🦁 Born to be wild

Welcome to another edition of The Drop.

If you want to be a hero and share our subscribe link with your alpha groups, friends, parents — that would be epic. Expect daily editions come March.

— Kate Irwin

Wildcard is changing the game

Wildcard has just migrated its Wildpass NFTs to Ethereum mainnet and is planning to launch a token. 

Wildcard is an upcoming, crypto-optional PVP battle game I’ve been following for years. You play as a character who can run around a 3D battlefield and throw cards that turn into powerful creatures that autobattle each other. People that spectate Wildcard matches can also be rewarded for watching and engage with the game. 

Wildcard is being developed by Playful Studios, whose CEO and co-founder, Paul Bettner, worked on games like Words With Friends, Age of Empires, and Lucky’s Tale.

Why is Wildcard still not out yet after more than two years? Building a fun game is hard, but in Bettner’s view, building a good game with crypto ties-ins makes it even harder. 

“I personally think it's because it's like building games while wandering through a minefield,” he tells me with a chuckle. “I’ve got two years of doing this under my belt and I’ve lost count of the number of times where unaligned incentives have attempted to hijack the game design and the focus [away from] just trying to create a truly fun game for a mass audience, because of crypto.” 

Simply put, Bettner wants to make a game that you’ll choose over anything else in your Steam library because it’s more fun.

“Crypto has this gravity to it, it has this set of forces that are constantly trying to tug the design of a consumer application, or a consumer product, especially like a game, in certain directions,” Bettner added. 

Wildcard initially released the Wildpass NFTs on Polygon back in 2023 — which gave up to 4,444 fans early access to the game’s development. Bettner calls these holders, and the game’s Discord server’s members, the “golden cohort.” They’re the core community he wants to make happy with the game.

Wildcard founders Bettner and his wife Katy Bettner previously attended the Game Developer’s Conference in the past as part of the Polygon booth, representing part of the chain’s gaming ecosystem (which then also included the now-cancelled shooter Deadrop, which launched Founders Passes on Polygon).

Now, the Wildpass NFTs are leaving Polygon. The team migrated them to the Ethereum mainnet on Monday and covered the cost of gas for the move for holders. 

Bettner tells me they’re not committing to any one EVM chain moving forward, but they see the Ethereum mainnet as a good spot for the genesis NFTs because of the chain’s liquidity. The mainnet has higher transaction fees than Polygon, though.

“The Wildpass is not intended to be an asset that people are trading every five seconds,” Bettner explains. For future Wildcard NFTs or rewards meant to be traded frequently, it’s likely the team will pick another EVM chain with lower fees.

Their WC token, which hasn’t been released yet, is unlike anything we’ve seen recently because this token will be 100% community-owned, with zero team allocation or VC involvement. And it’s not a memecoin, either.

“I’m hoping we can set a new standard here,” Bettner shares. The token won’t have team or VC allocations because he doesn’t want the Wildcard community to feel pitted against the team or investors financially if investors suddenly decide to cash out and send the token nosediving.

The recent favorable regulatory climate with Trump’s election and the shakeup at the SEC has also made the team more comfortable launching a token.

“It's basically the opposite of a meme token,” Bettner says of the WC token. “It is directly connected to the Wildcard ecosystem and to the value that's created in the Wildcard ecosystem.”

Bettner’s Playful Studios is also building Thousands, a blockchain-powered streaming platform like Twitch but with more incentives and rewards for both viewers and streamers.

I previously played an early version of Wildcard — and it’s solid. I’m a fan of MOBA- and arena-battler style games like Overwatch, and I love colorful sci-fi games where characters have special powers. So I am absolutely looking forward to the game’s full launch.

Mystery Society out of cash

The Mystery Society — not to be confused with Midnight Society — is cancelled. 

The “social deduction” game was still in development and was using the Immutable zkEVM chain for its blockchain elements. 

The game’s team said the title is being canned because of a lack of funding. “The state of web3 gaming is just too challenged right now and despite all our efforts, we have been unable to secure the funds to keep building,” the game’s X account wrote on Monday.

This means its MYSTRY token may not ever launch: “Our plans for the $MYSTRY token are on indefinite hold. If we find another Web3 partner, we will seek to find a way to reward our community for their loyalty to the game. We will also be refunding all the customers who purchased gems,” the team added.

Mystery’s CEO Chris Heatherly also confirmed the news. “I still believe in Web3 gaming. But I don't think it’s going to work without a major shift in approach. This hurts deeply but I'm not giving up,” he said.

New fund guns for mass adoption

Blockchain developer platform Alchemy, which offers tech for crypto wallets and other crypto integrations, is trying to inspire more mainstream adoption with a $5 million fund called the “Everyone Onchain Fund.” 

Sam Altman’s World, formerly known as Worldcoin, already uses Alchemy tech and now has over 23 million users, according to the company. 

But this cycle, much of crypto hasn’t been focused on vying for mainstream interest. Instead, memecoins have captured Crypto Twitter’s attention, and companies have launched tokens and new chains largely with existing traders, VCs, and influencers in mind. Abstract is arguably one of the few new platforms really targeting the “normies,” or non-crypto people, this year. 

Could a new fund help? Maybe, maybe not. My two cents? $5 million is but a drop in the crypto bucket of $3.16 trillion.

• Korean pop band BlackPink is coming to Story. While most of the crypto market was down bad on Monday, Story’s fresh IP token has still been surging. The token’s price is up about 15% in the past day, and up 136% in the past week. 

• Blockchain gaming group WolvesDAO has confirmed its WOOF token will be on Avalanche. 

• Memes Lab raises $2.3 million in seed funding to build its TON-based memecoin creation platform that anyone can use. Expect lots of Telegram integrations, too. Memes Lab already has a Telegram mobile battle game.

It’s like the Pink Panther, but, like, part fish? Right? Plz don’t get rekt on this thing.