7 years in development and raised $7M in a round backed by Tencent?
GAMING CHRONICLES 145
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TLDR :
Tatakai raises $7M
Cambria introduces Renown
Mythical Marketplace gets an overhaul
🗞️ NEWS
TATAKAI RAISES $7M
Around 2 weeks ago (yes…we’re late), Tatakai announced it raised $7M in an angel round for its open-world anime RPG. The round saw participation from Tencent, Metis, and others
The game clearly takes inspiration from Genshin Impact. However, uses a different concept that includes turn-based battles, card-based mechanics, and “AI-driven exploration zones”
The AI part seems more of a marketing gimmick than leading to net-new gameplay. Doesn’t read anything different than procedural generation
On October 25th, Tatakai launched its beta soft launch for internal testing in a select few Asian countries. The app is available in the Play Store
In terms of its crypto integration, Tatakai has NFTs, which can be traded on its “AMM-powered marketplace”. Furthermore, players can join decentralized guilds to influence the game economy with their votes (e.g., guild-based governance)
Based on the usage of the #BNB hashtags, it looks like the game will launch on the yellow chain. It has become quite common for Asian-based (anime) RPGs to choose BNB
When trying to research this game, there were a couple of unknowns I ran into:
It’s unclear who’s developing Tatakai. Different sources mention a “Tokyo-based studio”. However, the only connection found is to Super Esports Pte. Ltd., which is based in Singapore, and is probably just the publisher of the game
Tatakai’s Twitter page states that the game has been in development for the past 7 years. This tells us that it’s highly likely the game launched in Web2 first, and later relaunched in crypto
Tencent’s involvement in this round also reminds me of Aria, a game that was co-published by the gaming giant. Aria started in Web2, under the name of “Manasis Refrain”, before it pivoted to Web3 years later
There’s little information available on whether the listed investors were involved in the round. The websites that reported on the news are either press releases from Tatakai itself or crypto gaming-based news outlets
Overall, the game looks alright, but I doubt it innovates enough on the genre to compete with the incumbents in the anime RPG space. Furthermore, there are just a bunch of unknowns when it comes to Tatakai and its background
CAMBRIA INTRODUCES RENOWN
Last week, Cambria introduced a new system called “Renown”, also called the “ve for NFTs”, referring to Curve Finance’s veTokenomics (vote-escrowed tokens). Essentially, a time and behavior-weighted onchain reputation score (for NFTs)
Renown aims to solve the problem of how long-term holders are penalized for holding early-stage NFTs, instead of rotating, without additional utility based on holding time
The current system treats opportunistic buyers and long-term holders the same. To emphasize why the (existing) system is inefficient, I want to use a line from Fishing Frenzy’s litepaper on Proof of Contribution (as discussed last Monday):
“The core idea behind reputation tokens is that not all users are equal, and should not be rewarded equally.”
veTokenomics was introduced by Curve in 2020, disincentivizing LP yield-hopping based reward ratios and incentivizing loyalty through providing benefits to time held:
From Ben: “This worked incredibly well”, “…and creates a temporal moat between builders and opportunists - directly counteracting the “liquid too soon” problem of crypto by de-incentivizing liquidity until the product matures.”
Renown is an evolution of Cambria’s existing “Loyalty Score” system that was introduced in September 2024. A simple mechanic that counts how many blocks an NFT has been held since it was last transferred or minted. Plus, a special title or badge for holders who have held since mint, called “First Founders”
The team drives utility perks and other benefits to this group of holders
Through the Renown system, every NFT holder will generate a veNFTScore, representing a record of their conviction, activity, and engagement across the ecosystem
Holding (or staking) time + “Attunement” (committing NFTs to in-game actions) increases the score, whilst selling or transferring resets it
An example of what Attunement looks like: “binding e.g., a Founder NFT to a specific game activity, asset, guild, or ecosystem product in a way that leverages its renown score for yield, cosmetics, perks, etc.”
