⛓️ Ubisoft goes cross-chain

Hey frens! It’s Wednesday, aka the sluggish day of the week.

But the news doesn’t stop — in fact, there’s a lot of it. Today we’re talking about Ubisoft, Sony and Mastercard.

— Kate Irwin

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

Ubisoft game items could go “omnichain”

Remember the “interoperability” gaming dream? 

Ubisoft is spinning up a Decentralized Verification Network (DVN) to verify crypto assets that are being moved or bridged from one blockchain to another. 

The company is using LayerZero’s tech — more specifically, its codebase and omnichain messaging protocol — in the deal. The game studio is running its own clients and nodes for its network, however.

The DVN means Ubisoft can let players move their NFTs and in-game currencies from one chain to another, which makes them usable with other Ubisoft crypto games (or external games or platforms). It could also make complete migrations from one chain to another easier if Ubisoft ever decided to move one of its blockchain games.

Ubisoft may enable cross-chain bridging soon for its fantasy turn-based RPG Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, which launched using the Oasys EVM blockchain in October 2024. Last year — months before the game launched — LayerZero said it was adding support for Oasys with the end goal of making Champions Tactics “omnichain.”

Now, it sounds like that’s actually possible.

LayerZero’s tech turns assets in transit into Omnichain NFTs (ONFTs) or Omnichain fungible tokens (OFTs). ONFTs could be assets like in-game items, while OFTs could be used for in-game currencies. 

Ubisoft will be able to decide the cost of bridging assets for users, LayerZero Labs CEO and cofounder Bryan Pellegrino told Blockworks in an interview. LayerZero tech makes all costs upfront, so that no surprise tokens are required for bridging.

The DVN is intended to be easier to use than a traditional crypto bridge, which can require multiple currencies across multiple chains and anywhere from a few minutes to a week to complete bridging an asset depending on the chain.

Pellegrino believes crypto gaming is moving toward becoming a “broader, much more liquid ecosystem,” and that enabling more asset movement between chains is a step toward that vision.

We don’t yet know which chains Ubisoft plans to support with its DVN. But given its existing and upcoming games use Oasys and Immutable zkEVM, respectively, those may be two of the options if Ubisoft adds a bridging feature to Champions Tactics, for example. LayerZero currently supports over 130 blockchains including Ethereum and Solana.

Ubisoft’s Nicolas Pouard, VP of the studio’s Strategic Innovation Lab, has previously said their goal is to be chain-agnostic — which a DVN supporting dozens to over a hundred chains would certainly enable.

After I previously reported that Ubisoft’s next crypto game is likely a trading card game (TCG) using Immutable’s zkEVM, Ubisoft and Immutable announced that they’re rebooting Might and Magic as a crypto TCG.

“Long term, the goal is that, you know, the user doesn’t think about a chain at all. They don’t think about gas at all. Their wallets are just dollar-denominated. Everything is just abstracted in the backend,” Pellegrino said, adding: “Users aren’t going to think about chains and RPCs for too much longer.”

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Another crypto game ditches crypto

I covered crypto game studio Jungle over two years ago, and I hadn’t really heard from them since. Now, the Brazil-based studio has decided they’re leaving crypto and will launch their mobile shooter game as a free-to-play, non-crypto title instead. 

According to a screenshotted Discord message from Jungle (Jungle’s crypto-themed X account has been inactive since February), the team described the change as a move to “take all future development offchain.”

Gamers on Crypto Twitter criticized the move, calling the game “doomed” and “shit,” while others suggested the game’s team should offer Jungle NFT buyers refunds now that the game devs are ditching their crypto plans.

According to Jungle’s website, their game was supposed to launch last year. Jungle raised $6 million in seed funding in 2023. Their investors include crypto VCs Bitkraft, Delphi Digital, and Framework Ventures. 

Jungle isn’t the first game to cancel their crypto plans, of course. Other games have decided to leave crypto or remove planned crypto elements (some older examples include Checkmate Immortal and STALKER 2). 

Because crypto remains a controversial topic for gamers, it’s likely Jungle won’t be the last game to jump the crypto ship.

Truth token + wallet?

Trump Media and Technology Group might get into tokens. 

Their latest shareholder letter states that the team is exploring the idea of releasing a digital Truth wallet, as well as a utility token as part of a Truth rewards program.

The token may “initially” be usable to pay Truth+ subscription costs (Truth+ is the media firm’s streaming service) and may be usable across “other products and services” in the future, according to the letter.

These hypothesized crypto offerings could ultimately be marketing tools to generate interest in and engagement with Truth’s streaming apps.

I say this because those apps don’t have a lot of downloads right now — at least on Google Play. 

Truth+ TV has less than 5,000 downloads, and Truth+ has less than 1,000 downloads as of Tuesday evening, according to their respective Play store pages. By comparison, Truth Social, the company’s flagship product, has over a million downloads on Google Play.

• Yet another crypto card is here. This time, it’s the OKX Mastercard. Mastercard more broadly is also expanding its stablecoin payments support.

• Crypto development startup Plume added its SkyLink staking product to Sony’s Soneium chain. SkyLink will let Soneium users earn yield from real-world assets like tokenized US Treasurys and Plume chain private credit.

• MapleStory’s upcoming crypto game version has opened up its account/player name redemption. Those holding Name NFTs are now able to claim the unique usernames they want. 

  • This is one of the games I’m excited about and still following closely these days. It feels like they’re getting very close to launching.

• Yuga Labs’ VP of Blockchain saw his Robinhood account restricted. The joys of crypto centralization.

This comic by Mental Marvin hits too close to home (but is often true):