Latest news with #PudgyPenguins
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
X (Twitter) partners with prediction market Polymarket
X (Twitter) partners with prediction market Polymarket originally appeared on TheStreet. The social media platform X announced on June 6 that it has signed up the cryptocurrency-based prediction market, Polymarket, as its official partner. Headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, Polymarket is the world's largest prediction market. Launched in 2020, the platform lets investors place bets on a number of events, such as political phenomena, economic news, sports, entertainment, etc., using cryptocurrency. X, owned by the billionaire tycoon Elon Musk, is easily the most popular social media platform among the crypto community. While the community has hoped for years for X to directly integrate crypto payments into its social platform, it can certainly live with this step forward for now. Musk himself has often touted cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin as useful tools in the modern economy. His electric vehicle company Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) holds 11,509 BTC on its balance sheet that is worth $1.2 billion at the time of writing. The company even offered crypto payments for a while but abandoned the program after a while back in 2021. Musk, who successfully backed Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election, had also hailed the prediction markets, in reference to Polymarket, for being "more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line." Even though the tycoon and the president are now having a public feud, the announcement sent the crypto community into a state of frenzy. U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken was rather surprised: "Ayo?!!!" The crypto payment service MoonPay reacted: "POLYMARKET FOR THE WIN." Popular NFT series Pudgy Penguins wondered: "So you're saying we'll be able to gamble on the Trump/Elon twitter fight?" "Polymarket has established itself as the leading authority in accurately forecasting elections, global events, and cultural trends. We're excited for the future of this partnership—stay tuned," XBusiness said. X (Twitter) partners with prediction market Polymarket first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 6, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 6, 2025, where it first appeared. Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Mayor
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
YGG expands into Web3 game publishing with launch of LOL Land
Yield Guild Games announced that it has expanded into Web3 game publishing with the launch of the Casual Degen game LOL Land. With the launch of its first title, LOL Land, Yield Guild Games (YGG) has announced YGG Play, a new game publishing unit dedicated to lighthearted, addictive games that embrace the chaos and culture of crypto degeneracy. With YGG Play, the association aims to define a new genre in gaming: Casual Degen. The debut game — a browser-based casual board game featuring members of the Pudgy Penguins community as playable characters — with 116,000 pre-registrations prior to its exclusive launch on Abstract Chain. By playing, collecting points, and unlocking NFTs in LOL Land, players have the chance to win part of a prize pool funded on May 1, valued at $10 million in YGG token rewards. 'Over the past four years, we've seen and played hundreds of games, and Yield Guild has invested in many of them. Through that experience, we've come to know what's fun, what works and what doesn't, and that's led us to develop some very strong opinions on how to best serve the crypto market,' said Gabby Dizon, cofounder of Yield Guild, in a statement. 'YGG Play, which is specifically targeting the Casual Degen market, is our expression of everything we've learned, starting with our first game, LOL Land.' LOL Land features four thematic boards, each with a unique mechanic: YGG City, Beach Day, Carnival, and Ice World Wonderland — the latter being home to the Pudgy Penguins IP, where players can choose to playable characters based on notable members from Pudgy's community, including Aaron Teng, Rusk0f, KP, Burnasso, and Orange. Dizon is also a playable game character, and other themes are under development, including Pirate Cove and Parkside Story. Read More Steam's top 10 games captured over 60% of revenue in 2023 The Abstract Chain, the exclusive platform for LOL Land, was created by Igloo Inc., the parent company of Pudgy Penguins. Its consumer-first approach makes it easier for players to get into Web3 games by using chain abstraction and integrating friendlier onboarding mechanisms such as social logins and passkeys. The platform has already succeeded with several launches, including Myriad, Roach Racing Club, and Gacha. The launch also coincides with the YGG token being available on Abstract. 'LOL Land is a game built by degens for degens,' said Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins, in a statement. 'It takes everything we've come to love about playing Web3 games and puts it into a casual pick-up-and-play experience. We're really excited to be a part of YGG's first game and its exclusive launch on Abstract.' LOL Land offers two gameplay modes to suit different player preferences. The free mode allows players to enjoy unlimited rolls at no cost, though it does not include YGG token rewards. In the premium mode, players can purchase premium rolls, with points earned through gameplay eligible for redemption in YGG tokens. LOL Land is only available to players 18 years or older and in certain countries. The game is available to play now at I asked Dizon a few questions. In a message to GamesBeat, Dizon said YGG is a guild protocol that provides guilds with a suite of tools to organize onchain. 