Byron Gilliam

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Use this time wisely.”



— Hester Peirce
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://youtu.be/yNvcwZov6Jg?si=_zlLR0eysdVP_7OK">Neal Stephenson is still interested in crypto</a></h2>



Neal Stepheson, famous for predicting the Metaverse in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, also predicted crypto.



In The Diamond Age (1995), he imagined a network &#8220;designed from the ground up to provide privacy and security so that people could use it to transfer money.&#8221; (The Diamond Age also predicted large language models.)



In Cryptonomicon (1999), he described a digital currency based on public-key cryptography and backed by physical gold.



In Reamde (2011), the plot revolves around a highly valuable, in-game virtual currency, and all the problems it causes when people try to convert it into real-world currency.



These novels were so prescient because they were steeped in the cypherpunk ideas Stephenson was following at the time — which makes it encouraging that he still finds today’s crypto scene cypherpunk enough to be interesting.



“You see a mix today of people who are genuinely driven by the belief that they&#8217;re doing something socially constructive for society by getting us away from centralized financial institutions and centralized information brokers,” <a href="https://youtu.be/yNvcwZov6Jg?si=_zlLR0eysdVP_7OK">he told Epicenter</a>, “mixed in with a lot of other attempts to commercialize this that I think are often driven by less idealistic considerations.”



That mix has been shifting in favor of the “less idealistic” recently — and, after listening to Stephenson, I wonder if that might be why the crypto industry is struggling to create things that people outside of crypto find valuable.



“It’s impossible to architect a compelling experience backwards from a desired financial outcome,” Stephenson says. “If you start with the goal of ‘let&#8217;s make a lot of money’ and then try to reverse-engineer a creative project from that motive, it&#8217;s not going to work.”



He advises people to “resist that temptation to just immediately financialize everything and concentrate instead on the intangible value of what people are creating.”



To that end, Stephenson is the co-founder of <a href="https://lamina1.com/home">Lamina1</a>, a blockchain platform that hopes to provide the “economic rails” for a Snow Crash–like metaverse, in which creators set their own terms.



Whatever the project&#8217;s merits, I find that encouraging, because if Neal Stephenson still thinks crypto is worth working on, I do, too.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/q9i0dy/south-park-our-crypto-advisor">South Park is still interested in crypto, too&nbsp;</a></h2>



The writers of South Park sum up the state of crypto in just a few lines of dialogue:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1236" height="244" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109852" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=1236 1236w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-38.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1236px) 100vw, 1236px" /></figure>
</blockquote>



Most of us are Stan, I think, trying to make a little money while also pointing out what’s wrong with finance and the world.



But sometimes we forget why we’re here.



Later, when Stan and his crypto advisor are brainstorming how to “create FOMO” for a South Park memecoin, they mistake Kyle’s moral rebuke for a marketing pitch:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1242" height="170" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109853" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=1242 1242w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-39.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1242px) 100vw, 1242px" /></figure>



The difference between Kyle and the crypto advisor — between cypherpunk principles and crypto opportunism — can get muddled at times.&nbsp;



The trick, as Neal Stephenson reminds us, is keeping your wits about you and knowing how to distinguish between those things.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://stratechery.com/2025/the-benefits-of-bubbles/">The benefits of cognitive bubbles</a></h2>



Ben Thompson says there’s a “quasi-spiritual element” to the current AI bubble.



“There are people working at these labs that believe they are building God,” he writes. “That is how they justify the massive investment in leading edge models that never have the chance to earn back their costs.”



This should, in theory, be a good thing.



Bubbles are productive when they leave behind physical infrastructure, like railroads and fiber optic cables (the Carlota Perez thesis).



But they can also be productive by creating “cognitive capacity” — the surge of innovation and invention that occurs when everyone is inspired to pull in the same direction (the Byrne Hobart thesis).



AI is unusually inspiring, so it should, with luck, have unusually high returns from the cognitive capacity it’s creating.&nbsp;



“There are benefits from bubbles that pay out for decades,” Thompson concludes, “and the best we can do now is pray that the mania results in infrastructure and innovation that make this bubble worth it.”



This might be applicable to crypto, too, which is sadly not in a bubble — perhaps because it’s lost some of the “belief and motivation” it once had from a shared faith in cypherpunk values.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://visserlabs.substack.com/p/bitcoins-silent-ipo-why-this-consolidation">Bitcoin’s IPO</a></h2>



Jordi Visser attributes bitcoin’s current weakness to selling by the first generation of believers: “Addresses that accumulated when Bitcoin was a cypherpunk experiment are finally moving their holdings.”



The original cypherpunks, he says, “are passing the torch [to] entities who care less about ideology and more about returns.”



(Or, in South Park terms: from Kyle to Stan.)



As a result, Visser says, “Bitcoin will probably never again have the radical energy it had in its early years.”



But he sees this as a positive development: “From a market structure perspective, this distribution is enormously bullish long-term.”



Visser equates this to an IPO where ownership of a company passes from a handful of private investors to a broad base of public ones.



That can depress prices for a while, he says, but is long-term bullish because “concentration is fragile [and] distribution is antifragile.”



Each bitcoin that moves from concentrated hands to distributed hands makes the network more resilient.&nbsp;



“The OG whales are having their liquidity event,” he writes — including one “Satoshi-era holder that recently sold <a href="https://investor.galaxy.com/news/news-details/2025/Galaxy-Executes-One-of-the-Largest-Notional-Bitcoin-Transactions-Ever/default.aspx">$9 billion of bitcoin</a> through Galaxy.&nbsp;



“And what they’re leaving behind,” he concludes, “is a Bitcoin that’s stronger, more distributed and more resilient than the one they accumulated.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OFzH92_DwI">Crypto Mom advice</a></h2>



This week’s “blue wave” of election results is a reminder that the free pass the crypto industry is currently enjoying might expire in approximately three years.



&#8220;Use this time to build things that are valuable, that are good, that meet the needs of your fellow Americans, people across the world,” Crypto Mom Hester Peirce has advised.&nbsp;



In addition to, you know, just being the right thing to do, it’s also how the industry can insulate itself from politics.



“Build real things with real value for society,&#8221; Peirce concludes, “because that’s the best way to make sure that good crypto regulation will last from administration to administration.”



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Links: Snow Crash, South Park, Bitcoin’s IPO and bubbles

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-drop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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How will we find new AI agents to use in the near future? What could a decentralized, more open AI ecosystem look like? And how will AI agents make payments for us?



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-foundation-team-ai-integration">ERC-8004</a>, a new Ethereum technical standard first unveiled <a href="https://medium.com/survival-tech/the-story-behind-erc-8004-next-steps-ec46c18d1879">this summer</a>, aims to be an answer to all that. The <a href="https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-8004">standard</a> is being peer-reviewed, and its smart contracts were launched on the Ethereum testnet this month. MetaMask AI Lead Marco de Rossi, Ethereum Foundation AI lead Davide Crapis, Google engineer Jordan Ellis, and Coinbase Developer Platform engineering lead Erik Reppel co-created the protocol, which also incorporates feedback and contributions from a slew of other crypto companies and projects.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">LIVE NOW: AI Agents can discover and trust each other without a central intermediary. This lays the foundation for open agent economies. ERC-8004 v1, co-authored with <a href="https://twitter.com/DavideCrapis?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DavideCrapis</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/ethereumfndn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Ethereumfndn</a>), <a href="https://twitter.com/jordan0ellis?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jordan0Ellis</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/Google?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Google</a>) and &#8211; welcome Erik! &#8211; <a href="https://twitter.com/programmer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@programmer</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Coinbase</a>) is now… <a href="https://t.co/purYaxWk1P">pic.twitter.com/purYaxWk1P</a>&mdash; Marco De Rossi (@marco_derossi) <a href="https://twitter.com/marco_derossi/status/1976257886390002116?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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ERC-8004 lets builders and users mint AI agents like they’re NFTs and delegate them using those ERC-721 rails. It makes AI agents discoverable, and can hold agent reputation scores onchain. The AI agents can use <a href="https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome">x402</a>, a new open payment protocol developed by Coinbase.&nbsp;



Agent developers could ultimately charge for access to their tools and agents, who could be deployed for a range of use cases around user productivity, trading, payments or even reshape consumers’ <a href="https://clam.capital/blogs/future-of-media-is-a-bank">subscription diets</a>. At some point, perhaps AI agents could even hire each other to complete different tasks, like a more open version of what Google has developed with <a href="https://developers.googleblog.com/en/a2a-a-new-era-of-agent-interoperability/">A2A</a>.



“Maybe it’s early to think about the business model fully, even if x402 is clearly the best monetization source for AI agents, but we should focus a lot on use cases and not just on the infra,” De Rossi told me in an interview.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">x402 will unlock pay-per-use models that save users real money Many of us today pay $100+/month across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok &#8211; rarely hitting limits Future: Imagine paying only $20 for what you actually use Add streaming, articles, content sampling platforms, and the…&mdash; Jake Hiew (@jakehiew) <a href="https://twitter.com/jakehiew/status/1983099386038190152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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The agents themselves aren’t being stored on Ethereum because, as De Rossi explained, running AI agents in such a way is very complicated and would require “a lot of overhead.”&nbsp;



So it’s not going to be that decentralized. But there’s definitely a middle path that 8004 unlocks for developers between a completely closed ecosystem and something completely open and decentralized.&nbsp;



In this vision, users or companies host their own AI agents on their own devices or servers. Then, they use the blockchain, via 8004, as an open app store of sorts to share their models with others and receive ratings and feedback.&nbsp;



For this to have broad consumer appeal, AI agent explorers of sorts — pretty frontends with checkout integrations — would have to be built for humans. De Rossi said that roughly half a dozen teams in crypto are already working on making something to this effect a reality.



“The current situation is that you see stuff on the [block] explorer which is totally unusable,” he said.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Everyone’s hyped about x402 right now. Most haven’t realized it’s just one piece of something way bigger. The real shift that will define Crypto × AI is Agentic Commerce. AI agents autonomously trading, negotiating, and executing with minimal human input.<a href="https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@a16zcrypto</a>’s state… <a href="https://t.co/NTgNsMjjaR">pic.twitter.com/NTgNsMjjaR</a>&mdash; Soubhik Deb (@soubhik_deb) <a href="https://twitter.com/soubhik_deb/status/1982823993645445359?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Building something that anyone can use can be a difficult line to walk, though, if various platforms decide to restrict the visibility of certain types of AI agents.



But maybe this will happen in a more organic way if the crypto community is able to, collectively, give agents feedback and therefore shape their reputations. Agents with better reputations could get more visibility, while questionable agents with lower scores fade into the background (but remain accessible).&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="653" height="611" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-141.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109580" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-141.png?w=653 653w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-141.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-141.png?w=275 275w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-141.png?w=279 279w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-141.png?w=234 234w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-141.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 653px) 100vw, 653px" /></figure>



“The bad outcome is we have many different silos, like app stores, [and] that’s it,” De Rossi said of the future of AI agent discoverability. “That’s just worse for consumers.”&nbsp;



“If we want to make this happen in an interoperable way, there are two possibilities, probably. The US government,” De Rossi said with a laugh, “or the infrastructure owned by nobody, which is the blockchain.”



Pushing some vague ideals of whatever “Web3” is supposed to be isn’t going to spur blockchain adoption in the AI industry, De Rossi argued.



“Who cares? The point is, how can we have an infra that is neutral, and this is understandable to everybody. It’s public infrastructure.”



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Ethereum could be the ultimate app store for AI agents

Blockworks

Coinbase has acquired Echo, the onchain capital formation platform founded by crypto investor Cobie, for approximately $375 million.



