Many P2A Campaigns, more of Telegram gaming, and a $212M raise (?)
GC ALPHA 02
GC Alpha is a new newsletter format where we explore P2A events, SocialFi, market narratives, and alpha more in-depth (GC on Monday | Newsletters on Wednesday).
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
Fableborne Adventures S1
Fableborne started S1 of its P2A campaign on June 11th. During this campaign, you want to accumulate different types of Essence:
Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Primordial
For now, the focus of the event is on defeating world bosses, which earns you Silver Essence by participating. The Essence you earn is determined by how much damage you dealt (increased by sharing damage referral codes), and a jackpot is rewarded to the player who deals the final blow
Access to the mobile game (where you can earn Gold Essence) is opening up soon
Gomble Games Treasure Hunt
Gomble Games is launching the Treasure Hunt event today, a fast-paced and high-stakes puzzle game
As a player, you aim to reveal what’s under certain tiles quickly, and you can find Lucky Draw Tickets, but the goal is to uncover the Treasure Chest, which wins you the entire prize pot.
The Treasure Chest accumulates the prize money from players’ tile-opening fees
Players will open tiles on a 10x10 grid by paying a fee per tile. The cost of tiles is dynamic based on the number of remaining tiles, prize money in the chest, and the number of remaining tickets
Overall, it seems like a gambling-oriented mini-game, something that would fare well with the Web3 audience. You can read this guide that explains all the mechanics
Pirate Nation S2
Pirate Nation rewarded 31% of the $PIRATE community allocation to S0 and S1 players. Last week, on the 11th S2 started. It is unknown how many points will be distributed during this season, I do expect it to be lower than S1, around 10% of the allocation or so.
Nevertheless, if you’re already staking $PIRATE, it seems worth it to complete the quests and earn additional tokens to start earning more points. Here’s a quick overview of the quests in S2.
I am also reading that buying Worn Copper Coins might be Alpha
FLASH EVENTS
Crypto Unicorns launched Unicorn Bingo - you can earn XAI rewards
XTREMEVERSE launched a GambleFi feature, where you can earn $XTREME points
The Beacon’s New Frontier Quest has been a huge success so far
Not P2E, but you can sign up on Off the Grid’s website to receive access to the game (takes about a week I heard)
MARKET TALK
TON/Telegram Gaming
There are a few interesting developments in terms of Telegram/TON gaming, and we are seeing multiple teams jumping on the bandwagon:
Pixelverse raised $5.5M through Delphi, Merit Circle, and others
The project launched its P2A campaign in April, and they added their game PixelTap (Notcoin + a battler) to part of this campaign, which has been widely successful so far
Ancient8 dropped Pirate Clash, an idle merge game (like CatizenAI)
The makers of Sipher (now Ather Labs) launched a game called Captyal War
It’s a social casino game, where you spin the wheel, get coins, and raid others. Pretty much a Coin Master clone.
Web3 games that compete in this same genre are King of Destiny (KoD) and CityVerse Tycoon
Corey Wilton, the founder of Mirai Labs, teased they are building a game similar to CatizenAI.
With the large influx of games coming to Telegram, curation becomes increasingly important, one tip I’d give you if you’re looking to position yourself is to go for infrastructure (e.g. GAMEE) to de-risk. Additionally, it might be worth it to check out TON grantees.
BrilliantCrypto
BrilliantCrypto, the silly-looking miner game that made headlines last week, made a rather confusing statement mentioning they raised $212M.
In actuality, it was “only” a $10M raise, but $212M was deposited from ~80K users in this IDO raffle. So, why is there so much interest in this game?
This IEO (initial exchange offering) was launched by Coincheck. A platform where buyers often experience significant returns, multiplying their initial investment several times. They also did an INO for Nine Chronicles and Last Memories.
Furthermore, you have to understand that the Japanese Web3 gaming scene is much different than anything else, and is much more “GameFi-oriented” (simple gameplay loops with emphasis on P2E). Japan has a huge (Web3) gaming scene with spending power. Funnily enough, they also bought a PSG sponsorship.
Gaming Tokens
Last week was a good sentiment check on the demand for gaming tokens, here’s the TL:DR on what happened:
Bloodloop ($BLP): pretty much overshadowed by the other launches last week. The fact that they launched the token before P2A also removed a lot of the (farmer) speculation here
On the other hand, they did launch “low” at an FDV of ~$70M, meaning there’s potential upside for buyers on the open market
Unagi ($UNA): didn’t see many people talk about it in my crypto bubble, the launch didn’t seem that spectacular, but it did coincide well with the Ultimate Champions game launch
$UNA is a rebrand from the $CHAMPS token, originally used in Ultimate Champions
Volume started to pick up this weekend now the UEFA Euro 2024 started
Aethir Cloud ($ATH): Not only gaming but also cloud infrastructure + AI, which is a better narrative, and the token did surprisingly well.
ATH went past a $3B FDV at some point, and the airdrop was a nice stimmy as well
Pirate Nation ($PIRATE): The initial launch was a bit underwhelming perhaps, but the (likely engineered) Coinbase listing created a lot of upward price movement and improved sentiment
The airdrop was well-received by the majority of players, and Pirate Nation even made up with the whales which felt disadvantaged at first (because of the non-linear airdrop)
Ember Sword ($EMBER): This was almost like a stealth token launch, which unsurprisingly flopped
The overall sentiment is still “meh” I’d say, especially after the Web3 gaming is dead drama, can we see a bottom soon?
ON THE RISE
“The Gate” is the Bornless’ Web3 arm, which popped up recently, additionally, I know they hired a Web3 CM as well
Sugartown started teasing something new the “High Card”, marking the start of Chapter 1
Champions Tactics announced its Champions Mint on July 15