#850 A week of looking forward
To MapleStory N's launch
Top 300 Web3 Games Index: ↑8% today, ↓48% YTD
Ronin Games Index: ↑3% today, ↓69% YTD
Immutable Games Index: ↑4% today, ↓53% YTD
AI Gaming Agents: ↑11% today, ↓39% YTD
Jon’s TX Games Index: ↑17% today, ↓46% YTD
Jon’s 2025 Reboot Index*: ↑7% today, ↓53% YTD
*Definitely not investment advice
Sometimes the week’s news isn’t this week’s news but anticipation of next week’s news, which this week means the news of the global release of Nexon’s PC 2D MMORPG MapleStory N on Thursday 15th May — itself the first instantiation of the wider MapleStory Universe ecosystem.
But while we’re waiting, there are some things we can do.
You can try to pre-download the game: something I’ve been attempting to do, so far without success.
I’ve had more success with the NFT mint that Nexon launched on OpenSea, and not just me. The free MSU Scroll NFT has now been minted 867,679 times and will — no doubt — exceed 1 million before the cut of date of 12th May.
Sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing 📈 in the future 🔮 of gaming 🎮
As for other successes, it’s worth pointing to Pixels’ new staking ecosystem — discussed in detail last week — which although in its early stages, has already given up its first set of rewards.
Those who had staked into Pixel Dungeons did especially well, with holders of the 1.1 million PIXEL staked sharing a pro rate distribution of 297,000 PIXEL — that’s 1 PIXEL in rewards per 3.7 PIXEL staked.
But the equilibrium has already shifted with 5.9 million PIXEL now staked into Pixel Dungeons.
More generally, though, only 7% of the total circulating PIXEL tokens have been staked, around $3 million-worth so there’s plenty more education to do.
Weekly News roundup
Arbitrum announces $10 million of games funding.
Xociety joins forces with Adidas to bolster digital identity and creativity.
Playtron’s Game Dollar stablecoin coming to Sui in Q4 2025.
Square Enix expands Symbiogenesis to Sony’s Soneium.
Delabs launches Press Play On The Future campaign.
Teletubbies are now live in The Sandbox.
Ninjas in Pyjamas partners with Chiliz’s Socios platform for more rewards.
How Vaulta’s banking tech contributes to sustainable web3 game economies.
Xsolla acquires web3 community platform Ludo to boost web store push.
GOAT Gaming launches Amy, its first AlphaGOAT Pro AI agent.
Sweat wallet goes multichain, launches AI agent Mia.
Mythos gaming chain surpasses $650 million in lifetime trading volume.
Wemade remains committed to expansion despite WEMIX token delisting.
As pontificated on by me below! Get well soon, Jenny.
One Year Ago: I was casting a skeptical eye over Immutable’s claim it had 320+ games signed up. That number has now officially increased to more than 450 but we’re still looking for its poster child hit title.
Most recent hope RavenQuest remains around 10,000 DAUWs, leaving the little-known Chess Universe as Immutable’s most popular game with around 30,000 DAUWs, presumably because of its ongoing Taurus Trophy tournament, and the new popularity of chess.
🔗 Additional Links 🔗
MapleStory Universe’s free NFT via OpenSea has now surpassed 867,679 mints.
It looks like Somnia’s fully onchain Minecraft-inspired demo Chunked will soon be dropping gold.
In its move to make all money programmable, Stripe has launched Stablecoin Financial Accounts in 101 countries, including stablecoin-based payment cards in Latin America.
🤖 AI-ditional Links 🤖
Coinbase has launched x402, an open standard and protocol to bring onchain payments to the web. No API. One line of code. “Great for AI agents!”
Today, I had to break the death of the pope to an AI agent. She was very confused.
The marketcap of all AI agent tokens is now back over $10 billion.