The move underscores the exchange giant’s push to build compliant, blockchain-native fundraising infrastructure as onchain capital markets mature, according to<a href="https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/coinbase-acquires-echo-unlocking-the-future-of-onchain-capital-formation"> Coinbase’s announcement</a>.&nbsp;



Cobie reflected on the sale in a <a href="https://x.com/cobie/status/1980579379244855384">post</a>, writing: “When I started building Echo two years ago, I knew it had a 95% chance of failing. To be honest, I couldn’t really imagine any other outcome, but I thought at least it may be a noble failure worth attempting.&nbsp;



“I certainly didn’t think Echo would be sold to Coinbase, but, here we are,” he added.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">New episode with <a href="https://twitter.com/ShanAggarwal?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ShanAggarwal</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@coinbase</a> out now! <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonYanowitz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JasonYanowitz</a> We discuss: &#8211; Acquiring <a href="https://twitter.com/echodotxyz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@echodotxyz</a> for $375m &#8211; Coinbase&#39;s end goal &#8211; IPOs &amp; tokenization &#8211; Advice for founders &#8211; Prediction markets &#8211; The acquisition process &#8211; Exchange listings, crypto venture &amp; more!… <a href="https://t.co/JltPZIr58P">pic.twitter.com/JltPZIr58P</a>&mdash; Empire 🟪 (@theempirepod) <a href="https://twitter.com/theempirepod/status/1980594280361046384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 21, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Echo will remain a standalone platform under its existing brand while Coinbase integrates Sonar, Echo’s public sale product, into its ecosystem. The companies plan to expand access for founders and investors to onchain capital formation directly through Coinbase’s interface.



On Monday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that the company also purchased Cobie’s original UpOnly NFT — the emblem of Cobie’s long-running crypto podcast — for $25 million, calling it “a piece of crypto culture worth preserving” in a<a href="https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1980397986149744769"> tweet</a>. The NFT will reportedly be displayed in Coinbase’s onchain heritage collection, though financial details have not been independently verified.



Coinbase has made a handful of acquisitions so far this year.&nbsp;The exchange bought Deribit in a multi-billion dollar deal to expand into global derivatives trading,<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-deribit-deal-focus-derivatives?utm_source=chatgpt.com"> Blockworks</a> reported. It also acquired the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-acquires-opyn-leadership-team">Opyn leadership team</a> in July to strengthen its onchain markets stack, and acquired the founders of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-adds-sensible-leadership?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Sensible</a> in September to develop consumer-friendly DeFi tools.



This is a developing story.



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This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor&nbsp;<a href="mailto:jeffrey@blockworks.co" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael McSweeney</a>&nbsp;before publication.



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Coinbase

Coinbase acquires Cobie’s crypto fundraising platform Echo for $375M

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-drop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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No, Farcaster is not trying to replace Crypto Twitter.



But Farcaster’s Ecosystem Lead Linda Xie is laser-focused on the crypto-native audience.



The crypto social app isn’t gunning to be the next Instagram or TikTok, either. Instead, there’s a built-in wallet, financial rewards up for grabs for building a Farcaster mini app, and a leaderboard for top posters that mimics more degen trading platforms.



“The team has spent five years building out a social graph in the crypto space, and that’s really, really tough,” Xie told me in an interview. “And so now we’re at the point where we’re going from social to adding the wallet.”



The social media app ecosystem is pretty crowded, with many options to choose from. The wallet world is also crowded: Lately we’ve seen a surge in more established apps like Robinhood and the Coinbase Wallet adding social elements, plus a slew of new startups trying to reimagine crypto trading from a social-first perspective.



With so many options and so little time, traders will be forced to pick a few to focus on that reward them the most.&nbsp;



What makes <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-the-decentralized-social-media-platform-farcaster">Farcaster</a> different, I’d argue, is that it’s effectively an Apple- and Google-approved crypto ecosystem hosting its own mini app store within the app itself.



Farcaster can help early crypto builders find their first 100 or 1,000 users, with a core audience that already likes and understands crypto.&nbsp;



“You’re able to do things that just aren’t even possible on Twitter,” Xie said of Farcaster’s permissionless ecosystem. “You can iterate really quickly, put things out there, have people try using it and see what happens.”



She noted that builders don’t have to pay Farcaster or get its permission to build and distribute a mini app there.&nbsp;



“As a builder, it’s crucial to be gaining distribution off the bat,” Xie said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">By the numbers</h2>



On CT, you might see a lot of joking and troll-posts about how Farcaster has “no users.”&nbsp;



But such claims aren’t accurate when you look at the data. It’s not on the level of Twitter, of course, but it has its own community.&nbsp;&nbsp;



On Monday, Xie told me that Farcaster’s number of daily active users varies a lot, but said that number is in the “tens of thousands” of users per day.



“What we’re really focused on looking at is the number of funded wallets, especially the ones with meaningful balances,” she said.



Xie added that Farcaster has seen over 100,000 total wallets funded so far.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1920" height="1080" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109188" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=1920 1920w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Farcaster.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at Farcaster’s vibrant mini app ecosystem</figcaption></figure>



After our conversation, Farcaster saw a spike in iOS downloads this week, Appfigures data shows, which may be due to Farcaster’s <a href="https://x.com/farcaster_xyz/status/1977941893028659348">decision</a> to reward some users who deposit USDC on Base into their Farcaster wallet with a match of up to 10%, or up to $500.&nbsp;



Crypto loves free money, of course, but it does seem like the world of Farcaster mini apps has a lot of rewards up for grabs that some CT diehards might be leaving on the table by not exploring the app.



To me, Farcaster’s app ecosystem feels like a more refined, user-friendly version of the Telegram crypto mini app world.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">100K DAU in Farcaster app yesterday 🔥&mdash; Farcaster (@farcaster_xyz) <a href="https://twitter.com/farcaster_xyz/status/1978494847871783346?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Appfigures estimates that Farcaster has seen over 65,000 iOS downloads this year, and over 25,800 Android downloads this year.



Google <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farcaster.mobile&amp;hl=en_US">data</a> shows Farcaster has seen over 500,000 total downloads on Android, and Appfigures’s algorithm suggests Farcaster has seen at least 400,000 iOS downloads in total.



Going forward, the Farcaster team is continuing to support features its crypto-native audience actually wants.



Xie said Farcaster is looking into adding “more privacy features” long-term, and has continued to add support for more blockchains. Most recently, they added BSC support, perhaps in part due to the recent surge in memecoin activity on that chain. 



She added: “We want to be the place where crypto people are talking, where they’re transacting, and it’s like, regardless of which chain it is, like, we just want the user to have the best experience.”



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dApps

Farcaster hits 100K+ funded wallets as it builds out its app store

Ben Strack

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This version of DAS London felt extra timely as stablecoins proliferate, tokenization developments multiply, DATs keep buying their desired tokens and more US crypto ETFs wait in the wings.&nbsp;



Not to mention the latest crypto turbulence, which spurred a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-liquidations-drive-historic-market-turbulence">historic level of liquidations</a> Friday — making this gathering feel even more fitting, in a way.&nbsp;



Christopher Holmes, a member of the House of Lords, alluded to that “crash” Monday morning, asking the crowd: “How’s everybody’s blood pressure?”



Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan was later asked how much Friday’s activity damaged this crypto cycle. He was resolute in his answer: “Not at all.”



His firm’s main customers are professional investors — family offices, financial advisers and institutions — that he says are driving this cycle by growing their crypto allocations from, let’s say, 0% to 3%. That’s mostly into bitcoin, which remains up ~23% year to date and roughly 6x what it was just three years ago.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1440" height="874" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-108967" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=1440 1440w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=423 423w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=430 430w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=361 361w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1440px) 100vw, 1440px" /></figure>



“The people driving the market can’t pronounce solana,” Hougan added.



Stablecoins — with a market value just shy of $300 billion — were another big talking point.&nbsp;



Inversion founder Santiago Roel Santos, for example, criticized exchanges <a href="https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1963375254526709879">upping their max leverage</a> offerings to traders. He warned that the industry best not rely too much on centralized exchanges to acquire users.&nbsp;



“[With] stablecoins in their own right, as a tokenization product, we don’t need to innovate more than that for this industry to be 10x larger and transform businesses,” Santos argued.



Apeiron Investment Group founder Christian Angermayer also addressed stablecoins:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">&quot;I think the US [will] go as far in the next three years to try to convince numerous of these countries to just completely abolish their currency and completely dollarize&quot; <a href="https://t.co/iTdV0eTEVh">pic.twitter.com/iTdV0eTEVh</a>&mdash; Digital Asset Summit 2025 (@blockworksDAS) <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksDAS/status/1977697640759325143?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Panelists touched on regulation too.&nbsp;



UK Parliament member Nigel Farage, who seeks to become Britain’s next prime minister, said the vast majority of his colleagues can’t <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nigel-farage-deregulation-bitcoin">hold a crypto convo</a>.&nbsp;



&#8220;You might as well be speaking Swahili to them,” he told Blockworks co-founder Michael Ippolito.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">If <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Nigel_Farage</a> wins the general election, &quot;we will bring crypto in from the cold&quot; <a href="https://t.co/udoA6grCf1">pic.twitter.com/udoA6grCf1</a>&mdash; Digital Asset Summit 2025 (@blockworksDAS) <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksDAS/status/1977700466487124347?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Speaking of regulation, Jito Labs chief legal officer Rebecca Rettig said on the DAS stage she doesn’t expect US market structure legislation to pass this year. She’s eyeing 2026.



“The best thing would be if we stop having regulatory panels two to three years from now, because the lawyers can just be back-office people like we’re supposed to be,” she said to laughter.&nbsp;



Rettig added: “The biggest question is, and will remain to be, what do we do about DeFi?” Regulators want to, after all, hold people/front-ends accountable in that realm; that could slow down market structure clarity.&nbsp;



“It is almost like you’re explaining robots to people or what the future looks like,” she noted. “It’s very hard for financial regulators to believe that things that look so similar to what they know from centralized legislation can actually happen without any human intervention.”



It was DeFi platforms like Aave that operated <a href="https://x.com/heyibinance/status/1976976922283221445">smoother than various centralized players</a> during what many called the latest “stress test,” Rettig said.



Let’s wrap up this Day 1 recap with a bigger-picture quote from DeFi Development Corp. CEO Joseph Onorati. It’s a theme that seems to sum up most DAS events.&nbsp;



He said he didn’t view his move to running a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/equity-fueled-firms-volatility-sol">Nasdaq-listed</a> Solana treasury company as a transition from DeFi to TradFi. Rather, it was just “a natural progression” given regulatory changes, which he said will allow these two systems to keep merging.



“In 20 years…hopefully [finance is] more decentralized than centralized,” Onorati noted. “But there’s just going to be one system in the long run.”



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Soundbites and sentiment from DAS London Day 1

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Could “Gaming Capital Markets” spur interest in crypto gaming?



Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron is behind the <a href="https://x.com/ogprotocol/status/1975715526967239154">upcoming launch</a> of the Open Game Protocol, a chain-agnostic app layer that aims to reward players of any game in any token — and reward developers with tokens, too.



“We think the most important thing for players is that they get rewarded, and even more so, that they believe in the rewards they get. And the most important thing for developers is that they get more players, and that at the end of the day, they can make a living making games,” Waldron told me in an interview.



But it’s not exactly easy for game developers — who are not blockchain engineers — to reward players with any token already on the market, because that would involve buying large amounts of that token upfront and then writing smart contracts to distribute it.



“For most game developers, all that stuff is a non-starter,” Waldron said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Conflicting incentives</h2>



Crypto gaming has had an identity crisis for years as disparate genres like narrative games and casino games are lumped together. Many crypto game developers, investors, and influencers have touted the importance of “good games first” before all else.



But perhaps they failed to realize why anyone would play a crypto game in the first place: a player can win something of real financial value. Otherwise, big-budget games like Fortnite and League of Legends — backed by multibillion-dollar studios — offer a better gaming experience overall.



Some indie devs have realized that crypto gaming’s advantage is the financialization that makes it different, but we’ve yet to see any title break out into the mainstream. This year, we’ve seen casino games, hypercasual titles, and “Ponzi-esque” titles come and go, all trying to tap into a more token-forward approach.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">GCM is next. Gaming Capital Markets&mdash; justin waldron (@jtwald) <a href="https://twitter.com/jtwald/status/1975435878614073788?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 7, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Marketing around crypto games has emphasized what blockchains are being used, touting them like big-name brands. This is often because it’s the L2s themselves who are doing the marketing.



But L2 blockchains’ motivations and interests may actually be in opposition to what game developers actually need.&nbsp;



“Their own incentives are kind of getting in the way,” Waldron told me. “They’re like, ‘I want to drive a certain type of TVL and transactions on my chain.’ So they’ve become less aligned with the games that they’re working with, to some extent.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How it works</h2>



Waldron likened OG Protocol to Stripe, because any game developer can get token rewards set up for their game as quick as setting up credit card payments.



