Here’s a Reddit-style post in the voice of a crypto trader with a sarcastic twist: Splinterlands Just Launched a “Crypto Gaming Recovery Fund” – aka Rehab for Bagholders So Splinterlands decided to put on their cape and become the Robin Hood of failed blockchain gaming. They’ve raised over $500K (from their devs and the SPS DAO) to “help” players who got wrecked buying assets in dead Web3 games. Translation: Congrats anon, your JPEGs from zombie projects might finally be worth $10 of in-game credits. Here’s the play: They’re covering losses from TOKYO BEAST (Immutable) and The Walking Dead: Empires (Gala) first. Other rug-victim games like Ember Sword and Pirate Nation are on deck. The fund runs for seven years (because nothing says “long-term stability” like a half-decade+ payout plan). To “qualify,” you gotta do the usual Web3 hoops: submit your wallet, make a Splinterlands account, and oh yeah… buy their $10 Spellbook. If approved, you’ll get a whopping $10 in Splinterlands credits to buy cards. Keep grinding and they’ll toss you more over time. Basically: “We’ll refund you, but only if you join our ecosystem and keep playing.” Not charity, but clever funneling. Respect where it’s due—most projects just rug and vanish, Splinterlands is rug-surfing their competitors’ playerbase. tl;dr: Splinterlands is turning your dead bags into their new liquidity. Honestly, it’s both evil-genius and kind of hilarious.

The NFT sector lost over $1.2 billion in market value in a week as Ethereum cooled from recent highs. According to NFT Price Floor, total NFT market cap fell 12%, sliding from $9.3 billion to $8.1 billion. Leading collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes saw sharp declines in valuation and sales volume, while Pudgy Penguins climbed to the second spot despite also losing value. The shift followed Ethereum’s 9% drop after reaching nearly $4,700, with ETH trading around $4,292 at press time. 

 So… turns out even pirates can’t survive the bear market. 🏴‍☠️ Proof of Play just announced they’re shutting down Pirate Nation (the fully onchain RPG) along with their Apex and Boss L3 blockchains that were running on Arbitrum. Yep, the whole ship is going down. Quick recap for the non-degens: Game launched in 2023, went full “onchain everything” vibes. Dropped the $PIRATE token in June 2024 with a play-to-earn season (because nothing screams sustainability like P2E…). Ran staking, points, events – you name it. At peak they had over 100k DAUWs. Now? Around 10k. 🪦 PoP basically said “we love the community, but not enough to keep bleeding money on servers.” Translation: the economics didn’t work out. They are moving some scraps over to their shiny new Proof of Play Arcade on Abstract. Supposedly, Pirate Nation’s PvE battle mode and maybe other minigames will live on there. Oh, and they want to focus on their vRNG infra (because hey, infra pays, games don’t). The game itself will limp along for 30 more days. There’s a final two-week event where players can burn in-game items for “Plunder Certificates” (future rewards TBD). Holders of the 10k Pirate PFP NFTs will get one last batch of $PIRATE tokens. PoP ended the announcement with the usual “we’re focusing on fun, profitable, widely accessible products” line. Aka: “please don’t call us another web3 gaming rug.”

Once dismissed as a failed Ethereum PFP project, Moonbirds is soaring again after being acquired by Orange Cap Games in May 2025. The collection’s floor price has jumped from just 0.29 ETH (under $800) to over 3 ETH (nearly $14,000), fueled by renewed community energy, fresh branding with “birb” memes, and a stronger cultural presence on NFT Twitter. The revival mirrors the turnaround of Pudgy Penguins, showing how community-driven identity and strategic leadership can breathe new life into struggling NFT brands. While NFT trading volumes are climbing and blue-chip collections like CryptoPunks also hit multi-year highs, Orange Cap says its long-term goal is to grow Moonbirds into a broader entertainment and gaming IP—without overpromising. 

🚨 Sky Mavis pulls a 180: Ronin is ditching “sidechain” vibes and moving to full Ethereum L2 🚨 So apparently the days of Ronin being marketed as a “gaming-focused Ethereum sidechain” (translation: an L1 with a cosplay complex) are over. Sky Mavis just announced they’re turning it into a fully-fledged Ethereum L2, because… well, nobody’s playing blockchain games and Ethereum finally looks like it’s not going to rug its own ecosystem. Couple spicy details: 12x faster txs once the L2 transition is done. So maybe Axie players can finally breed their pixel chickens without waiting. Staking revamp: moving to a “Proof of Distribution” model. Translation: devs who actually build get rewarded instead of idle validators who just click “stake” and vibe. Plans for a zkEVM? Yeah, those just got yeeted. Sky Mavis is also cozying up with the usual L2 suspects: Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync, Polygon. Imagine Ronin as the needy kid at the Ethereum lunch table asking, “Can I sit here?” Big picture: this is them admitting that gaming alone won’t pump RON forever. By aligning with Ethereum’s “institutional adoption” narrative, they’re clearly hoping to piggyback on ETH’s price momentum and grab some non-gaming apps to prop up the ecosystem. The catch? We’re talking about a hardfork around Q2 2026. So yeah, two years of speculation fuel incoming. RON bagholders, congrats—you just got a new narrative. 🎉 TL;DR: Ronin is ditching “independent sidechain” cope, becoming an Ethereum L2, promising speed/security gains + staking overhaul, and praying that non-gamers show up this time.

