Submit your game on BuidlHack 2026 Ludium Portal before April 16th
If you need some inspiration, make sure to check out our Wednesday stream, in which we tried out a bunch of vibe-coded games. Will we try out yours next?
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
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:
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
