Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. DYOR + I will hold some of the assets that are spoken of in this newsletter.
(P2A) EVENTS & SOCIALFI
The Treeverse holder build is now live for NFT holders
If you hold Treeverse NFTs, you can now sign up for the alpha using the form in the Tweet
Avarik Saga launched its BETA access for verified Ronin Network creators
Pirate Nation introduced a new game mode called Pirate’s Saga
DUPER introduced Season 4 on the Abstract mainnet
As a player, you will be eligible for Abstract XP, earn Emblems that will be airdropped as NFTs, and compete for the top 100 to gain a Genesis Ace of Spade
A socialfi bot that will reward future B3 allocations to related content on Twitter
Kuroro Wilds Alpha will launch on February 5
You can now pre-register for exclusive rewards. Over 30M KURO in prizes (+ 10M KURO for the referral program)
Pixel Dungeons is now open and free for all
In the free dungeons, you can obtain Pickaxes. These Pickaxes can be used to enter the paid dungeons and extract PIXEL tokens.
MARKET TALK
PROOF OF PLAY AND PIRATE NATION
Proof of Play (PoP) is becoming more vocal about its vision, and so last week it released a short video on the topic:
PoP is building infrastructure for onchain apps (so not only games) - playing into the vision of it becoming easier, quicker, and cheaper to deploy an app on-chain than off-chain
Framed as: “PoP is skating where the puck is going”
Furthermore, Dith mentions, that more games and apps will be announced soon (outside of the recent Gigaverse and Onchain Heroes announcements)
In addition, Amitt (the CEO of PoP) released a post on what Pirate Nation and PoP are focusing on right now:
The team improved their staking system for late entrants by raising their multiplier cap to 700% and increasing the weekly accrual rate by 100%
Next to that, the team wants to clarify PIRATE’s role in the Proof of Play ecosystem, saying:
“Primary focus is ensuring Pirate Nation player, holders of PIRATE, and stakers are a major part of the PooP ecosystem”
“We’ll have a separate announcement about Founder’s Pirates' role in that ecosystem in the near future.”
Amitt further emphasizes how Pirate Nation is a showcase app and ecosystem to demonstrate the power of the PoP tech and its interconnectedness:
“There is no Proof of Play without the success of Pirate Nation and its ecosystem”
Despite this change, PIRATE is trading at an ATL. While this fact can be largely attributed to poor market sentiment and the lack of demand for gaming tokens, Maverick makes a good point:
“think the two biggest issues are: 1. how much does $pirate accrue value for $pop 2. actual value of $pop”
As a counterpoint, the PoP team is pretty much saying that improving these two points will be their focus
Furthermore, he parallels PIRATE and POP to PRIME and PROMPT and how stakers can see the potential (vision) of AI Wayfinder
I suppose selling the vision of AI tooling to navigate the blockchain is easier to sell than the AWS of onchain apps (similar to Chainlink)
It will be interesting to see the (inevitable) transfer of value from PRIME to PROMPT when the 2nd token launches
As PoP continues to add exciting apps to its ecosystem, continue to explain the future of its infrastructure, explain how the future token will benefit from this, and shed more light on how Pirate Nation-holders benefit, I expect more value to accrue to PIRATE
However, I assume converting people into buying into this narrative will be a slow process - the apps will have to lead
ABSTRACT WEEK 1 DISAPPOINTS, BUT…
People were excited about the Abstract mainnet launch, however, only one week after its release we’re already seeing large disappointment across the timeline. Let’s break it down:
First of all, the timing of the launch was unfortunate, as on the day itself market sentiment wasn’t great (and today it’s even worse)
Secondly, the expectations seemed way off. Some expected the token to launch on day 1 (?). Abstract will be a marathon after all, with probably 3-6 months of mainnet until TGE
Furthermore, there isn’t much liquidity on Abstract, leading to the (large) underperformance of initial NFT mints
Someone made a good point that there aren’t any liquidity-based incentives right now like Blast had
One of the bigger issues right now is the lack of fun apps to tinker around with:
Leon Abboud explains Abstract’s cold start problem well, which comes down to lots of attention, but a lack of builders. Attention will attract the builders over time
Furthermore, some of the most anticipated apps, like Onchain Heroes, Gigaverse, and now also Cambria have yet to launch on the chain
The Cambria announcement makes me wonder whether more apps will choose the multi-chain approach to benefit from the streaming feature (my take on it)
Some people said Abstract launched too early, which is a fair take. On the other hand, you can see this launch as a minimum marketable product (MMP)
The platform has a great UX and is very intuitive, plus can be commended for its app discoverability. But lacks the apps and fine features to retain users, which just takes time
Igloo Inc. is a strong team that has shown how to execute, so I think we just have to be patient for this one…
Plus, teams get overly judged for their launch (which is very important as it can be the pinnacle of attention), however, isn’t a very builder-friendly environment