Gotchichain is a permissioned version of Polygon optimized for Aavegotchi-themed games and dapps.

NFT gaming protocol Aavegotchi is working with Polygon to launch a gaming-optimized blockchain called Gotchichain in Q3.

Gotchichain will use Polygon’s supernet to create a customized blockchain designed for mass-scale adoption for gaming players. Aavegotchi is already deployed on Polygon, but having its own supernet will give players faster transaction times and minimal gas fees, according to a blogpost.

Aavegotchi’s governance token GHST will be the gas token for all transactions on Gotchichain, the announcement said. GHST briefly spiked 5% on the announcement but was trading around $1.21 at press time, down over 10% in 24 hours.

Earlier Wednesday, a separate crypto gaming project also announced it was working with Polygon supernets, one sign of how Polygon is betting big on gaming technology.

Gotchichain is “going to be a game changer for reducing friction and bringing more people on-chain,” said the founder of gaming development firm Pixelcraft Studios, Jesse Johnson told CoinDesk.

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Bitcoin dumped Thursday on the back of multiple catalysts that contributed to selling pressure.

Selling pressure on bitcoin (BTC) contributed to a broader market drop as tokens of some of the largest blockchains fell as much as 6% in Asian morning hours on Thursday.

Bitcoin dipped under $22,000 during European hours on Wednesday, even as broader traditional markets remained relatively unchanged. Ether (ETH) shed over 2%. Among other large-caps, solana (SOL) and matic (MATIC) fell 6% in the past 24 hours, while Uniswap’s UNI and Avalanche’s AVAX fell 4% in the same period.

Artificial intelligence-focused tokens The Graph (GRT) and SingularityAI (AGIX) fell as much as 8%, paring gains from a month-long rise. Curve ecosystem tokens curve (CRV) and convex (CVX) fell 7%, while gaming-focused ImmutableX (IMX) dropped over 12%.

The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a broad-based index designed to measure the market capitalization-weighted performance of the crypto market, fell 1.2%.

Toncoin (TON) bucked the trend, rising 6% in the past 24 hours on no immediate catalysts. Shiba Inu (SHIB) rose 2.2%, buoyed by the upcoming beta launch of Shibarium, its native blockchain.

As such, the market-wide decline came as crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank said it will “voluntarily liquidate” its assets and wind down operations of its holding company, Silvergate Capital Corp. (SI).

Elsewhere, CoinDesk reported that U.S. banking giant JPMorgan (JPM) is ending its banking relationship with Gemini.

Meanwhile, the drop in prices caused over $100 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours, data from analytics tool Coinglass shows. Slightly over 85% of these liquidations were on short positions, or from traders betting on falling prices.

Over $70 million worth of those figures occurred on bitcoin and ether futures alone.

Liquidations occur when traders borrow funds from exchanges to bet on crypto prices using a relatively smaller initial capital, one that is forfeited when prices reach a predetermined liquidation level.

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The accelerator aims to connect founders with potential investors.

Noted venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has a price-innovation cycle thesis that essentially says that crypto bull markets attract buyers, while bear markets make room for developer innovation that increases optimism – and eventually, asset prices.

Building Web3 projects is a difficult task even in the best environments, but there’s a new founder-built accelerator that wants to help founders build and connect to potential investors.

Beacon was created by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and the small management team includes Uri Stav (formerly Chief Security Officer of CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group), Prateek Sharma (former Sequoia Capital vice president) and Kenzi Wang, who founded venture capital firm Symbolic Capital with Nailwal, amongst others.

“We’re creating Beacon because, as a network of web3 founders and operators ourselves, we’re 100% committed to this idea of bringing the next one billion users into this space. With everything happening in the news, we know the odds are stacked against us,” Nailwal told CoinDesk in an email. “However, if we can support the best founders and accelerate projects serving real customer needs, adoption will happen – it’s inevitable.”

The accelerator’s first remote-first, twelve-week cohort kicked off in October with more than 30 founders from 15 companies across decentralized finance (DeFi), infrastructure and consumer applications. Mentors to the cohort included Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu, Yield Guild Games co-founder Beryl Li and CoinFund partner Evan Fang.

Beacon hopes to stand out from other accelerators by building in-house software that can connect founders and investors. Beacon has already built a custom platform for potential investors to review projects, learn more about founders, view video pitches and request introductions. On the founder side, Beacon is working on a social network to help founders and alumni stay connected.

Beacon’s inaugural program will end with a live-streamed Demo Day in January where founders will pitch to more than 300 Web3 investors.

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The funds have been siphoned out of the project and into centralized exchanges.

The newly launched Dragoma project appears to have been subject to a rug pull worth an estimated $3.5 million, according to blockchain sleuth PeckShield.

Dragoma, which launched just days ago, had said it planned to become a Web3 adventure game that incorporated NFTs and elements of social media alongside its native token, DMA.

The token, which was created on Polygon, was recently listed on centralized exchange MEXC, generating millions of dollars in volume.

