Dan Harmon’s NFT Show Set for Season 3, NFT-Friendly Square Enix CEO Resigns and More

by · March 16, 2023

Krapopolisthe nonfungible token (NFT) pegged comic 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 the team announced the renewal via Twitter on March 2, stressing that NFT holders can still engage with the program before it airs.

Speaking to Deadline on March 2, Michael Thorn, Fox’s president of scripted programming, noted, “We’re so positive about the work we want to support and its ability to find an audience and succeed,” while emphasizing 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 cast 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 provides the NFT-related elements to the show.

The NFTs are called “Krap Chickens”, and feature cartoon chicken avatars in the same art style as the show. There are 10,420 tokens, with some still out at 0.18 Ether (ETH).

Crap chickens. Source: Krapopolis

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 CEO role from Matsuda. However, the move will not be finalized before an annual shareholder meeting in May.

Although Web3 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.

While at Square Enix, Matsuda took a bullish position on Web3 games several times.

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:

“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 Oasys blockchain gaming project in September. In December 2022, the firm also invested $52.7 million in mobile game developer Gumi Games to help develop mobile-based games to earn titles.

Mint Madness

Multichain NFT marketplace Magic Eden has launched a “Mint Madness” promotion offering free access or “free mint” to 13 Web3 games in March.

Mint Madness was published on March 3rd, and its 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

Disney-backed Baobab Studios sold out its first batch of 8,888 NFTs just nine hours after launching on March 2.

The cartoon avatar-focused droplet is called “Momoguro” and is attached to an upcoming role-playing layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution, ImmutableX.

The game features breeding elements and quests in a world called “Uno Plane”, with NFTs as a central part of the game experience.

According to data from CryptoSlam, the NFTs have generated $8.1 million worth of secondary sales to date, with $7.6 million on launch day.

Other good news:

Layer 1 Ethereum Virtual Machine blockchain, Flare, welcomed its first NFT platform after Sparkles went live on March 2nd. The platform is set to refine the interoperability of native Flare protocols to increase use cases for NFT tools.

March 1, trading platform Robinhood launched its Web3 wallet on Apple’s app store, becoming available to iOS users in over 130 countries.