Solana (SOL) Games After the FTX Collapse: Everything Gamers Need to Know

• Tokens related to GameFi projects involved in the Solana ecosystem have been an understated casualty in the collapse of FTX.
• FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried had been a major Solana backer, with the aim of investing $100 million in gaming projects.

GameFi projects built on the Solana blockchain have taken a major hit in the wake of the collapse of FTX, with the values of numerous game-tied tokens in decline. Of the affected titles, Aurory, TapFantasy, Star Atlas, and Mini Royale Nations have been some of the hardest hit. 

The FTX Crash

The FTX Group, with exchange FTX US and quantitive crypto trading firm Alameda Research under its banner, has been at the center of recent market turbulence as the company crashed, eventually being forced to file for ‘Chapter 11′ bankruptcy. Amidst the general market crash, Solana particularly suffered, as the Founder and former CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, had been a significant Solana backer.

FTX, Lightspeed, and Solana Ventures had pledged to invest $100 million in blockchain gaming projects as part of a consortium of venture capital firms in 2021. The agreement was a landmark deal for Solana, with Lighspeed Partner Amy Wu sharing her excitement on Twitter.

Recent events saw SBF’s FTX crypto empire implode, as the value of the FTT cryptocurrency token plummeted in the wake of the revelation that FTX had been operating with $9 billion in liabilities with just $900 million in liquid assets to cover them.

The Games Affected by the Collapse

Following the collapse of FTC, the in-game token of turn based role-paying game Aurory, AURY, has decreased 63.6% in price over the last seven days, according to data from CoinGecko, causing the game itself to tumble in value in turn.

Source: CoinGecko Chart of AURY/USD of the last 7 days.

In the same seven day period, Star Atlas, a space-themed strategy game built on Solana, saw the value of its ATLAS cryptocurrency decrease by 34%, as Star Atlas followed a similar trend to Aurory.

While Solana’s top game, TapFantasy, struggled with its value as it witnessed the value of its cryptocurrency TAP decrease 10.9% over the last seven days, it has maintained a strong playerbase, recording 2,563 unique active wallet addresses in the last seven days, based on data from DappRadar, representing a 22.11% increase over the same period.

On the Flipside

• The value of Solana’s native SOL cryptocurrency suffered a staggering 49.8% drop in value over the last seven days, indicating that game tokens were not the only ones impacted by the developments around FTX, and were rather casualties of events in the broader ecosystem.

Why You Should Care

While the collapse of FTX has hit broad strokes of the crypto space in equal measure, it is clear that Solana (SOL), and the games built therein, have been some of the worst impacted. The scope of the crash cannot be understated, however, as the drop has been felt by projects even outside of the sector.

While many of these projects will likely recover after the market stabilizes, the trials they currently face will allow new games to step in and take the spotlight—likely those built on competing networks.

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