The week of AI agents and ERC20C
Much to think about
I started the week crunching data to answer the question: what percentage of total VC funding into the games sector between 2021 and 2024 went into blockchain games?
The answer was 51%.
Of course, a constant theme during the week was the rise of AI agents; something highlighted again today with some surprising news from Ronin.
It airdropped its JAIHOZ token — created using the Virtuals platform and inspired by Sky Mavis’ head of growth Jeff ‘Jihoz’ Zirlin — into 100,000 wallets across Base and Ronin.
Ronin wallets holding high-end NFTs including Mystic Axies and CyberKongz or staking RON received an allocation, as did wallets holding the VIRTUALS tokens on Base.
The agent itself is also live on X, and getting plenty of attention, including from other agents, with VaderAI already investing into the new token and releasing some memetastic artwork.
And despite a mid-week wobble — dropping 13% — the total marketcap of all AI agent tokens remains an impressive $15.5 billion.
Not investment advice clearly but this is a trend everyone should be looking into with due consideration.
Other substantive topics were discussed too.
In Blockchain Gaming World #187, I discussed lessons arising from the slow decline of Crypto Unicorns with company founder Aron Beierschmitt: also noting how the game and its IP is now being managed by a community DAO, as the developer moves onto its new project.
It’s a fully onchain tactical RPG called Neo Olympus. If you’re interested — and I am — it’s just dropped its litepaper.
However, the biggest news of the week — and the hardest to digest — was the launch of Limit Break’s ERC20C standard for tokens, which will give developers new flexibility in terms of how they deploy and operate in-game tokens.
For example, they can create tokens — known as apptokens — which can only be used within a game and not traded externally. Minimum and maximum prices are possible, as are novel ways for developers to generate revenue from liquidity pools. You’ll even be able to create tokens with fixed exchange rates, and tokens backed by underlying value.
Of course, none of these concepts are novel in-and-off themselves, but having all these features made available within one protocol is something new.
It will be fascinating to see how developers start to use them, even if I personally have some concerns about the outcomes.
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Weekly News roundup
Soccerverse is our Game of the Week.
The Top 31 people in blockchain gaming.
Sonzai launches AI-driven social Telegram game TeleMafia.
Planet Mojo unveils WWA AI agent and token.
ZkCandy gaming L2 raises $4 million.
First 30 games coming to Line Messenger’s dapp portal in January.
Web3 gaming and AI tokens’ performance in 2024.
Leaving dull 2024 behind, blockchain gaming looks to thrive in 2025.
As discussed below:
Ready Makers x Ready Maker (Gibraltar) news
Ready Makers has secured an emergency court order against Ready Maker (Gibraltar) over the launch of the PLAY token.
Previously known as Ready Games, the mobile gaming network raised $8.5 million from investors including Bitkraft and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick in 2019, eventually pivoting to blockchain in 2022 and raising a further $3 million for its token launch, before renaming itself Play in 2024.
Ready Maker (Gibraltar) was set up by former Ready Games’ COO Christina Macedo to launch the PLAY token in a more legally supportive location than the US. However Ready Makers alleges the token launch violated contractual obligations to the original investors.
As for the token itself, it launched on 10th December, and currently has a marketcap of $49 million.
Additional (AI) Links
Joyride Games has launched an AI agent for its Super Champs ecosystem. Called Agent Kigu, it’s streaming games live on Tiktok and YouTube.
UGC platform Hytopia is launching AI agents using its own proprietary framework within its Minecraft-inspired ecosystem.
Animoca Brands and Virtuals have announced a joint initiative to invest in AI agents.
AI16z’s ElizaOS framework has been used to launch AI agents in Roblox title Squid Game 2.
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