Notcoin Token Launches, GameStop Mania, and NYAN Incoming

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Notcoin token launches: Finally, four months after the Telegram-based game launched, Notcoin debuted its NOT token on Thursday via The Open Network (TON). The massive airdrop yielded the largest gaming token launch of 2024 so far, along with over a billion dollars worth of trading volume.

Viral Telegram-based game Notcoin paused its gameplay in April ahead of its imminent token launch, originally planned for April 20. The devs pushed the launch date back to ensure a smooth launch and it appears to have paid off, with no major issues reported.

GameStop Revival: Three years after the notorious 2021 GameStop short squeeze, which was turned into a documentary and feature film, Roaring Kitty—one of the key figures of the short squeeze—appeared to return to Twitter on Sunday.

This resulted in the video game retailer’s stock’s price skyrocketing, with trading halted many times over. As we should expect by now, this meant that countless GameStop-related meme coins also saw huge gains. But the hype train started to crumble on Friday when the company’s stock tanked 26% after it revealed plans to sell up to 45 million shares.

Nyan Heroes token: Solana-based hero shooter game Nyan Heroes will launch its NYAN token on Tuesday, May 21 via exchange partner Bybit. Details regarding the game’s airdrop are expected soon, particularly as the game is currently holding its second pre-alpha playtest with play-to-airdrop rewards via the Epic Games Store.

Apeiron Esports Championship: Ethereum trading card strategy game Apeiron has announced a world championship tournament with a huge $1 million prize pool.

Apeiron Guild Wars 2024 will see the top 12 guilds—the Ronin Network game’s version of a clan—battle it out to reach the in-person finals, which is slated to be hosted in Hong Kong in Q3 2024. On this stage, players will showcase their skills for a share of the prizes.

Fantasy Top Update: After taking Crypto Twitter by storm, Fantasy Top shipped a huge update that saw over 40 new heroes added to the game. On top of this the scoring system was adjusted to battle bots artificially inflating scores, plus Fantasy Top launched a pair of competitions last week.

ICYMI

• Ethereum card battler ‘Cross the Ages’ launched its CTA token, while also raising $3.5 million in a round led by Animoca Brands.
• Rogue-like trading card game Guild of Guardians is now available on iOS and Android.
• Meme coin gambling game Rug.fun played its second game, amassing $246,000 total value locked
• NFT chess game Anichess has partnered with global esports brand Team Secret ahead of its PvP mode launch.
• Crucible Network announced the Emergence Marketplace, a place for interoperable digital assets to be traded, set to launch in the summer
• Param Laboratory, an independent game and infrastructure development company, secured $7 million in funding led by Animoca Brands.

GG spotlight

Here are a couple of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

Edited by Andrew Hayward