The article lists both the advantages and disadvantages of veNFTs:
Advantages include tracking loyalty history, increased design space with NFTs, time-weight is easy to track with NFTs, and NFT supply can be limited and more easily controlled
Disadvantages include long-term balance, overrewarding existing holders, and disincentivizing new holders from entering. Furthermore, NFTs would need utility early on, and they are already less liquid than tokens. Renown would only further incentivize holding
So far, Cambria has used the system to give higher weight to NFT reveals for the Islands. Plus, for giveaways, raffles, and perks, as well as the distribution of NFTs and tokens
In the future, they might add utility in terms of governance power, emissions, discounts, and bribes
Overall, it has been interesting to see a push for reputation systems over the last year or so, some examples including GLHFers’ programmatic WL, Pixels player reputation tools, Fishing Frenzy’s more recent Proof of Contribution, and now Cambria’s Renown. Is it the future of more sustainable reward mechanics?
MYTHICAL MARKETPLACE 2023 - 2025
Yesterday, John Linden shared that the Mythical Marketplace (MM) will be receiving a major overhaul soon. Before we see the new marketplace, John reflects on where they’ve come from, the milestones, and adds context on the upcoming changes:
The MM sits at the core of Mythical’s ecosystem and powers every item traded in every game economy. In total, almost 500K players have used the marketplace, which the company believes to be their edge:
In Mythical’s titles, trading is directly built into game progression. The company’s patented “QuickTrade” system, in which players can bundle existing (items) NFTs into a more valuable one, has been “the most significant thing we’ve done in web3” according to Linden
The major benefit of this approach is instant liquidity and value exchange (instant match of buyers and sellers). This solves a huge problem with NFT markets, which are often illiquid
In the near term, Mythical plans to add full in-game trading to FIFA Rivals and Pudgy Party, like what’s in place for NFL Rivals
Marketplace activity → perpetual MYTH demand. Fiat is automatically converted into MYTH through a regulated broker. Every trade incurs fees in MYTH, and a portion of these trades is burned. New titles added to the ecosystem “support the underlying flywheel driving $MYTH consumption”
Additionally, it’s mentioned that the marketplace mechanics and game design are creating a constant positive net flow (more inflows than outflows). In theory, that means you can sustainably scale (if LTV > CAC)
But despite the scale potential of this model through player demand (both Web2 and Web3), the ecosystem hasn’t yet reached the size needed to offset the constant selling pressure of the token, as shown by the chart
Mythical’s 2021 raise of $150M at a $1.25B valuation, led by A16Z, is one of the reasons the token has underperformed. This post on BidClub (now from 2024) is another interesting one on this topic
More recently, Mythical also started taking revenue in PENGU tokens
Over 60% of Mythical’s revenues come from player trades
Essentially, Mythical is one of the largest studios now trying to prove the “mobile token thesis”. This thesis relies on the following (from Brydisanto):
Users at some level of scale
Ability/pathways to recurrently convert IAP into token buying (in particular from traditional mobile gamers)
Revenue otherwise supporting the token, at least in part
The metrics:
~44M transactions to date, with the ATH month at over 4M transactions. Every transaction represents a P2P trade
The ecosystem has seen 12 successive quarters of increasing inflows: Y1 → Y2 (+163%) and Y2 → Y3 (+63%). Additionally, there’s an increasing delta between inflows and outflows: Y1 → Y2 (+126%) and Y2 → Y3 (+20%). So, 37% more growth in inflows than outflows in Y1 → Y2, and 43% from Y2 → Y3
To add to this, there’s this data point from July this year as well from VentureBeat: NFL Rivals has a total of 7M downloads, with 60,000 DAUs using the marketplace
In terms of its new marketplace, the following features will be added: non-custodial wallets, EVM, and Seaport (OpenSea) compatibility, no KYC, withdrawal limits or hold periods, and more
Overall, Myhical is one of the largest companies driving the adoption layer from blockchain rails, specifically P2P trading. From a token-holding perspective, I do remain sceptical of the scale needed to start seeing more upward price action for MYTH
FLASH NEWS
Onchain Heroes introduces OCH World, a high-risk onchain exploration game
Forkast secured investment and moved to Arbitrum (from Ronin)
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The Cambria Renown system seems like a real breakthrough for long-term incentiv alignment. Its intresting how they're applying veTokenomics to NFTs, especially when most projects still struggle with rewarding loyalty over speculation. The comparison to Curve's model makes sense, but I wonder if the illiquidity factor could actually backfir in markets where new entrants are crucial for growth.