💸 What happened to CGX

Hey, frens. We’re back on this fine Thursday with another exclusive edition of The Drop!

Markets have been a little red the past week. Most gaming-related tokens are down except for Ronin and Hive, which have made some modest gains. TOPIA’s a winner this week, jumping 24%. The Parallel game’s PRIME token took one of the biggest hits in the category, and is down 14% in the past week. 

Fartcoin could also be nearing the end of its days — that memecoin is down over 80% in the past month. It still has a substantial market cap though.

But hey, things could be worse, right?

— Kate Irwin

🕹️ CGX token spawns accusations of insider sales

Community Gaming, a crypto-powered gaming platform, launched a prediction market (PM) called Forkast on Ronin this week. Forkast will use the CGX token and let users bet on different real-world outcomes in gaming and influencer culture.

But some traders on Crypto Twitter accused the Community Gaming team and affiliated insiders of selling off the token — before regular users had the chance to claim it early Wednesday morning. 

Massive interest in the token took their website down, making new distributions to retail impossible until the site was restored. 

Over half a dozen posts from different accounts asked the team who was selling the token because its price had already slipped from $0.3 to $0.03 the morning the token launched. On Wednesday, it was down 70% from its all-time high. Now, it’s already at $0.009 — a 90% decline from its ATH.

Community Gaming founder and CEO Chris Gonsalves tells me that neither the team nor its investors have sold their allocations of the token. 

“The only entities that have tokens [besides the team, investors, and influencers] are the exchanges themselves who distributed through their listing promotions,” he said Wednesday morning while the website was down.

The token is available on Gate, MEXC and Katana.

“So those traders and the site going down is causing bad price action but any FUD about insiders selling is 100% false. Team tokens are locked for 18 months and all investors for 12 months,” Gonsalves said, adding:

“We sent out 8 creators payments (total of ~25k in CGX tokens) simultaneously when the claim process started and the site crashed right after that so people are sharing a screenshot of that but none of them did anything with those tokens so it's just poor optics.”

Ronin’s blockchain scanner shows me that creators Kyroh, Inspectormnbl, and Raiden are still holding their allocations as of Thursday morning.

A big selloff could mean that those who get allocations of the token don’t see value in holding it long-term. Or, they could just be farmers looking for a quick buck. A tale as old as time in crypto.

If you do end up getting some CGX and don’t want to toss it into the prediction market or sell it just yet, Forkast is promising those who stake CGX various rewards including monthly loot boxes with platform credits, Community Gaming tournament access, and governance participation in Community Gaming’s upcoming player-versus-player (PVP) blockchain.

Yep, that’s right — Ronin is getting an L2 blockchain, PVP. It’s intended for competitive gaming apps, according to the team. The chain will be governed by CGX DAO as well as the PVP Council, as well as anyone who stakes their CGX tokens.

💰 Sony blockchain starts rewards campaign

Sony Block Solutions Labs and Astar Network are allocating 100 million ASTR tokens as a reward pool for activity on Soneium. They’re calling it the Astar Contribution Score (ACS).

From today until May 30, you can engage with 40 different dapps on Soneium — including Quickswap, Kyo Finance, Synstation, Yay!, SoneX and others — to earn ASTR tokens. Points are accumulated and can eventually be converted into ASTR at the end of the campaign. 

Each ACS point can be exchanged for 0.1 ASTR. Using ASTR on Soneium with eligible dapps will net a 2x ACS point multiplier, while using ETH will net a 1.3x multiplier. USDC grants 1.2x the points, and USDT will grant 1x the points. 

ASTR is currently worth $0.04 at time of writing, meaning that if its price doesn’t change, each ACS point would be worth $0.004 (without a multiplier). That means you’re gonna need a LOT of points to really see major value from this. Like, tens of thousands of points to get $40, or $80 if you use ASTR. Good luck, farmers!

Soneium doesn’t have its own dedicated native token (yet), and has been using ETH for gas fees on its Optimism Superchain-powered network. It currently has about $36M in total value locked.

It’s cool to see Sony trying hard to get people to use its chain, but there are so many chains out there that the competition will be tough — even for Sony.

🚨 Coinbase CEO sends warning to memecoin insiders

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sent out a lengthy Xeet (can I call them that?) yesterday reminding us of the (obvious) fact that insider trading is illegal. And yes, it applies to memecoins, too.

“Some memecoins have clearly gone too far lately, to the extent people are insider trading,” Armstrong wrote, seemingly in reference to the LIBRA memecoin. 

“This is illegal, and people should understand that you will go to prison for this. In every crypto cycle, there is a get rich quick crowd that comes and goes, and learns this lesson the hard way. Don't break the law! And don't try to get rich quick,” the CEO said.

Welp, hopefully the scammers and grifters will get in line now, right? Right?

⚡ Lightning Round

• Kraken has updated its app with a new revamped user interface.

• Solana memecoin PAIN launched on Wednesday. Its MC is now sitting at $53M but its price is down 39% from its ATH, per Coinmarketcap data. Fun! 

• Ledger finally adds <32 ETH staking to Ledger Live via Coinbase. 

• Somnia’s Shannon testnet launches today. Somnia is an EVM L1 blockchain that’s promising less than a cent in fees per transaction, and it is trying to build out a gaming ecosystem.

• Overherd, a SocialFi platform on Sei, launched in alpha on Wednesday.

🍃 Fresh Mints

Recent:

• Fishing Frenzy, an upcoming mobile game on Ronin, held its Founders Pass mint on Tuesday. 

• The Last Monarchy, a mobile strategy game on Skale, held a mint for its Legacy Keys on Wednesday.

Upcoming:

• SocialFi/GameFi platform RekTech launches its Dream Pass open edition mint on Feb. 25 and will run for 6 days

  • The mint fee is .25 SOL, with no limit on number of passes per wallet

  • The Dream Pass is the only way you can access RekTech

• Wassie 3D bear NFTs are minting on Berachain starting Feb. 22. You’ll need a bit of the BERA token to pay for fees when minting.

• Variance, an upcoming free-to-play roguelite action game on Treasure, is holding a mint on Feb. 25 for its Genesis Void NFT collection.

🖥️ 2nd Monitor