The project’s website is not responding and its social media channel has been deleted, PeckShield said.

At its peak, the DMA token reached $1.78. It tumbled Monday morning, losing 99.8% of its value.

The missing funds have been moved to centralized exchanges, according to PeckShield.

The founder of Dragoma is Texas-based Ken Graese, according to a June press release.

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Over $20 million had been earmarked to help projects making the move.

More than 48 projects previously on the Terra network have begun migrating to Polygon almost two months after the Terra ecosystem collapsed following the implosion of terraUSD (UST).

“Terra projects have begun migration,” Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt said in a tweet early Monday. “Over 48 projects and counting… including OnePlanet_NFT, an exclusive 0xPolygon marketplace, and DerbyStars_HQ.”

In May, Polygon Studios announced a multimillion-dollar fund to assist Terra projects looking to switch. It was ready to pay as much as “$20 million, roughly” to help Terra teams migrate to its own blockchain to continue building products.

“For any project which wants to come from Terra to Polygon, we will be happy to provide them both financial assistance as well as technical assistance,” a spokesperson for the Polygon ecosystem told CoinDesk at the time. “We’ll provide them developers and everything.”

Developers behind other blockchain networks also courted Terra projects, among them Kadena, Cosmos and Avalanche, as previously reported.

UST, the Terra ecosystem’s algorithmic stablecoin that was designed to maintain its value by minting or burning exactly $1 worth of luna for 1 UST, fell to under 10 cents in May after losing its peg following investor outflows.

Excessive minting of luna to try and bring UST back to its peg caused prices of the governance token to fall by as much as 99.7%, while Terra-based DeFi applications saw over $28 billion in outflows.

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The league says its official NFT platform is still in its “test and learn” phase, but has seen promising results since launching in November.

The National Football League (NFL) is once again dabbling with non-fungible tokens (NFT), launching a series of card-themed collectibles tied to its upcoming player draft on Thursday.

The collection is live on the league’s Polygon-based marketplace, which it unveiled in November 2021 and has since been used for various playoff game ticketing promotions.

The NFTs will also be given out to members of this year’s “Inner Circle” club, which includes fans selected to represent each team on draft night.

A representative of the league told CoinDesk it has given out more than 500,000 NFTs tied to ticket purchases since the marketplace’s release. Of those 500,000, around 210,000 were directly interacted with by their owner, a 42% figure the league considered a win in terms of engagement.

“Those are just the ones we gave out for free, so we were impressed by the engagement numbers for sure,” Sam Rubinroit, the NFL’s director of club business development, told CoinDesk in an interview. “A good number of the NFTs we released for purchase sold out within 24 hours of their release.”

Rubinroit said the ticketing collectible platform is still very much in its “test and learn phase,” with larger plans cued up for the upcoming season. NFTs from its initial “Regular Season Clubs” collection were one point trading hands for thousands of dollars a piece, but have since cooled off to the $300-$600 range for the more popular teams.

The Polygon-based marketplace is just one of many NFT waters the league has dipped itself into in the last year, the most notable being a partnership with NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs to create NFL All Day. Both Top Shot and All Day are built on the Flow blockchain.

The league’s official blockchain partnerships policy remains lucid and developing, but has seen movement in the realms of fan tokens and crypto endorsements in recent weeks.

The league’s players association (NFLPA) has a few crypto-related partnerships of its own, including an NFT tie-up with sports betting giant DraftKings and a partnership with the metaverse game Upland.

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Polygon becomes Rarible’s fourth supported blockchain. OpenSea only sports three – but does 1,000 times the weekly sales volume.

Non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Rarible is tapping Polygon as its latest blockchain integration, joining Ethereum, Flow and Tezos as part of the platform’s vision for multi-chain commerce.

Market leader OpenSea supports Ethereum, Polygon and Klatyn. It added Polygon-based NFTs last October.

Rarible’s expansion to other chains has been at a steady clip since the site’s launch in early 2020, integrating with Flow last June and Tezos in December. Rarible also launched a messaging feature in November.

That hasn’t done much to boost sales volume, however, according to blockchain data compiled by DappRadar. OpenSea has seen $414 million in weekly sales over the most recent seven-day period; Rarible has only seen $383,000.

As part of the announcement, Rarible said it will be launching its own multi-chain wallet, though no release date was provided. The platform is also adding capability for fee splitting and royalty standards for ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens minted on the site.

“[Rarible] understands the responsibility to democratize all aspects of NFTs for both creators and consumers,” Alexei Falin, CEO of Rarible, said in a press release. “A collaboration with Polygon is another achievement for Rarible Protocol that enables blossoming marketplaces and projects built within its ecosystem to access new communities and increase back-end capabilities.”

The company says it will also be tapping Polygon Studios, the blockchain’s NFT and gaming arm, for marketing and tech support as part of the partnership.

Polygon has been on a partnership tear of its own in recent months, most recently in the news for deals with sports betting site DraftKings and music NFT marketplace OneOf.

Polygon raised a $450 million funding round in February led by Sequoia Capital India.

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