But there’s also a community component, and tokens can be staked.



“We built a system to create these reward pools so that the token communities can decide which games get how much rewards,” he said. “Instead of the games making the assets, it’s assets pairing with existing games.”



Traders are able to support the tokens and games they like.&nbsp;



All of this is possible because of what Waldron calls “gamecoins,” which are attached to existing tokens. He used FARTCOIN as an example.&nbsp;



“The FARTCOIN gamecoin is not used inside of the games. Actually, it’s a governance token that just determines where the rewards of FARTCOIN go. And so it’s a way of speculating on how big is the game ecosystem for FARTCOIN going to become.”



Game developers outside of crypto might ultimately use the protocol for their non-crypto games as an alternative to traditional advertising, Waldron suggested.



“It becomes like another way to acquire users that’s cheaper and more effective than ads,” Waldron said, adding that developers could also buy gamecoins and stake them against their own titles.



The OG Protocol is using Solana to start, but plans to expand to EVM chains in the future. It’s being incubated by <a href="https://x.com/pixiekate13/status/1976013310593319257">ICMrun</a>, a Solana-forward group focused on applications for tokenization.



At some point, OG Protocol hopes to offer its app layer as an integration for existing crypto wallets via a “play button” of sorts that lets traders see any token and then have “play” beside it as an option to play games that use that token in addition to existing wallet options like buy, sell, or swap.&nbsp;



“We probably have 30 or 40 wallet partners that are already interested in doing it,” Waldron said.



This could certainly help crypto wallets achieve their <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-trading-apps-going-social">super-app</a> dreams.



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Gaming

OGP wants to pair any token with any game

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The TGE for LINEA has begun — and Consensys CEO Joe Lubin is hinting that more tokens are coming.



LINEA is the token for Consensys’ existing Ethereum L2 zk rollup of the same name. The token comes roughly <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/linea-mainnet-ethereum">two years after</a> the Linea blockchain’s mainnet launch.&nbsp;



But LINEA isn’t the chain’s native gas token — it’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/linea-previews-eth-first-roadmap">using ETH for that</a>. LINEA also isn’t a governance token, either, which might lead some to ask: What is it for?



LINEA’s market cap was higher than $560 million at launch. That’s already been <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/linea">sliced</a> down to $360 million as of Thursday morning — a 36% plunge in less than a day.&nbsp;



For better or worse, a token’s price history tells a story. While that story can certainly be manipulated or subject to macroeconomic pressure, token price fluctuations can also be an indicator of interest over time.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Lubin is now telling traders why he thinks the LINEA token is worth hanging onto: You may get a lot more tokens.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Well, just holding Linea will open up further rewards opportunities, mostly in other tokens; some from Consensys and some from protocols that we are aligned with. MetaMask and Linea are cooking somETHing together to make this happen. Together we are all bootstrapping the Linea… <a href="https://t.co/AGhPovMSBH">https://t.co/AGhPovMSBH</a>&mdash; Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) <a href="https://twitter.com/ethereumJoseph/status/1965986280828727566?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“Just holding Linea will open up further rewards opportunities, mostly in other tokens,” Lubin <a href="https://x.com/ethereumJoseph/status/1965986280828727566">wrote</a> late Wednesday night. “MetaMask and Linea are cooking somETHing together to make this happen.”



He added: “If we notice, at some date in the future that you&#8217;ve held n LINEA tokens for m days, that just might lead to another token landing in your account.”&nbsp;



Does this mean MASK is coming?&nbsp;



Lubin previously <a href="https://decrypt.co/95039/metamask-consensys-30-million-users">confirmed</a> a MetaMask token was part of the bigger plan back in 2022, though that hasn’t materialized yet.&nbsp;



Now that the US regulatory outlook has changed, it’s possible that dream may be revived.&nbsp;



MetaMask recently <a href="https://thedrop.beehiiv.com/p/hot-take-friday">announced</a> its own stablecoin, mUSD, which will exist on Ethereum and Linea.



While we’re speculating, Lubin’s comments could alternatively mean some kind of yield could be in the works, whereby holding LINEA in your fox wallet results in other tokens (like ETH or mUSD) being earned over time.&nbsp;



But the way his comment was phrased — with other tokens just “landing” in your wallet one day — sounds more like he’s describing future airdrops across one-time events and not a steady earning mechanism.



Hence my speculation that a fox token (that’s not a stablecoin) could be coming.



Lubin’s comments didn’t appear to inspire a surge of buyers to drive LINEA’s price back up. Since his post, LINEA’s price has more or less remained stable around $0.02 with a $360 million market cap. The dangled carrot of future rewards might have prevented further selloffs, though.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="560" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-107614" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-86.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: A look at Linea’s profitability as a chain. </figcaption></figure>



As a chain, Linea is profitable for Consensys. It’s seen over $65 million in L2 revenue so far, with a profit of over $34.3 million after subtracting costs for proofs and other fees, according to SeaLaunch data on Dune.&nbsp;



It’s still much smaller than Base and Arbitrum from a profits standpoint, but it’s still in the game.



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ConsenSys

Consensys CEO Joe Lubin hints at future LINEA perks

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A new financial app trend is emerging: Just add posting.



Last night, Robinhood <a href="https://x.com/RobinhoodApp/status/1965589746937446623">unveiled</a> “Robinhood Social,” an upcoming new tab within the Robinhood app that will let Robinhood users see and create posts about stocks and crypto tied to real trades and follow others’ accounts. There’s a “For You” page and a “Following” page, too.&nbsp;



Sounds a lot like Crypto Twitter, if you ask me.&nbsp;



But Robinhood’s also deploying these social media features to help show traders new assets to buy — which could ultimately keep users on the app longer and make Robinhood more money. Traders may also copy others’ trades, as TechCrunch has <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/09/robinhood-embraces-copy-trading-after-warning-competitors-about-regulatory-risks/#:~:text=Roughly%20nine%20months%20after%20suggesting,feature%2C%20all%20the%20more%20notable.">pointed out</a>, which is a tune-change from Robinhood’s prior concerns about the practice.



“Most people today use social media before trading, especially our active traders, yet social media is overrun with clickbait, marketing bots, fake profiles and doctored screenshots,” Robinhood VP of product Abhishek Fatehpuria <a href="https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1mrGmBVPjgBJy">said</a> during the company’s “Enter The Mainframe” event on Tuesday.&nbsp;



Robinhood thinks it’ll be able to establish itself as a trusted SocialFi platform because users are tied to Robinhood trading accounts.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Introducing Robinhood Social. Coming next year. Show off your recent gains, discuss strategies, follow your favorite traders, and make market moves in real-time.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RobinhoodPresents?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RobinhoodPresents</a> <a href="https://t.co/cLhiCw7bpH">https://t.co/cLhiCw7bpH</a> <a href="https://t.co/LYaLgkcuuM">pic.twitter.com/LYaLgkcuuM</a>&mdash; Robinhood (@RobinhoodApp) <a href="https://twitter.com/RobinhoodApp/status/1965589746937446623?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But Robinhood isn’t the only consumer finance app pushing heavily into SocialFi features — Coinbase continues to add lots of social media features into the beta version of its wallet overhaul, too. Yesterday Base <a href="https://x.com/baseapp/status/1965532254433857959">said</a> users will be able to create posts from the Base app’s homepage and buy each other’s posts, much like what Zora also offers. Zora’s being integrated into Base (and Zora posting via the Base app now <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zora-app-accounts-debate">accounts for a notable portion</a> of Zora’s overall activity).



Upstart players have also been trying to forge a name for themselves in the SocialFi space.&nbsp;



<a href="https://fomo.family/">FOMO</a> lets users track others’ trading activity by tying accounts to Twitter handles and letting them buy and sell tokens all on one mobile app. And Pump has made livestreaming a big part of its site — and recently added “Pump Chat” to its mobile app.



This year, we’ve even seen Kraken release a Venmo-like app hilariously dubbed <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kraken.pay.app&amp;hl=en_CA">Krak</a>, which displays a list of your friends on the app and lets you send them crypto (they compare sending money on Krak to sending a DM).



A trend is clearly emerging: US crypto exchanges see social features as a key part of crypto’s future growth.&nbsp;



But will this latest SocialFi push amount to little more than a limited-time experiment — like the since-forgotten CoinbaseNFT?&nbsp;



I think this latest social push is going to stick around for a while, though it could run out of steam if traders get tired of juggling multiple apps.&nbsp;



Robinhood and Coinbase may be angling to swipe some of Twitter’s market share in the finance sector and retain users by becoming more like the “everything apps” WeChat and Naver have already become.



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From Base to Robinhood: Why trading apps are going social

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After receiving bids from Arbitrum, Polygon, zkSync, and Optimism, gaming-focused Ronin has <a href="https://x.com/Ronin_Network/status/1965220031320793442">announced</a> it’s going to use Optimism’s tech to transform itself from an Ethereum sidechain into a full Ethereum L2.



“This was a highly contested battle between L2 providers,” Ronin cofounder Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin <a href="https://x.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1965223718491230286">said</a>. “This move opens up Ronin&#8217;s upgrade to Proof of distribution which will create more rewards for the builders.”



Ronin will join the likes of Base, Unichain, Worldchain and Kraken’s Ink, who also use Optimism’s codebase for their respective L2s.



Arbitrum had <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-offer-ronin-750k-arb">placed</a> the first offer, a move that ultimately <a href="https://x.com/pixiekate13/status/1958696275777659067">did not appear</a> to land in its favor.&nbsp;



And in case you missed Optimism’s final bid, it <a href="https://x.com/agoshoUY/status/1963178614830076225">offered</a> 5 million OP tokens, contingent on hitting certain revenue metrics with 500,000 OP upfront — plus support from Eigen Labs, Conduit and Boundless. Ronin <a href="https://x.com/Ronin_Network/status/1965220461366968665">said</a> this translates to an addition of about $5 million to $7 million to its treasury via OP, ZKC and Eigen tokens.&nbsp;



In a post about the news, Optimism cofounder Mark Tyneway <a href="https://x.com/tyneslol/status/1965234801885217064">said</a>: “Don’t get caught up in the recent alt L1 narratives, it’s still incredibly attractive to launch an OP Stack based L2.”



Bidding chains ultimately expected to gain net revenue from Ronin joining them — and so were willing to offer some financial and resource perks upfront (though some of the offers were contingent on Ronin hitting certain targets).



As Arbitrum Gaming Ventures’ David Bolger <a href="https://x.com/CocoraEth/status/1958811195042832648">argued</a> in part of his response to my tweet about their first bid: “Ronin is a billion dollar ecosystem with a massive opportunity ahead.”



Last year, the Optimism Collective saw over $24.6 million in fee split revenue, Blockworks Research <a href="https://blockworks.com/analytics/superchain">data</a> shows.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="1052" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-107477" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=391 391w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=397 397w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=333 333w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-69.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



In Q1 and Q2 this year, 73% of Optimism Collective’s fee split revenue has come from Base.&nbsp;



Unichain, Ink, and Worldchain make up a much, much smaller percentage of that pie — and currently resemble small blips on the fee revenue chart.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="849" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-107476" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-68.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



We don’t yet know how much Optimism will stand to make from Ronin, but the gaming chain is far smaller than Base (Ronin has about $54M in TVL while Base has over $4.7B in TVL, per DeFi Llama).&nbsp;



Ronin could certainly benefit from a closer proximity to Base’s ecosystem, though. And while crypto gaming currently feels quiet right now, Optimism does stand to benefit from having the team behind one of the most successful blockchain games of all time among its ranks.&nbsp;



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Optimism scores $5M+ Ronin deal for L2 tech

The NFT marketplace OpenSea announced the creation of its Flagship Collection on Monday. According to the company, this will be a $1 million initiative to acquire and curate digital art and culturally significant NFTs.



The move marks the company’s first formal reserve, <a href="https://x.com/opensea/status/1965133373489484275">designed</a> to showcase NFTs as cultural artifacts while giving artists and collectors heightened visibility. The launch also coincides with OpenSea’s broader strategy ahead of its SEA token rollout.



The program will operate under a committee-driven process, with OpenSea employees and external advisors selecting acquisitions. Purchases will be celebrated as “acquisition moments” across the platform’s channels, designed to encourage dialogue and education in the collector community. To safeguard against conflicts, OpenSea says it has established strict internal procedures to prevent leaks or trading misuse.



