1/ An Ethereum based trading card game is blowing up after their main competitor banned a popular pro player due to supporting the Hong Kong protests.

@GodsUnchained has now demolished @CryptoKitties record for daily NFT token transfers.

2/ On October 7th, Blizzard, the maker of Hearthstone, announced that they were rescinding the prize money from a champion pro player and suspending him for a year because he had spoken out in support of the Hong Kong protests.

3/ In response, Gods Unchained, a Hearthstone competitor built on Ethereum, tweeted that Hearthstone cared “about money more than freedom.” They also offered to pay for all of the banned Hearthstone player’s lost winnings. Their tweet has now been retweeted over 10,000 times.

4/ Since then, Gods Unchained sold out their Genesis Card Pack for a total of 33,333 ETH, equivalent to about $6.2 million.

5/ Blockchain-based games put gamers in control of their in-game assets. Gods Unchained cards are tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain, which means they can be freely bought and sold, and cannot be revoked or censored.

6/ Gods Unchained may be early evidence that gamers are starting to care more about owning their in-game assets, and that a larger shift could be on the horizon.

7/ Read more in my piece in this week’s issue of @coinmetrics State of the Network:

The Evolution of Ethereum Tokens https://coinmetrics.substack.com/p/coin-metrics-state-of-the-network-44c