming. bad players can beat good players, high skill has EV edge over time
    3 - Incomplete Information - some perpetual mystery, often from pvp or from a changing metagame. should not be easily “solvable” / “bottable”
    4 - Continuous Risk/Reward Decisions - this is the game
    5 - Game Feel / Juice - you need to put people in the “zone”
    6 - Adversarially Robust - anti sybil / agent / bot / exploit systems”

  • “Degen games are interesting b/c they need to be designed from the ground up to be financialized entertainment. Adding real stakes to games is non-trivial, you can’t just slap a wager on and call it a day. It’s an incredibly exciting and relatively unexplored design space.⁠”

    • To add a relevant takeaway from our conversation with Arto to this quote: “Open economies fundamentally change what players care about, so successful crypto games must be designed from the ground up around those incentives, not introduced as an afterthought”

• The three key advantages of a degen game:

  • ⁠”The biggest structural advantage of a well-designed degen game is that the extraction problem is solvable in ways it simply isn't for perps/memes.”

  • “The second moat is content. Emergent PvP is perpetual content generation that no studio has to pay for⁠⁠⁠⁠. Guild conflicts, economic wars, legendary players, improbable comebacks - these stories write themselves and they market the game for free:”

    • Fableborne isn’t necessarily a “degen game”, yet it consistently proves to be a content machine. Strong (financialized) game loops that are engineered to capture momentum trigger a content flywheel (e.g., FDF). In deeper games like Cambria, this content layer becomes much more sophisticated

  • “The third moat is identity and retention. Stakes create investment - not just financial but psychological. Players who've built reputations, accumulated achievements / soulbound cosmetics / small advantages, and formed communities inside a game don't churn”

• The degen gaming playbook:

  • “⁠The playbook is simple.

    1- Use spectacle + meta games to hook players, Mr. Beast style
    2- Make high risk gameplay socially acceptable via MMO wrapper.
    3- Limited P2E, through Guilds as mass activations into the competitive loop
    4- TL Takeover: streamers, YouTube side hustlers, TikTok edits
    5- Profit p*rn: “X earned 20 ETH in 1 week from PvP.”

• Overall, a great read for anyone building in crypto consumer from someone who’s building on the edge of it. Personally, I continue to be bullish on this category and look forward to how it develops in 2026

MAGIC SHUTS DOWN MARKETPLACES + PIVOTS

• Magic Eden (ME) announced it is “refocusing” on Solana, Packs (gacha), and DiceyHQ, and will sunset its EVM and BTC marketplaces + will let go of the ME wallet

  • From Jack, the co-founder and CEO of ME: “The 80/20 rule has become our reality: 80% of our cost are tied to products generating only 20% of our revenue”

• It was funny to see how they tried to control the narrative of this pivot through paid KOLs. Jonah Blake called it “softened blow exposure” lol. Of course, this strategy created backlash, because as soon as there’s money involved, people see that the “real” opinions get blurry

  • Ico, who got paid to promote the pivot, said in his 2nd Tweet: “I would have FUDed the death of NFTs for free, but thankful that Magic Eden was willing to sponsor my thoughts on the topic/announcement”

  • On the topic of paid partnerships, it’s been clear that Twitter has been pushing for more transparency. The “paid partnership tag” is live now (and yes, crypto products can still be promoted)

• Back to ME, and why they are winding down the EVM and BTC marketplaces. The products simply don’t generate enough revenue to justify their existence, not only because of a lack of volume from the majority of them (esp. ABS, BERA, MON, AVAX, ARB, etc.), but also a lack of a sustainable revenue model (~$65K revenue on Ordinals volume in the last 30 days)

  • Daily NFT trading volume on OpenSea (OS) isn’t looking great either. According to this Dune Dashboard, the majority of the volume (and revenue) is coming from token trading now. OS started its transition from NFT marketplace to “the place to trade anything onchain” last year

  • To double-tap on token trading, we have to address ME’s acquisition of Slingshot of last year. Slingshot was a mobile-first trading app (very similar to fomo). The app was shut down earlier this year as a standalone app, and it ther were plans for it to be merged into ME 2.0, but it seems like they fumbled that opportunity…

    • From Jonah, who worked on it: “They fumbled what would be fomo today if they weren’t so bad with decision making”

• Moving on, let’s talk about Packs (gacha) briefly. ME introduced this feature to its platform in October 2025. A very similar experience to any other Pokémon Pack opening platform

  • In the first week of the launch, packs generated $13M in volume, and margins for these businesses can vary between ~12% and 30% net. However, this one week also accounted for 54% of the revenue for the whole of 2025 for ME

• Furthermore, the company is betting on DiceyHQ, a crypto casino and sports betting platform focused on “new games, new social primitives, new financial protocols”. During its closed beta with ~200 users, around $15M was wagered (of course, this data is not representative of anything at scale)

  • Again, to quote Jonah, who’s quite opinionated about the whole thing: “You aren’t adding anything new. Nobody cares if you add a new game these are data companies they’ll make new games if they see a new and loss of retention”

• ME’s token launched in December 2024, opening at ~$11. Today, the token is trading at $0.11, around -99%. This means the token would need a 9,900% gain to get back to its price at launch. I.e, the token is in absolute shambles

  • $ME will remain the central token of ME and Dicey. More clarity on how it will integrate with the casino is TBA, but whether it can be saved is something I highly doubt

  • One of the peak examples of poor token distribution. They gave away too many (free) tokens to the community in a market where holding isn’t rewarded

• The new ME consists of a Solana NFT marketplace, crypto casino, and gachapon. Do they have a moat or edge in any of these markets? Maybe Solana NFTs, but it doesn’t seem so for the other two

  • So, the “dead weight” they’re shedding looks like a good decision, but whether the refocus is the right decision remains questionable

ON THE RISE

• Immutable “signed one of its biggest MMORPGs yet”

• Project O evolved into DCC, a larger platform around collectables

• Ronin’s L2 migration is coming soon…

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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TLDR :

• Open Loot announced Warcast

• Power Protocol raises $3M

• Axie Infinity’s bAXS goes live

🗞️ NEWS

OPEN LOOT IS ANNOUNCED WARCAST

• Around two weeks ago (yes, we’re late…), Open Loot (OL) announced that they’re building a new 4X game called Warcast: “a strategy game centered on territory control, resource management, and strategic decision making”

  • In Warcast, players will secure land, build out their bases, and compete over finite resources in a shared map. From a high level, it looks like they’re going for a game similar to Kingshot

    • Next week, on March 3, there will be an invite-only playtest for the game. Moreover, we can get a better idea of how the game plays by going to the website, which features some in-game screenshots

• 4x is an interesting crypto genre that, in my opinion, is underserved. OL, on why they’re making a strategy game: “These mechanics provide a strong foundation for player driven economies within a web3 enabled game, where outcomes are shaped by planning and coordination rather than short term action.”