'Our core community's Discord currently has over 112,000 members and our Guild Advancement Program (GAP) has seen over 300,000 community members use our questing platform,' Dizon said. 'Since launching on Base in November last year, we've had more than 75 Onchain Guilds sign up for our platform's pilot. We also have a global network of guilds spanning 11 regions, represented by our guild partners YGG Pilipinas (Philippines), W3GG (Southeast Asia), OLA GG (Latin America), KGeN (India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia), SKYGG (South Korea), YGG Japan, YGG China, AMG DAO (Europe), and NYXL (North America).' Asked why YGG decided to make a game, Dizon said, 'We decided to launch our game publishing arm because we want to establish the 'Casual Degen' category in Web3 games. With our history and our deep connection to the community and its crypto-native, grassroots, play-first culture, game publishing felt like a natural expansion.' Gabby Dizon is cofounder of YGG. YGG has grown into a hub for players to discover new games and contribute their skills to different projects and ecosystems. Dizon added, 'We represent highly skilled communities that can bootstrap the launch of a game by connecting them with dedicated players as well as groups that can provide the services these early-stage projects need like community management, marketing and local events, content creation, education, esports, game testing, and more.' And he said, 'YGG is uniquely positioned as a publisher because we know what the community looks for in games and we know where these games need help at launch—we hear it directly from the players. So, expanding into publishing and making the first game ourselves made sense.' I asked Dizon how YGG chose the game. He noted that before he got into crypto and cofounded YGG, he was a game developer for over 20 years. 'I was actually building casual games for much of my career. It's nearly five years since we founded YGG, and we've played hundreds of Web3 games and invested in many of them,' Dizon said. 'Building our ecosystem and running events like the YGG Play Summit has kept us closely aligned with our community's interests. We understand what the YGG community wants: playing fun games and enjoying the rewards together.' And he added, 'Based on our experience, we also knew that the Web3-native game market is still very underserved. These are the people who aren't necessarily hardcore gamers but are in crypto for fun — or what we call degens. Hardcore Web3 gamers are actually a very small portion of the total Web3 user base. But the 'Casual Degens' — that's people trading memecoins, minting NFTs, or trading on exchanges — they're a much larger market. And we know exactly how to target these markets.' Yield Guild Games (YGG) is a global collective of gamers, creators, and builders turning play into opportunity. Known for pioneering the Web3 guild model with the rise of the play-to-earn movement in 2020, YGG laid the foundation for a new kind of digital coordination: a network of onchain groups, each organized around their own purpose, and united by shared values of collaboration, progression, and ownership. Pre-registration is currently ongoing at
Forbes
06-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
A $3.2 Billion Opportunity? OpenSea CEO On NFTs' Unexpected Comeback
Azuki, Pudgy Penguins and Claynosaurz are various different NFT collectives still active in 2025. Boaz Sobrado At 3 PM, when most of his peers are slowly finishing their workday, a 23-year-old man who goes by the name '0xExceed' is just beginning his. From his apartment in Asia, he rubs sleep from his eyes, makes coffee, and logs into Discord. Over the next 14 hours, until about 5 AM, alongside his co-founders they'll manage their NFT project whilst coordinating with artists across multiple time zones, and engaging with a community of thousands. In 2021, this schedule wouldn't have raised eyebrows. But in 2025, when most mainstream observers have written off NFTs as a passing fad, 0xExceed's dedication seems almost anachronistic. While his university classmates pursue careers in AI startups or TikTok agencies, he and his team remain passionately committed to digital art ownership. He isn't alone. NFT collectives like Pudgy Pinguins, Remilia, Azuki and Claynosaurz been grinding on, seemingly oblivious to the NFT winter. These projects have wildly different goals and communities: while Azuki's mission is 'honoring anime's cultural legacy', Pudgy Pinguins floods Walmart with cute plush penguins and Remilia advances a political-cultural movement loosely defined as 'network spirituality'. But they share NFTs as a common factor. "People keep saying NFTs are dead, but our community remains passionate," says 0xExceed, whose "Pixel vs Pixel" art competition recently attracted hundreds of submissions from around the world. "The technology is evolving, and so are we." This persistence isn't isolated. Despite NFT trading volumes down significantly from their 2021 peak, communities of creators and collectors continue to thrive. And according to Devin Finzer, CEO and co-founder of OpenSea, the world's largest NFT marketplace, this evolution is exactly what we should expect. "If you zoom out, there's a ton of exciting things happening in tech overall with the rise of AI. It's becoming easier to create content and build software applications," Finzer explained in a recent interview. "The big thesis we have is that crypto and blockchains are a key piece of infrastructure for all the things happening in tech right now." NFTs By The Numbers The raw numbers tell a dramatic story: NFT trade