Nightcrows, Asterix, and Parallel Colony
SKYGG's Weekly Web 3 #5
Join us every week for SKYGG’s Weekly Web3, your go-to newsletter for all things Web 3! This week, we're diving into the latest launch of Wemade’s new title Nightcrow, Asterix, and Parallel Colony.
Come along as we delve into the latest trending stories and narratives in the Web3 space from last week!
🎮 Wemade: Shaking or Evolving?
Wemade's newest Web 3 MMORPG game, Nightcrows, has been making significant impact in the Web 3 gaming sphere, following its worldwide launch on March 12th across 170 countries. As part of the WEMIX platform, Nightcrow surpassed $10 million in revenue within just three days. By March 15th, the game had gathered around 230,000 concurrent users, with persistent queues indicating sustained player interest.
Nightcrow introduces a Play-to-Earn model that focuses on two key aspects: diamonds linked to the $CROW cryptocurrency and an in-game material DEX platform that utilizes $CROW. This approach mirrors a BTC-like market while retaining the essence of a traditional MMORPG rather than solely a P2E game.
As the P2E feature is level-gated and inaccessible to most users, it's crucial to closely monitor the upcoming price volatility of $CROW and the trading activity rate within the in-game DEX. Despite these uncertainties, Nightcrow's success highlights a strong demand for engaging gameplay among gamers.
Despite the triumph, Wemade encountered a sudden leadership shakeup. CEO Jang Hyun-guk unexpectedly resigned on March 14th, passing the reins to Wemade's founder, Park Kwan-ho. This shift caused WEMIX to plummet by 30% and led to a more than 10% drop in Wemade's stock, mirroring the market's surprise and unease at the departure of a pivotal figure who had been driving Wemade's blockchain initiatives.
Jang's early departure, with over two years remaining in his term, has sparked significant speculation, particularly given Nightcrow's recent successful launch. However, as of March 18th, both WEMIX and Wemade's stock prices have begun to rebound, suggesting a strong outlook for the company and its latest game. Will this eventful week signify as a memorable chapter in Wemade and WEMIX's story? Only time will tell.
📦 404 narrative continues with Asterix
Pandora, the flagship collection for ERC-404, was the standout high-profile project that started the 404 trend last month. The protocol aims to tackle liquidity challenges encountered by traditional NFTs through a blend of ERC-20 and ERC-721, allowing for the fractionalization of the NFT into tokens. As a result, the token exists in a dual form enabling trading on both NFT marketplaces and DEXs like Uniswap.
However, the project exhibited vulnerabilities due to unoptimized contracts and gas fee issues, ultimately undermining its initial goal of addressing NFT liquidity challenges. Cygaar, the creator of the ERC-721A standard, formed a team to standardize and optimize ERC-404, leading to the creation of the DN-404 standard.
The first NFT project to implement DN-404, Asterix, mirrored Pandora's mechanism where 1 $ASTX equates to one NFT. Unlike traditional NFTs that reveal metadata at a set time, Asterix utilized its liquidity options during the reveal process to generate buzz by taking random $ASTX snapshots throughout the day. If more than two snapshots were taken, users could preview their NFT's rarity before the official reveal, encouraging trading and rerolls to aim for higher rarities, thus fully experiencing DN-404's liquidity benefits.
Post-reveal, Asterix's high-quality art continued to attract attention, with prices soaring from 0.6 ETH to 1.4 ETH. The announcement of a lineup of strategic investors, including prominent KOLs, further heightened its appeal. In the ETH NFT market where everything else is bleeding, Asterix stood out as a rare example of price appreciation, a testament to DN-404's influence, now evident as 1 tier CEX wallets adopt the “404” tag over “ERC-404”.
While DN-404 marks a significant milestone in NFT liquidity, this is not the endgame. The price of the token $ASTX, and consequently the NFTs, remains susceptible to volatility due to its low capacity of the liquidity pool. As such, there are significant problems the 404 movement needs to tackle and until then, the future of the 404 series promises new opportunities as we continue to observe its evolution.
➕ Parallel: More than a Web 3 TCG
The excitement surrounding $PRIME has been steadily growing over the past few months. Last week, the long-awaited details of "Parallel Colony," an AI-driven survival simulation game, were revealed. Drawing from the same universe as its TCG title, Parallel Colony seamlessly integrates into the AI and gaming narrative, capitalizing on the success of the Solana blockchain.
Unlike many other mediocre projects, Colony was not a pivot made in desperation to fit into the AI narrative but a strategic extension of Parallel's TCG roots all along. Initiated last summer, Colony seems like a well-timed move by the Parallel team to tap into the evolving market narratives.
The game promises a world where autonomous AI avatars, capable of human-like thought and action, evolve and adapt with minimal human intervention. The development of WayFinder, Colony’s omnichain AI tool, and the upcoming launch of a new token, $PROMPT, are testaments to their innovation.
The introduction of AI-enhanced NPCs is set to revolutionize the RPG experience, offering depth and interaction previously unattainable. This leap forward isn't just a milestone for Web3 but has also already caught the eye of Web 2 gaming giants. Korean game publishers such as NCSoft and Nexon are already exploring similar territories with their AI NPC projects, signaling a broader industry shift.
However, where Parallel Colony distinguishes itself is in its embrace of the “play to earn” feature, a realm still not traveled thoroughly by the industry behemoths. Centered around $PROMPT, the game offers Colony users a unique opportunity to earn $PROMPT by playing the game with Parallel Avatars or by staking $PRIME. Parallel Colony stands as a beacon of innovation, merging the thrill of gaming with the frontier of AI technology and the lucrative allure of Web3 gaming monetization.
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