  • Over 3 years ago now, I wrote an article for the Wolves called: “When Does Web3 Make Sense In Gaming?” In this piece, we talk about 4X games, mentioning how these titles often use multiple resources, which drives P2P trading volume. Plus, that warfare is a powerful mechanic to burn resources and create a strong social layer

• Warcast will be created under the leadership of OL, the creators of Bigtime (more on that later). Johnson Yeh, the former CEO for China, Japan, and SEA at Riot Games, is the game lead for this project

  • Interestingly, Yeh is the founder of Ambrus Studio, the developers behind the crypto game E4C: Final Salvation. The studio announced a $15M raise last October, yet their E4C token is trading at a ~$25K market cap?

  • When going through Big Time Studios (OL) LinkedIn, I also found out that their CEO and founder is one of the co-founders of Decentraland (small world)

• The OL platform was built on the success of Big Time. It functions as a crypto publisher with its own marketplace, token (OL), and launcher. OL used to feature the following games on its platform: Worldshards, Moonfrost, Boss Fighters, Shatterpoin, The Desolation, Kokodi, and Bigtime

  • However, it decided to restructure its publishing model in Q3 last year. And now, only features Bigtime and the Trump Billionaires Club (GC Alpha 78), presumably due to the lack of success of most 3rd party titles

    • One of the games that had potential among the above list was Worldshards. However, because of complete mismanagement, the SHARDS TGE, held back in September, completely flopped

    • The game got booted off the platform more recently, and it seems the developers abandoned World Shards as well (based on comms)

      • After it was delisted, players received (non-transferable) “OL credits” to cover up to 25% of the purchase value as compensation for primary purchases on WorldShards. Naturally, the community wasn’t too happy about this “solution”

        • Overall, OL doesn’t have the greatest reputation in crypto gaming, I’d say

  • Other than Warcast, the studio is developing a mobile pet-collecting game that uses the Big Time IP. More information on this title is TBA

• On the topic of Big Time, the game generated over $100M in revenue since its pre-season, according to Decrypt data of March 2024. Most of this was generated during initial NFT sales in 2021-2022, primarily Space NFT drops (virtual land)

  • Big Time is a very average MMO, but it stood out back then, during the
    ”metaverse wave”, frankly, because all other games were way worse. This position gave them the ability to sell a ton of NFTs, which isn’t replicable anymore in this market

  • OL, taking a shot at the 4X genre is also interesting, because these titles are known for their monetization depth. The website uses terms like “anchor your army to crypto”, so I wonder how much they will be going for scale vs. servicing their existing audience with an NFT-first strategy

    • Big Time NFTs are mentioned to be playing a role in Warcast

• So, will Warcast be another success of the size of Big Time? I don’t think so. Yet, I’m quite curious to see how this game performs and how this team will innovate based on their learnings from its prior “cash cow”

POWER PROTOCOL RAISES $3M

• The Power Protocol (PP) announced that they raised an additional $3M in a round exclusively led by BITKRAFT (BK), making total funding to date $15.4M.

  • For context, PP is the blockchain infrastructure or “economic engine“ behind the next generation of crypto entertainment and the official launch partner of Fableborne (disclaimer: I work for Fableborne)

    • Previous funding rounds included: a $5.5M round for Fableborne in June 2023, and another ~$6-7M round that was announced in January 2025

  • The funds will be used to build out the PP and attract third-party studios into the ecosystem, including adopting the $POWER token and using the underlying onchain infrastructure

• Comments from both the PP and BK on the raise included:

  • Kam Punia (CEO PP): “This investment helps us keep moving toward that vision and develop an ecosystem built on progression, competition, and lasting engagement. Bitkraft’s support gives us confidence to keep improving thoughtfully for the benefit of our players and partners.”

  • Justin Swart (Principal at BK): “With impressive metrics, and one of the most cleanly executed token launches, Pixion, the Fableborne game, and the Power Protocol are building a compounding machine.”

• BK has been a fairly active deployer in the crypto gaming space over the last few years, with investments in Party Icons, Beamable, Smolbound, Cartridge, Cambria, Sonic, Avalon, Carbonated, BLOCKLORDS, and more

• The Power Ecosystem consists of 4 core Pillars, see litepaper:

  1. The Protocol: “…the infrastructure layer that makes blockchain entertainment scale.” This ecosystem connects partners and players through consumer apps, data-driven liveops, and $POWER

  2. Power Labs: The Protocol’s incubator, “the engine for innovation and growth in the ecosystem”. Power Labs functions as a competitive funnel to onboard builders across gaming, blockchain, and AI into the Power Ecosystem

  3. $POWER: The token that fuels the ecosystem, functioning as:

     1. A gaming token within Fableborne, and future 1st and 3rd-party titles

     2. An infrastructure token that fuels the Power Protocol

     3. An incubation token, the unit of value for Power Labs

  4. Fableborne: PP’s launch partner by being the first app to integrate $POWER into gameplay, staking, and liveops. “The first proof point of the Protocol”

• The PP was born out of Fableborne’s initial success, using the game as a launchpad to bootstrap distribution and seed the ecosystem with users, attention, liquidity, and mindshare. The third-party expansion strategy will be an important factor in how this ecosystem continues to grow

AXIE INFINITY’S APPTOKEN bAXS GOES LIVE

• Bonded AXS (bAXS) is now live inside Axie Infinity, a variation of the original AXS, and an Apptoken (programmable token). What’s bAXS (also discussed in GC NEWS 150)? Here’s everything you need to know:

  • bAXS is backed 1:1 by AXS

  • It’s a utility token that can be staked and used across sinks within Axie (breeding, ascensions, forging, etc.)

    • On staking, players can stake bAXS and receive AXS rewards. Paying out the same rewards as with AXS, and with the same governance weight

  • The token can only be spent on sinks within Axie. It can’t be traded or transferred, to retain most of the value inside the ecosystem

  • bAXS can be converted into AXS, but players will have to pay a “Treasury Fee”. This fee is determined by the “Axie Score” (reputation) of players, and ranges from 17.5% for the highest rank to 85% for the lowest rank

    • The score is influenced by Axie NFT holdings, treasury contributions, community contributions, and in-game performance

      • To date, Axie’s Treasury is worth ~$39M (-42% since Jan 23). Its main functions are backing AXS’s value and supporting the ecosystem by funding Axie Improvement Proposals (AIPs)

        • Interestingly, AIP-002, the “Axie Constitution”, was rejected last year. A proposal that created the foundation for community governance over the Axie Treasury

      • Treasury growth will be an insightful metric to watch to get an idea of how much bAXS is converted to AXS, and whether it can be a meaningful mechanic to extend the ecosystem’s run rate

    • Just like GIGABIT’s design, the fee is a strong incentive for players to keep their tokens within the platform. In turn, this also increases the likelihood of players spending the tokens instead

      • However, the bAXS → AXS conversion mechanic doesn’t have the rewards flywheel like GIGABIT has, where every conversion takes a % to return those rewards to the players. Perhaps a missed opportunity?

