Crypto: The Game, the "Survivor"-inspired reality competition that went viral earlier this year, is coming back for a third season—under new ownership.
On Monday, Uniswap Labs—the startup behind the leading Ethereum decentralized exchange, Uniswap—announced that it has acquired Crypto: The Game. Founders Dylan Abruscato, Tyler Cagle, and Bryan Lee will join Uniswap Labs to continue steering the direction of the experience, along with helping Uniswap Labs craft its own messaging around decentralized finance.
Crypto: The Game is an on-chain survival game that quickly gained buzz on Crypto Twitter amid its first season, during which players competed in a series of challenges—such as playing Pac-Man online or real-world scavenger hunts—for $115,000 worth of ETH.
As in "Survivor," players were split into tribes, and winning or losing challenges determined whether or not a tribe would have to vote members off. The last person standing wins.
Both seasons of Crypto: The Game have captured significant attention—and generated a lot of drama, too. The first season was won by a pseudonymous player from a rural town in Japan, who wrote poems for his fellow teammates and won by being an all-around good person. The next season unfolded much differently
Season 2 saw some 800 players spend over 4,000 hours combined on the game’s website and tackling its challenges—and concluded with a group of players teaming up to buy back into the game after a brutal backstabbing eliminated them from the competition. They collectively won the $210,000 prize and donated all the proceeds to the Tornado Cash Legal Defense Fund.
Several members of Uniswap Labs participated in the first season, and then the firm got onboard with season two by sponsoring one of the challenges—a “custom crypto scavenger hunt,” as Abruscato described it to Decrypt.
“I think that made them realize that we kind of cracked the code for bringing folks on-chain,” he added.
When asked about his team’s decision to join Uniswap Labs instead of staying independent, Abruscato told Decrypt that he wants to continue to scale Crypto: The Game. He believes that Uniswap Labs builds amazing products, and hopes to tap into that expertise to take the game to new heights.
What can future Crypto: The Game players look forward to? While a date hasn’t been set for the upcoming season, Abruscato affirmed that all of the elements of the game that the community has grown to know and love will continue to be there.
“We see this as an opportunity to leverage their expertise and our learnings from previous seasons,” Abruscato explained. “There will still be new games, new twists, and new drama—just all under the Uniswap Labs umbrella.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward