‘Pixelverse’ Reveals Telegram Game Airdrop and TON L2 Plans as PIXFI Launches

Pixelverse, a crypto gaming franchise that has rapidly gained recent prominence in part due to the success of its PixelTap game on Telegram, launched its PIXFI token on Thursday—and revealed plans for rewarding players with an airdrop.

PIXFI is currently trading at a price of around $0.024, as of this writing, though price trackers vary on whether it’s up or down since launch due to the extreme volatility of newly launched tokens. CoinGecko calls it up 17% so far, while CoinMarketCap frames it as a nearly 5% decrease due to varying starting prices logged by each respective tracker.

The PIXFI token has a total supply of 5 billion tokens, and a Pixelverse representative confirmed to Decrypt that 13.6% of that supply is currently circulating, giving the token a market cap of around $17 million. It has amassed about $26 million in trading volume so far.

Pixelverse had announced that PIXFI would launch on The Open Network (TON), but the token's contract is actually on Ethereum. Expansion to TON may be coming later, but the details there are currently unclear. Decrypt reached out to a Pixelverse representative for clarity, but did not immediately receive a response.

Regardless of its current price momentum, PIXFI’s launch has paved the way for Pixelverse’s next steps, including offering token rewards for players via an airdrop. That’s something that the project had been cagey about leading up to the launch.

According to a Telegram post on Thursday, Pixelverse will let PixelTap players claim an NFT beginning July 25, with the rarity level of the NFT dependent on their in-game level.

PixelTap players and users of the Pixelverse dashboard who then hold a Rare, Epic, or Legendary level NFT will be able to claim PIXFI tokens via the airdrop, while holders of Common or Uncommon NFTs won’t get a token allotment.

But there’s a catch—or rather, some important nuance to consider. Users who opt to claim their PIXFI immediately will only be able to take 10% of the allotted tokens, with the remaining 90% “being recycled into the PIXFI Community Incentives Pool,” per an official explainer.

Players can earn out more or all of the allotment simply by continuing to play PixelTap and/or using the Pixelverse dashboard. It’s not a timed unlock, but rather driven by engagement.

“This innovative system rewards users for their actions similarly to how battle passes work in Web2 games,” the post reads, “meaning the more you utilize Pixelverse products, the more PIXFI tokens you will be able to withdraw.”

Pixelverse also revealed its plans to continue building in the TON ecosystem, which is closely aligned with the Telegram messaging app. Following the launch of PIXFI and the upcoming airdrop plans, Pixelverse plans to deploy a dedicated layer-2 scaling network on top of TON with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, called Pixelchain.

The Pixelchain testnet is set to launch next week, with Pixelverse describing it as the first EVM chain to launch on TON—though more are coming. Pixelchain will be used to power games and apps built under the Pixelverse brand. Decrypt inquired about the tech being used to power Pixelchain’s EVM-compatible TON layer-2 network, but did not receive immediate clarification.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to clarify that the PIXFI token initially launched on Ethereum, and if or when it's still coming to TON is unknown.