  • The first airdrop happened today and was based on players’ Axie Score and staked AXS amount (per a snapshot taken on February 5)

  • bAXS rewards will slowly be introduced as ecosystem rewards across: the Bounty Board, Classic and Origin, Homeland, Codex, and campaigns and community

• bAXS is one of the few Apptokens that is live now. Other than vPIXEL and xFISH, I can’t name any. While I’m excited for this tech, and on paper, it makes a lot of sense, I remain cautiously optimistic about the impact of the tokens

  • Simply, because there’s no living proof out there yet that it can create a (more) sustainable token chart

• Other than the integration of Apptokens, I’m interested to see the LBAMM go live, “The liquidity layer built for Apptokens”. Last August, in GC NEWS 132, we talked in more detail about what it is and what it enables:

  • “Dynamic player-driven fees, event-linked market rules, embedded quests and progression hooks, economy control and anti-bot tools, reward layer innovation, and custom market-making are some examples“

  • There’s currently an audit live for the LBAMM contract with $150K in rewards

• Overall, we’ll have to experience how much this changes for AXS’s trajectory. We remain cautiously optimistic and look forward to how Atia’s Legacy can catalyze the token’s potential revival

FLASH NEWS

• StarGrid Galaxy War goes live, but also halts funding and development

• Sage from Kuroro Beasts replaces himself with an “AI CEO”?

• Cambria shares the details for the public sale of its RSGP token

• Project O is releasing its Alpha Collector set soon

• Major changes are coming to Abstract’s XP system

• Magic Eden is shutting down its Ordinals + EVM Marketplaces (+more layoffs?)

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: Colony

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MARKET TALK

HUNTERTALES LAUNCHES AND…

• It might be “Ponzi season” right now, because another Ponzi game just launched (and already failed?). Huntertales (Ht) is the project I’m talking about: “a new kind of collaborative GameFi”, which launched its first season on MegaETH just 3 days ago

  • Ht is coming from a former team at Defi Kingdoms (DFK). One of the few OG (GameFi 2021 cycle) games that’s still around and kicking

• The game tried a different approach to the usual Ponzi game model by focusing on team play, which tied progression to collaboration

  • Ht’s high-level core game loop involved: recruit hunters → deploy hunters to sectors → coordinate with other players → fight sector battles and dynamic events → success: earn bounty + advance/failure: hunters die permanently

    • Note: This is a simplified version, as there is more depth to the mechanics

• Before its S1 release (“The Grand Campaign”), Ht held two events:

  • In October, it launched its 1-month Pioneers Program. An event focused on a referral mechanism, allowing users to get a headstart on obtaining in-game assets

  • More recently, on February 10, it launched on MegaETH alongside its Hunter Recruitment event. During this time, players could start opening Hunter Packs, which contained Hunter Characters (ERC-1155 NFTs). There are 3 pack tiers and 6 different rarities for heroes

    • From the 10th - 17th (until TGE), Hunters passively generated $CROWN tokens. The litepaper mentioned: “… by recruiting Hunters, you're indirectly acquiring CROWN at an implied valuation of $1MM”

    • Ht raised around $800K from these pack sales before its TGE, equal to around 5,000-6,000 packs sold

• The Grand Campaign started last week, on the 20th, and will run for 60 days. Its token, CROWN, TGE’d at the same time

  • CROWN is the utility token of Ht, awarded to players who win sector battles and used for opening Hunter Packs, purchasing upgrades, entering Boss dungeons, and managing guilds

    • TGE happened on Kumbaya (a new DEX on MegaETH). The team added $400/$500K ETH in liquidity to the CROWN pair, and the market price started at $0,105 ($1,050,000 valuation)

  • The game used an interesting mechanic of delaying a portion of their rewards. All players had a CROWN Treasury. To fund these, there was an automatic tax on claiming (hunter) deployment rewards:

    • “Every time you claim deployment rewards, 15% of your earnings is also credited as Treasury CROWN: a separate, locked balance on top of your liquid payout. You receive both. To access your Treasury, you must unlock and rebuild the Statue of the First Hunter with $CROWN across 10 levels.”

      • As players’ Hunters fall in battle, these souls unlock a portion of their Treasuries. You could call it a “pity system” to soften the blow of losing Hunters (losing $), so players don’t churn immediately after

• CROWN peaked at a $3.2M FDV, around 4 hours after its launch, then entered a death spiral of red candles (a common pattern among these games) and is now trading at a ~$315K market cap (~-70% from its listing price)

  • From an outsider's view, this downward spiral was largely fueled by players who bought Hunters early on, generated CROWN tokens pre-TGE, and wanted to recoup their “investment” on TGE

  • This never allowed the loop to form that makes the majority of players risk their assets, and recycle their CROWN in buying new packs (in case their Hunters die). The token chart then becomes reflective of player interest. The lower it goes, the less likely to make a profit, and the more players churn

    • To my understanding, minters got 7M tokens out of the available 10M tokens on TGE. On the first day, only 1.37M tokens got burned, so I imagine the majority of that excess supply became sell pressure, and there wasn’t enough buying pressure to offset that

• Last week, we talked about Cash City collapsing as a Ponzi game (now trading at a ~$250K FDV) and the factors that influence the longevity of these models

  • One addition I would make to this list is the performance of the token it's nominated in (e.g., ETH in Ht’s case), closely related to market sentiment, but more specific

    • So, when ETH (or SOL) drops in value or is historically trading at low levels (like now), users become more conservative, delay spending, and are more likely to exit.

      • I.e., users will be more inclined to spend when ETH is at $4K than when it’s at $2K, despite spending more in $ value

• Lastly, it’s worth pointing out how this isn’t a great look for MegaETH. Despite receiving support from the chain (2 QRTs), which brought a lot of eyeballs to them, and despite being one of the few interesting apps live on MegaETH at the moment, Huntertales couldn’t perform

  • In contrast, OCH had a much greater impact when it launched on Abstract

KATE SHARES HER VIEWS ON CRYPTO’S IMAGE PROBLEM

• Last November, we interviewed Kate Irwin, a journalist who wrote for PC Mag, The Block, and Decrypt, with a keen interest in crypto gaming. Our talk with her hasn’t released yet (video editing…), but I still wanted to share the highlights with you today:

• On mass adoption:

  • “Mass adoption is probably just not going to happen for crypto games in that way that people once thought a couple of years ago […] The reality is that the stigma has not yet changed, crypto game projects put too much focus on shilling to their own communities, and not enough focus on changing broader industry sentiment around NFTs and tokens…”

    • The space’s path to scale is a mix of rebuilding trust and shifting mainstream perception. Furthermore, it has become clear that the TAM of onchain (crypto-savvy) users isn’t large enough and isn’t growing either, meaning a CT-only GTM strategy will limit your upside potential

• Treasury management of crypto game studios:

  • “Crypto game studios could position themselves financially very differently than they have…some of them have been acting like Web2 studios: okay, we have this amount of money, we’re going to spend it to build the game and on marketing…until we’re almost out of money, and then we’re going to release the game and really hope we sell everything, or maybe they’re selling NFTs or tokens beforehand…”

