Telegram pivots and Blankos are back
Weekly roundup
It’s been a week shaped by a personal obsession and an ongoing sector trend.
Starting with the trend, the stampede towards Telegram mini-games and the TON blockchain continues, with South Korean game dev Delabs being the latest outfit to drop everything and pivot its activity to Telegram.
CEO Joon Mo Kwon says that he thinks the opportunity is 25x larger than the one which catapulted Delabs’ parent company 4:33 Creative Labs to $100 million in annual revenue when it started releasing midcore games on the Kakao messaging platform in 2014.
Hence, Delabs’ idea is to bring “proven midcore games with proven IP” to Telegram.
In addition, I spoke to TonTon Games’ CEO Danill Shcherbakov about how the startup publisher plans to make the most of this opportunity, in part by releasing a lot of games but also building out an adtech platform, which will allow TonTon to optimize its publishing slate.
I also really enjoyed Shcherbakov’s final quote of the podcast which was that startups don’t fail when they run out of money, but when they run out of hypotheses to test.
Certainly, the arrival of Telegram as the marketing meta for blockchain games contains plenty of blue ocean for experimentation, which is why so many companies are so enthusiastic about it.
As for the obsession, the Blankos NFT collection finally went live for trading on the Mythos blockchain, which allowed me to update my floor price database, which hadn’t been touched for over two years.
Indeed, I have to admit that there were dozens of Blankos characters that I hadn’t listed on the sheet, let alone got their prices.
That’s all being refreshed now.
Currently, I’m tracking 181 unique Blankos characters, of which I own 122. But it’s proving to be an expensive hobby. Adding 28 of those missing 59 Blankos will cost $525, and that’s for the cheapest 28, those currently priced under $100.
Still, there is some hope as the prices of most Blankos appear to be dropping.
*This data is for those Blankos with floor prices currently under $1,000.
Sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing 📈 in the future 🔮 of gaming 🎮
Weekly News roundup
Mythical names its mobile social royale IP tie-in Pudgy Party.
IMX token price hit as Immutable gets SEC Wells notice.
SNK’s Shodown Samurai R coming to Sui via PC and SuiPlay0X1.
Off The Grid launches its battle pass via $14 OTG Pro subscription.
Roguelite Wanderers will deploy on Treasurechain.
The Sandbox’s Alpha 4 on track to break user records.
Deadfellaz’ TCG Death Touch coming to Skale in 2025.
Alliance Games announces a $5 million Series A round.
Xsolla announces Xsolla ZK L3 chain for payments and NFTs.
Netmarble’s NFT Adventure launches with Koongya Restaurantz tie-in.
Lamborghini is minting its Revuelto NFTs via RaribleX.
As discussed below:
Off The Grid data news
Developer Gunzilla is yet to announce any official figures for its console shooter Off The Grid, but it has told me that DappRadar’s tracking — currently reporting 203,000 DAUWs — is wrong on the low side. In this context then, it’s worth looking at a dashboard on FlipsideCrypto — also cited by The Block — which has the game peaking at one million active addresses this week, with around 500,000 active sender addresses. This would make it the most popular blockchain game in terms of onchain activity.
Of course, all the data should be available just by querying its Gunz blockchain’s block explorer, which is currently still operating as a testnet as part of the Avalanche ecosystem.
In total, Gunz now lists 9.7 million lifetime addresses of which around 2.5 million were created prior to Off The Grid going live, suggesting around 7 million accounts have been created.
Finally, the game’s just released two new skins but don’t worry because “*Both characters are fictional”.
Additional Links
Stablecoin provider Tether has generated $7.5 billion in profits YTD 2024 from the interest on its +$100 billion of collateral, consisting of gold and US T-bonds.
Between them, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon spent $60 billion during Q3 2024 on data centers.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report 👀 Q3 2024 👀 here.