MapleStory breaks the curse of slop TGEs
GC ALPHA 49
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.
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P2A & P2E EVENTS + SOCIALFI
MapleStory Universe has enhanced NESO and XP rewards until May 31st
The Starknet x GG.xyz gaming #1 went live last week (6 games, $100K in prizes)
Sparkball is launching this week, marking the start of the preseason
Rosentica’s CBT is launching this week on May 24 ($30K in rewards)
Farcade introduced Leagues: competitive groups where users earn points
Supervillain launched P2 of its airdrop campaign with Rewardy Wallet
MARKET TALK
MAPLESTORY’S TOKEN LAUNCH SURPRISES
Last Thursday, MapleStory Universe launched its NXPC token. The token opened at around a $2B FDV and even briefly went up to a $14B FDV. Today, NXPC is trading ~$2B FDV again
To many, including myself, this came as a surprise. Especially because of the game’s lack of mindshare pre- and post-TGE. Was there more than meets the eye?
It’s pretty safe to assume some degree of market making and supply control were involved (often referred to as “crime"), signaled by the chart going up to $14B (!) and the astronomical amount of volume
NXPC opened with a circulating supply of 16.9%, of which 16.3% is allocated to the “Early Community”. The question is how much of this allocation is in the hands of players, traders, etc. - i.e., what is the real/uncontrolled float?
We know a portion went to the Binance Tax, Upbit, and players got an airdrop
The lower your (real) float, the more control you can exert over your chart. This is also why another launch like GUN, launched at a 6.05% initial circulating supply
Speaking of comparisons, NXPC outperformed all TGEs of 2025 and perhaps even in 2024 (with exceptions like PORTAL)
For 2025, NXPC outdid B3, SONIC, SERAPH, GUN, XTER, etc. The start of this year has shown a challenging climate to have a successful token launch. Simply, a combination of too many sellers and few buyers…
It will be interesting to see how NXPC performs over the next few weeks, as many tokens usually take a 20-50% haircut post D1. MSU’s token remains relatively stable so far
Whether there was “crime” involved or not, as gaming maxis, we can still take this moment and celebrate a long-awaited victory (lol), a promise the GUN launch didn’t fulfill
Hopefully, this can pave the path towards a gaming season
“WEB3 GAMING IS DEAD” (AGAIN 3x)
This week, despite the bullish momentum of MSU, the “Web3 gaming is dead” debate resurfaced, after more people started posting about Nyan Heroes and Blast Royale shutting down (it’s good for engagement after all…)
Tr3vor compiled this list of games that shut down or divested from crypto gaming this year
We should all know by now that gaming is a hit-driven industry (insert statistic of X% of games fail in the first year), and how a new business model using crypto slims down the chance of success
Sometimes it makes me wonder whether Gabriel Leydon is right, who said: “Trying to please web3 “speculators” who really have no business investing in video games (99% failure rate industry wide) is a bad idea”
In Web2, games continually fail, and most often the investors take the hit. Web3 adds the “baggage” of the community if a game were to fail or pivot
Only about two months ago, we discussed the same debate, which was sparked by this Tweet at the time. Vader argued that after billions of dollars in investment, the crypto audience simply isn’t interested in crypto gaming
Counterarguments included that the most talented teams have yet to ship, many builders entered with the wrong intentions, and we have made lots of strides since 2021
Market-wise, gaming is now in a better spot than in March, primarily driven by a better macro-environment and the good, recent performance of ETH
A great chunk of the gaming market is dependent on the most controversial and underperforming token, unfortunately
Again, Web3 gaming remains neither dead nor inevitable. However, I believe 2025 will play a key role in what the next few years will look like
ON THE RISE
The RCADE Foundation (Revolving Games) is delaying its TGE by ~3 weeks
Tokyo Games TGT VIP Card minters at last week (0.1 > 0.7 ETH at peak)
Calamity is introducing a presale for their NFTs, positioned as token vehicles