💰 BIG Ponzi?

Hey frens! Welcome back to The Drop.

It’s Monday, and that means we’re just barely waking up.

We’re talking about the controversial Abstract mining game, Big, as well as sharing more details about the Solana Gaming Pass.

Let’s dive in.

— Kate Irwin

Big mining game — or big Ponzi?

Abstract, the Ethereum L2 blockchain that claims it’s “leading the next generation of consumer crypto,” is featuring and endorsing a crypto mining game that some have accused of being a Ponzi scheme.

Abstract has added “The Big Badge” as a visual badge reward for users who engaged with Bigcoin, an app that gamifies the BIG token and lets players “mine” the token from their virtual “facilities.”

“Bigcoin aims to become the most recognized coin on the planet by combining the proven emission mechanics of Bitcoin with viral, community-driven incentives,” the token’s white paper reads. Pseudonymous X user “Satoshi Bigmoto,” also known as “Bigtoshi,” is listed as Bigcoin’s creator and white paper author. Their account was created in February, just a few months ago.

But to “mine” BIG and increase their hash rate, players have to buy “miners” for their pixelated “facilities” using BIG itself (both the size of one’s facility and the number of miners increase one’s hash rate). Players also have to spend BIG to “upgrade” those virtual mining rooms.

Abstract Marketing Lead Phin Totten confirmed to me that Bigcoin isn’t actually using players’ physical computers to mine the token — and that the token isn’t actually being mined at all. Instead, what’s happening is a simulation, facilitated by the token’s smart contract.

One X user declared over the weekend that “Bigcoin has taken the timeline by storm and made a lot of money for people who got in early,” adding, “Congrats to everyone who got in early.”

While others have argued that all of crypto is a Ponzi scheme, Bigcoin has less utility and less legitimacy than its inspiration, Bitcoin, which has been adopted by Wall Street in the form of bitcoin ETFs. 

Cornell Law School defines a Ponzi scheme as: “a type of investment fraud in which investors are promised artificially high rates of return with little or no risk. Original investors and the perpetrators of the fraud are paid off by funds from later investors, but there is little or no actual business activity that produces revenue. The scheme generates funds for previous investors so long as there is a consistent flow of funds from new investors.”

It’s currently unclear what the point of Bigcoin is, however, besides enriching miners who “got in early” with a layer of gamification on top.

Despite its token burn and sink mechanisms intended to help keep the token’s price higher, BIG’s price has fluctuated and can be as volatile as other low-cap tokens. It had a market cap of $6.9 million as of 11:15 am ET Monday morning, per Gecko Terminal data.

A few minutes later, its market cap spiked to $7.5 million. It then lost about 15% of its market cap in less than an hour, then regained that loss just as quickly and then lost it again. 

The token’s price had spiked 40% in the past day as of Monday morning, but it quickly fell to just a 12% gain, showing big price swings. 

Cryptocurrency prices more broadly are up across the board in the past day and week, with gaming tokens seeing more of a mixed bag. 

Sui, Immutable and Gala have seen their prices rise and are up anywhere from 7% to 11% in the past week.

Memecoins have made more substantial gains in the past day and week, with fartcoin up 75% in the past week and BONK up 28% in that timeframe.

We got the deets: Solana Game Pass 

We finally have more details about the Solana Game Pass after I flagged earlier this month that it’s coming from Solana Gaming, a part of the Solana Foundation that’s managed by marketing agency The Gaming Strategist.

The pass will be a four-week “gamified quest system” featuring 20 to 25 different games using Solana, according to marketing documents shared with Blockworks. 

For those of you familiar with traditional game passes, this isn’t technically that. While a traditional game pass is something you buy to unlock exclusive loot, this is a limited-run competition with prizes.

Five to seven games will be added to the quests every week until all 20-25 games are a part of the contest. You’ll have to complete tasks like following certain accounts on social media, wishlisting certain games, or watching certain pieces of content to potentially earn prizes.

Last week, the team behind it told me in a Telegram message that it’ll be starting “mid-April,” and a “Game Pass Loading” post shared on Sunday suggests it’s coming very, very soon.