“The Heist” Team Returns with New NFT Game

Years after ‘The Heist’ became a viral, albeit temporary, success, Longwoods Labs is back with another NFT-based GameFi project, Defi Dungeons.

Ready for a change of meta, Solana’s onchain traders are eager to get their hands on $GOLD, the game’s native token. Over $6.6M has been deposited into the $GOLD alpha vault, which was oversubscribed within 20 minutes.

Are Solana’s onchain markets ready for an alternative to meme coins?

DeFi Dungeons Alpha Attracts $5M in Deposits

Launched via Meteora’s alpha vault, Defi Dungeon’s $GOLD token launch demolished its $3M  cap within 20 minutes of launch. At press time, over $11M has now been deposited to the $GOLD vault, illustrating high demand for exposure to Solana’s next NFT GameFi experiment.

While traditional launches favor snipers, Meteora’s alpha vault enables all investors to purchase $GOLD tokens at a capped price of $0.03. Purchased tokens are distributed to all contributors pro-rata based on their deposited share of the $USDC vault. Originally, Defi Dungeons intended to use $SOL for the Alpha Vault, but opted instead to use $USDC to avoid price fluctuations in the underlying asset.

Similar to Longwood Labs’ previous games, $GOLD plays a key role in the Defi Dungeons economy. Players will need $GOLD to upgrade their NFT character, trade in-game items, and go on quests in search of more $GOLD.

While this is inherently unsustainable, Defi Dungeons is likely to incorporate a wide variety of token sinks and burn mechanisms to support $GOLD value and introduce game theory elements to the economy.

Longwood Labs’ Returns

Defi Dungeons is the third GameFi project from Longwood Labs, a long-standing Solana-based game developer studio. Longwood Labs is best known for its previous game, ‘The Heist’.

The Heist was a wildly popular NFT game launched in April 2023, thriving during a period where Solana’s onchain activity was dominated by NFT markets. At its peak, The Heist NFTs traded at a floor price of ~20 $SOL, with rare traits like Gorillas (which boasted valuable in-game utilities) often cracking 100 $SOL.

However, the birth of the 2024 bull run spelled the end for The Heist. Rising $SOL prices and memecoin popularity drew attention away from NFT markets, causing the value and demand for The Heist NFTs and its in-game currencies, $NANA and $COCO, to plummet.

Is the Market Ready For NFT GameFi?

The Defi Dungeons launch comes at a time when Solana’s onchain traders are eager for a change of meta. Plagued by oversaturation and fatigue, Solana’s once-flourishing memecoin economy has struggled to reclaim users following the Kelsier scandal. 

As evidenced by the recent surge of rewards token launches like $IMG, which reached an all-time high market cap of $46M, traders want more from the trenches. 

Instead of financially nihilistic memecoins, Defi Dungeons presents a strategic asset backed by a gamified economy.

While The Heist was launched in the grip of a devastating crypto winter, Defi Dungeons is coming at a time when crypto, and the Solana ecosystem specifically, are home to millions more users. With its fantasy theme and bull market launch window, Defi Dungeons is oddly reminiscent of 2021’s Defi Kingdoms, whose native token $JEWEL hit an all-time high market cap of $1.3B.

$GOLD will be tradable around 1 hour after the alpha vault closes, with Defi Dungeons expected to release more information on NFT minting and the game’s launch in the near future.

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