Jack Kubinec

First there was the Solana Saga, now there’s the Sui SuiPlay0X1.&nbsp;



That’s the bet Sui developer Mysten Labs is making, as it <a href="https://x.com/SuiNetwork/status/1777990298385219986">announced</a> the pending launch of a handheld gaming device that natively integrates with the Sui blockchain. The product will be <a href="https://x.com/SuiNetwork/status/1777990300138393895">built</a> with Playtron’s device-agnostic gaming operating system, Sui said.&nbsp;



A marketing video posted by Sui showed a slick, PlayStation Portable-esque device, but any actual gaming handheld is in the very early stages, and the product isn’t set to hit the market until 2025.&nbsp;



Official details on the release remain relatively sparse, though VentureBeat <a href="https://venturebeat.com/games/suiplay-0x1-is-an-open-steam-deck-like-gaming-handheld-with-multiple-game-stores/">reported</a> some details based on interviews with executives involved in the partnership. The device will aim to integrate Sui wallets for users at the OS level, so game developers could do things like airdrop rewards directly to users.&nbsp;



But the elemental design choice of which chip to use is still to be determined, VentureBeat reported. A spokesperson for Sui did not immediately return a request for more information.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a>’s Saga phone did uninspiring numbers at launch before becoming highly sought-after among crypto natives due to BONK airdrops being offered by protocols developing apps for the phone.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-phones-sold-out">Solana fans suddenly BONKers over the Saga phone</a>



Like Solana, Mysten teamed up with an external developer for its handheld Web3 product. Playtron is a handheld gaming software startup that <a href="https://x.com/PLAYTR0N/status/1774316904251068686">came</a> out of stealth with $10 million in funding roughly two weeks ago. Mysten Labs, along with Polychain, Circle and CMT Digital, were crypto companies that have invested, The Verge reported.



Playtron’s calling card is an operating system that can support games from different platforms, perhaps opening up the notoriously siloed gaming space.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">When one chapter ends, another begins</h2>



Bored &amp; Hungry, the Long Beach, California-based hamburger restaurant, is <a href="https://x.com/longbeachcounty/status/1777043411490746835">closing</a> up shop roughly two years after its 2022 founding. The shop, opened and branded around the Bored Ape NFT said to be owned by founder Andy Nguyen, let some customers <a href="https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=first-crypto-burger-purchase-at-bored-ape-restaurant-illustrates-why-people-dont-widely-do-this#:~:text=Instagram%20video%20of%20%24APE%20transaction">pay</a> using APE tokens.&nbsp;



It’s not the end of the road though, as Bored &amp; Hungry also opened three stores in the Philippines and another in South Korea. The burger chain’s branding has been acquired by Seoul-based Hungry DAO. The company will hold pop-ups this year in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai, Nguyen <a href="https://x.com/AndyTheNguyen/status/1777349077954592981">said</a> on X.&nbsp;



In other APAC-based-NFT-themed-restaurant news, a restaurant in Australia <a href="https://www.theurbanlist.com/melbourne/a-list/nouns-deli">rebranded</a> to become Nouns Deli, with branding based on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nouns-fork-two-dao-treasuries-spending">NFT collection and DAO</a>.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One interesting stat:</h2>



<ul>
<li>A Flipside dashboard <a href="https://flipsidecrypto.xyz/marqu/solana-nft-marketplaces-organic-wash-trading-F-UoCh">suggests</a> that over the past 90 days, 50.84% of trading volume on the Magic Eden NFT marketplace has been wash trading.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Also of note:</h2>



<ul>
<li>Crypto: The Game, the online survival game where competitors vie for an 80 ether prize, has <a href="https://x.com/cryptothegame_/status/1778816423990878528">whittled</a> the pool from 800 contestants down to 570.</li>



<li>Shooter game MetalCore <a href="https://x.com/Immutable/status/1777825818221428801">became</a> the first playable title on the Immutable zkEVM network.</li>
</ul>



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Web3 Watch: Sui unveils handheld Web3 gaming device

David Canellis

Challenger blockchains Sui, Sei and Ronin are having a moment.&nbsp;



Their native cryptocurrencies have tripled in price over the past three months, outperforming all other layer-1 assets in the top-100 by market cap.



Market leaders bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>), ether (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>) and binance coin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/bnb">BNB</a>) meanwhile gained about 30% in that time. Solana (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/sol">SOL</a>) and avalanche (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/avax">AVAX</a>) nearly doubled.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/sui">SUI</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/sei">SEI</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/ron">RON</a> are far smaller cryptocurrencies with less liquid markets (all three combined are not even one-third of AVAX’s market cap), so increased volatility is to be expected.



