Founder of Monsters.fun decides to "explore different opportunities"
SIDELINED NEWS 153
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
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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