#881 A week of knowing who's who
ID is the name of the game
Top 300 Web3 Games Index: ↑1% today, ↓61% YTD
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Jon’s 2025 Reboot Index*: ↑1% today, ↓68% YTD
*Definitely not investment advice
This week the theme has been all about identity, notably:
who you are
what you’re doing, and
how to enforce the consequential reputation — good or bad.
Nexon and its web3 arm Nexpace have been struggling with such negativities in the context of MMORPG MapleStory N, various aspects of which are being botting by hundreds, even thousands of accounts, which are speedrunning the game’s rewards.
Detecting such accounts isn’t particularly difficult but banning them just means thousands of new accounts are constantly being created.
So to reduce its level of mole-whacking, Nexpace has introduced a Credit Level system, which limits new accounts to interacting with the MapleStory Universe NFT marketplace.
In order to play MapleStory N, new accounts have to hold 10 NXPC tokens ($9) in their wallet. Nexpace hopes this is enough friction to reduce bot farms, but not enough to annoy real players. But they can complete a formal KYC process if they’d rather do so without the 10 NXPC deposit.
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As for companies trying to solve this problem more generally, Animoca-instigated Moca Foundation has announced its Moca Network is now levelling up to becoming the Moca Chain.
This will see Moca Network’s existing privacy-focused ID and reputation framework and tools being codified within an EVM L1 blockchain, which itself is designed to be easily integrated with all other EVM blockchains, and even web2 infra.
In this way, Moca Foundation hopes that users will be able to complete KYC processes and like without broadcasting their private ID details.
Of course, Moca Chain will use the existing MOCA token for gas, validator staking, storage, oracle, data generation and verification fees. It expects its testnet will go live in Q3 with mainnet launch sometime in Q4.
Weekly News roundup
Nominate the best mobile blockchain game for Mobile Games Awards 2025.
New identity-focused L1 Moca Chain will launch in Q4 2025.
Wildcard to launch on Steam in October 2025.
Web3 Telegram game dev Spekter raises $5 million.
Nexon adds Credit Level system to deal with MapleStory botting.
Jobs news: Dominic Jang leaves MapleStory Universe.
Nexon commits to “long haul” improvements to reduce MapleStory N botting.
Lineup Games chooses Sui as its default network.
Sky Mavis launched NFT gacha boxes.
Cirque du Soleil will headline The Sandbox Alpha Season 6.
As discussed below:
Plus #878 We need to talk about Immutable.
Solve For The Equilibrium news
Moca Chain gives these two examples of how its privacy-focused ID system could be used. Explain, giving your reasons, which of the two is more likely to be adopted?
“An online liquor store can use AIR Kit to embed a seamless account onboarding and identity flow to verify if the user is over 21 years old.”
“Prove you were an Inter Miami fan before Messi joined.”
🔗 Additional Links 🔗
Sleepagotchi has been submitted to the app stores for release. 😴😴
Bhutan’s hydropower-minted Bitcoin is now worth $1.3 billion, that’s close to 40% of its GDP.
You can play EVE Frontier for free until 7th July, maybe even using my referral link.