Still, the data suggests those networks have garnered increased usage over the past few months, at least in the case of Sui and Ronin.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16788805/embed#?secret=SQj9RZfEkg" data-secret="SQj9RZfEkg" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The market has gravitated towards newbie layer-1s</figcaption></figure>



Sui is a delegated proof-of-stake network built by former Facebook/Meta engineers, pitched as a high-performance blockchain that can execute transactions in parallel in hopes of faster throughput.



Sui’s total value locked (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tvl">TVL</a>) has exploded from $90 million to $560 million in three months.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-price-ratios">Sui, Bittensor, Celestia top small pack with rising bitcoin price ratios</a>



SUI’s rally explains only a small part of that surge — there were 73 million SUI staked in its DeFi protocols at the end of October, now there’s more than 320 million.



Peer-to-peer lending platform Scallop, liquidity protocol Navi and decentralized exchange Cetus make up most of the network’s TVL right now.



All while some more established blockchains — BNB Chain, Avalanche and Polygon PoS — have seen their TVL shrink, even as crypto broadly staged powerful comebacks over the past year.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16790056/embed#?secret=Y5Uoe2OGnO" data-secret="Y5Uoe2OGnO" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">BNB Chain’s total BNB locked has trended downward since 2021</figcaption></figure>



Ronin, on the other hand, is the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a> blockchain for gaming communities, built by Axie Infinite creator Sky Mavis.&nbsp;



It’s perhaps most well-known due to the unfortunate hacking of its token bridge in 2022, when more than $650 million in crypto kept in the bridge&#8217;s smart contract was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sky-mavis-reopening-ronin-bridge-with-enhanced-security">stolen by North Korea-linked attackers</a>.



There were around 21,000 daily active users on Ronin three months ago. Now, that figure is up to 615,000 — led by Web3 decentralized identity service CARV and games Pixel and Apeiron.&nbsp;



The daily active users metric is notoriously squirrely in crypto. It represents the number of unique addresses which make at least one transaction per day, and can be gamed with bots and other sybil tricks.&nbsp;



It’s unclear if active user metrics have been artificially boosted for any of the networks mentioned in this piece, but best to read into them with a grain of salt.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16792769/embed#?secret=Rr4Buc2YQC" data-secret="Rr4Buc2YQC" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Bitcoin and Ethereum’s daily active addresses has mostly stayed flat over the past five years</figcaption></figure>



Sei, much like the similarly-named Sui, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sei-blockchain-v2-developer-network">is a network pushing parallelized processing</a>. San Francisco-based Sei Labs pitches it as the fastest layer-1 for trading, specifically tailored for decentralized exchanges and the like.



Uptake appears to be slow so far, with only $14.5 million SEI locked in its DeFi platforms right now.



And while that number has more than tripled in the past three months, most of that was due to SEI’s price appreciation — 450% in three months. The actual number of SEI tokens locked has dropped by more than a third since November.&nbsp;



On-chain volume on Sei has also dropped below $1 million per day, according to DeFiLlama, down from a $3.7 million peak in January.



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Sui price triples in 3 months, signals changing of the guard in DeFi

Bessie Liu

<div id="highlights-block_631f1a3df8a2b" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Blockchain gaming and metaverse raises dominated funding discourse last week</li>
 <li>Animoca Brands raised $100 million while Mysten Labs netted $300 million</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



As traders <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/the-flippening-will-ether-flip-bitcoin-in-the-next-year/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">debate</a> whether Ethereum’s Merge represents a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event, metaverse and Web3 gaming projects continue to draw major funding.



Last week, the Hong Kong-headquartered Animoca Brands <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/singapores-temasek-aims-100m-at-metaverse-giant-animoca/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">secured</a> $100 million in a strategic funding round led by Singapore state-owned Temasek the likes of Boyu Capital and GGV Capital. Previous backers Mirae Asset Management and True Global Ventures (TGV) also participated, among others.



“Animoca Brands has grown significantly as a company in the last year, and our new investors will contribute strategic advice and perspective as we build the world’s leading company furthering digital property rights in the Web3 industry,” Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands said in a statement.



The blockchain gaming giant — the largest in Asia — appears quick to put that money to use. Word broke last week that Animoca had backed San Fransisco-based ​​Revolving Games in its <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/animoca-brands-among-backers-in-13m-raise-for-revolving-games/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">latest $13 million seed raise</a> alongside Pantera Capital, Polygon and Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser.



