#876 Why the tokens that can work are the tokens without worth
You can't put a price on it
Top 300 Web3 Games Index: ↓1% today, ↓60% YTD
Ronin Games Index: ↓1% today, ↓80% YTD
Immutable Games Index: ↓2% today, ↓60% YTD
AI Gaming Agents: ↓7% today, ↓64% YTD
Jon’s TX Games Index: ↓1% today, ↓58% YTD
Jon’s 2025 Reboot Index*: 0% today, ↓67% YTD
*Definitely not investment advice
It’s increasingly obvious there are a bunch of recently-launched blockchain games from experienced teams that are finding some level of sustained audience, which we could nervously label as having some level of “success”.
In my mind, examples include Off The Grid, MapleStory N and Pixels.
However, when we look at the performance of their tokens — GUNZ, NXPC and PIXEL —the numbers are bad, very bad. These tokens are down 80%, 73% and 97% respectively.
Clearly there is a significant disconnect between the trajectory of the product and that of the token.
Of course, this is hardly news: even I had worked this out by April 2022 in the article My Token Killed My Blockchain Game.
So why do all these *smart* companies keep launching tokens?
There is only one reason. Everyone who has any allocation of a pre-launched token wants that token to be live as soon as possible so they can sell as much of it as possible. This is still true when market conditions for game tokens are as terrible as they currently are.
Even if a developer doesn’t want to launch the token, the growing pressure from all other parties eventually forces them to do so.
So are there any alternatives?
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Good question.
Thanks for asking, for this is where we are finally seeing some innovation in the sector as the *really smart* companies are launching tokens that aren’t pre-sold to anyone. In fact they are 100% given away to the community.
In this way, they are worthless, at least they don’t have any anchored launch price.
Even better, many of these tokens are designed to have very lightweight utility. In some cases, they’re more like memecoins. In others, they are pure transactional utility tokens, with uncapped supply so there’s no point in holding them or buying them speculatively in the hope the price will go up.
Examples include Playful’s WC token, which while named for its web2 game Wildcard, only has utility within its Thousands web3 interactive streaming platform, and Voya Games’ DynoCoin, which is the underlying transaction token for its forthcoming Craft World game, part of the wider Angry Dynomites ecosystem.
Even Pixels, which has failed in terms of plan A for its play-to-earn PIXEL token, is heavily into plan B, which is repositioning PIXEL as a reward and staking token for many play-to-earn games, both on Ronin and other blockchains.
Of course, it’s much harder to rejuvenate a token that’s already live and down, but it’s not impossible.
And this is where we’ll see whether any of those live blockchain games are really strong enough as products to eventually reconnect the trajectory of their player base to that of their token.
Weekly roundup
Mavens: What can we learn from withered web3 games and those that are thriving?
CTA token climbs 161% as Animoca confirms strategic partnership and token purchases.
Playful Studios takes total funding to $53 million.
B3 goes harder on gaming with “crypto gaming” B3PC.
Slime Miner breaks 13 million players and $2 million monthly revenue on LINE.
MapleStory N’s most expensive NFT sells for $18,617.
Somnia surpasses 1 billion transactions with Chunked accounting for 25%.
Off The Grid migration to Gunz mainnet expected in the "coming weeks".
As Legend of Ymir preps for global launch, WEMIX signs 2 new games.
Moonfrost NFT sale raises $275,000.
Decentraland’s 24 hour Game Night goes live 5pm UTC.
Game token launchpad Uptopia raises $4 million.
Big Screen Gaming and AI Gamechangers Summits coming to Helsinki.
As discussed below:
🔗 Additional Links 🔗
Gala has changed requirements for its node validators so they now need 1 million GALA tokens ($14,000) in their wallet per node or their rewards will be cut proportionately to what their wallet holds. Unsurprisingly, people are not happy. But — seriously — who’s still validating Gala nodes? 🤡