Following on from the news that Laguna Games and the Crypto Unicorns DAO are sunsetting its Unicorn Party game, the US developer has now also shut down Crypto Unicorns‘s core land game.

In terms of the practical impact for players, they’re no longer able to breed or evolve their unicorn NFTs, a main part of the Crypto Unicorns gameplay.

In an official statement following a recent community meeting with CEO Aron Beierschmitt, the reason given for ending land gameplay is that “our current structure has become unsustainable after the recent liquidation event.”

It continues, “To ensure the longevity and success of the Crypto Unicorns ecosystem, we are (…) 

• Reducing team size from 80 to 15,
• Pivoting the core game: The core Crypto Unicorns game will transition into a fully on-chain experience”. 

Exactly what pivoting to a fully onchain experience entails is not yet decided, but the statement says that “we will be able to expose all data to the community, allowing them to build out tools, projects, and interfaces as desired.” Furthermore, Crypto Unicorns will open-source its smart contracts, in the hope of providing an easier process for creators building within its ecosystem.

The team also hopes to launch a war event that will see existing NFTs destroyed to reduce the supply and highlight the value of the most rare items.

Continuing the project in this scaled down format is only possible due to the evolving web3 technology, and notably the migration from Polygon to Xai earlier in 2024.

Moving forward, the team looks to involve the community and DAO more. It also affirms that Rainbow Rumble is already maintained by a second-party studio and the title will continue to explore future opportunities in esports.

Backed by Delphi, Bitkraft, TCG, BACKED, Polygon Ventures, and more, Laguna Games has raised a total of $31 million for Crypto Unicorns. The last public funding round was announced in March 2022.

For those wanting to give feedback and engage in the future of the Crypto Unicorns ecosystem, they can submit their ideas via this Google form.

Back when it launched in early 2022, Crypto Unicorns was a posterchild for the whole Polygon gaming ecosystem but the breed, battle and collection title has now completed its migration to Arbitrum L3 Xai.

Crucially, support for Xai means that users no longer have to deal with Crypto Unicorns’ own infrastructure, which resulted in much friction as you had to bridge assets to and from the Polygon mainnet.

The Xai migration has also resulted in the launch of a new native marketplace, gas-free transactions as well as various reward campaigns, both in the new CU tokens – effectively a reissued version of the old RBW token – and the underlying XAI token.

“Launching Crypto Unicorns on Xai is a game-changer for our community,” commented Aron Beierchmitt, CEO of Crypto Unicorns’ developer Laguna Games.

“With faster, gas-free transactions, a new marketplace, and enhanced features, the player experience is significantly improved. By combining these advancements with hyper deflationary tokenomics, we are setting the stage for a stable and sustainable in-game economy. Two years of bear-market-building is finally coming to fruition!”

Next up comes Crypto Unicorns’ play-to-airdrop campaign, which will launch on Monday 1st July and run for two months. Xai is including the game in its own Vanguard rewards campaign too.

Players will be able to earn Xai rewards logging in and completing tasks, while Shadowcorn NFT owners will receive additional Xai rewards by minting minions in the Shadow Forge, a feature in which they can harvest resources, craft rituals, and mint minions to improve their standing on the leaderboard. They will also have access to future Shadowcorn vs Unicorn game loops.

You can find out more and play the game via the Crypto Unicorns‘ website.