TL;DR

• Follow the Hustle and the Nexus Twitter accounts for the latest news.

• Web3 gaming and tech: MON token launch, Sappy Seals Monad game, Super Villain Labs raise, HYCHAIN, PARAM token launch, PlayAI raised, Zentry raised, New Pudgy Penguins game, and more.

• Macro news: Mt.Gox, xAI, Pectra Upgrade, Donald Trump, and SEC legal fees.

🎮 Web3 Gaming and Tech

• The long-awaited $MON token finally launched last Monday

  • It’s now trading at a ~$40M market cap and a ~$387M FDV, which seems below many of the expectations, which went up to $1B FDV

• Sappy Seals announced they are bringing a mobile game to market with Play Ember

  • “Sappy Quest” will be a mobile dungeon crawler, which will launch on the Monad testnet

• Supervillain Labs (SVL) announced they raised $4.5M in a seed round

  • The investment was co-led by Aptos Labs and Intella X

  • SVL is building an idle RPG and MMO - this is the former team of the Web3 game that was shelved last year Gran Saga: Unlimited

• HYCHAIN introduced the first game launching on the network: Loot Legends (LL)

  • LL is a mobile-first dungeon crawler RPG

• An honest take on the current state of Web3 gaming, and what needs to change

  • Jonah speaks on distribution methods, the flow of money, meme coins, and more

• Param Labs, the studio behind the Kiraverse, launched its $PARAM token 2 days ago

  • The token is now trading at a ~$24M market cap, and ~$189 FDV

• Ember Sword (ES) announced they’re finally launching a token: $EMBER

  • ES is a cross-platform MMORPG, which can even be played in browser

• PlayAI announced they raised $4.3M in their seed round

  • Polygon Ventures, Zentries, Gabusch, Jihoz, and others were on the cap table

  • PlayAI is building a network where players can “sell” their gameplay to train AI models

• Kuroro announced a $2.5M strategic round, co-led by Sanctor Capital and Animoca Brands

  • They had an impressive cap table with the involvement of founders of Pixelmon, Pixels, Axie, AI Arena, Hytopia, YGG, and more

• Anomaly announced they raised $1.45M in a round led by Decasonic

  • It’s an AI-powered L3 gaming platform, which will launch minigames on Telegram

• Mythical Games announced a partnership with Pudgy Penguins to build a mobile game

  • The game will be deployed on the Mythos Chain, a Polkadot-based gaming network

• Yuga attempted to acquire Everquest last year

  • Estimates are that Everquest grossed $100Ms of revenue in its lifetime

• Elixir Games launched its $ELIX token on DEXes

  • The token is now trading at a ~$90M FDV

• Zentry announced they held a new strategic round of funding

  • Zentry holds over $150M in their treasury, which generates over $10M per year, giving them years of runway

• Gala Games shared that the remaining 4.4B $GALA that was stolen from the exploiter last week has been burnt

  • They also recovered all the ETH to buy back and burn close to another billion of $GALA

• Spielworks, the makers of the Wombat gaming platform, acquired Chainmonsters

  • Chainmonsters is a web3 monster-collector game, and Spielworks plans to revive and accelerate its development

  • They initially paused the development in April 2023

• STEPN announced a new app STEPN GO

  • It’s a lifestyle app that rewards movement and social interactions

  • What this means for the existing STEPN app remains unclear

🕹️ Gaming Narrative Play

• Arbitrum Gaming: Arbitrum is one of the ecosystems that has been attracting good game titles, and has many developments going on:

  • $200M DAO Gaming proposal passes Quorum

  • The Treasure Ecosystem and Treasure Chain Testnet

    • Plus the flagship game they are building: Smolverse

  • The Beacon launching soon

• Overall, there are quite some catalysts that should push more attention to the ecosystem, especially the $200M proposal can play an important role in here in game acquisitions

🚀 Nexus V1 Alpha Launch

Welcome to the thirtieth version of the newsletter! Today, Jonny will be speaking live in the Discord and tell you about what kind of updates are coming, plus when we can expect the public launch. Make sure to attend for live Nexus Alpha!

In the meantime, this is how you can get involved:

• Get a Nexus Pass NFT now for exclusive and immediate lifetime access.

When we launch publicly, you can:

• Subscribe for $49/month to unlock the full potential (live at a next-stage launch), or

• Use the free version (limited in features) of the platform

Don't miss out—follow our journey on Hustle's Twitter, YouTube channels, and Nexus Twitter.

📈 Macro Cryptocurrency News

• The collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox has transferred $9.62 billion worth of Bitcoin into a new wallet, raising hopes among creditors.

• Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, has secured $6 billion in Series B funding, achieving a post-money valuation of $24 billion.

• Ethereum core developers have announced plans to roll out the Pectra Upgrade by the first quarter of 2025.

• With the approval of an important filing in the race to launch a spot ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF), many industry leaders are predicting that SOL and XRP are the next contenders (likely in 2025).  

• A U.S. federal judge has mandated that the SEC pay approximately $1.8 million in legal fees in its case against Digital Licensing Inc., operating as Debt Box.

• Former President Donald Trump has said he’ll commute Ross Ulbricht's sentence, the founder of the Silk Road online marketplace, to position himself as a pro-cryptocurrency candidate appealing to Libertarian voters.

• Coin of the Week: $RON

• Market Cap: ~$950M

• What is the Ronin Network? Ronin is a gaming network, which continues to attract strong IPs. Currently, its catalog includes Pixels, Ragnarok: Monster World, Apeiron, Kaidro Worlds, Wild Forest, Axie Infinity, and more. Ronin is well-positioned to incubate more Web3 gaming hits (like Pixels), and the whole ecosystem will grow of that upside.

• Delve into Hustle's market wisdom with his “Daily Watchlist” and deep-dive analysis available on the TTOO Discord server and through his “In the Game" show. 

✍️ NFT of The Week

• Pick of the Week: Aurorians

• Why Aurory?

  • Seekers of Tokane recently had a large update

  • One of the better Web3 games

  • One of the largest games on SOL

  • Upcoming art upgrade

  • Rolling out the KOL campaign

• Utility

  • New loyalty system bringing greater potential for rewards (coming)

  • Loyalty-based airdrop (coming)

• Catalysts

  • Aurory recently finished a large update and is rolling out a marketing campaign to push its narrative

  • With the added utility and art upgrades, it is believed this will lead to more attention shifting to the Aurorians collection

Nexus Market Talk Tweets

See you next week!