Dan Harmon’s NFT Show Set for Season 3, NFT-Friendly Square Enix CEO Resigns and More…
Krapopolis, the NFT-affiliated cartoon series from Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon, has been renewed for a third season by Fox, despite season one not even airing yet.
The Krapopolis team announced the renewal via Twitter in March. 2, and emphasized that NFT holders can still engage with the program before it is broadcast.
Speaking to Deadline in March. 2, Michael Thorn, Fox’s president of scripted programming, noted that “We are so positive about the work we want to support and its ability to find an audience and succeed,” as he emphasized his faith in Harmon. “While [a third season order] is atypical, it was a no-brainer for us too Krapopolis,” he added.
Krapopolis is an animated comedy set in ancient Greece that follows a “misguided family of humans, gods and monsters trying to run one of the world’s first cities without killing each other.”
The case includes some big names such as Richard Ayode, Matt Berry, Pam Murphy, Duncan Trussell and Hannah Waddingham.
The series is produced by Fox Corp’s NFT firm Blockchain Creative Labs, which also provided the NFT-related elements to the show.
The NFTs themselves are called “Krap Chickens” and feature cartoon chicken avatars in the same art style as the show. There are a total of 10,420 tokens and some are still up to 0.18 Ether (ETH).
Holders are granted exclusive access to experiences, content, rewards and voting rights on certain aspects of the show.
Square Enix’s CEO is stepping down
Square Enix’s NFT-friendly CEO Yosuke Matsuda is stepping down after nearly 10 years at the helm of the company behind the Fantasy franchise.
In a notice of company changes in March, Square Enix outlined that Takashi Kiryu will take over the role of CEO from Matsuda. However, the move will not be officially finalized until an annual shareholder meeting in May.
Although Web 3 and NFTs were not referenced explicitly in the notice, the firm indicated that it is still looking to proceed with new technology integrations, suggesting that its blockchain-related plans may remain unimpeded.
“Under the rapidly changing business environment surrounding the entertainment industry, the proposed change is intended to reshape the management team with the goal of adopting ever-evolving technological innovations and maximizing the creativity of the company’s group,” the filing said.
During his time at Square Enix, Matsuda outlined bullish sentiments on Web3 games on several occasions.
Notably, in a January 1 New Year’s letter, Matsuda emphasized that Square Enix had devoted “aggressive investment and business development efforts” toward the space in 2022, and would continue to do so in 2023.
“After the excitement and excitement that surrounded NFTs and the metaverse in 2021, 2022 was a year of great volatility in the blockchain-related space,” he mentioned in the note, adding that:
“However, if this turns out to have been a step in a process leading to the creation of rules and a more transparent business environment, it will definitely have benefited the growth of blockchain entertainment.”
Under Mastuda’s leadership, Square Enix rolled out tokenized Final Fantasy character collectibles in July 2022 and partnered with Oasy’s blockchain gaming project in September. In December, the firm also invested $52.7 million in mobile game developer Gumi Games, to help develop mobile-based games to earn titles.
Mint Madness
Multi-chain NFT marketplace Magic Eden has launched a ‘Mint Madness’ promotion offering free access, or ‘free mint’, to 13 Web3 games in March.
Mint Madness went live in March. 3, and the name is a nod to the famous NCAA college basketball tournament called “March Madness,” which sees approximately 67 basketball games crammed into the month.
The blockchain games are spread across Polygon, Ethereum and Solana, with nine, three and one apiece respectively. Magic Eden also offers a 20,000 Polygon (MATIC) prize pool worth approximately $23,200.
Prizes will go to the top 10 traders of the NFTs related to nine of the new games based on Polygon, with the top prize of 4,500 MATIC ($5,220).
Related: Galaxy tips Bitcoin NFT market to reach $4.5 billion by 2025
The full list of games available during the promotion includes Planet Mojo, Meta Star Strikers, Alaska Gold Rush, Shrapnel, Petobots, Blast Royale, Rogue Nation, Tearing Spaces, Freckle Trivia, Realm Hunter, Legendary: Heroes Unchained, Shrapnel and Papu Superstars.
Disney-backed studios’ sales slump
Nine-time Emmy Award-winning, Disney-backed Baobab Studios sold out its first batch of 8,888 NFTs in just nine hours after launching in March. 2.
The cartoon avatar-focused droplet is called “Momoguro” and is attached to an upcoming role-playing game (RPG) on the layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution, Immutable X.
The game itself has breeding elements, along with missions in a world called “Uno Plane”, with NFTs as a central part of the gameplay experience.
According to data from CryptoSlam, the NFTs have generated $8.1 million worth of secondary sales to date, with $7.6 million of that coming on launch day.
Other good news:
Layer-1 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain Flare welcomed its first NFT platform, after Sparkles went live in March. 2. The platform is set to refine the interoperability of native Flare protocols to increase the use cases of NFT tools.
In March. 1, trading platform Robinhood launched its Web3 wallet on Apple’s App Store, becoming available to iOS users in over 130 countries.