On August 14, 2025, an EtherRock NFT sold for 135 ETH (about $606,000), sparking flashbacks to the 2021 NFT craze when the collection symbolized market speculation. With ETH prices near record highs, old passions are resurfacing—though not everyone is pleased. Social media reactions ranged from disbelief to mockery, highlighting EtherRock’s enduring role as a reminder of the excesses of past NFT bubbles. 

Here’s how that could look as a sarcastic crypto-trader-style Reddit post: Title: Immutable Just Pulled a Ubisoft – Web2 Games Are Crashing the Party 🚀🎮 Alright, fellow degenerates, buckle up. Immutable, the chain that’s been bribing us with IMX since April 2024’s Main Quest and the April 2025 Perpetual Rewards grind-fest, just announced they’re letting web2 games in the door. First through the velvet rope? Ubisoft – yes, the same guys who can sell you the same game 4 times and call it a “Remaster.” So far, we’ve been questing like medieval peasants: Complete random in-game or social tasks ✅ Hoard “gems” like it’s Candy Crush ✅ Wait for the weekly IMX token drop like starving pigeons ✅ They’ve already given away over $1M in IMX (translation: early grinders are laughing, latecomers are asking “wen moon?”). But the catch until now was you could only do quests in games running on Immutable’s zkEVM chain. Now? They’re letting any game in, blockchain or not. Meaning we can finally grind points in games your cousin Kevin actually plays without having to give him a 30-minute wallet tutorial. Numbers check: 5.6M lifetime wallets touched Immutable (no word on how many are bots 👀) Weekly rewards pool: ~25k wallets. That’s… not a lot of competition if you’re quick. Immutable’s own words: “From today, any web2 studio that meets our quality bar can integrate with Immutable Play…” Translation: “Bring us your whales, your gamers, your cash cows yearning to be monetized.” This could either: Funnel millions of normies into web3 without them realizing it. Become another “play-to-earn but now with Assassin’s Creed skins” graveyard. Either way, I’m farming those gems until they tell me to stop.

Web3 anime brand Azuki has teamed up with Swiss watchmaker H. Moser & Cie. to release Elements of Time, a limited-edition watch collection inspired by the Azuki Elementals NFT series. The line features four Pioneer Tourbillon models ($75,000 each) and four Pioneer Centre Seconds models ($25,000 each), representing Fire, Earth, Water, and Lightning. Each design is limited to 24 pieces, with deliveries managed by The 1916 Company. 

So, our favorite Ronin-based pixel MMORPG Lumiterra just wrapped up a nice little testnet event… and decided the next logical step is to launch its shiny new AI agents on Monad. Y’know, that chain that’s… still a testnet. Mainnet is apparently “later in 2025,” which in crypto years is like saying “don’t hold your breath.” The devs say Monad is basically Ethereum-compatible but with a Solana/Sui/Aptos-style parallel execution model, so in theory we’re talking sub-second block times, single-slot finality, and up to 10k TPS. In other words: it could be blazingly fast… if it actually exists outside of PowerPoint slides yet. The AI agents themselves? They’re supposed to “learn” by watching how you play, so they can grind for you while you’re offline. And because it’s Web3, obviously they’re NFTs — so you can rent out your pixel sweatshop minions to someone else. They might even hop over to other games, DeFi apps, and onchain social. On the one hand: cool tech flex. On the other: we’ve seen this “future of gaming + AI + fast chain” movie before, and it usually ends with a cliffhanger where the chain is still in beta. Not financial advice, but… maybe let the AI agent play the game and do the bag-holding for you this time.

The NFT market recorded $574 million in sales in July, marking its second-best month of 2025 despite a drop in active buyers. Average transaction value hit a six-month high at $113, signaling a shift toward rarer, higher-quality assets. Ethereum collections dominated with $275.6 million in sales, led by CryptoPunks and Pudgy Penguins, the latter posting a 65% floor price jump. Bitcoin and Polygon followed in sales volume, while Cardano posted triple-digit growth. Analysts see the trend as part of a broader crypto upswing that could signal a selective new cycle for NFTs.