  • “I’m not aware of a lot of game projects with substantial treasuries really treating their treasuries and the money that they earn like they’re a hedge fund, and reinvesting that money and staking that money, and being smart about maybe not keeping it all in their token, like diversifying a bit, because at that point you’re trying to reduce risk…”

    • While blockchain creates additional risk to a business model that is already risky, it also offers financial and distribution tools to derisk bankruptcy, advantages that many studios still underuse

    • Immutable would be a prime example of how a gaming company can sustain through great treasury management (and investments). As of August 2025, they still held ~$700M in various crypto assets

• Crypto’s image and onboarding new users:

  • “Web3 hasn’t been profitable or lasting as a sector. We’ve seen Coinbase trying to remarket the words Web3 and NFT as onchain […] Some of the new jargon that they’ve created is not going to translate to non-crypto people, unless you sort of handhold them through it…What does building a tokenized onchain community even mean?…”

    • Instead of naming and renaming concepts using crypto jargon, try to introduce meet your users with terminology they already understand. A good example of this is Cambria’s rebrand from crypto- to real-money gaming

  • “So I think Web3 was one of those things as well, a great buzzword for the 2021/2022 NFT boom that we saw, but from a traffic standpoint and in journalism…we have been avoiding terms like that, because it’s just not a term that people search for…And that word doesn’t mean a lot to non-crypto people after all those years, and crypto-native people think…that’s the 2022 FAD that’s not profitable”

    • “Web3” (gaming) not only has a negative connotation and little meaning, but it’s also not optimized for SEO. Simply look at the Google Trends data when you compare it to the search term “crypto” (gaming)

  • “When it comes to marketing and getting more people onboarded, the simpler the better…”

• Why she remains excited about crypto:

  • “For me, this new wave has been really interesting, watching the rise of a new kind of SocialFi, where it’s not just like Friend.tech, where it’s this max-extract hype cycle, but it’s more about long-term decentralized social platforms and social trading…We’ve upgraded, it’s not just all like chaotic PFPs and really bad games. We’ve all raised our standards…”

• Crypto is just a big economy:

  • “EVE Frontier is another one that’s serious about economies. Sometimes, some folks in crypto forget that all of crypto is just the economy…but another version of it. We all need to be good at economics…we all need to understand finance to understand crypto”

• We thank Kate for coming on the show and sharing her insights on crypto’s image problems. Next time, we’ll have Kam on. This conversation will focus on Fableborne’s reflections on S4 and TGE, and where the studio is heading next

ON THE RISE

• Moku’s Grand Arena crossed $1M in revenue

• Openloot announced a new 4x title called Warcast

• Wildcard introduces the Premier League: franchises and sponsorships

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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TLDR :

• The $16.5M Pokémon Card debacle

• Gigaverse introduces GIGABIT

• Anichess x Alibaba Cloud

🗞️ NEWS

THE $16.5M POKEMON CARD

• This week, Logan Paul set the world record for selling the most expensive Pokémon and trading card for $16,492,000. The only PSA 10 (more on this later) out of the 39 cards of the Pikachu Illustrator card in existence

  • Goldin led the auction for the sale, a marketplace for trading cards and collectibles, acquired by eBay in 2021. The platform took a 24% premium on the $13.3M hammer price, totaling $3,192,000

    • It seems that, just like Paul, Ken Goldin isn’t too much of a straight shooter either…

• Paul bought the card back in 2021 during a private sale for $5.3M. In the same video, in which he told the story of his purchase, he announced that he will be selling the card on a platform (co-founded by him) called LiquidMarketplace (LM)

  • The card was fractionalized, i.e., ownership was split across 50,000,000 tokens, each selling for $0.10 ($5,000,000 in total). Logan would retain 49% ownership of the card, and the community would have the majority stake of 51%. It “was owned by the community,” and they could decide what to do with it

• So, how did “the community” not benefit from the $16.5M card sale? Well…according to the ToS of LM, he had the right to buy the card back, which he did. In May 2024, he bought back the 5.4% share of the Pikachu Illustrator that was sold for $270K. The remaining 45.6% remained unsold during the auction, apparently

  • Purchasers were refunded and could withdraw their original investment in their LM accounts. But “for reasons outside of Paul’s control, the site went offline”. The LM website (or ShadcnStore template) is now live again for users to claim their refund

    • The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) charged the executives of LM, including Paul, with “misappropriating investor cash” in June 2024

      • There’s a bunch of shady stuff here that concerns the misappropriation of $3M in funds, including hidden payments to shell companies, misleading statements to token purchasers, lies about card authenticity, and more

• Regarding the card's grading (the PSA rating), there seemed to be some scepticism about it. xQc went over the details of the card and found multiple flaws, questioning the validity of the PSA 10 rating

  • Raiden did mention that cards can be regraded. And if PSA rated it a 10, it’s a 10. The process is also manual, so human error is possible: “A series of graders verify authenticity and evaluate condition using PSA's trusted 10-point grading scale”

• The winner of the auction is someone named A.J. Scaramucci, the son of Anthony Scaramucci, a wealthy financier and former White House Communications Director. A.J. is the founder and managing partner of Solari Capital, which led a $220M funding round for American Bitcoin

  • After winning the auction, A.J announced he’s working on a new venture called TreasureTrove (Trove lol?), “a real-life Treasure Hunt”

    • His goal is to collect the rarest artefacts on our planet, including dinosaur fossils and even the Declaration of Independence

• Lastly, it was worth noting the presence of the crypto bros at this event. 9GAG, Memecoin, and AceTrader received a shoutout. They were present because of their plans to enter the TCG World. Furthermore, the Azuki team seemed to be there to show Paul the Bucketman IP they’re working on

GIGAVERSE INTRODUCES GIGABIT

• In Dith’s article “Tokens don't work as game currencies,” posted last week, he outlines his thoughts about game currencies, including how good currencies work, why volatile currencies don’t work, in-game financialization, and more. An appetizer for what we can expect from Gigaverse’s token

  • And so, just yesterday, Gigaverse posted an article, “Introducing: GIGABIT”, an outline for the game’s proprietary currency. Let’s dissect it…

• So, what’s GIGABIT?

  • It’s a token that can be traded cross-chain, without any bridging required:

    • “…a player who joins the game on Abstract can trade with a player who joins the game from any other chain such as Base, MegaETH, Ronin, and so on”

      • By not boxing itself into one chain, this opens up the (onchain) TAM massively and removes all the friction of bridging. Similar to how Cambria allows on-ramps from various chains

  • It can be traded cross-platform, without ever needing to own any crypto:

    • “…an onchain player on Abstract can trade with a player who joins the game from, say, Steam, or a dedicated mobile version of the game, in the future.”

      • I.e., the system is also built to scale to Web2 audiences

• GIGABIT has a stable exchange rate:

  • “Every 100 GIGABIT onboarded into the ecosystem (purchasable with $1) can be cashed out for $0.8 in USDC, with $0.15 from the margin funding player rewards.”

