🎨 Art of the deal?

Hey frens.

Welcome back to another week of The Drop. 

Today we’re talking about Ronin, Pokémon, Gitcoin, and more.

Let’s dive in.

— Kate Irwin

P.S. Let me know how you’re liking The Drop! Send me an email at [email protected].

A burned bridge — and an alleged secret deal

Sky Mavis has accused one of the games using its Ronin chain of “secretly” making a deal with another blockchain in violation of a preexisting agreement.

The game in question, a mobile fantasy title dubbed Ragnarok: Monster World (RMW), uses both the Ronin and Cross protocols.

Sky Mavis co-founder Aleksander Larsen accused RMW of being unable to keep up with increased competition since the Ronin blockchain became permissionless in February. Being a permissionless chain means game developers no longer need Sky Mavis’s approval to build on Ronin.

“The team behind the game ignored our advice and has since lost favor with the community. To make matters worse, they secretly signed a deal with a separate blockchain, breaching our agreement,” Larsen wrote in a post on Saturday. 

“Naturally, this comes as a surprise, given the support we’ve extended to them. The trust has been broken to such a degree that we are ending our professional relationship with 0x&, the team behind Ragnarok Monster World,” Larsen continued.

The Sky Mavis co-founder initially said that the game’s assets would be removed from Sky Mavis products, like Ronin Market, entirely. In a subsequent post, however, Larsen said the assets will remain on the Ronin marketplace but would lose their checkmark there — indicating a lack of endorsement from Sky Mavis.

“This will be our last statement on this matter,” Larsen said.

RMW’s Genesis Land Launchpad and Presale are still prominently featured on the Ronin Market’s homepage as of Monday morning (and its Landverse collection still has a gold check). 

RMW denied that any “secret agreement” was made and contended that it upheld all “contractual obligations” with Sky Mavis.

“It is unfair to frame this situation as a ‘loss of trust’ based solely on unilateral interpretations,” RMW argued.

Others have suggested that RMW’s decision was a play to remedy dwindling funds. Blockchain foundations, DAOs or leading labs typically offer substantial grants to game developers to integrate their chains — and RMW may have chosen to go “multichain” to get more funding.

“We're going to see this even more,” Moku co-founder Hantao Yuan predicted in a post about the issue. “Them moving to another ecosystem for a grant just means they have survived for now.”

Blockworks has reached out to 0x& for comment.

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Pokémon NFT rumors gain traction

Are Pokémon NFTs coming — or are they secretly already here?

Speculation around Pokémon Home NFTs on the Sui blockchain spread across Crypto Twitter over the weekend. Believers pointed to a vague announcement from the official Pokémon X about adding tradeable and giftable “digital souvenirs” or medals to a Pokémon Home update. 

But the blog post from The Pokémon Company doesn’t mention anything about crypto, Sui or NFTs. That blog post alone doesn’t prove that blockchain tech is being used here.

But there’s more.

One Pokémon fan said they found that the Pokémon Home mobile app’s privacy policy briefly listed “Parasol Technologies, LLC” as a developer Pokémon said it “might” share user data with. 

They noted that Parasol was only mentioned in the English, Spanish, French, German and Italian translations of the policy.

As of Sunday evening, any mention of Parasol is not in the app’s privacy policy, suggesting it may have been quietly removed. 

Sui developer Mysten Labs acquired Parasol last month.

The official Sui blog previously mentioned Pokémon as one of three examples of a type of trading card game (TCG) in a post about Parasol. Then, it seemed to have quietly removed that example, too.

I asked Mysten Labs about the Pokémon NFT rumors — and a spokesperson declined to comment.

Technically, none of this is enough to prove for certain that these medals are blockchain assets. 

My guess? If that privacy policy did indeed mention Parasol before, then Sui NFTs for Pokemon are either here or coming soon. 

Gitcoin layoffs

Gitcoin, the token and platform promoting open-source development, is shutting down its Grants Lab. It has also laid off some team members.

Gitcoin co-founder Kevin Owocki said the grants program doesn’t have a “clear, sustainable path to profitability.” 

Gitcoin’s GTC token has been down substantially from its all-time high, declining in price since 2022. GTC is down 74% in the past year, and remains down over 98% from its all-time high in November 2021.

• Zed Champions, a virtual horse racing game on Base, is launching its “Season 0” at 8 pm ET tonight.

  • As part of a recent collab with Kaito, those who yapped about the ZED token and/or game on X get badges and part of 2% of the total ZED token supply. Badge holders get seasonal NFT airdrops. 

  • FWIW, this is definitely degen stuff if you’re into that sort of thing (and as a reminder, we’ve seen horse-racing game tokens crash miserably before).

• Solana dapp engine firm MagicBlock has raised $7.5 million in seed round funding to build tech for fully onchain games on Solana.