TL;DR

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

• Web3 gaming news: Aavegotchi's Geist chain, The Mystery Foundation, Takedown Legends, PiP Trader, XBORG XBG token, Nexus Interactive raises, Gate Ventures’ 100M fund, The Dimensionals expose, Story Protocol raises an additional $80M, and more.

• Macro news: U.S. job gains revised downward, Brazil green lights a second Solana ETF, Mt. Gox moved $75M in funds, BlackRock surpasses Grayscale in crypto ETF holdings, and more.

🎮 Web3 Gaming and Tech

• Aavegotchi introduced its L3 Geist chain

  • It’s a gaming ecosystem built with Arbitrum Orbit, Base, and the Alchemy Platform

  • Within this platform, only “members” can earn. This concept tries to combat the flood of extractive bots, when it comes to open ecosystems

• Fableborne Adventures Season 2 is live, with new features and events

  • The game was trending on Twitter in the gaming category on the day of its launch

• Mystery Society introduced The Mystery Foundation, meaning a token will be coming soon

  • 50% of the token supply will go to the community

  • Mystery Society is a social deduction game, developed by Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow Games (former talent from Disney and Universal Studios)

• Takedown Legends is a game powered by SNACK, and developed by Fried Chicken Labs

  • It’s a mobile top-down shooter with MOBA mechanics, where players play different battle royale-like game modes

  • SNACK is a LATAM-based investment community, backed by Animoca Brands

• PiP Trader is a new arcade-style trading game - players compete using their financial know-how

  • In this game, participation in the Market Run Mode will be counted toward your airdrop eligibility

  • Recently, the studio behind the game PiP World purchased the largest stock simulation game inside of Roblox

• XBORG launched its token last Monday and achieved $4M in trading volume on D1

  • Notably, the token launched without market makers, 100% investor unlocks and is only listed on DEXes

  • XBG is trading at a ~$15M market cap and a ~$70M FDV

• Nexus Interactive (NI) announced they raised $2M in an oversubscribed seed round

  • NI is a development studio, Web3 game publisher, and creator hub

  • Note: we don’t have any association with Nexus Interactive

• Gate Ventures partnered with The Blockchain Center in Abu Dhabi to launch Falcon Gate Ventures - a $100M blockchain fund

• IcoBeast publishes his large Dimensionals expose, outlining the project’s Web3 promises, secret pivot, remedial plans, and Web3 exit

• Etherscape is the #5 trending game on Epic Games

  • It’s a top-down Web3 ARPG MMO built on Enjin, where you lose all your items when you die

• Zeeverse launched a Mini Telegram game with a $25K prize pool and P2A

  • The concept is similar to Flabby Bird but in a different format

• Story Protocol announced they raised a total of $140M, with an $80M Series B led by A16Z

  • “ Story is the world’s IP blockchain, a Layer 1 that seeks to tokenize the multi-trillion-dollar asset class of intellectual property.”

  • Over 200 teams with more than 20M addressable IPs are already building on the platform

• WatCoin, by GAMEE, announced it received investment from TON Ventures

  • TON Ventures recently announced its $40M fund, to back early-stage Web3 mini-apps

• The Web3 questing and community platform Soulbound announced they raised $4M in a round held in Q2

  • The team is working on Twitch live stream integration for Soulbound-partnered games, with a TGE scheduled in the 2nd half of this year

🕹️ Gaming Narrative Play

• “NFTs are back”: Last week this message probably crossed your TL multiple times, this week not many seem to talk about it anymore. Narratives seem to come and go extremely fast at this point, so don’t get caught in the 3 or 7-day trend, but have conviction in something.

• Rather than chasing the latest hype, consider placing your bets on a few strong teams. In the medium to long term, this approach is likely to pay off as these projects mature and grow in value.

🚀 Nexus V1 Alpha Launch

Welcome to edition #42 of the Nexus Power Up Newsletter, the one that commemorates our public launch! A big thank you to our community, supporters, and partners who have believed in us and contributed to our early success.

The special 20% early bird discount is still available, which you can access using the link below.

($79.99 for an annual standard membership to Nexus for the first 1000 sign-ups in the first 72 hours)

You can also get access through:

• Getting a Nexus Pass NFT now for exclusive lifetime access

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

📈Macro Cryptocurrency News

• U.S. job gains over the 12 months ending in March were revised downward Wednesday by 818,000 — a significant revision that adds to recent concerns that the economy has been slowing. 

• Robin Linus, a Bitcoin developer, has unveiled a new method called "BitVM2" for making Bitcoin more programmable.

  • This builds on his previous work, which aimed to allow developers to create and run programs directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.

• Brazil's financial regulator has given the green light to a second Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF).

  • This new fund, offered by Hashdex and BTG Pactual, will allow investors to trade Solana tokens on the Brazilian stock exchange.

• Drift, a Solana-based cryptocurrency trading platform, is expanding its services to include prediction markets. 

  • Similar to Polymarket, users can bet on the outcomes of future events like elections.

• Mt. Gox has recently moved $75 million worth of bitcoin to Bitstamp, a centralized exchange handling creditor payouts.

  • This suggests that another round of repayments to Mt. Gox's creditors may be happening soon. Several other exchanges, like Kraken, have already made similar payments.

• Tether is partnering with Phoenix Group and Green Acorn Investments to create a new stablecoin tied to the United Arab Emirates dirham.

  • This new coin aims to be the first of its kind to comply with the UAE's new regulations for digital currencies.

• BlackRock, a major investment firm, has surpassed Grayscale in terms of crypto ETF holdings.

  • This means BlackRock's ETFs now hold more Bitcoin and Ethereum than Grayscale's ETFs. BlackRock's ETFs currently hold a total of $21.2 billion, while Grayscale's hold $21.2 billion.

🌟Token Spotlight by Hustle

• Coin of the Week: SUNDOG

• Market Cap: ~$190M

• What is SUNDOG? Sundog is one of the major meme tokens on TRON right now, as the result of being promoted by Justin Sun (the founder of TRON). Recently, the meme coin platform SunPump was also introduced, in an attempt to compete with Solana’s PumpFun. The question is whether the TRON meme coin narrative can be sustained.

• 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: Calamity Artifacts

• Why Calamity?

  • Calamity is an ARPG with a playable beta

• Utility

  • Exclusive holder reward pool for the P2A campaign

  • Guaranteed allocation for the public token sale

  • Unique in-game utilities

  • Small token airdrop (only for the rare and grail Artifacts)

    • High-rarity NFTs are being sold for close to the FP sometimes, meaning some sellers are not paying attention

• Catalysts

  • The game is slowly bringing out the game to the public, and organizing a P2A campaign soon. This should bring more attention to the project.

• Counterpoint

  • Calamity was launched under a different name before. At the time the game couldn’t gain traction and all the token holders were reimbursed. Whether the game can succeed in Web3 this time remains uncertain

  • Players (who are also holders) of the game are the ones who will benefit the most. So there’s less value accrual from a passive holder perspective

Nexus Tweets

See you next week!