😈 Goblin mode

Hey frens. Today we’ve got news on Goblintown and Magic Eden.

Markets can spike or plummet based on a single social media post these days. Most gaming tokens are up overall in the past day, but still down in the past week.

Stay nimble — anything is possible.

— Kate Irwin

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

Goblintown unveils Abstract NFT drop

Truth Arts — formerly known as Truth Labs, the team behind the 2022 Goblintown Ethereum NFT collection — has released NFT “licenses” inspired by driver’s licenses.

To become eligible to mint a Goblintown license, aspiring drivers had to wait for a seemingly endless amount of time with no end in sight in a DMV. In this case, the wait was at the Goblintown DMV, which was a webpage with a DMV simulator. You took a number, waited, waited some more, and ultimately submitted your email address to the team. (You also need to create a DYLI account with that same email address to claim your license.)

When I stumbled upon the DMV simulator shortly after it launched April 1, I didn’t know what the endgame was, but I figured it would probably end in some exclusive reward. I clicked on it to check it out. 

I took a number, saw the depressing knowledge of a long wait and some extremely high numbers (like 99,999), and gave up after about 30 seconds.

I had work to do, okay? 

Truth CEO and cofounder Alexander Taub said in a post that wait times were anywhere from one to five hours per customer.

The Goblintown DMV is now closed. If you didn’t get the chance to pass idle hours waiting, the NFTs can be bought on secondary marketplaces.

The “license” NFTs can be claimed until this Friday, April 11, according to an X post. They’re minting on the Abstract blockchain. There are six possible character designs: “pumplescroob,” “lord buttbat,” “jug,” “gromblar,” “urki,” and “gobbie.” 

When asked why the Goblintown team chose Abstract for its latest NFTs, Taub told Blockworks via email: “We are big fans and friends of Luca, Pudgy Penguins, and the Abstract team. The licenses were first and foremost something that we wanted people to be able to physically redeem (if they choose to),” he said, adding: “We are also building more things for Abstract, this just happened to leapfrog those things.”

The NFTs can be “burned,” or removed from the blockchain permanently, in exchange for real-life physical versions of the licenses.

The licenses are thematically tied to the upcoming Goblintown racing game, Goblintown: Really Hard Driving Game, which was announced back in February. 

It’s technically not a crypto game, though. The game won’t require any NFTs to play, but it won’t be free-to-play, either (exact pricing is TBD).

“This game is very purposefully a non-Web3 game. The first reason is that you cannot have anything crypto- or token-related and be in good standing on Steam, which is where we will be first distributing the game. This is the number one marketplace for indie games, so that made the decision for us,” Taub explained.

“The second reason is we wanted to make a game that is fun and entertaining and something people WANT to play, not because they might make money or speculate on it. We are building an entertainment and technology company, and creating entertaining games is something we need to deliver on outside of speculative digital assets. So the game has IP origins with Goblintown and our original digital collection, but it is our attempt to build ourselves into a character IP brand,” the CEO continued.

On April 20, Goblintown is hosting an IRL event in New York City where invitees can try to beat the game for $10,000 in cash.

The game will also be on offer IRL at Pax East in Boston next month and at DreamHack in Dallas at the end of next month. At all of these events, those with NFT licenses will be able to cut the line to play the game.

“We figure you waited at the digital DMV for a minimum of an hour (to 5 hours!) so we can let you skip the line. In the future, we might come up with more fun little things, but tying it to the actual in-game is not something we plan to do,” Taub told Blockworks.

Like Really Hard Driving Game’s title suggests, it’s intended to be very difficult to play.

“This isn't just about skill — it's about nerves, instinct, and maybe a little bit of chaos. Goblintown has always thrived on unpredictability, and this challenge is no exception,” Taub said in a press release.

Goblintown: Really Hard Driving Game has echoes of Yuga Labs’ Dookey Dash, which was a difficult driving game with obstacles that was released for a limited time beginning in January 2023. 

The original Dookey Dash was also for degens and competitive gamers, but it required a “Sewer Pass” NFT to access the game. The winning Dookey Dash key ultimately sold for $1.6 million in February 2023. In September 2024, Yuga Labs released a free-to-play, newer version of the game.

Goblintown’s Really Hard Driving Game will launch before the end of this month, Taub confirmed to Blockworks.

Magic Eden buys trading app Slingshot

NFT marketplace Magic Eden is acquiring trading app Slingshot.

As of Tuesday, the deal has been signed and is expected to close soon, a spokesperson for Magic Eden confirmed to Blockworks. Jack Lu, Magic Eden’s CEO and cofounder, also spoke to us about the deal.

“Why Slingshot, right? The way we would think about it is — if you look at the market today, there was a time everyone was launching L2s,” Lu told Blockworks. “But it was pretty obvious that the market was pretty over it. And our conviction in this cycle — but also over the long term — is [in] the apps. It's the apps that are going to win and get the most attention.”

Lu explained that he enjoys a number of Slingshot’s features, including what he describes as super fast trading and the ability to trade across any chain without bridging tokens. He also likes that more tokens are available to trade on Slingshot, compared to a centralized exchange like Coinbase.

Magic Eden is also planning social features for Slingshot in the future. 

“Our vision for Magic Eden has always been all chains, all assets,” Lu said. “This is not just an app that allows you to trade memecoins.”

Support for Hyper Liquid, XRP, Cardano, Sui, TON and Chainlink is in the works on Slingshot, he added. 

Lu clarified that while there might be integrations between Slingshot and Magic Eden in their long-term vision, nothing’s imminent in the short-term. However, there could be a user identity tie-in at some point in the future, where users of both trading platforms are able to see all their assets in one place, under one account.

“We don't want to create too much interdependency between Magic Eden and Slingshot. [Slingshot is] a really fast team. They ship super fast,” Lu explained.

When asked how much Magic Eden paid to acquire Slingshot, Magic Eden’s rep said both sides of the deal prefer not to share the financial details behind it. 

Slingshot’s app is available on iOS and Android, and can be used almost worldwide, including in the US, as long as you comply with its terms of service. It launched in February 2023, according to one of its posts on X. 

Slingshot lets users connect Apple Pay, Venmo, PayPal, credit card or debit card to make crypto purchases. It offers a non-custodial wallet for users and is a decentralized app, meaning all swaps occur onchain and users retain custody of their crypto at all times. There’s no option for Slingshot to custody user assets.

Slingshot is a mobile-first app, and has a simplicity to its interface and design that reminds me of Robinhood.

But it has to compete with Robinhood — which has a market cap of $30 billion — as well as other behemoths like Coinbase and Binance. Plus it’s in the ring with DeFi platforms and other smaller crypto trading tools. But Slingshot seems to have an ease-of-use that could make it appealing to crypto newcomers.

The app’s Google Play Store page shows Slingshot has over 10,000 unique user downloads, which means its Android version has more than 10,000 but less than 50,000 downloads (“50K+” would appear as the download count if the app has over that amount). 

Magic Eden’s move to expand beyond just NFTs is something other NFT marketplaces have been exploring, as NFT trading volumes stagnate. OpenSea has said it wants to add fungible tokens to its latest marketplace, OS2, to expand beyond just NFTs.

Despite markets being down this year, Magic Eden’s Lu isn’t worried about the broader sentiment and state of crypto because he’s taken a builder’s perspective — a stance execs and devs often take in bear markets.

“Now is the best time,” Lu said. “Right now when it’s really quiet, we actually find it the best time for us to cool our minds and really bet deep on our thesis and build really hard.”

Lu’s interview was edited and condensed for clarity.