Call of Duty-Inspired Solana Meme Coin MLG Skyrockets After FaZe Clan Boost

Do you remember rushing home from school to play Call of Duty all night, screaming abuse to your friends on Xbox Live as you worked your way through a bag of Doritos? One Solana meme coin is bringing back those vibes to an apparently eager audience of traders, resulting in the token skyrocketing in value by 5,200% over just six days.

360noscope420blazeit (MLG) started in April simply as a tokenized representation of the prime years of Call of Duty gaming—before “omnimovement” and overly complex killstreaks, or the flood of microtransactions and goofy skins. It was a time when people hurried home to trick shot on Modern Warfare 2, spend hours slaying Nazi Zombies in World at War, or play Search and Destroy in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The token gets its long name by combining the classic “360 no scope” trick shot—essentially, doing a spin before shooting someone without zooming in to aim—with the classic “420 blaze it” meme referring to smoking weed.

Its MLG ticker nods to Major League Gaming, an organization that was at the heart of the Call of Duty esports scene before series publisher Activision acquired it, ultimately fizzling out after the pandemic. The token also uses MLG’s original logo, almost certainly without permission.

The token evoked an emotion that attracted a cult-like crowd. As the project pumped out streams of maximalist Call of Duty montages reminiscent of the 2010s “dank era,” the core team—or “clan leaders” as they prefer—was deploying Call of Duty servers strapped with MLG-themed texture packs.

At the time of writing, according to the token's site, there are servers for the original Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops 2, and the remastered Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, World at War, Black Ops, and Ghosts servers are also in the works.

“People are rather annoyed with how modern video games are handled. They reminisce on the golden age of gaming,” pseudonymous clan leader Munnopoly told Decrypt. “MLG brings that past to a reality while breaking down tons of walls.” 

He explained that the throwback gaming culture has led to “countless people” who have no clue about crypto—but love the scene—to download a Phantom wallet and buy up the Solana token. The exposure to the traditional gaming scene only amplified when the CEO and co-founder of iconic esports team FaZe Clan, Richard "FaZe Banks" Bengtson, started shilling the token.

This came as the result of a FaZe rebrand on January 1, which added a glitchy digital camouflage to its branding style guide. The MLG server texture pack was swiftly updated so players could put the new FaZe camouflage on their weapons.

Banks apparently loved it, bought 50 SOL ($9,700) worth of MLG, and started reposting the account. That day, the token pumped 275% to a market cap of $11 million.

The memes kept flying in, textures were updated, and Banks promised to 1v1 crypto influencer Jakey on Modern Warfare 2 map Rust for 100 SOL ($19,500) if the token hit a $69 million market cap. Vibes were high and the token kept flying as the MLG token team introduced a new take on “crypto gaming” to the world.

“Most people hear gaming in crypto and think of some Clash of Clans knockoff [or] other low-quality games where you spend crypto on microtransactions,” Munnopoly claimed. But now, he believes, crypto gaming includes MLG and its custom Call of Duty servers.

This is very much akin to Miladycraft, a Minecraft server run by the edgy Remilia NFT collective. That server became a place for the community to gather, celebrate its alternative culture, and throw events—even if Minecraft itself, much like Call of Duty, is a traditional “Web2” game.

Crypto gaming has been attempting to break into the mainstream for years. Last year, Hamster Kombat attracted 300 million players—more than many major AAA releases—but failed to capture the hearts of gamers as a simple tap-to-earn affair. By contrast, Off the Grid made waves with traditional gamers, but is still in early access and hasn't yet made its crypto elements a particularly visible part of the game.

On January 7, iconic FaZe trick-shotter FaZe Fakie posted an MLG meme, tagging the account. As the hype continued to climb, Banks promised to get an MLG tattoo if the token hit a $100 million market cap. And it did. 

MLG went parabolic, hitting a $164.45 million market cap just five days after Banks found the token. The FaZe founder kept to his word and got the tattoo on his arm.

“Crypto and gaming have always been very alike, especially in terms of community and culture,” influencer and MLG token investor Jakey told Decrypt. “Gaming was once seen as nerdy, for the outcasts in school, until [the] script was flipped due to the culture it curated on the internet.”

“Crypto is in a similar place—was seen [as being] for the nerds, geeks, riddled with bad actors even, but has since experienced its flippening,” he added. “Creators, products, meme coins [are] all making it much more attractive and cool [to] be involved with crypto.”

There's long been the idea that gamers hate crypto. After all, mainstream game studios like Ubisoft received major backlash when attempting to implement the technology into their titles.

But the rise of MLG shows another potential path forward for the pairing of crypto and gaming, leaning in on nostalgia and vibes—and notching massive gains as a result.

Edited by Andrew Hayward