ne of the biggest stories this week was the long-awaited debut of the PIXEL token by the popular play-to-earn game Pixels. After several delays, the token was finally launched on Monday, February 27th. Users who had been farming and playing Pixels for months were finally able to claim their PIXEL airdrops.
The initial demand was massive as over $1 billion worth of PIXEL was traded on its first day, making it one of the most traded coins. This highlighted Pixels's huge popularity and excitement as its economy and in-game rewards transitioned to its native blockchain.
Portal Breaks Pre-Listing Records on Binance
Another highly anticipated project, Portal, saw its pre-listing rewards campaign on Binance break new records. The gaming token is set to debut on February 29th officially. In the lead-up to the listing, Binance ran a "Launchpool" where users could stake BNB or BUSD to earn allocations of the PORTAL token. An incredible $8.6 billion was staked on the first day alone, making it the most successful Launchpool ever. This indicated the major interest among crypto investors wanting to get an early position in Portal before its market debut.
A Blast From the Past - N64 on the Blockchain
In innovative news, the team behind the Ninjalerts app emulated a Nintendo 64 emulator on the Bitcoin blockchain. Now owners of their "Pizza Ninjas" NFT assets within the app can play classic N64 games directly on the blockchain. They emphasized this helped preserve older video games. It showed the potential for blockchain technologies to immortalize different forms of digital content and media. While still an early experiment, it was an intriguing proof of concept for larger games or applications to someday live fully on-chain.
Other Updates From the Week
There were also several other notable events across the crypto-gaming space. Arbitrum layer 3 network XAI saw its token reach new all-time highs. Three relatively new gaming tokens - Heroes of Mavia, Parallel and Beam - also hit new price peaks. And yesterday, news emerged that the personal wallets of Ronin founder Jeff Zirlin were drained of $9.5 million worth of Ethereum in a sophisticated attack.
