Hi everyone,
It was a particularly busy week in the world of blockchain games, but before jumping into the latest headlines make sure to read our new essay on XYZ. As a reminder, you can read the full update in our research portal, or you can skim through the weekly highlights here in your inbox. <Read More button>Also, please note that our upcoming deconstruction of Splinterlands will come out next week, so stay tuned for that. Let’s dive in…
Yuga Labs making big moves off the back of Bored Ape Yacht Club
Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club has been a major cultural icon in NFTs, especially among celebrities, reaching over $1 billion in market cap this year. This has led to an expansion of their ambition like a game-based metaverse ambition called MetaRPG. As a step towards expanding the IP for MetaRPG they acquired the property rights to two other major NFT collections, CryptoPunks and Meebits. These will be integrated into the MetaRPG along with some other recently announced initiatives: ApeCoin and Land sales.
APECoin is planned to be a token currency for the MetaRPG as well as being announced as having use in a new P2E game collaboration with nWay (a company owned by Animoca Brands). nWay themselves just recently delivered a game and NFT collaboration with the Olympics. In a move that may be related to any or all of the above (rumor is a racing game), they recently launched a mysterious website with Animoca Brands that resulted in some backlash over its KYC requirements (likely used to avoid bot and sock puppet wallet accounts). On top of all this, Yuga Labs is planning virtual land sales in March and August for MetaRPG.
F1 Delta Time shuts down after losing license
Animoca Brands has built much of its reputation off developing successful branded games, especially as it moves deeper into NFT gaming. This makes it all the more concerning when it’s abruptly unable to renew for one of its few first party NFT games like F1 Delta Time. It’s unclear why Formula 1 denied renewal of the license or how long Animoca Brands knew for at this time. This does provide a case for what can happen when you have “ownership” of an NFT whose contents are handled by a renewable license. F1 Delta Time was part of Animoca Brands stable of of REVV Motorsports games sharing the REVV token and has existed since 2019, predating the recent NFT craze. The game held milestones for NFT sales like most valuable NFT sold in 2019 at approx. $113k in Ethereum and most valuable virtual car transaction in 2021 for approx. $265k.