Revolving Games previously raised $12 million in pre-seed funding from backers including NBA TopShots’ Dapper Labs, Permanens Capital Partners, Kenetic, Saramayacar and DWeb3 Capital earlier this year.&nbsp;



Companies building new blockchains to underpin video games are also garnering interest.



Mysten Labs, another San Franciscan Web3 startup, in a Series B netted <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/mysten-labs-300m-fundraise-values-business-at-more-than-2b/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$300 million</a> funding from investors to scale its fledgling blockchain, Sui. FTX Ventures led the round, with prominent investors from a16z, Jump Crypto and Apollo joining in.



Although a launch date has not yet been set, Mysten Labs envisions Sui as a low-cost creator-owned network, geared specifically for games.



“We believe that Sui’s novel architecture will meaningfully improve scalability and lower transaction costs, unleashing new web3 applications and experiences for a broader audience,” Arianna Simpson, a general partner at a16z said in a statement.



Meanwhile, the NEAR Foundation — the Swiss firm behind upstart layer-1 network NEAR — has just debuted a $100 million venture capital fund in partnership with newly-launched Caerus Ventures.



The fund, which initially closed with $50 million in capital, will focus on seed to Series A investments across Web3 culture and entertainment projects.



Separate from gaming, Seattle-based Web3 startup SpiceAI, which wants to make blockchain data more accessible, received <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/web3-startup-spiceai-cooks-up-13-5m-raise-to-make-data-more-accessible/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$13.5 million</a> from Madrona Venture Group. Australian venture capital firm Blackbird Ventures and many angel investors also took part in the round.&nbsp;



In its current state, SpiceAI platform is a query interface integrated with GitHub and gives developers access to data from various protocols.



Other noteworthy raises last week include:



<ul><li>Web3 UX startup Slide <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220908005232/en/Web3-UX-Startup-Slide-Raises-12.3M-Seed-Round-Co-Led-by-Polychain-Capital-Framework-Ventures" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">secures</a> a $12.5 million seed from Framework Ventures.</li><li>Software development and decentralized data storage startup Community Labs raises a $30 million Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.</li><li>Gameplay Galaxy secures a $12.8 million seed from Blockchain Capital.</li><li>Synquote, a decentralized trading platform for cryptocurrency options, closed a $2.8M seed round.</li><li>Trystack.io received $2.7 million from Madrona to build crypto education trading platform.</li></ul>



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Funding Wrap: Metaverse and Web3 Gaming Still Hits With VCs

Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_631a0a1f1033c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Other participants in the funding round were a16z, Binance Labs, Franklin Templeton and Coinbase Ventures</li>
 <li>Sui, launched in March, forgoes consensus for most transactions, allowing it to speed up transactions</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Mysten Labs is putting its fresh round of funding toward powering more Web3 applications and speeding up the adoption of its new blockchain, the company revealed Thursday.



The California-based Web3 infrastructure company <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/mysten-labs-launches-blockchain-platform-sui/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">launched decentralized blockchain platform Sui</a> in March. Mysten Labs CEO Evan Cheng said in a statement Thursday that Web3 infrastructure is currently “in the dial-up era.” 



“It’s slow, expensive, capacity constrained, insecure, and simply hard to build for,” he added.



The Mysten Labs team said it can build a better blockchain. As an example of one novelty to improve scalability, Sui forgoes consensus for most transactions, allowing it to parallelize the execution of them and reduce latency, a technique known as “casual ordering.”



The project was expected to launch an incentivized testnet in August and has <a href="https://medium.com/mysten-labs/validator-registration-open-9464c31ff9f6?source=collection_home---6------2-----------------------" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">solicited prospective validators</a> to participate, but the team has not announced a launch date. A token, SUI, is also planned, which will be used to participate in the proof-of-stake network after mainnet launch, also on an unknown future date.



Cheng had spent the last 16 years at tech companies such as Apple and Facebook, which is <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/zuckerberg-says-facebooks-new-name-will-be-meta/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">now known as Meta</a>. He and three other former Facebook employees — Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun and George Danezis — worked on Meta’s Novi Financial team to help develop <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/facebook-led-crypto-project-diem-to-be-sold-off-for-200m-report/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Diem stablecoin</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/coinmonks/overview-of-move-programming-language-a860ffd8f55d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Move</a> programming language.



Sui’s use cases, according to Mysten Labs, include facilitating airdrops to millions of people in a single, low-cost transaction; creator-owned decentralized social media networks; and developing blockchain gaming interactions such as equipment crafting, character leveling and battle records stored on-chain.



FTX Ventures led the Series B round. Other participants included a16z crypto, Jump Crypto, Apollo, Binance Labs, Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sino Global, Dentsu Ventures, Greenoaks Capital and O’Leary Ventures.