    • It’s very similar to Roblox’s Robux model, which Dith goes into in his article. By controlling the spread, they can maintain their own margin (5% in this case) to fund development, growth, and anything else + sustainably reward players (without inflation)

      • It’s a strong incentive for players to keep their GIGABITs on the platform, increasing the likelihood of the currency being spent (but, at the same time, also a disincentive to onramp)

        • And if a player decides to “extract”, a chunk of that value recirculates back as rewards, further strengthening the holder and spender loop

  • Instead of players/holders speculating on the token price, the risk <> reward mechanics will exist elsewhere:

    • “Gigaverse will continue to introduce risk <> reward mechanics and fun “opportunities for gains” in many ways, starting with a competition we’re launching in a couple of days…”

      • From Dith’s article: “There are many ways to financialize your game and let players enjoy arbitrage opportunities, yield, risk / reward mechanics, the potential for ROI and so on, WITHOUT introducing a volatile game currency.”

  • Through this system, the token isn’t a separate product from the game, as it unifies the two. The game’s success isn’t judged on the token’s performance, but purely on its ability to attract players and volume, and monetize

• Volume drives rewards

  • Per GIGABIT’s model, the more players spend, the larger the player rewards. Incentives will differ per game mode and activity. There will be liveops, including timed events + special competitions, and ongoing reward loops

    • So, the reward pool is both fueled by off-ramp fees + GIGABIT spend (incl. the marketplace, shop, competitions, and wagering)

  • Players will be able to on-ramp using crypto (USDC) from any chain or fiat (coming later), and off-ramp in USDC

• GIGABIT is scheduled to go live sometime this Friday and will launch alongside a Gigaverse Anniversary competition, “expected to see the largest amount of player rewards in Gigaverse delivered to date”

  • It’s mentioned that GIGABIT is one of the core systems that will form “Gigaverse 1.0” (the long-term version of the game), including new game modes, a long-term economic model, an open world experience, and more

• GIGABIT is much like any (traditional) in-game currency: controllable, stable, and frictionless. Only the on and off-ramping process involves crypto. You could see it as a “game-branded stablecoin”

  • Looking forward to seeing this experiment go live this week, and potentially setting a new standard for tokens

ANICHESS PARTNERS WITH ALIBABA CLOUD

• This week, Anichess shared that they signed an MOU with Alibaba Cloud to develop “AliBAE (Build and Earn), a platform for the next generation of vibe coders and creators”. It will be powered by Qwen, Alibaba Cloud’s AI model

  • With the use of AliBAE, “anyone can build, and anyone can earn ($CHECK),” through publishing content and apps with vibe coding

    • The AliBAE.build website is live, and can be visited to claim a badge to redeem a multiplier. You can’t use the creator tools yet

• You could call it a “decentralized publishing model,” which incentivizes the community to build experiences on top of Anichess and grow their ecosystem (similar to Roblox and Fortnite). However, the question is whether Anichess is large enough of a game/ecosystem to create a big enough incentive and attract talented builders

  • Just because AI tools now allow everyone to become a “developer” doesn’t mean that the content produced is always valuable. We’ve noticed this with the countless “AI masturbation” on the timeline (where are the apps?). As of now, vibe coding is much more useful for automating personal tasks than building useful apps

    • As a counterpoint, you do have platforms like Remix (discussed in GC News #126), purely focused on vibecoding mobile games. And some of the titles on there can be pretty enjoyable

  • Whether this is just a narrative play (like we have seen multiple times now in gaming) from Anichess to align itself with AI seems unclear to me. Developing tools like these can be a large undertaking on its own

    • My hunch is that they simply built an Anichess-branded wrapper for Qwen, bolted on some $CHECK functionality, and then made it sound bigger than it actually is. Of course, we have yet to see the tooling, and I’m just making assumptions here…

      • In terms of credibility, Alibaba Cloud QRT’d the announcement, but didn’t have any official press release

• Despite my doubts, the price of $CHECK did pump on the news. It’s important to note that this announcement was paired with a UGC campaign that explicitly pushed creators to talk about price action

  • The pump from $0.067 to $0,10+ (+50%) has fully retraced now, with the current price being $0,066

• So, is it all just narrative, or is there substance behind it? Time will tell. Yet, I remain sceptical about whether these future vibe-coded apps can add value to the Checker ecosystem

FLASH NEWS

• Spekter Games launched a new game called Spekter City

• The Sony Innovation Fund invested $3.2M in Record Protocol’s YOAKE

• Sport.fun partnered with Polymarket: “Prediction markets are coming soon to SDF”

• Huntertales is launching S1 alongside its CROWN token today

• Moku’s Grand Arena S1 is now live with a $1M prize pool

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: Debellum

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MARKET TALK

CASH CITY LAUNCH

• Two days ago, another Ponzi game launched called Cash City. A browser tycoon game in which you manage firms, open packs, upgrade, and earn CASH tokens to “take your firm from the mailroom to the penthouse” (i.e., Addicted.fun, but instead of growing weed, you manage a firm)

  • Looks like Cash City took the theme from the (failed) Hedge Empire on Sophon, in which players had to “build their own trading empire”

  • Also, looks like the pack mechanics (gacha) in Ponzi games are becoming a new thing, started by Addicted

• Cash City is a game by Longwood Labs, the makers of The Heist and Defi Dungeons

  • The Heist is a high-stakes, risk-based game with idle elements. Players had to stake their assets (NFTs) to generate resources, but could face RNG-based risks when claiming/unstaking their assets

    • The Heist launched in April 2023 and was live (or operated) until August 2025. Probably, until the team decided to shift its focus to Cash City and Defi Dungeons instead

  • Defi Dungeons is a fantasy idle-RPG in which players have to manage their (NFT) heroes, including dungeon runs, quests, and training them. In the game, players passively earn GOLD tokens

    • As part of its launch, the team sold both NFTs and tokens. Through the Character sale, 11,000 characters were sold for $325 (in SOL) each, raising over $3.5M in total. The token sale was held through a fair launch on Meteora, selling 10% of the supply for $3M (so $6.5M raised in total)

      • When GOLD launched, it opened at around a $130M market cap, but then saw an enormous red candle (like usual), crashing the price to ~$30M. For a week or so, it traded sideways until the (inevitable) trend down to zero happened. GOLD is trading at a ~$44K market cap today

    • To my surprise, the project was still receiving updates last December. After several content updates, the game looks quite similar to Defi Kingdoms now

      • With Cash City being launched, it does seem unlikely that the team will continue to put resources into a game that doesn’t monetize and has such a low market cap

    • That said, I would be surprised if the team spent more than $2M to build and liveops Defi Dungeons, thus far

• Longwood Lab’s model is quite similar to Pandemic Labs, as both studios have launched and killed a couple of Ponzi games now. However, they also differ, as Longwood runs liveops for their titles much longer (although I’m not sure that’d is the case with Cash City), and doesn’t have a studio token

• Moving on to Cash City, its token CASH TGE’d alongside the game launch. On TGE, CASH wicked up to around a $7M market cap (~18x lower than GOLD’s ATH), followed by a big red candle, and now it’s trading at ~$2M