volumes have plummeted from their August 2021 peak of over $3.2 billion per week to current levels below $100 million. This 97% decline might suggest the NFT market is in terminal decline, but Finzer sees a more nuanced reality. NFT trading volume by chain Cryptoslam via The Block Crypto "There have been some substitutes for what NFTs represented early on in 2021," Finzer explained, pointing to the explosive rise of meme coins that have attracted billions of dollars in trading volume. "Some of that has been absorbed by the meme coin craze, where it's more liquid, it's fungible, and you can trade it around and get in and out more easily." Many successful NFT projects have also evolved by embracing their own ecosystem tokens, creating hybrid models that blend the community aspects of NFTs with the liquidity of fungible tokens. "A good example is that now many NFT projects have both a token component and an NFT component," Finzer explained. This market shift has occurred alongside fierce competition for NFT marketplace dominance. OpenSea's journey illustrates this volatility, with its market share plunging from over 70% in 2021 to as low as 15% in 2022, before recently rebounding to 58% following its platform upgrades and ecosystem token announcements. Another significant shift is that NFTs have gotten cheaper. Not just because prices crashed, but also because buying and selling NFTs became a lot less expensive. 'We now have faster, more inexpensive, higher throughput chains. You can have an entire economy where you buy an NFT for 50 cents and maybe the most rare one is $50. That's a much more healthy ecosystem than in 2021 when your cheapest NFT was at least $1,000 if not $5,000.' The average sale price of top NFT collections. The Block Meanwhile, adjacent digital ownership models are thriving. Counter-Strike skins recently hit an all-time high with a market cap approaching $5 billion. Finzer attributes part of this success to accessibility: "If you're buying an in-game skin for Counter-Strike, you don't have to fiddle with self-custody, you don't have to fiddle with wallets." NFTs in a Positive Regulatory Environment Fortunately for OpenSea, recent rulings, particularly the landmark recent court ruling between Apple and Epic Games, are set to transform NFT accessibility on mobile platforms. This ruling effectively ends Apple's monopoly on in-app payments, opening significant opportunities for NFT marketplaces like OpenSea. Finzer enthusiastically responded when asked about the impact of this ruling. "We just launched our open beta for what we're calling OS2, which is the brand new version of OpenSea, which lets you discover, and trade anything on chain." Finzer explained that this court decision directly addresses a major barrier: "The next things on our roadmap are really bringing that to mobile in the most delightful possible way for people to really get on board easily." He emphasized that "the Apple ruling is going to be great for that because the in-app purchase situation has held us back for a good amount of time." Legal staff members push carts with boxes of court documents in front of the U.S. district court in ... More Oakland, California, U.S., on Monday, May 24, 2021. Apple's chances of winning an antitrust trial brought by Epic Games appeared less certain Friday after the judge put chief executive officer Tim Cook on the spot over claims that his company's app marketplace is anticompetitive. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg © 2021 Bloomberg Finance LP This change means users will soon be able to purchase NFTs directly through iOS apps without prohibitive fees. Previously, OpenSea's mobile app didn't allow purchases because Apple's 30% commission made it "cost prohibitive" for their peer-to-peer marketplace model. With these restrictions lifted, Finzer believes it will bring down the barriers to entry and be "great for consumers" who will have easier access to NFT experiences on mobile. The regulatory environment for NFTs and crypto more broadly has improved significantly, according to Finzer. Following recent political changes in the US, many investigations of crypto companies have been ended. He noted that during the previous regulatory uncertainty, many smaller creators were hesitant to participate in the ecosystem. NFT Cultural Significance and Digital Identity Remilia Collective's Controversial Milady NFT was adopted this year by Vitalik Buterin, founder of ... More Ethereum Milady Maker One of the most compelling aspects of NFTs that has persisted through market fluctuations is their role in establishing digital identity and community membership. This was dramatically illustrated when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin changed his profile picture to Remilia Corporation's Milady NFT earlier this year, causing a significant market reaction. "There's something about owning a digital asset and going and making that purchase and then setting it as your profile picture on social media that demonstrates that you're part ofs that community," Finzer observed. "It can demonstrate a mindset shift." He compared the CryptoPunks community to this phenomenon: 'When you buy a CryptoPunk, you're immediately welcomed into this really vibrant community... It really does give you immediate recognition of what that person stands for.' We've also seen community membership evolve in projects like Pudgy Penguins. What began in 2021 as chubby, playful flightless birds has morphed into a full‑blown consumer brand. Pudgy Penguins can now be found across toy‑store shelves and on viral TikTok videos. There's even a Solana‑based PENGU ecosystem token whose drop this year vaulted into the top 10 by trading volume. As founder Luca Netz