The first purchase in the collection is <a href="https://www.cryptopunks.app/cryptopunks/details/5273">CryptoPunk #5273</a>, one of the original 10,000 NFTs in the iconic Larva Labs series later acquired by Yuga Labs. The marketplace <a href="https://etherscan.io/tx/0xe38213bde0e43693df83838147a08bb914ad253105dfee127d4aeb556bfcf76a">appears</a> to have paid 65 ETH for the asset, worth ~$285K at time of purchase, roughly two weeks ago.



OpenSea Chief Marketing Officer Adam Hollander said the initiative is intended to “spotlight emerging artists and creators,” placing their work alongside historically significant digital pieces. Over the coming months, the marketplace says that it plans to target one acquisition every few days, spanning works from emerging artists to rare, high-profile tokens, with the goal of building a long-term cultural archive.



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M&amp;A

OpenSea launches NFT archive with $1M+ acquisition plan

Donovan Choy

The United States celebrates Labor Day on the first Monday of each September.&nbsp;



Almost everywhere else in the world, Labor Day is celebrated on May 1.



How did this come to be?



During the early Industrial Revolution, US trade unions launched a national strike for the eight-hour work day.



What began as a peaceful rally on May 4, 1886 in Haymarket Square, Chicago, erupted in the deaths of at least thirteen people after a bomb was detonated.



Eight anarchists were convicted. Four were hanged in a trial that went down in the annals of history as something of a mock trial.



The first of May was canonized by the Socialist Second International after the bloody Haymarket affair in 1886. With that, unions embedded May Day in labor calendars across Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa.&nbsp;



Yet, Washington, rattled by the 1894 Pullman Strike, blessed a calmer existing September parade instead, in part to avoid embracing the revolutionary overtones that May 1 had taken on after Haymarket.



The US’s Labor Day landed in September not because history pointed there, but because of politics — even if May 1 had the stronger moral claim.



The whole tale is politics as usual: power vs. power. Trade unions used force (strikes) to reshape the legal rules of industrial capitalism while state governments used force (law) to assert their own.



That’s because politics is fundamentally a zero-sum game. Extraction is the name of the game. When one wins, the other side has to lose.



The libertarian novelist Ayn Rand put it succinctly:&nbsp;



“All men and all private groups have to fight to the death for the privilege of being regarded as &#8220;the public.&#8221; The government&#8217;s policy has to swing like an erratic pendulum from group to group, hitting some and favoring others, at the whim of any given moment — and so grotesque a profession as lobbying becomes a full-time job.”



Contrast that to the positive-sum nature of markets. Trade takes place only when both parties agree they are better off.



Sure, markets aren’t perfect. Markets have a way of being perverted, they are inefficient, are subject to regulatory capture, or end up in cronyistic relationships that are hard to untangle.



Blockchain technology is the once-in-a-century technological advancement that improves upon the market institutions humankind has enjoyed only over the last 200 years.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="657" height="692" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-15.png" alt="" class="wp-image-106904" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-15.png?w=657 657w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-15.png?w=285 285w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-15.png?w=244 244w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-15.png?w=248 248w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-15.png?w=208 208w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-15.png?w=76 76w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 657px) 100vw, 657px" /></figure>



Decentralized ledgers mean crypto communities can use exit, rather than force, to settle disagreements and reshape the rules of markets.



When the big blockers didn’t get their way in Bitcoin’s Blocksize Wars, Bitcoin Cash was born.



When the Ethereum community <a href="https://x.com/dannyryan/status/1531383030786314240">feared</a> Lido’s stake share neared the chain’s liveness threshold of 33% in 2022, ETH stakers opted to stake elsewhere.



When OpenSea tried to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blur-opensea-royalties-nft-creators">enforce</a> mandatory royalty fees, the competing NFT marketplace Blur skirted the ban and offered consumers royalty-free trading because NFTs live on open, composable rails.



And when innovation lags, liquidity migrates — from Compound to Aave, from Balancer to Uniswap.



There are countless more examples, but the lesson is the same: When voice stalls, exit disciplines. Because open source has no moat.&nbsp;



Some fear that as the industry institutionalizes, crypto experiences its own “softening” of values. It’s a rightful concern.



Yet the core fact remains: Exit remains on the table, whether it’s ETF wrappers, digital asset treasuries, custodial UX or centralized blockchains.



That is less true for a Big Tech platform because of lock-ins, and least of all for government laws.



The credible option to exit is what makes crypto a fascinating experiment in and of its own right. Its innovation isn’t consensus by force, but consensus by exit.



That is perhaps what a crypto Labor Day could celebrate. Not a day won by politics, but a day where labor keeps the right to walk.



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blockchain

What Labor Day can teach crypto about power

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-drop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The metaverse is long over.



And yet, it’s always been here, since the dawn of the internet. You&#8217;re in the metaverse as you read this.



The metaverse in the 2022-era sense of the word was little more than a fancy marketing play around rebranding VR. But every video game, every livestream, and every social media app is arguably all part of the existing metaverse that is the internet.



Paradoxically, the metaverse as corporate executives imagined it never materialized, because it was already here this whole time.



Today we’re unpacking some details about what’s been going on at The Sandbox, one of the OG crypto metaverse projects, and the massive overhaul it now faces.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Sandbox gets slashed, pivots to memes</h2>



Ethereum-based metaverse land game The Sandbox is being gutted and restructured, facing layoffs and executive changes as Animoca Brands reshapes its future.



The crypto newsletter TheBigWhale first <a href="https://x.com/Raph_Bloch/status/1960687502391451716">reported</a> the news on Wednesday. Animoca Brands confirmed to Blockworks that a “restructuring” has occurred.



Animoca Brands has laid off over half of The Sandbox’s 250 employees and moved the game’s co-founders — Sébastien Borget and Arthur Madrid — into new roles.&nbsp;



Animoca CEO Robby Yung was internally appointed The Sandbox’s new CEO about two weeks ago, TheBigWhale notes, with an internal source adding that Borget and Madrid “no longer have executive powers” in their new roles.



In a statement shared with Blockworks, Animoca confirmed the role changes but said that both of The Sandbox’s cofounders “remain deeply involved” with the project.



Borget is taking on the role of “ambassador,” while Madrid is taking a “chairman” role. In a phone call with TheBigWhale, Borget reportedly said: “I remain the person who best represents The Sandbox around the world.”



Borget did not respond to my request for comment.&nbsp;



Animoca suggested in its statement to Blockworks that the layoffs may have been in part due to generative AI.&nbsp;



“The impact of AI advancements in the gaming industry has been well documented: AI allows us to accelerate our deployment of content, features and LiveOps while maintaining a leaner, more agile team,” Animoca’s statement reads.



It continues: “While decisions that impact personnel are always difficult are never made lightly, they are necessary to adapt to technological advances and ensure The Sandbox’s long-term success.”



The Sandbox employees in Argentina, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay are among those most impacted by the layoffs.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Many offices for the metaverse</h2>



It’s currently unclear how many offices The Sandbox has open — but I was able to independently verify that The Sandbox has had offices in at least a half-dozen different cities around the world, with offices reported in at least nine.



TheBigWhale’s reporting notes that the game’s offices in Lyon, France are expected to close. Offices in Argentina, Uruguay, South Korea, Thailand and Turkey are also being closed.



A <a href="https://officesnapshots.com/2024/03/25/the-sandbox-offices-los-angeles/">page</a> on the interior design site OfficeSnapshots published last year details how interior design firm Koko3 decorated The Sandbox’s lavish 8,611 square-foot space in Culver City, Los Angeles. The space features arrangements of plush modern chairs, glass-walled meeting rooms and digital screens displaying Bored Ape NFTs.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdG8XEKzKUPiyEiwt8VdAnDeYP6uwn4lrcsBPECcDTG_rnEqob0c408-waTAvIJz_8WTe7sbTRs5gaZ2fXDYPcBJExHP09I6if9wvfJ7ElwdZaS716XtYLpZhKLA6dlu2LaUx1w?key=Gx6a7qGP8XhsxiVHDplqTw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: A close-up of The Sandbox metaverse map showing land plots for Faze Clan, Atari, Snoop Dogg, OpenSea and many others.</figcaption></figure>



The Sandbox’s <a href="https://docs.sandbox.game/en/about/about-the-sandbox/the-sandbox-team#the-offices">website</a> confirms the game company has a corporate office in Paris, a game development office in Buenos Aires, an office in Maldonado, Uruguay focused on web operations, plus additional offices in Seoul and London, as well as a “presence” in Hamburg, Germany.&nbsp;



But now, at least six of The Sandbox’s many offices are expected to close as a result of the massive restructuring at the company.&nbsp;



Animoca confirmed to Blockworks that four offices have been closed, and says The Sandbox will still have “a formal presence” in 9 locations globally.



As a blockchain gaming publisher and investor, Animoca is one of The Sandbox’s biggest financial backers. It is The Sandbox’s main shareholder, according to TheBigWhale’s report.&nbsp;



Animoca has offices in Hong Kong and Australia, with its Hong Kong office recently <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2024/10/29/as-hong-kong-firms-downsize-animoca-built-a-workspace-the-size-of-10-tennis-courts">becoming</a> “the size of 10 tennis courts” late last year.&nbsp;



Animoca has raised over $860 million in total funding, according to Crunchbase <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/animoca-brands-corporation#financials">data</a>, with its most recent round being a $358.9 million round in 2022 that put it at a pre-money valuation of $5.1 billion.&nbsp;



A source told TheBigWhale that Animoca spent $300 million on The Sandbox in the past eight years, and isn’t impressed with how things have gone. The Sandbox is still believed to have anywhere from $100 million to $300 million, primarily in ETH and stablecoins.&nbsp;



Last year, The Sandbox <a href="https://www.animocabrands.com/the-sandbox-announces-usd20m-funding-at-usd1b-valuation-cap">raised $20 million</a>, putting it at a $1 billion valuation. Crunchbase data shows The Sandbox has raised <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-sandbox-f24f#financials">$115 million</a> to date.



A Dune dashboard indicates that The Sandbox has seen <a href="https://dune.com/KARTOD/the-sandbox-main-dashboard">over $100 million</a> in total NFT volume.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Dwindling numbers</h2>



Despite all that cash, however, The Sandbox hasn’t seen many players. A source told TheBigWhale that “many” of the game’s “few hundred” remaining daily users “are bots in South America.”&nbsp;



But even back in the metaverse heyday, reports suggest The Sandbox’s crypto game version had never really seen a userbase that compared to Decentraland or Axie Infinity — and certainly nowhere near the non-crypto metaverse giants like Minecraft, Roblox, and VRChat.&nbsp;



Naavik noted in a January 2022 <a href="https://naavik.co/deep-dives/jan-2022-premium-sandbox/">report</a> that investors were effectively valuing The Sandbox’s <a href="https://medium.com/sandbox-game/we-raised-93m-to-grow-the-sandbox-open-nft-metaverse-a8a2a0411d90">30,000 MAUs</a> reported in November 2021 at $472,000 dollars each — while the game was still technically in alpha.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc8vDgB4qIFAXoo5xNKoDLZw9magcZO5FRQACOvk5JT7Q1hYAKFIxPGdQkE2B9X4XUAzRKtidzq7Aexa1fNugSeHn6Noc-MVc6JmcO2j96dgPQRgUrgSDoWgSoUc64fAjsPLrH3yg?key=Gx6a7qGP8XhsxiVHDplqTw" alt=""/></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe6c7oIbNCDRnwUt2CY6h1kZj0mxj-sHndSnmZIlRZqvhP3YdEUEo2f4t0a8dtitCL1o4CM4TF-YskdYdzkMNOgITayMCpLxlodI--1tia1u8J9QcmbkbyXlaQ9WZ7BzibcBkCyGw?key=Gx6a7qGP8XhsxiVHDplqTw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Images: 2022 data comparing The Sandbox to other metaverse-style games.</figcaption></figure>



So what’s happening now?&nbsp;



The Sandbox is reportedly pivoting to building crypto apps. A pump.fun-inspired memecoin launchpad that uses Base is in the works.



“From the outset we&#8217;ve held to our line on gaming, but you have to take market developments into account,” Borget told TheBigWhale.&nbsp;



It’s unclear what will happen to the game’s SAND token. Its price has remained flat in the past day, and is down 4% in the past month.



