Beam Token Up 36% as Merit Circle Network Transactions Hit All-Time High

Merit Circle DAO, a gaming-focused crypto group, launched its new Beam network on Avalanche in August 2023. Now, the subnet appears to be gaining traction, as its BEAM token has surged 36% in the past day and 25% in the past week, according to CoinGecko data.

At time of writing, BEAM sits at a price of roughly $0.022, nearing its all-time high price of $0.027 seen on December 14.

The Beam subnet has also seen a spike in total transactions on its network since mid-December, reaching a new all-time high of over 103,000 transactions on Wednesday, per Avalanche network data. And over half a million total wallet addresses have engaged with Beam’s blockchain since its launch.

Last month, the team behind the Beam blockchain also added the Polygon-powered Immutable zkEVM blockchain to its list of compatible chains for its Sphere NFT marketplace and broader tech stack offering. Despite seeing price losses Wednesday in the wake of Bitcoin’s flash crash, Immutable’s IMX token has rebounded roughly 4% in the past day but is still down about 4.6% in the past week, per CoinGecko.

While the BEAM token dipped about 9.5% Wednesday, it’s already rebounded substantially, outpacing gains seen by the top 20 other gaming-focused cryptocurrencies by market cap. Besides BEAM, only Merit Circle’s governance token and Yield Guild Games’ token have seen double-digit percentage gains in the gaming space following Wednesday’s dip.

Why is BEAM pumping? One self-described Beam “maxi” suggested to Decrypt in a message that there could be a “FOMO rush” to buy the token, thus driving up its price (in crypto, “maxis” or “maximalists” typically buy, promote, and believe in the future of one specific crypto token and critique other tokens).

Merit Circle co-founder Marco van den Heuvel told Decrypt in a message that Beam’s transaction surge is likely due to activity from just “one or two” games that have only “partially deployed” on Beam so far, like Goons of Balatroon and Nekoverse: City of Greed. But memecoins like BeamCat are also seeing activity, logging over $290,000 in total volume traded in the past 24 hours per GeckoTerminal data.

Notably, Beam’s official Twitter account was recently suspended—though Merit Circle’s account remains live. Heuvel told Decrypt in a message that he believes the Beam account was taken down because “fake accounts reported it in high numbers.”

Heuvel said that Beam account impersonators have already emerged in an effort to scam users, and that the team has contacted Twitter support to resolve the issue.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.