puts it, 'the Trojan horse for crypto adoption is IP,' and Pudgy's journey from niche collectible to mainstream merch proof‑points that thesis in action. At the same time, anime‑focused Azuki has leaned into storytelling and fan collaboration. Founder Alex 'Zagabond' Xu describes Azuki's mission as 'honoring anime's cultural legacy while pioneering new creator‑funding models.' Like many other projects, it now has its own ecosystem token. Over half of the ANIME token went to its NFT holders, which 'underscored how digital communities can co‑own IP development, from story arcs to funding anime productions'. The NFT Technology Cycle Finzer views the current state of NFTs as part of a natural cycle that new technologies typically experience. "With any new technology, there's always this period where things get really exciting. People get interested in the use cases, and there's this sort of period of mania, and that's really what we saw in 2021," he said. 'But then it's typically followed by a longer period of people building infrastructure and use cases and innovating. And I think that's what we've seen over the last couple of years.' This perspective aligns with what we've seen in other technological revolutions, from the internet itself to mobile applications. The initial hype gives way to a more sustained period of development where the true value emerges. While much of the early attention focused on digital art and collectibles, Finzer sees NFTs as part of a broader digital ownership layer that will be essential as more of our lives move online. "OpenSea has really expanded from just being an NFT marketplace to being a place where you can discover, own, and trade anything on chain," Finzer noted, highlighting the platform's evolution beyond its original narrow focus. Pudgy Penguins, by Toikido, are displayed at the 2023 Toy Fair, in New York's Javits Center, Monday, ... More Oct. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. In fact, NFTs have been proving us they are more than 'just NFTs': From Azuki's community‑driven entry into the anime industry to Pudgy Penguins' toy‑line partnerships. New projects are leaning in strongly to the 'online identity' aspect, with for instance 0xExceed's KazeCreations' moving from PFPs to banners and high-fashion physicals. This demonstrates NFTs' power as online programmable IP, not just digital JPEGs. One emerging trend that Finzer finds particularly interesting is the connection between physical items and NFTs. "There are now a number of companies building physical items that are represented as NFTs," he explained. He highlighted Courtyard, which has been "doing significant revenue, significant volume" by allowing people to trade rare Pokemon cards represented as NFTs and then receive the actual physical item on demand. "They fly under the radar a little bit because they're not necessarily your typical NFT project, but they're just a great example of the flexibility and usefulness of NFTs," Finzer said. 'They do not have to just be pure digital collectibles or art, they can represent all sorts of things.' NFTs, AI and Gaming The rise of generative AI is creating new opportunities for NFTs, according to Finzer. "It's just made it infinitely easier to create content," he explained. 'If you're a developer and you want to build a game, or if you're an artist and you want to create art, it's just so easy to do that now.' As these AI-powered applications grow, Finzer believes many developers will want "some way to have unique digital ownership" within them, which is where NFTs can play a critical role. Interestingly, rather than seeing AI as a threat to NFT value, Finzer sees it enhancing the importance of provable digital ownership. "For digital art, where there's elements of human culture, I think you really even more so need a provable digital ownership layer," he said. Finzer also pointed to a number of exciting Web3 games in development, including Parallel, a trading card game on the blockchain. Many of these projects are integrating AI and continuing to build and ship despite the market fluctuations. Another a notable example of NFTs powering gaming experiences is Claynosaurz. Their gaming experience is launching with Gameloft, a mainstream game publishing studio known for popular titles such as the Modern Combat series, The Amazing Spider-Man, Gods of Rome, and Despicable Me: Minion Rush. Moreover, the project earned recognition at the 2025 Collision Awards, a prestigious event that honors excellence in animation across all disciplines including film, television, and gaming. The Collision Awards, established in 2024 by industry leaders and the organizers of the long-running Telly Awards, brings together judges from major studios like Disney, Pixar, and Nickelodeon to evaluate global submissions. Claynosaurz's 3D dinosaur characters won in multiple categories, showcasing how NFT projects can produce animation quality that stands alongside traditional entertainment giants. These are no longer the pixelated images NFTs are often associated with. The Future of NFT Digital Ownership Despite the ups and downs of the NFT market, Finzer remains convinced that digital ownership will be a fundamental part of our increasingly online lives. "NFTs are going to play a critical role in society going forward," Finzer asserted. 'I think there needs to be a digital ownership layer... as more and more people move to the digital world.' As AI continues to advance, as gaming ecosystems grow more sophisticated, and as more of our identities become tied to digital assets, NFTs may indeed fulfill the vision that Finzer and other early advocates have promoted. Not as speculative assets but as essential infrastructure for the digital future.
