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

By Andrew Hayward

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.

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.

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.

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:

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