This Week in Crypto Games: Pixels Token Launch, N64 on Bitcoin, Portal Breaks Record

The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re debuting This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Huge PIXEL launch: Surging Ronin blockchain farming game Pixels finally debuted its long-awaited PIXEL token last Monday, and it was a massive market hit. More than $1 billion worth of the token was traded in less than a day, putting it in the top 10 most-traded coins on Monday, and play-to-airdrop recipients got their tokens.

Pixels Trading Volume Hits $1.2 Billion as Ethereum Gaming Token Tops Major Coins

PIXEL, the Ethereum token of popular blockchain game Pixels, has racked up more than $1.2 billion worth of trading volume since launching Monday morning, according to data from CoinMarketCap. That makes it the 10th most-traded cryptocurrency across the entire market, based on the more than 8,800 coins that CoinMarketCap tracks. That means more PIXEL has been traded than some of the most popular cryptocurrencies, including Avalanche (AVAX), Dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA), and Polygon (MATIC) duri...

Portal breaks records: Cross-chain gaming token Portal is set to debut on February 29 on Binance, and demand is already skyrocketing. Ahead of the token listing, the crypto exchange is running a Launchpool campaign that lets customers stake BNB and FDUSD to earn PORTAL rewards—and with over $8.6 billion staked on day one, it quickly became the most successful Launchpool project to date. Final airdrop details are expected before the listing.

Portal Fever: Record $8.6 Billion Staked for Binance Rewards Ahead of Game Token Airdrop

The long-awaited Portal gaming token will launch next week, and the pent-up demand is enormous. Crypto exchange Binance began its Launchpool campaign on Thursday, letting customers stake other cryptocurrencies to earn PORTAL rewards, and it’s already breaking records after attracting several billions of dollars’ worth of funds. More than $8.6 billion worth of Binance Coin (BNB) and the FDUSD stablecoin have been staked into Binance’s rewards pools for Portal, as of this writing. The Portal team...

Play N64 on Bitcoin: Just weeks after inscribing a Super Nintendo emulator on the Bitcoin blockchain via Ordinals, the team behind the Ninjalerts app has now inscribed a Nintendo 64 emulator that can play digital files of classic games. They’re calling it a win for video game preservation, and it will be playable by owners of Pizza Ninjas assets on Ordinals.

 NFT Revolution

You Can Play Super Nintendo, N64, and Other Classic Games on Bitcoin—Here’s How

Thanks to the Ordinals protocol, crypto users have inscribed more than 65 million bits of media on the Bitcoin blockchain over the last year, from artwork to profile pictures to, yes, even playable video games. The Bitcoin-based alternative to NFTs lets users etch games and applications onto the chain, effectively preserving them for as long as the decentralized network lives. Some see this as a way to ensure classic games survive in an era in which digital games are delisted and hard to access....

Ronin founder’s wallets drained: Approximately $9.5 million worth of Ethereum was drained from a pair of Ronin wallets belonging to Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin late Thursday and routed through coin mixer Tornado Cash, making it difficult to track the flow. Zirlin, co-founder of Ronin and Axie Infinity, said that it was his personal wallets that were compromised, and that the attack did not impact the network itself, its Ethereum bridge, or developer Sky Mavis.

ICYMI

• The XAI token of the Arbitrum layer-3 gaming network of the same name set multiple all-time high prices last week, the latest after announcing plans to launch staking rewards in the coming days.
• Other gaming tokens that set all-time high prices last week include Heroes of Mavia (MAVIA), Parallel (PRIME), and Beam (BEAM). All three tokens launched within the past year.
• Yuga Labs co-founder Greg “Garga” Solano returned to the CEO role last week, replacing former Activision executive Daniel Alegre. Garga promised more transparency and communication around Otherside, the Bored Ape Yacht Club maker’s upcoming metaverse game world.

• Esports giant Team Liquid, which competes in League of Legends and Counter-Strike (among other games), is building a fan rewards platform on the Sui blockchain.
• Kaidro, an anime-style role-playing game that was originally planned to launch on Immutable X, will instead be deployed on Ronin.
• Pirate Nation game developer Proof of Play is launching its own Arbitrum-based layer-3 network called Multichain, which will power fully on-chain games and apps.
• MetalCore, a first-person shooter with mechs on Immutable zkEVM, is launching a “Call to Arms” closed beta test that begins February 26. We went hands-on last year.
• Cosmik Battle, an NFT trading card game running on Arbitrum, launched on the Epic Games Store last week alongside Web3 gaming marketplaces.

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

‘We're Promising Nothing’: Telegram Game Notcoin Has 25 Million Players and a Soon-to-be-Real Token

Notcoin popped onto crypto gamers’ radar at the start of the year, as millions of Telegram players flocked to the chat app’s curious coin-tapping distraction—and were apparently mining billions of Notcoin in the process. But there was a curious catch: the coins weren’t real, at least not in the on-chain cryptocurrency sort of way. Now there are more than 25 million “Notcoiners” furiously tapping that same gleaming coin, competing in squads, and absorbing messages that are somewhat nihilistic but...

Pixels Review: Should You Play the Buzzy Crypto Farming Game?

The crypto gaming space has been gripped by Pixels in recent months, and Decrypt’s GG is no exception. We’ve covered the rising player counts since migrating to Ronin, interviewed the founder about its surge, and detailed this week’s long-awaited PIXEL token launch. But unlike many gaming projects that enjoy a fleeting moment in the crypto spotlight, there’s an actual playable game behind the token hype—and it doesn’t require any expensive NFTs to play, and you don’t have to beg around Discord s...

Metaverse Games With 40,000 Players in the Same Space? The Tech Is Coming

Metaverse technology startup Improbable is working on infrastructure that can support up to 40,000 players simultaneously occupying the same virtual space. "We've been building a technology which allows us to have up to about 40,000 people in the same virtual space at the same time," Improbable's Chief Product Officer Rob Whitehead said at the launch of the Metaverse Society's "Scaling the Metaverse" report. "They can all see each other, interact with each other, hear each other." Whitehead like...