Has The Sandbox’s crypto-powered metaverse vision been officially put to rest after so many years? It sounds like it.



But Animoca insists: “The Sandbox is not pivoting away from its core mission, and we are very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead.”



Madrid and Yung did not respond to my requests for comment.&nbsp;



I wonder how Snoop Dogg’s metaverse neighbor who paid <a href="https://decrypt.co/87524/someone-paid-450k-snoop-dogg-metaverse-neighbor">$450,000</a> to “live” next to him in The Sandbox feels right now.



Probably not too great.



Updated 8/28/2025 at 2:30 p.m. ET with additional comments.



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The Sandbox co-founders ousted from exec roles amid mass layoffs

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Like all good things, it turns out that killer apps come in threes.



Polymarket, Hyperliquid, pump.fun. These are the voyages of modern-day crypto enterprise.



And before you tell me that stablecoins are crypto’s fourth killer app, thereby ruining this airtight metaphor: No.&nbsp;



Stablecoins are a tool. Wallets are apps (but only barely). I will die on this hill.



For the sake of being pedantic, let’s separate Circle, with its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-ipo-price-execution-stablecoins">wildly successful IPO</a>, into a separate category: “fintech on the blockchain.”



There’s suddenly no question that Polymarket, Hyperliquid and pump.fun are the sole victors of this cycle.&nbsp;



Hyperliquid won perps, pump.fun won memecoins (although Bonk.fun <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/launchpads">made it close</a>), and Polymarket won the concept of betting on random stuff. Polymarket had its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polymarket-performs-smoothly-on-election-day">breakthrough moment</a> during the US election, so it tracks that Donald Trump Jr’s 1789 Capital recent investment has cemented its status.&nbsp;



CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/26/polymarket-secures-investment-from-trump-jr-backed-1789-capital.html">reports</a> the deal ranged in the double-digit millions, with Don Jr. also joining the firm’s advisory board.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Pleased to announce that my fund <a href="https://twitter.com/1789Capital?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@1789capital</a> has invested in <a href="https://twitter.com/Polymarket?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Polymarket</a> and that I will be joining the team as a Strategic Advisor. Prediction markets have completely changed the way people follow the news. I&#39;m proud to support the industry and look forward to helping… <a href="https://t.co/C3QlMEKQFe">https://t.co/C3QlMEKQFe</a>&mdash; Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) <a href="https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1960367380724351416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



A longstanding criticism of the crypto space is that it’s too insular. That it’s all decentralized infrastructure for degenerate gambling apps, in one form or another. Crypto’s endless servicing of speculation largely overshadows the utility of peer-to-peer payments and freely accessible tokenized dollars.



Now, I don’t agree with that summation, but it exists, persistently so. And the fact that the current breakthrough apps express different degrees of degeneracy won’t do much to change that perception — Hyperliquid with its leverage of up to 40x; pump.fun with its gamified memecoin launches; Polymarket with its pop-culture wagering.



I have a theory that crypto is, for the most part, years ahead of the mainstream. Crypto knew that blockchain-powered prediction markets were interesting seven years ago, when Augur launched on Ethereum in 2018, causing <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/welcome-augur-cryptocurrency-death-market-where-you-can-bet-donald-trump-1043571">moral panic</a> over the potential for assassination markets and so on.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Not a very consequential thing, but kinda funny: a Polymarket user named &quot;romanticpaul&quot; (yes, his real username) started aggressively buying Taylor Swift to be engaged starting yesterday afternoon around 3pm. He nearly doubled the price from a 25% chance (this year) to 45%. You… <a href="https://t.co/IXVRqj0eB6">pic.twitter.com/IXVRqj0eB6</a>&mdash; Domer❤️‍🔥 (@Domahhhh) <a href="https://twitter.com/Domahhhh/status/1960394729176105077?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Do we need to bet on celebrity romance? No. Is it fun? Yes.



Bookies have obviously been taking bets on obscure stuff like the next James Bond or celebrity deaths long before crypto. But Augur, Polymarket and all the others have added immediacy to the mix — letting the public open the markets rather than the bookies themselves.&nbsp;



Anyone paying attention to sports betting would know that gambling on anything and everything would be the next evolution. And perhaps Bored Apes re-primed the normie-sphere for its next big arbitrary collectible in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/labubus-succeeded-nfts-failed">Labubus</a>, some three decades after Tomagotchis and Beanie Babies ran wild.



With this in mind, 1789 Capital’s bet is clearly a solid one, even if Polymarket is what Russ Hanneman would call “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo">pre-revenue</a>,” in that it doesn’t collect any fees (yet), apparently subsisting only on venture capital money like the cash just raised from Don Jr, now amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.



And for all of its pesky <a href="https://www.dlnews.com/articles/people-culture/bettors-say-some-polymarket-prediction-outcomes-are-gamed/">problems</a> with market resolutions, it’s certainly fitting that a crypto-native outfit in Polymarket could be a primary venue for mainstream degeneracy moving forward.&nbsp;



It all begs the question: Is there more money to be made by looking outward from crypto rather than inward, like Hyperliquid and pump.fun?&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXexJwFpr4mDV_hj8_jhEL05r_khSbMNJg33Ox-udU4moa1kZo3dmECJs1wqMy0m11gEwlc8fLQRmd0mcbCDTzN1va-qmcrjoLUq5b6WFeBX2hoqmFUFstbVjOxe4C1s5bzw3O7Szw?key=cfCdTcmo1Yyyag1GX4K42Q" alt=""/></figure>



Hyperliquid has averaged more than $55 million onchain monthly revenue over the past six months and pump.fun nearly $33 million, per <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/application-comparison">Blockworks Research</a> data.&nbsp;



That’s far below a mainstream app like <a href="https://ir.roblox.com/news/news-details/2025/Roblox-Reports-Second-Quarter-2025-Financial-Results/default.aspx">Roblox</a> (currently about $360 million per month), but about in line with <a href="https://www.businessofapps.com/data/discord-statistics/">Discord</a> (around $50 million per month in 2023). Polymarket has otherwise seen over $1 billion in monthly trading volume for three months running, and is on track for a fourth in August. A hypothetical 5% fee would give it $50 million in monthly revenue right away, although perhaps a withdrawal fee might be easier to stomach.



In any case, it’s easy to make the argument that crypto and blockchain are worthwhile regardless of whether they only ever amount to reconstructing the traditional financial system to be more transparent and trustless, outside of the penchant for gambling.&nbsp;



But Polymarket is getting close to crossing the culture chasm in a way that Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana never have. Those may be household names, but they’re still “crypto.”&nbsp;



Polymarket might just be “Polymarket.”



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Polymarket is close to crossing the culture chasm

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Zora cofounder Jacob Horne <a href="https://x.com/js_horne/status/1959987899346153716">said</a> yesterday that “process changes” are happening internally as a result of a public <a href="https://x.com/crystaltaixyz/status/1959628118810890509">controversy</a> around a supposed “@TysonFury” Zora account being created to represent the British heavyweight boxer on the crypto social app.&nbsp;



Horne seemingly promoted the celebrity’s account in an X post (which, like all Zora accounts, has a coin tied to it). But both Horne’s post and the Zora account in question have since been deleted.



Artemis engineer Crystal Tai flagged the issue after reportedly seeing her Fury creator coin tokens and trade history disappear from her Zora wallet after the celebrity account was taken down.



Blockchain analyst ZachXBT said that the short-lived @TysonFury Zora account was a “celeb coin rug” brought forward by a trader known as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYJAbrpwHVw">Sahil</a>.”



The analyst shared a screenshot showing a thread of emails from Sahil’s inbox around scheduling a meeting between Sahil and the Zora team, which Base’s Jesse Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1960002545172254770">said</a> was ultimately cancelled.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">i’m usually a big fan of <a href="https://twitter.com/zora?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@zora</a>, but this is not ok. &#8211; a “verified” <a href="https://twitter.com/Tyson_Fury?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Tyson_Fury</a> account launched on zora &#8211; tweeted by <a href="https://twitter.com/js_horne?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@js_horne</a> &#8211; then the zora account was deleted &#8211; jacob’s tweet deleted &#8211; the token + trade history wiped from my zora wallet there’s now no way to sell. sure, i… <a href="https://t.co/3BeWSjwMMm">pic.twitter.com/3BeWSjwMMm</a>&mdash; Crystal Tai (@crystaltaixyz) <a href="https://twitter.com/crystaltaixyz/status/1959628118810890509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Sahil has been previously tied to celebrity coins and openly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_oLziAyN_o">advises</a> traders to “just rug and rug again.”&nbsp;



“Keep extracting and keep rugging,” Sahil said in a video clip shared by Coffeezilla as part of an exposé published in June called “I got this celebrity scammer to confess.”



Despite Sahil’s reputation, Pollak said he was “willing to hear him out.”



“Sahil reached out and said he was interested in onboarding people to Zora,” Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1960002545172254770">wrote</a>. “I told him he had a bad rap, bad actors aren’t tolerated on Base, and he’d need to demonstrate positive impact.”



But that didn’t last long.



“Less than an hour later Sahil revealed that he was in fact lying and a bad actor and Zora removed the profile,” Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1960002545172254770">continued</a>.



Horne appears to have jumped the gun on posting about the Fury account. It’s unclear to what extent Fury himself is aware of the account’s brief existence, and neither his Instagram nor X account have posted about the issue.



I’ve reached out to Fury’s reps for comment, but have not yet heard a response.



Horne noted that Zora has been facing “an increased rate of accounts connecting legitimate socials and then removing them quickly,” and <a href="https://x.com/js_horne/status/1959983968389869632">said</a> the team is “working on mitigating this issue generally” to prevent future incidents.



“Zora needs to better distinguish between verified and unverified accounts,” Delphi Digital research analyst Jordan Yeakley <a href="https://x.com/yeak__/status/1960033867395686736">observed</a> in a post about the incident.



Last night, Zora announced that it’s updating its app to hide coins that break rules, and is making it easier for holders to sell or transfer hidden coins.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Update: + Coins that break community guidelines are hidden on Zora + Hidden coins are now only visible in your wallet holdings with a warning + You can trade, sell, or transfer your hidden coins We are committed to making Zora the most trusted place to launch and trade creator… <a href="https://t.co/Ds0TDU1G8U">pic.twitter.com/Ds0TDU1G8U</a>&mdash; $zora (@zora) <a href="https://twitter.com/zora/status/1960172958389076131?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



More broadly, “creator coins” and “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zora-latest-content-coin-fad">content coins</a>” might sound like a fun purchase — until the account you bought from gets banned and your bags go to zero.



As an obvious reminder: Buying any micro-cap token like those on Zora is a big risk if your goal is to make a profit.&nbsp;



Zora’s content coin approach has led some artists to criticize it for offering little more than “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zora-app-accounts-debate">memetic speculation</a>,” while fans of the platform see it as a new creative outlet and a natural next step for the future of social crypto tools.



For what it’s worth, Fury himself posted a video on Instagram of himself jogging outdoors on Monday, encouraging his 6.7 million followers to, as they say in crypto, go out and touch grass.



“You’ll feel much better,” the boxer said.



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The Drop newsletter

Zora updates app after ‘Tyson Fury’ account sparks rugpull concerns

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Crypto gaming has seen plenty of multimillion-dollar raises, but in many cases, that funding and hype hasn’t amounted to much. It’s not a guarantee of future success, by any means.&nbsp;



Funding in the crypto gaming sector is also <a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/state-of-blockchain-gaming-in-q2-2025">down 93%</a> year-over-year, meaning there isn’t as much of an appetite for funding large dev teams or splashy marketing budgets right now.



But builders are still finding ways to ship projects with lean teams, turning visions from the GameFi trenches into reality.



Jakpot Games, which is building out its Solana-based site with just three people in its core team, is one of those projects. Their arcade-like platform launched last week, letting players spend the platform’s JAKPOT token to try their hand at getting a high score in one of a few different browser-based games.&nbsp;



Rex Runner and Speed Racer, which both involve speeding through pixelated environments, are the two titles currently on offer.&nbsp;



Currently, each Jakpot tournament has a countdown — meaning players have anywhere from 12-24 hours to try to reach the top of a game’s leaderboard in order to win some tokens.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">To cap off the weekend, we extended our tournament over 440,000 <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24JAKPOT&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$JAKPOT</a> on the line pure skill, pure competition less than $1 to enter <a href="https://t.co/TKc0bvNImK">pic.twitter.com/TKc0bvNImK</a>&mdash; Jakpot Games (@JakpotGames) <a href="https://twitter.com/JakpotGames/status/1959766461842612605?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Users connect to the site via crypto wallet tool Privy, and buy the platform’s token using SOL.