FTX Ventures Partner Amy Wu said in a statement that Sui’s parallelizable agreements and “object-centric architecture” were key technical innovations that make it a next-gen platform for Web3 builders.&nbsp;



Arianna Simpson, a general partner at a16z added: “We believe that Sui’s novel architecture will meaningfully improve scalability and lower transaction costs, unleashing new web3 applications and experiences for a broader audience.”



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Mysten Labs’ $300M Fundraise Values Business at More Than $2B

<div id="highlights-block_6239eac074c4c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Sui says its use of what it calls “casual ordering” differentiates it from other blockchains</li>
 <li>Ethereum’s total value locked dominance for DeFi applications fell from 97% in January 2021 to 55% earlier this month</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The Web3 infrastructure company <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/four-former-facebook-developers-launch-web3-startup/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recently founded</a> by four former Facebook employees has launched a decentralized blockchain platform.



Called Sui, the layer-1 platform is designed to facilitate instant settlement and deliver the high throughput, low latency and low cost needed to power applications for billions of users, according to a Tuesday company announcement.&nbsp;



Mysten Labs CEO Even Cheng had spent the last 16 years at tech companies such as Apple and Facebook, which is <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/zuckerberg-says-facebooks-new-name-will-be-meta/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">now known as Meta</a>. He and three other former Facebook employees — Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun and George Danezis — worked on Meta’s Novi Financial team to help develop <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/facebook-led-crypto-project-diem-to-be-sold-off-for-200m-report/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Diem stablecoin</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/coinmonks/overview-of-move-programming-language-a860ffd8f55d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Move</a> programming language.



Move, a bytecode language used to implement custom transactions and smart contracts, powers Sui’s programming model.&nbsp;



“Existing technology suffers from restrictive storage methods and inherently unsafe programmability models, which force developers to compromise on functionality and user experience,” Cheng said in a statement. “Sui solves the most notorious problems in blockchain by delivering unrivaled scalability, premium security, and simplified user experience at the lowest cost.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">How is Sui different?</h3>



Ethereum’s total value locked (TVL) dominance for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications fell from 97% in January 2021 to a record low of 55% earlier this month, according to Defi Llama data. Ethereum’s TVL is currently roughly <a href="https://defillama.com/chain/Ethereum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$120 billion</a>.



Created to solve the most common blockchain “pain points,” Sui uses horizontal scalability to maintain low gas fees and high transaction processing capacities beyond legacy payment rails such as Visa and Swift.



One of the layer-1’s main differentiators from other blockchains is its use of what it calls “casual ordering,” according to <a href="https://docs.sui.io/learn/sui-compared" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sui’s website</a>. Unlike other blockchains, Sui forgoes consensus for most transactions, allowing it to parallelize the execution of them and reduce latency.



While Sui is designed to perform well with direct sender transactions, it comes at the cost of added complexity in what it considers to be less common use cases, the informational document adds.&nbsp;



“Sui’s system design breakthrough eliminates a critical bottleneck in existing blockchains: the need to achieve global consensus on a total-ordered list of transactions,” Mysten Labs Chief Product Officer Adeniyi Abiodun told Blockworks in an email. “This computation is wasteful given most transactions are not contending for the same resource against other transactions.”



The architecture, according to the team, will make it “the first and only permissionless blockchain that has horizontal scalability [with] no upper limit on network throughout.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Use cases</h3>



Sui’s use cases, according to Mysten Labs, include facilitating airdrops to millions of people in a single, low-cost transaction; creator-owned decentralized social media networks; and developing blockchain gaming interactions such as equipment crafting, character leveling and battle records stored on-chain.



A spokesperson for <a href="https://www.lucky-kat.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lucky Kat Studios</a>, the creators of a game called Panzerdogs, said that Sui’s ability to mirror NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and handle on-chain assets opens up new options for blockchain gaming.



“Imagine importing all your NFTs into a game, upgrading them into new, usable assets and enhancing the gaming experience and the in-game economy,” the Lucky Kat representative said in a statement. “Not only do the NFTs become a part of the gaming experience, but the game also becomes a part of the NFT.”



<a href="https://sowork.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SoWork</a>, which offers virtual workspaces in the metaverse, uses Sui to mint composable, mutable NFTs to its customers.



“We’ve come a long way with Ethereum, but it really feels like Sui is what gets us as startups, consumers, and creatives to the next level of decentralization, because it goes beyond simple NFT minting,” a SoWork spokesperson said.



Mysten Labs previously said Sui will go to mainnet later this year following its test and beta net phases. The company anticipates developer activity on-chain by April or May.



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