  • There were no presales (tokens or NFTs). The way the game monetizes is by firms (1 SOL each), required to start playing the game. Players need to spend CASH to upgrade their firm. Furthermore, there are “intern and advisor packs” (gacha), selling for 200 (~$4) and 1000 (~$20) CASH tokens. Plus consumables

    • Through purchases in CASH, players improve their “efficiency”, i.e., the rate at which they generate CASH tokens

  • On the day of the launch itself, 1,000 firms were opened (1000 SOL in revenue). The day after, the team reported that 1.5M CASH has been emitted, and 5M CASH burnt. Despite burn > emissions by over 3x, CASH’s price remains flat

    • Someone also reported the team made $300K in token swap fees so far

• Overall, after tracking multiple Ponzi games over the last few years, some patterns start to arise:

  • Almost always, the token peaks at TGE (by a margin) and slowly trends to zero

  • “I’m making $$$ per hour” posts (in a way, the organic marketing) are the best marketing to pull in more players to Ponzi games

    • We didn’t see much of that for Cash City in this case, likely explaining why it fell flat

  • FOMO is a strong emotional driver of early player adoption. As these games are always about being early if you want to make (significant) money

    • However, if that’s not the case (like Cash City), your early adopters won’t be able to shill the opportunity (and their referral codes) enough to get a second wave of users in (i.e., exit liquidity), and it falls apart

• How big a Ponzi can get seems to be a mix of market sentiment (coins down = earlier profit taking), trust in the team, recency bias (what was the last Ponzi, and how did it do), reward emission rate, first mover advantage (speaking of chains) KOL vs. organic push, and, of course, the rate of new users and liquidity coming in (a Ponzi’s lifeblood)

• Overall, unless the team decides to pump the token again, and so make earning more attractive, I think Cash City won’t make the end of this week

WE TALK WITH KIEFER ABOUT GROWTH

• A couple of months ago, we spoke with Kiefer from ReplyCorp. Kiefer worked as a systems designer for crypto casinos and worked as an incentive consultant for Scopely, Cardano, and Wildcard, before joining ReplyCorp as a co-founder last year

• The conversation we had focused mainly on growth and incentives, not necessarily in a gaming context, but the takeaways do still translate to gaming here:

• On how to think about incentive design:

  • “For any given user, what motivates them to take a desirable action. That ties in when you’re talking about Web3, it ties in when you’re talking about Web2, so when you’re trying to get someone to spend, play, engage, hold a token, it depends a lot on the user and what they actually care about”

    • Behavior is driven by motivations, and motivation varies by user (even though it’s almost always financial in crypto). Good design aligns incentives with what each user segment cares about

• Designing products without signups and onboarding:

  • “There are a bunch of studies that have been done by behavioral economists that show that even for things that people objectively want, and they know are really good for them, you think they would actually do, even a little bit of friction added to that process can prevent them from actually following through…”

    • Behavioral economics show that ease of use can drive behavior more than incentives. Especially when apps will expand beyond crypto, into less incentive-sensitive audiences (i.e., beyond farmers), reducing friction is key in conversion

  • “I was inspired by that (“Safe more Tomorrow”) to create a mechanism….where users can get a benefit immediately in exchange for agreeing that: “Hey, in the future, when the token launches, it can be staked for a little while, or you can stake it for even longer, because I want to benefit today, because I personally value whatever that thing is that I get right now, and I’m discounting that liquidity of the tokens in the future”. That’s a very important behavioral bias to think about”

• What makes something self-propagating?

  • “To do this (have a K-factor higher than 1), you must bake virality into the core loop of the product”

  • “There’s also an important part of thinking about what is a meaningful incentive, that it’s important both for the person inviting and something valuable for the person that is being invited. It could be financial, it doesn’t have to be, it just has to be relevant to that particular scenario and valuable to them”

    • Some supportive data on dual-sided referral incentive design: “Users who received dual-sided rewards (both referrer and referee) were 3.2x more likely to complete multiple referrals.” ~NextBee

• Overall, some great takeaways from Kiefer here. The next interview will be with Kate Irwin, in which we will talk about crypto gaming from a journalist’s perspective, so stay tuned for that

ON THE RISE

• YOM has closed a $3M round to “fix” cloud gaming

• Sanko GameCorp winds down Sanko mainnet (dev for SankoQuest continues)

• The Treeverse S2 is launching tomorrow

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR + I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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TLDR :

• iBLOXX raises $5.4M for StrayShot

• Monsters.fun is shutting down?

• Cambria token launch + Genesis coming

🗞️ NEWS

iBLOXX RAISES $5.4M FOR STRAYSHOT

• Last week, iBLOXX announced it raised $5.4M in a round to complete the development of its title, StrayShot (formerly 0X Battleground). The funds will also be used to support marketing and distribution, liveops, ongoing updates, and console versions

  • This wasn’t the first round that iBLOXX raised to develop the game, because in February 2023, it announced a $5M investment led by PrimeXM (a brokerage platform). At the time, this valued the company’s gaming arm at $30M

• StrayShot is a 3rd-person BR, extraction, and TDM shooter on mobile and PC, currently in beta. Development for the game started in late 2022 (post the first GameFi hype cycle) by iBLOXX Studios

  • From the surface, it largely seems like a lazy copy of PUBG to me

  • StrayShot partnered with SKALE in March 2023 and runs its own L1 on the chain

  • The game even had SBF as a character in there at the start. Remember the period in which all these famous CT characters were integrated as IPs?

    • On the topic of IPs, the game managed to strike a deal with the Lamello family (basketball brothers) in 2023

• iBLOXX is part of the DMCC Gaming Centre ecosystem, based in the DMCC Free Zone, and part of the broader Dubai Program for Gaming 2033 (a government initiative aimed at growing the gaming industry)

  • When visiting the iBLOXX website, I found out that the company is “a Web3 gaming and quantitative investment firm”. The iBLOXX brand has different divisions, covering proprietary trading, market making, and more. iBLOXX Studios is the developer behind StrayShot

    • The CEO, Domenik Maier, has a background in investments, trading, capital markets, etc. However, has no prior experience in building games. Gauging their LinkedIn page, it seems unclear who’s really calling the shots here in terms of game dev

• Unsurprisingly, StrayShot also jumped on the Telegram bandwagon. In September 2024, it launched an idle clicking game called TapShot. The game reached 500K “users” within a month. But had to close down the app after Telegram’s and TON’s exclusivity agreement (Feb 2025), in which all apps had to use the TON chain

• Even though it seems the game has made progress, when comparing it to the (seriously abysmal) state 0X Battleground was in, I still don’t see the vision here. To me, it’s part of the 2021 - 2022 cohort who saw crypto gaming as an opportunity to raise funds, nothing more

  • As always, happy to be proven wrong, though. But history is telling of where this will end

MONSTERS.FUN IS SHUTTING DOWN?