85% of every pot is split among the top scorers. 10% goes to the team’s vault for marketing and development, and 5% rolls over into the next round’s pot, Jakpot cofounder Gannon Breslin, who previously authored The Drop, explained to me in an interview.&nbsp;



Like many gaming upstarts, Jakpot has already had to fend off an onslaught of cheaters who sought to unfairly exploit the platform for financial gain.



“They cheated in ways we didn’t even imagine possible,” Breslin said, adding that continuously monitoring and expanding upon their existing anticheat is a top priority.&nbsp;



Since its launch last week, Jakpot has seen 7,316 games played, 16.1 million game credits transferred, and 26.7 million JAKPOT paid out in total.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">footballdotfun is awesome, and i&#39;m glad its leading the charge for gamefi seaon however, the game is still speculation which is more betting then not outright skill<a href="https://twitter.com/JakpotGames?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JakpotGames</a> is pure skill with $ on the line 19 hours left with 255,000 in the pot <a href="https://t.co/n9TOZHRnAd">pic.twitter.com/n9TOZHRnAd</a>&mdash; Gannon Breslin (@gannonbreslin) <a href="https://twitter.com/gannonbreslin/status/1959909285292593307?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



As often happens with low-cap tokens, JAKPOT’s <a href="https://dexscreener.com/solana/bpehdmdgf92pd4h6bqscaagrzdfpat8tpbas9s2bmti8">price</a> has fallen significantly from its all-time high. 26.7 million JAKPOT was worth over $53,000 just a few days ago, but would now be worth about $15,000.



“We’re 10,000 times more focused on people playing the game than the market cap,” Breslin said of the token.&nbsp;



The team is planning to add a “Degen” mode soon with higher token buy-ins per play to raise the stakes for those who want it.



They’re also building out custom game lobbies and are actively exploring which games they might add to their platform next (I suggested DOOM).&nbsp;



As the Jakpot team continues to build, they’ll have to compete for Crypto Twitter’s attention with the likes of the latest trend-of-the-moment Football.Fun, plus the Abstract gaming ecosystem and existing gaming platforms like Remix.



It’s never easy in the trenches.&nbsp;



Disclosure: Gannon Breslin is the prior owner and writer of The Drop newsletter, which was acquired by Blockworks.



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Solana-based Jakpot Games launches pay-to-play arcade

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Arbitrum’s gaming investment group is offering Ronin up to 750,000 ARB spread across three consecutive years to join them as an “Orbit” chain.



Currently, that’s worth about $367,500, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot.



But in this down-and-out gaming market, maybe that’s enough.&nbsp;



Ronin’s cofounders shared screenshots on social media of the offer from Arbitrum Gaming Ventures (AGV), noting that it would also include Gaming Content Creator Program access (social content support funded by Arbitrum DAO).&nbsp;



They’d also get financial assistance with audit costs via an existing $10 million Arbitrum ecosystem audit program.



“Cool to see Arbitrum throwing their hat into the ring,” Jeff “Jihoz” Zirlin, one of the founders, <a href="https://x.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992">wrote</a> in a pretty neutral-seeming response to the offer, which came from AGV councilmember and Offchain Labs Head of Gaming and Consumer Partnerships David Bolger.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The proposals are starting to roll in. Many of the questions we&#39;ve gotten around Ronin 2 revolve around: • How will Builder score be calculated? • Which L2 provider will be chosen? These are not fully up to Sky Mavis. They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with… <a href="https://t.co/zkq0jmh51G">pic.twitter.com/zkq0jmh51G</a>&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The proposal emphasizes Arbitrum’s continued interest in gaming.



Despite some <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-gaming-catalyst-dao-relations-rep">controversy</a> earlier this year around how much money AGV more broadly was committing to gaming, they’re still pushing forward in the sector.&nbsp;



AGV was previously known as the Arbitrum Gaming Catalyst. Its founding partner, Daniel Peng, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-gaming-reckoning-gdc">told me</a> back in March that they were talking to over 100 game teams (some of those talks seemed to have resulted in investments since).



Arbitrum Gaming Ventures is now helping fund <a href="https://x.com/ArbitrumPlay/status/1920545754432877026">titles like</a> Wildcard (a fun MOBA-style creature battler), plus gaming startups like Xai Games and Proof of Play (the latter of which recently killed its onchain game Pirate Nation).



“Studio Chain” is also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/studio-chain-gaming-blockchain-launch">building</a> with Arbitrum, which is a gaming- and entertainment-focused Orbit chain from the My Pet Hooligan-affiliated Karrat Foundation.



Ronin’s founders don’t seem totally sold on the idea of jumping on the ARB train just yet. They’re still open to offers from other sequencers.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">We&#39;re starting to see different L2 providers submit their proposals to Ronin. This means that they&#39;re looking to provide access to their sequencer technology which would facilitate Ronin becoming an Ethereum layer 2. What does a sequencer do? • Collects user transactions from…&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957942407028437202?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Ronin and Sky Mavis cofounder Aleksander Larsen specifically <a href="https://x.com/Psycheout86/status/1958051860780032326">mentioned</a> Optimism and zkSync as other possible vectors for Ronin to become an L2 besides going the Arbitrum route.



Zirlin also emphasized that these decisions are “not fully up to Sky Mavis.”



“They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with the governing validators,” he explained.



Last week, Ronin’s leaders <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ronin-becoming-ethereum-l2">announced</a> they were planning to rejoin Ethereum, moving away from being a sidechain to turn into a true Ethereum L2.&nbsp;



The change could help speed up transactions and make Ronin more than just a gaming chain.&nbsp;



Where will they land? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.



But it’s probably a sign that sidechains are over. At least, for now.



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Arbitrum

Arbitrum Gaming Ventures offers Ronin 750K ARB to become Orbit chain

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Yuga Labs wants its “Otherside” game to be like the Roblox or Fortnite of crypto — and isn’t giving up, despite the ongoing blockchain gaming lull.&nbsp;



Part digital social space, part video game with the goal of making user-generated content a massive part of the experience, Otherside is arguably the most ambitious crypto metaverse project still in development.&nbsp;



“This cycle is very different. I feel like every crypto cycle is a little bit like a revenge on the excesses of the last one,” Yuga Labs CEO and cofounder <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/yuga-labs-ceo-bayc">Greg “Garga” Solano</a> said in a recent <a href="https://x.com/RealJonahBlake/status/1955700364071858277">interview</a>.&nbsp;



“It’s a weird cycle in that, like, the quote-unquote ‘consumer-crypto’ part of things is actually insanely quiet. Whereas North America is coming onchain via treasury companies, ETFs. And then it’s like just the Zoomers that are coming onchain via like memecoins and pump.fun,” Solano said.



Things certainly are much quieter on the gaming front. DappRadar <a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/state-of-blockchain-gaming-in-q2-2025">reported</a> last month that crypto gaming funding is down 93% year-over-year, and user activity is on the decline as well.



Yuga saw over <a href="https://decrypt.co/99156/yuga-labs-sees-561-million-in-otherside-ethereum-nft-sales-within-24-hours">half a billion</a> dollars in “Otherdeed” virtual land NFT sales in less than a single day during the 2022 NFT boom — after raising <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bored-ape-yacht-club-creator-secures-whopping-450m-seed">$450 million</a> in funding.&nbsp;



If you ask me, if anyone has the dough to actually ship an expansive crypto game, it’s Yuga. But that also comes with a lot of pressure.



“The core Otherside holders don’t actually overlap a ton with Web3 gaming. It is a very collector-minded audience. And I think that’s also being taken into account,” Solano said of the decision to give Otherside a large social component.



On the development side, Solano said the Otherside team is “shipping at a faster cadence than we ever have.”



When asked whether Otherside has enough funding for another two to three years of development, Solano told crypto investor Jonah Blake:&nbsp;



“Yes. Hands down. We can do that just with cash without ever even touching any crypto assets that we own.”



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Yuga Labs CEO on crypto market: ‘This cycle is different’

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Winklevoss twins-backed exchange Gemini launched a wallet product yesterday, presumably to better compete with rivals like Coinbase and Kraken in the consumer market.



So how does it hold up — and where does it fit into the increasingly competitive wallet landscape?



The Gemini Wallet is a self-custody solution that also ties into a web-based dashboard, dubbed “<a href="https://onchain.gemini.com/portfolio">Onchain</a>,” which essentially offers a bigger screen to examine your crypto portfolio and make trades.



As of right now, this experience is on the web — there’s no standalone Gemini Wallet mobile app (yet). It’s not a Chrome browser extension either, though that could change at some point. Instead, some browser pop-ups will help you navigate the wallet sign-up and settings.



The onboarding process is a little different from what we’ve seen before. There are no Gmail single-sign on (SSO) flows, no passwords and no visible seed phrases. It doesn’t ask for any personal information, unlike onboarding with Gemini via an exchange account, which involves KYC.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfVpxvbvj_WX6BTyKd8p8Oz52iS1uP_y55GYBb02OCbiic1a80rqpyNF0gI6b1caNGqjNvW8n-B6kdKqx_qQqBVxr2ilaadoDNnhplSgwvDkWDfNrT34PwOLpMb3nmccYdzYSspEg?key=4wtK2839eBZvCsEpeak85Q" alt=""/></figure>



Instead, it takes about two seconds to generate a wallet via your device’s passkey tech. After you pick a .gemini.eth username, you’re ready to roll.



Essentially, the username is a free ENS name attached to your Gemini Wallet, which is a nice perk.&nbsp;



After running through the setup flow myself, I was impressed and surprised by how speedy and smooth the onboarding process was. It was easier than MetaMask, Coinbase, Phantom, and Ronin Wallet, all of which I’ve used before (but whose UX has improved with time).&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf3e8XAmDuwSQ4PG2Wbta6z-qjFxCz71YMlUDxh5QmsznncRqGbldyOAbiWFpVJtM4F_fu2UDQcNR58p3VtffI7NnO0WkgKvLWoduLvJkvCNVzcI3dSmxcDGKHxZ-KjXFlN3Lp0Ww?key=4wtK2839eBZvCsEpeak85Q" alt=""/></figure>



So far, the main embedded feature on Gemini Onchain, besides making basic crypto trades, is access to Gemini’s “vaults.” Traders can choose from the “Prime” vault (lower-risk) or the “Core” vault (higher-risk).&nbsp;



A pop-out explanation of the vaults describes them as a way to “invest and receive returns on your holdings by matching you directly with borrowers at better rates than traditional lending protocols.”&nbsp;



Gemini is <a href="https://www.gemini.com/blog/launching-the-gemini-wallet-a-simple-and-secure-way-to-go-onchain?utm_source=thedrop.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=sink-or-swim">covering gas fees</a> for “key actions,” though it’s unclear for how long that gas sponsorship might last. The wallet currently supports Ethereum’s mainnet, plus ecosystem extensions Optimism, Polygon, Base, and Arbitrum.



The Gemini Onchain experience feels like a soft landing spot for total newbs to DeFi. Maybe it’s for people who come from a non-technical field, or the crypto-curious who have never touched it before. The wallet is not intimidating, but it’ll feel too simple for some traders.



One thing about the “Onchain” hub is that it’s not much of a hub as it stands right now, besides being a way to manage your own wallet via buys, sells and swaps, plus access to those vaults and some educational resources. The buttons to other trading tools like Uniswap link out to the external site without keeping you logged into your Gemini Wallet over there.



Maybe the team will add onto and build out this hub over time so it can feel more like a crypto destination.&nbsp;



I’m glad the Gemini Wallet exists — it’s one of the nicest onboarding processes I’ve encountered.



But because it could still use more functionality, I probably wouldn’t switch from my other existing wallets if given the choice.



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Gemini

Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange launches Gemini Wallet

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Blockchain devs are increasingly centering their new products around user accounts and identities — and are launching their own chains as a result.



