Moku Chief Business Officer shares why crypto gaming is broken — and how to fix it

Kathleen Osgood joins Moku to bring third-party brands to the studio’s AI game Grand Arena

article-image

Moku/Kathleen Osgood modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Community-focused gaming startup Moku has hired Kathleen Osgood as its chief business officer to cement the firm as a key player in crypto-powered AI gaming.

Osgood was previously Ronin builder Sky Mavis’s Director of Business Development for over three years, and was Jump Capital’s Director of Market Development before that.

Osgood told me in an interview that she’ll be focused on bringing new partnerships, market-makers, and institutions to the a16z Speedrun-backed studio.

“Web3 gaming is broken. Nearly everyone is trying the same model,” Osgood wrote in a post announcing her new role. “It’s not about more games. It’s about a different way to earn from games.”

In September, Moku raised $5.35 million in funding from Sky Mavis, a16z Games’ Speedrun, Framework Ventures, 32-bit Ventures, and over a dozen angel investors, plus others.

Moku began in 2021 as a launchpad and engagement platform to organize the Ronin community around different projects, but now has its own Ronin-based NFT collection of 8,888 cutesy characters and a flagship game, Grand Arena. The Mokis look a bit like bear-raccoon hybrids, and wear a range of different accessories and outfits. The floor price for a Moki Genesis NFT is about 219 RON, which is about $96.

“It’s built for AI,” Osgood told me of the upcoming game. “I think a lot of the problem in Web3, and people are seeing, is there are a lot of bots, and there isn’t a sticky audience.”

“Moku is turning it on its head and being like, we’re going to build a game for AI, and we’re going to create this whole AI system,” she said.

Essentially, Grand Arena players can bring select NFTs they own into the game as cards and have them battle each other in a hands-off way where the human player is primarily a spectator. NFT owners can also earn royalties on their assets when they’re used in-game.

NFTs that can connect to Grand Arena will be able to battle others’ NFT characters, and their characters’ personalities will change based on what happens.

Some early renderings and art of the game’s environment suggests it may have vertical battler elements in the vein of MapleStory or Super Smash Bros. 

Loading Tweet..

“I think this could transcend and just become like an AI-native competitive layer for all of gaming,” Osgood said. “Even past gaming, it’s mostly idle NFTs, assets, or IP that can come in and plug themselves in.”

Grand Arena has traits of an idle, casual battler game that could be appealing to those holding different NFTs but who maybe don’t have the time to grind levels in different games. 

The Moku team plans to focus on Moki Mayhem with its own NFTs within Grand Arena first, with plans to let third-party collections plug in in the future. 

“It actually is creating a whole new niche within crypto,” Osgood said.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday

article-image

The government says Storm was a money-hungry aid to criminals; the defense says it’s not his fault that people used his code for illicit activities.

article-image

EigenLayer, Lido and Taiko are buying verifiable compute

article-image

Sam Altman sees our future through the World Orb

article-image

Few US politicians are this clearheaded about Bitcoin

article-image

Pump.fun seemed to kick off buybacks on Tuesday according to onchain analysis