• After months of silence, the founder of Monsters.fun announced that the current version of the game is shutting down: “We are going back to the drawing board to build a new iteration that takes the core of what made the game special and evolves into something even better”

  • In addition, Monsters will pivot away from Abstract, and Moodi (the founder) will be “exploring different opportunities”, while someone from the team will be heading the development of the new version

    • My hunch would be that the project was sold, but he doesn’t want to share that (yet). By distancing himself, he dodges any future accountability. His bio on Twitter now also says “I like AI & prediction markets”, which reads as him seeing better opportunities elsewhere

• For context, Monsters is a game that blends monster battlers, AI, and memecoin-like mechanics. The hook was: train your monster, battle, and steal your opponents’ market cap

• The fact that the game is being rebuilt isn’t much of a surprise either, as the game’s initial launch was scheduled for August 2025. During their (attempted) launch, a lot went wrong, so much so that they had to write an article about it

  • In summary, their communication was unclear, the content pacing was off, the game and game mechanics were too complicated, and the WL structure was broken

    • The majority of these problems could’ve been prevented by playtesting first, before making all these assumptions and putting the product out there

    • On the “WL structure”: the game used a bonding curve for token pricing in a presale. It’s unclear how much was raised during that sale

  • Furthermore, the article mentioned: “We're going to iterate faster based on your feedback. Features that people actually use? We'll double down. Features that nobody touches? They're gone. Simple as that.”

    • Let’s say we can question their iteration speed at this point, since it’s been 5 months since they posted this article. Plus, stopped communicating via socials since October

• Monsters never launched a token, but did launch an NFT collection. 750 Monster Capsules were sold in May 2025 for 0.125 ETH each (almost 94 ETH = $232,000 at the time)

  • If you minted them and sold them at the peak, you would have made a nice 5x. Today, they’re worth about 1/40th of their mint price (stop holding the bag…)

    • Funnily enough, this mint was also handled by the infamous Kickz. After trying to return to CT after his hiatus, getting ratio’d by ZachXBT led to him deleting his account

• The team may not have launched an ecosystem token, but did raise funds in a KOL round. According to Elisa, this money was “used for dev” already, so a refund seems unlikely. Looking at history, it’s also unlikely we’ll see a successful token launch in the future

• And so, we see another monster battler bite the dust. Is this genre in crypto simply doomed? The main problem is that these games all start too early with selling assets, but never get to hit the market or ship a complete experience

CAMBRIA TOKEN LAUNCH + GENESIS RELEASE

• After Ben’s latest investor/holder update, we finally have a timeline for Cambria’s TGE and “Cambria Genesis” (full game release). Probably the most-anticipated launch in crypto gaming for 2026. Let’s talk about it…

  • From Ben, in the announcement: “2026 is our make or break year, as we shift from ”development” mode to “scale” as a product, team, business”

• In terms of release dates, the announcement says:

  • TGE is coming in late May/June

    • Pre-liquid token sale (ICO) this month, with more details dropping this week

  • Cambria Genesis in June, immediately after TGE

• The TGE → full launch approach makes sense here, as one of the key learnings from token launches in 2024 - 2025 is that tokens should be introduced later in the product lifecycle

  • For a product to be supportive of a token launch, it needs to have a sufficient economic layer (systems and features). Of course, it’s never fully dependent on your systems only, as speculation is part of it, but Fableborne S4 taught us that this economic layer is vital to a successful TGE

    • Shared more thoughts on this topic in “Crypto Gaming is "Dead" (Again) - Let's Break it Down” (close to the end)

• Cambria Genesis is the full game launch, connecting the Duel Arena with the broader 24/7 Cambria World economy. This 3-step process of the “path to Genesis” started with the First Landing (introducing Islands), as discussed in Sidelined News #150

  • As we know, Cambria has used a seasonal approach, with a progression wipe after every season. I think Gold Rush will remain seasonal (like Deadman-mode), and the content outside that will have a long-term progression layer

  • This week, we got a sneak peek of an early Genesis build, which showed off regional banks, transports, and ambushes

• Cambria’s ticker will be $RSGP, and if you ever played Oldschool Runescape (OSRS), you know that RS reads as Runescape, and GP (Coins) stands for Gold Pieces. So, the ticker being optimized for the Runescape audience is telling about their next moves

  • A little back, we asked Ben about their “Runescape GTM” that has been sitting on ice. It seems that Genesis will be the moment when the strategy kicks off

    • From Ben (November 2025): "if you’re looking at the tech adoption curve, we’re targeting the early adopters right now. A lot of which are already in crypto, right?…as we go along the curve…we’ll eventually start hitting the really big audiences”

  • On this topic, we also asked him about onboarding Pika (a gambling-focused Kick streamer) back then. He answered that the goal was to tap into market-aligned and product-aligned viewers and look for new audiences

• Like any crypto game, the game’s TGE will be a vital moment in its development. However, Cambria is an exception, because it already proved it can monetize successfully based on wager volume and item sales in ETH (of course, a good chunk of that is driven by a potential token airdrop)

  • So, the question becomes: “Why token?”. We have yet to learn about RSGP’s role in Cambria’s economy, although some of Ben’s Tweets give us an idea of which direction they want to go

    • In Sidelined News 143, we speculated on a 2-token model: (1) an in-game utility token that trades 1:1 to USDC, and (2) an ecosystem token (in this case, RSGP). Plus, we know Apptokens have been on the team’s mind

• Overall, I’m quite excited about RSGP and would likely participate in the sale (NFA), but also wary when looking at current market sentiment. Especially, now the “ICO dream” has been shattered, with FDF underperforming and MegaETH sentiment taking a turn for the worse

FLASH NEWS

• Betting platform BLUFF announced that it raised $21M in a funding round

• Huntertales’ recruitment phase is now live on MegaETH

• The preparation phase for AveForge is now live on MegaETH

• Fishing Frenzy team did a buyback of over 3.7M $FISH

• Animoca Brands partnered with CryptoSlam to create Animoca Minds

• GIGACHADBAT launched it token on the YGG Play launchpad (not live yet)

• Psycheout stepped down from his operational role at Sky Mavis, Axie, and Ronin

🆕ALPHA CORNER

• Early Games: None for this week.

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MARKET TALK

GOAT GAMING IS SHUTTING DOWN

• GOAT Gaming (GG) announced this week that they’re sunsetting their products: GG, Gifts.Fun, Alpha Goats, and Amy Bot

  • For context, GOAT Gaming is AI infrastructure for (TG) games, Gifts.fun is a rewarded play and loot box platform, Alpha Goats are AI Agents that play and earn, and Amy Bot is a social AI agent

    • Note: Alpha Goats never got off the ground. Anybody who purchased them is eligible for a refund

  • After the announcement of the shutdown, Simon (the CEO) shared a post to add some context:

    • “While we saw strong early engagement (on TG), the ecosystem’s structural constraints, including ad fraud, bot traffic, and limited discoverability, made sustained growth difficult, and we ultimately didn’t reach a durable product-market fit.”