Zink, an SVM L1 from ATMTA, is the latest new blockchain to join the trend. ATMTA is the studio behind the in-development space exploration game <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/star-atlas-development-advances">Star Atlas</a>, which for years was expected to use Solana’s mainnet for all its crypto elements.&nbsp;



But that now appears to be changing. While some die-hard Solana fans might see the move as a shakeup, those unfazed by this reveal might argue Star Atlas making its own chain was inevitable for scalability, anyway.



Zink uses zero-knowledge proofs to power features like “zProfiles,” which will give users a central identity with “global permission settings” that can automate transactions and connect and apply to multiple apps, according to a statement.&nbsp;



ATMTA founder and CEO Michael Wagner told me via email that Zink is intended to be a “generalist consumer blockchain” long term, but that initially the studio is looking to bring other crypto gaming studios onboard to use the Zink chain.



“Zink will start as a largely centralized and permissioned blockchain. We do anticipate a validator set that includes several external parties on mainnet launch; large validators from Solana. But generally, ATMTA wants to control how the L1 matures in the early phases, and prioritize performance for Star Atlas,” Wagner explained.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Star Atlas Dev Log 5: Spent time refactoring the crouch logic. State machine can get a bit complicated given support for toggle crouch and various movement abilities. Did you know if you hold forward and crouch during a dash or upon landing your character will try to slide? <a href="https://t.co/EUbT5c4rEg">pic.twitter.com/EUbT5c4rEg</a>&mdash; Chypto (@Chypto_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Chypto_/status/1955297614716363017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 12, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“However, we have a roadmap that ultimately leads to going open access and permissionless. I would anticipate we achieve that within 18-24 months, though expect greater degrees of decentralization over time in a more iterative fashion,” he added.



The studio has slated Zink for a December mainnet launch.&nbsp;



As with most blockchains, Zink’s native token of the same name will be used for staking, consensus and community incentives.&nbsp;



Next month, a ZINK airdrop campaign will track community members’ activity and contributions to let them earn XP (and then ultimately the token). Playing Star Atlas and its affiliated games, like the SAGE browser game, will earn XP, as will locking up Star Atlas tokens ATLAS and POLIS.



Other existing chains focused on user identities include Worldcoin’s EVM blockchain, which seeks to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-biometric-identity-vision">discern between</a> bots and humans, and the upcoming EVM L1 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/animoca-moca-chain-mainnet-launch">Moca Chain</a>, which aims to give users more control over their identities and data.



How many of these blockchains we actually need is up for debate, of course, though ultimately metrics like revenue and user activity will answer that question in the long term.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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Solana-compatible Star Atlas L1 plots December launch

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Since the Zora app launched in September last year, it’s seen some adoption, with over 127,000 downloads on iOS and more than 50,000 downloads on Android, according to data from Appfigures and Google.



Out of those, nearly 18,000 Zora accounts are posting daily, Blockworks Research data shows. And 36% of daily posting Zora accounts are actually doing so not from Zora itself, but from the Base app.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXca2U_cdFXr4c7adzIPpiEYkTe1kFSr717AD8zRa-RjuL5s8uSdx41I3z_Y-hlAYqlXN-thwuO_D0RqT4P6RQnxPPR0DogZbfTF1WS8BNn3iDD1xXp5l2hzEevyHiJvF_II7WeREA?key=3HoGeV0_RBk32QwQrWRvSA" alt="" style="width:692px;height:auto"/></figure>



When the Coinbase Wallet app rebranded to just “Base” last month and integrated Zora for some users, that sparked a surge in Zora use through the Base app itself (Zora can also be accessed and used via a web browser).&nbsp;



Yesterday, Base engineer Youssef El Allali <a href="https://x.com/0xyoussea/status/1955424838379770241">shared</a> an AI agent tool that lets Base app users trade small amounts of Zora creators’ tokens by mentioning a Zora account’s handle, which could further speed up trading and further abstract it away from the mobile app itself.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcqERkbYEtBqoya0ACzQwuu6fKsPpckfK9ZaJuYDFJ7UR0TmeXnYbK-PMlzE4uQLHSWYPtfUqnAYCQqtiVyqaCXXoA_5j6vBmILrS9kgsj7aPeFstwECGoe1RfMsHP6iCMSqeWu?key=3HoGeV0_RBk32QwQrWRvSA" alt="" style="width:694px;height:auto"/></figure>



When you join Zora, a creator token is automatically generated and associated with you, and other users can effectively “trade” you. There isn’t really an obvious reason to buy someone else’s token, though, other than to financially support them or potentially flip their token to make a quick buck.



And while some crypto traders may have written off Zora as a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zora-latest-content-coin-fad">short-lived fad</a> like Friendtech or StarsArena, Zora has something those don’t — backing from Coinbase.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Introducing&#8230; Zora Coins Agent 🤖 An AI agent that uses Base Account Spend Permissions, <a href="https://twitter.com/CoinbaseDev?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CoinbaseDev</a> server wallets and <a href="https://twitter.com/zoradevs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@zoradevs</a> SDK to buy you any creator coin you want Just give it the handle and it will do the rest, no clicks, no pop-ups, all managed by spend permissions <a href="https://t.co/Y1U37EQKCY">pic.twitter.com/Y1U37EQKCY</a>&mdash; Youssef (@0xyoussea) <a href="https://twitter.com/0xyoussea/status/1955424838379770241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



So far, some of the Zora creator tokens’ market caps are surprising. As of Wednesday morning, about 20 Zora content creators, including ex-Coinbase employee turned Zora cofounder Jacob Horne, have creator account market caps of $1 million or more each.&nbsp;



45 creators have “market caps” of over half a million dollars each.&nbsp;



The top 10 accounts on Zora by market cap include a porn account, an AI art account, a crypto trading influencer, and some meme accounts, to name a few. Overall, it doesn’t look like art is dominating Zora’s financial landscape.&nbsp;



Some Zora accounts are personal and tied to individuals, while others are more anonymous or appear to represent a company or group.



But is it a good idea to assign “value” to people — or their personal posts or pieces of content — in such a rapidfire, mercurial way?&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehA1FjdF89Pc_GR6KhC7fvETj3ssKt9FiU_9fscip9vVSFZDZgEeH2rr5Te7aVFckbJfcRhbEU0KTnZpmlkBd4btjOhxYFYklJpBp4vdJRdZSxg2LhlqkuTybcJdVrxw4qSLGi?key=3HoGeV0_RBk32QwQrWRvSA" alt="" style="width:674px;height:auto"/></figure>



Some artists and founders aren’t so sure about Zora.&nbsp;



This week, Coinbase’s Base lead and unofficial Zora hype-man Jesse Pollak wrote: “Help I keep putting money into @zora and supporting creators and collecting content but my balance keeps going UP?!?!?”



“It doesn’t always go up,” electronic music artist and Royal founder Justin Blau <a href="https://x.com/justinblau/status/1955067797555315069">replied</a>. “The narrative is beginning to feel irresponsible. I don’t wanna wait another 4 years to convince creatives that crypto has more uses for them than memetic speculation.



“There is nothing wrong with speculation, just call it what it is. This disguising narrative is dangerous,” Blau continued.&nbsp;



Pollak hit back: “I didn&#8217;t promise up only. I described my experience that is very real. I&#8217;m also more optimistic than you about the combination of infinite creativity and a better creator economy.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">I funded my Zora account and base app account with $100 (separately) supported a bunch of creators and posted original content over the past few weeks. Here’s my updated liquid balances: Zora: $0.29 base app: $1.35&mdash; foundnone.eth (@transmental) <a href="https://twitter.com/transmental/status/1953571741902811622?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Some other artists, like visual artist ThankYouX, aren’t sold on the Zora idea, either (ThankYouX has released his work as NFTs and integrated blockchain tech into his work since 2020).



“It just adds a purely speculative element which isn’t what art is about,” ThankYouX <a href="https://x.com/ThankYouX/status/1955074694669123659">wrote</a> of Zora. “And the Zora team is very irresponsible with how they’ve handled things by launching automatically for artist[s] and hyping the speculation element too much.”



Notably, Vitalik Buterin tried Zora recently — and argued, among other things, that requiring users to input email addresses (and the affiliated smart wallets tied to them) could contribute to user segregation on Ethereum.



“You want compatibility for existing ethereum uses, no?” he <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1954987470896107592">asked</a> Horne in a post. “Otherwise you&#8217;re creating two incompatible ecosystems, one for ‘real ethereum users’ [and] one for ‘mainstream people’; I actually think this is one of the biggest risks in ethereum UX right now.”



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‘Memetic speculation’: Users debate Zora, the creator-token app with Coinbase backing

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Remember Bigcoin?&nbsp;



If you don’t, I don’t blame you. Its bubble popped fast.&nbsp;



The Abstract-based crypto “mining” game saw a sudden surge of activity back in April, reaching a cumulative user count of nearly 70,000 <a href="https://dune.com/Marcov/bigcoin">according</a> to some <a href="https://dune.com/hawkyang/bigcoin">dashboards</a>.&nbsp;



Players had to buy a virtual room and spend the game’s token, BIG, to add passive BIG mining rigs. Those rigs take the form of pixelated computers, GPUs, animals like Pudgy Penguins, or other objects. The rigs earned players more BIG over time.



The original game loop was about earning BIG and expanding their facilities. To get a larger room that can fit more mining rigs, players also have to — you guessed it — pay with BIG.



But initial hype around the game didn’t last. By June, the game was seeing less than 40 new users joining daily.



BIG’s price remains <a href="https://www.geckoterminal.com/abstract/pools/0x4e8e8cc1c6548aa41ecb187967d377bf15673c15">down 93%</a> from its April 11 all-time high.&nbsp;



But it’s climbed about 290% in the past month.



What gives? Its creator, an anon who goes by “Bigtoshi,” announced his departure from the project last month and has <a href="https://x.com/satoshibigmoto/status/1944756770121175159">handed</a> it over to a small group of community members.



One of Bigcoin 2.0’s core contributors is a crypto entrepreneur (and reported ex-game developer) who goes by the pseudonym <a href="https://decrypt.co/138765/how-elon-musk-parody-twitter-account-spawned-gaming-startup">BoredElon</a>.&nbsp;



Bored, who takes protecting his real identity seriously, describes himself as a Bigcoin whale. He’s tried his hand at a few different crypto projects in recent years, from his BoredBox crypto gaming lootbox idea to his Edison metaverse project. Neither of those projects are currently active.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdVoMCsZjPrmZWCCyID4jEv6PNnHoJ-NHeg4zqc2-UUlFTEdOwKIwAtQK-Bt0cuMX-UyyFBHx4-wR9THWY6nZ8wVEEOmMfh5PSKH8IDV68-q7hfmmRNn_lrZQJD_Pu464ZE8Hv9ag?key=Gx3OHwQaZj763ylvmQcyCQ" alt="" style="width:558px;height:auto"/></figure>



The <a href="https://docs.bigcoin.tech/">new Bigcoin</a> is being overseen by a “handful” of community members, including Bored, plus a trader who goes by EJR, and a few others. They’ve just <a href="https://x.com/bigcoinmining/status/1954936991285453017">turned</a> the pixelated “mining” rigs into over <a href="https://opensea.io/collection/bigcoin-miners">29,000 Abstract NFTs</a> on OpenSea in a way that generates royalties so the new team can build up a treasury to reinvest into further building out the game.



The new team also wants to be able to add more BIG liquidity so that buyers won’t have to pay a lot in slippage.



Of course, BIG’s price crash was nothing new. Like many, many low-cap tokens before it, BIG’s price spiked upon launch, only to dump and trail downward for months after. That price action, plus the fact that those who started “mining” early got more rewards, spurred (arguably valid) accusations that the whole thing was just a Ponzi.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1548" height="1020" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-106017" style="width:720px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1548 1548w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=390 390w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=396 396w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=332 332w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1548px) 100vw, 1548px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: BIG price history via GeckoTerminal.&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>



Bored said this week that BIG’s price “got out of control” when it first launched.&nbsp;



As a result, that created some unrealistic expectations. And, like with most tokens, the price plunge spurred anger from those who bought the top.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The problem with a lot of tokens today is they can be created in seconds,” Bored said during a <a href="https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1MnGnPYYoyjxO">livestream</a> of the game yesterday, where he displayed his “mining” facilities onscreen.



“I think the first iteration of Bigcoin definitely felt like a Ponzi,” Bored told me when I asked him during the stream if the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bigcoin-mining-game-faces-ponzi-allegations-amid-token-price-swings">“Ponzi” accusations</a> were fair. “I don’t think the current version of Bigcoin is a Ponzi at all,” he said.



Over half of the BIG that&#8217;s been mined has already been burned, with over 9 million burned out of 16.9 million mined (BIG has a capped 21 million supply).



Michael Lee, co-inventor of Abstract and former VP at Activision Blizzard, confirmed to me in a message that Bored and Bigtoshi aren’t the same person.



“Bigcoin’s handover to its community mirrors Bitcoin — its success depends on outgrowing its founder and becoming a project owned by everyone, yet no one. In this story, notable members like Bored step into the role of Michael Saylor.” Lee said.



He added: “With merge mining, Bigcoin’s promise is to evolve into a fair token launcher — free from KOLs, whales, cabals, bundlers, and market makers — for the people. Like Bitcoin, put in the work and mine the tokens.”



Whether Bigcoin 2.0 succeeds in this way is still up in the air, of course. But about 215 unique wallets have already bought into the new NFTs, suggesting at least some believe it can happen.



Update 8/12/2025 at 3:50 pm E.T.: wording around token burning changed for clarity.



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Abstract mining game Bigcoin plots comeback after BIG crash

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Crypto gaming and investment firm Animoca Brands now has a <a href="https://x.com/animocabrands/status/1953789549437452740">financial stake</a> in Cool Cats, that 2D pastel cat PFP collection from the 2021 NFT boom that most of you probably forgot about a couple of years ago.



Cool Cats, considered by some to have been at one point a “blue chip” NFT collection, will now be part of the Mocaverse. The <a href="https://ysiu.medium.com/the-meaning-of-tokens-and-the-purpose-of-the-mocaverse-22b134ca3bc7">Mocaverse</a> is Animoca’s ambitious vision to give everyone their own crypto-powered identity and tie that into games and other experiences.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcutHV4eyLtILpktRaxiqfRYsk9ekXBFjmYhVk0UB01S3japweFkc76tbVzDs2sQj_rIFnTouaPXtCaYl2c1ZjIHOFOKF3iCisTqMhPOgmNgbrEgMXHc8s2XPhMA3hQHNVYlIMDTA?key=zU2bGX4hrwcEG8YhzIEcdA" alt="" style="width:537px;height:auto"/></figure>



Animoca’s investment (of an undisclosed amount) means that Animoca and Coin Operated Group now own a majority interest in Cool Cats Group. Cool Cats community member Ken Cron is the chair and CEO of Coin Operated Group.



“We share a vision for a future where Web3 fuels creativity and community,” Cron said in a statement.



The NFT collection’s total volume traded has spiked roughly 400% in the past week, per NFTPriceFloor data. It also saw an expected floor price spike in the day after the announcement.



But that’s still just a blip in the grand scheme of things:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd3mXW-qwPdHvhHdj_WIljshYB08es6J4qZeVu8mkAbB1ozv-dLHYKFRVAGRp0qU4U0bL1ZxTYBOOeIUTHojCZrVft8uNKEIjdwMDsu_ubyR6Tx5dBmG3ofR-ndT2uHmR4fzC7hSA?key=zU2bGX4hrwcEG8YhzIEcdA" alt="" style="width:657px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Cool Cats floor price over time in USD. The collection has a $22 million market cap as of Monday morning.</figcaption></figure>



If I’m being honest, the news isn’t all that surprising, considering Animoca and the Cool Cats worked together <a href="https://x.com/coolcats/status/1578419928830726145">before</a> back in 2022.



In a statement, Animoca executive chair and cofounder <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/animoca-brands-yat-siu-crypto-gaming-comeback">Yat Siu</a> framed the move as a way to connect the Cool Cats’ community to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/animoca-moca-chain-mainnet-launch">Moca Network</a>.



“Cats have always been the darlings of the Internet, and Cool Cats is one of the most recognized digital brands out there, perfectly exemplifying the global appeal of digital felines,” Siu said in a press release.



Siu and Moca Network project lead Tyler Durden are also joining the Cool Cats board.



If you ask me — a self-proclaimed crazy cat lady — I’d argue the Cool Cats don’t lean into their feline inspiration nearly enough.



Yes, there was Cooltopia, a basic web game with a MILK token years ago. But otherwise the Cats could really stand to benefit from a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pudgy-penguins-luca-netz-nft-comeback">Pudgy Penguins</a>-esque social media brand building blitz to re-establish themselves as cute, relevant and actually about cats (their Instagram hasn’t posted a reel since February).



Back in 2022, Cool Cats’ future looked promising when it signed with top Hollywood talent agency CAA. But the collection also faced some <a href="https://decrypt.co/102920/what-happened-cool-cats-rise-fall-future-ethereum-nfts">controversy</a> around its then-CEO, who some community members believed wasn’t very in-touch with what the NFT owners wanted.



You also have to get people who don’t already own one of the 9,999 2021-era NFTs to care about the Cool Cats, too, in order to bring the brand back. 



As Animoca builds out its “Mocaverse” plans — which pivoted away from being a “metaverse” per se in recent years — it’ll absolutely have to compete with the Pudgy Penguins and the consumer-focused Abstract ecosystem.



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Animoca

Could Animoca Brands’ investment bring the Cool Cats back?

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Eve Frontier — an upcoming MMO from Eve Online studio CCP Games — isn’t your typical crypto game.



In fact, it’s probably more accurate to call it an expansive survival space MMO with blockchain rails that let players effectively “mod” the game to create their own features and challenges. And yes, there will be an EVE token underpinning it all, as well.



CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson has been in game development for over 25 years building Eve Online. That game has over 7,800 star systems, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrH6jyZ5j7g">complex economy</a> and ever-evolving, long-term battles driven by players.&nbsp;&nbsp;



And it’s been live for 22 years.



“The loop of creation to destruction is kind of the heart of the economy loop,” Pétursson told me in an interview. “And this is often what games get wrong at the heart of it, if things don&#8217;t leave the economy, then it’s, by definition, almost like a mathematical definition, an inflationary economy. The effects of an inflationary economy is that you add stuff into it, but you never take them out.”



When it comes to strategy, the worlds are designed in a way that encourages interactions between players.&nbsp;



“First, we create nature, a strategic landscape that requires specialization, cooperation and conflict. Conflict creates destruction that takes that loop — and we have that look pretty tight from Eve — then we add this energy mechanic. That&#8217;s where the token comes in,” Pétursson said of Eve Frontier.



“So that’s kind of the economy side. When we look at the general blockchain side, then we have created something called <a href="https://poolpartynodes.com/eve-frontier-smart-assemblies-a-beginners-guide/">smart assembly</a>, which is basically a combination of an in-game item and a smart contract. This allows you to basically program all the phenomena inside the world.”



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WgyB9h_euhw?si=x4YG_6FzPswh8t67" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Pétursson used an example where one player created a stargate using smart assembly that requires other players to bring the dead body of his enemy in order to use it.&nbsp;



“This is something that the player just programmed into the world without our permission. We needed to do nothing,” Pétursson said.



Eve Frontier is using the EVM L2 chain Redstone (built using the OP Stack codebase) for its blockchain elements.



While Eve Frontier comes from the same parent studio as Eve Online, there’s only overlap in a few areas on the development side that’s been symbiotic.&nbsp;



The new game’s team is building autonomously, Eve Frontier Community Manager Ben Sisson told me in an interview.



CCP has a separate design team for Eve Frontier as well as a separate team focused on the game’s crypto elements. Eve Online and Eve Frontier’s finances and funding are separate as well.&nbsp;



“CCP doesn’t use Eve Online money to pay Eve Frontier staff,” Sisson explained. But like Eve Online, Eve Frontier will generate revenue through a subscription-based model.



Both games do use CCP’s own Carbon game engine, though, so there is some overlap on the platform side.



“We did a huge engine upgrade last year, spent almost all of 2024 working on this engine upgrade,” Sisson said. “That team was doing that at the behest of Frontier. But that is a change that’s also going to benefit Eve Online.”



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How EVE Frontier is using crypto to change the game

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The last time Zora was in the <a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/vitalik-s-new-l1-scaling-plan-456481d76685267c">limelight</a>, the protocol was seeing an all time-high of 20-25k tokens created daily.



That was in April, just before the ZORA token-generation event — launching a “<a href="https://support.zora.co/en/articles/4796161">for fun only</a>” token that was universally panned by the Crypto Twitter commentariat.



The ZORA token dumped immediately on launch, daily tokens created cratered to less than 5k, and price had largely stagnated until last week.&nbsp;



Now it’s back. ZORA is today trading 227% up on the week, and its mobile app is <a href="https://x.com/js_horne/status/1949570371285315677">climbing</a> ranks on the iOS App Store.



Nearly 40k tokens were created yesterday, the highest in the protocol’s history. About 15-50% of the tokens (denoted in blue below) are coming from Base App, Coinbase’s newly rebranded wallet app.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdzj-ZxXpfV5FyQ_euqvhAKuja2UcuaC9xRLXZGhz2b9PsOcJ7VBWCgzqqdjLzY-EkERBH8czbrS0S0JDuBL1UmgzBJyk2Lz3B2_X8SVuNwLaAqPNXoLqhHUZmzFo69ie6DoV2GjA?key=MktSgORwkkHHEzwd57U5Fw" alt=""/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The economics of Zora</h2>



Zora is not a difficult product to understand.



It’s pump.fun with a social network. Or think Instagram, but tokenized into oblivion.



Here’s roughly how it works:



You are a social media influencer, and you post cool stuff on Zora. Each of your posts are tokenized as an ERC-20 token with a 1 billion supply. You receive 1% (10 million).



People think your post will go viral, so they buy it (via Uniswap under the hood), and you earn a 1% cut of the trading fee paid in ZORA. That’s the first revenue stream for creators.



These trades are paired against your “<a href="https://support.zora.co/en/articles/6338497">Creator Coin</a>,” which is basically your profile tokenized when you sign up on Zora. Your username is the ticker.



Every Creator Coin has a 1 billion supply, 50% of which is immediately tradable.&nbsp;



The other half vests linearly to you over five years. But here’s the catch: It only pays out to you when someone really likes you and trades your Creator Coin. That’s the second revenue stream for creators.



You quickly see how the incentives line up.&nbsp;



Make cool content, people buy your tokenized posts, you earn 1% trading fees. Become super popular, people speculate on your Creator Coin, your market cap grows, you get paid out more.



Most Zora trading volume is coming from Creator Coins — about $33 million yesterday.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc_ctetBNrrIMrPlYZXRjDABvK3h7Sa0XJ6MRsdzblT-qxzWF2SNmQ0TGStzh-ocAXRZFGhVG4m-2wWbYzet2MUk7pYRWyw5xr8F6jlB_AblHSoTUo2CBlS9Jtwje7flN3Au8NNdA?key=MktSgORwkkHHEzwd57U5Fw" alt=""/></figure>



I imagine that is quite lucrative for content creators.



Consider <a href="https://dexscreener.com/base/0x80a46421e3edbd8a25d623859ea875c344ca4427eb87605eae626bcf8a03a413">JACOB</a>, the Creator Coin of Zora co-founder Jacob Horne. It’s the second-largest Creator Coin, with a $6.2 million market cap today.



At a linear vesting rate of 500 million tokens over five years, that’s 273,973 tokens vested a day. Or about $3,397 in daily value at a $6.2 million market cap.



Contrast that with a typical Instagram creator who takes years to build a 50k following, and gets paid something like $100-$500 for a sponsored post, based on <a href="https://www.shopify.com/sg/blog/influencer-pricing#">Shopify’s</a> estimates.



Zora draws a lot of <a href="https://x.com/aeyakovenko/status/1949535075118494008">comparisons</a> to Pump for the way that it both attracts speculators to trade on low-cap tokens.



The key distinction is that Zora is attempting to anchor this activity to a native social network, betting that a durable network effect will sustain engagement.&nbsp;



(Pump appears to be moving in a similar direction with Twitch‑style livestreaming.)



That may explain Zora’s decision to deploy on Base, despite having already developed its own OP-stack L2 chain in 2023.



Zora’s revenue-sharing tokenomics is undoubtedly superior to traditional social networks. But without a genuinely organic social graph — and that is the most daunting task of them all — it’s hard to see Zora maintaining its momentum.



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