• The platform is developed by Mighty Bear Games (now called WeAreMighty). Originally, the company entered crypto gaming with Mighty Action Heroes (MAH), a mobile top-down shooter, based on their successful game in Web2, Butter Royale

  • In August 2024, it introduced GG, and in July 2025, MAH was sunset for the team to focus on their new endeavors in AI

  • The company was rebranded from Mighty Bear Games to wearemighty only in Dec 2025, even though the pivot to AI already started 2 years earlier. In the letter that was shared at the time, Simon said:

    • “Wearemighty reflects a broader canvas than games alone. It represents a company that builds both content and the infrastructure behind it”

• The studio raised $15M in total. It raised $10M during its first round in 2022, led by Framework Ventures, “through a token sale”. In 2025, it announced another $4M round led by TON Ventures, among others. The announcement mentioned that the funds will also be used to launch their $GG token

  • Note: I believe the $1M that’s missing here is the grant they received from the Singaporean government

  • Despite having raised funding through 2 “token rounds”, the GG token was never launched. So, I am curious about what the deals with the investors were, since the token never launched or will launch. With the company’s funding and its estimated burn rate, I don’t think a refund is in the books

• On Gifts.fun, players could earn GG currency off-chain. Naturally, the expectation was that these tokens would lead to a conversion to an onchain version of GG at some point

  • As part of the platform winding down, players can now convert off-chain $GG into Crowns, which are used to buy Gems. Players need Gems to open loot boxes on the website. Interestingly, to be eligible for a withdrawal, you had to play 100 matches in games on the platform

• GG never launched a token, but it did launch the GOAT Gaming NFT collection in July 2024. This new collection merged the old collections associated with Mighty Action Heroes. Unsurprisingly, the collection lost over 80% of its value after the shutdown announcement

  • On this topic, I think bagholding gaming NFTs has been one of my biggest financial mistakes to date, but I’ll leave those stories for another time

• Overall, the team couldn’t find PMF and had to close its doors. That’s the reality for over 95% of companies operating in this space

  • I think we were even “deflationary” (lol) in January, because we saw more shutdowns/pivots than new token launches in this month

24 MORE LESSONS FROM 10 FOUNDERS

• As part of our show Sidelined, we interview another builder every week. Every guest is building something different and has a unique story, with valuable insights to learn from

  • After having our 20th guest this week, it’s time for another recap of the best quotes and takeaways from our conversations. You can find part one of this series here (GC Alpha 73) and on my Twitter (see the tweet above), including the first 10 guests on the show

• This segment has been condensed to a top 10 (1 quote + takeaway for every guest). You can find all 24 lessons with video clips in a future article on my Twitter

  • Connor Kirsten - XBORG

    • "Right now, we don't have a market maker. We're not listed on any centralized exchanges. So, we don't get affected by some of the unfortunate things that happen in the space. That protects our community quite a bit and gives them a lot more confidence to hold our token"

      • Early-stage tokens can build stronger trust by prioritizing control (no CEXs and no MMs) over scale

  • JW - Fishing Frenzy

    • “The perfect Web3 game is a game that Web3 natives like and enjoy and play, and usually it’s a game that embraces a lot of crypto’s ethos, but there’s a pathway to a larger audience”

      • What JW describes here is the path between 1 and 2. The game that has a crypto-enabled metalayer that lives outside of the core game loop, but can achieve scale as well. We have yet to see this scenario play out

  • Ben - Cambria

    • “Crypto is almost like a bad word…to a lot of people, it means Ponzi scheme...At this point, we're not even a crypto game anymore, can't even use that term anymore...Real-money trading is the terminology that makes sense"

      • To add, Luke Barwikowski (from Pixels) shared the following on this point in an article: “ads that mentioned crypto rewards performed 5–10x worse than equivalent ads framed as normal real-money rewards.”

        • There’s a negative connotation to the word “crypto”, so you have to meet users with the language (and mechanics) that they’re already familiar with

  • James - Galaxxia

    • "Wherever the eyeballs are, brands want to spend. And that's why gaming, and why we're in a very unique position, because when you sit and speak to brands, they want to spend money in gaming, but no game has been built with this (transition to creators) in mind"

      • Planet-X is positioned as a marketing platform in which brands are integral to the game loop. The hook of extracting physical items through a digital (game) loop is naturally shareable. Together, this creates an interesting platform for advertisers to spend marketing dollars on (at scale)

  • Kam Punia - Fableborne

    • “S4 was actually planned for May, and then we just realized we don’t have the full-blooded experience that we wanted, we don’t think we have the economic layer or systems and features that can support an economic layer around Fableborne…”

      • One of the key learnings from TGEs in 2024 - 2025 is that tokens should be introduced later in the lifecycle. A product’s ability to support a token launch often hinges on its maturity

  • Sinjin - MAYG

    • “A lot of game developers don’t really know about liveops. They know how to develop the game, how to do the lore...and then you look at what crypto is...post-TGE crypto, that is an entire ******* liveops”

      • In crypto, success is less about a defining moment and more about building momentum over time and turning it into something valuable. Post-TGE, teams need this “liveops mindset” to keep their token relevant and valuable

  • Skarly - OCH

    • “The season-based model’s meta progression was hurting us...We found that they (players) never wanted to join something...There are just so many negative emotions attached to S2 and beyond”

      • A timed season-over-season progression model can create emotional and structural baggage: (1) existing players lose motivations (2) new players feel excluded. Better models are a seasonal wipe (like Cambria) or a consistently live game (later in the lifecycle)

  • 0xmons - StompGG

    • “It’s going to be difficult for a lot of these long tail things to catch a bid, unless they present themselves more like meme coins, or you have some other reason for people to want to buy it. And utility in games is often just not there”

      • Development cycles in gaming are long, especially compared to other product sectors in crypto. This means the time it takes for an “investment” to pay off is also much longer, requiring patient capital. CT values fast money, so naturally, this puts gaming at a disadvantage

  • Tuna - Pandemic Labs

    • “There are 3 points to crack to go viral. The 1st one is the concept […] you have to capture the attention within 1 second. How? It’s a one-liner. It’s like a YouTube video title”

    • “2nd point is the pre-launch strategy […] in the pre-launch phase, it’s 1000x easier to get attention than post-launch […] in crypto, people are always looking for alpha, people want to find you before shipping anything”

    • “The third part is a launch video […] In this attention economy, a launch video really works, because it makes people want to talk about your product”

      • To condense the first 3 quotes into bite-sized takeaways: (1) virality starts with an idea, not necessarily the product, (2) attention is the cheapest pre-launch, and (3) a launch video is your largest attention multiplier

  • Andrea - Beezie

    • “When I look at growth, there’s a direct correlation to how interesting we are stocking up our claws, what’s the inventory that people want at that moment, and then eventually growing categories beyond that”

      • In the collectibles market, growth is not only driven by scaling UA, but also through demand creation through timing, inventory curation, and expansion to new product categories

• Raiden and I are happy to have already had 20 guests on our show and are excited to keep pushing it forward. Will you be the next guest on Sidelined? Our DMs are open

ON THE RISE

• Relay raised $17M in a Series B and is launching its Relay Chain

• OCH’s Maze of Gains is now live

• Project O officially rebrands to Origins TCG

Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR + I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.

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