In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: No Crying in Angie’s Pub (by PhoenixxDown)

• The Overhyped and Disappointing Launch of Abstract Chain (by Flower83)

What a lovely bull market this is. Aren’t we all having so much fun!

Flower’s got a super bearish article coming up, so I’ll try not to kill us all off in this section before you get to that. No promises, though—I don’t have much to work with in the grand scheme of the broader market.

Thankfully, Neo Tokyo is a place where bad news is deflected, and we carry on unperturbed. No crying in Angie’s Pub.

Alright, first on the agenda is… oh, God. Citizens, there’s an important announcement for your eyes only in the internal-announcements channel. You should check it out.

Do not be alarmed. All is well—in fact, it’s another indicator that better times are coming soon.

This announcement follows some discussion from the most recent Town Hall this past week. If you missed it, it’s well worth your time to catch the recording. There’s a lot of alpha on what’s being planned for the year ahead.

This Weeks Neo Tokyo Content

Interlinked #65 - This episode once again features two of our favorite Citadel superstars, Ben and Cryptoetheus, discussing the very real and chilling idea that US stablecoins could be a backdoor to a CBDC. The conversation also touches on geopolitical dynamics, potential U.S. expansion, and executive orders impacting crypto.

Market Monday - This past week’s session was titled “Is It ALL OVER?!”—which makes my job of keeping this article light monstrously difficult. The good news? We’ve reclaimed $100K since. As for the rest—airdrop season with $ANIME and $JUP, and AI Agents’ next leg up—it’s probably best if you just listen back to the recording.

NT x Unfungible Space - This one is going to be essential if this week is anything to go by—“Finding a Job in Web3 Gaming” was the topic of discussion yesterday. McDonald's is not your only option, Citizen. Listen back to the recording and expand your employment horizons in these trying times.

SOL Arena AMA - James Au (CEO) and Cabin (COO) join the AMA team to discuss their play-to-earn gaming platform, where players can test their skills against the competition, earn crypto, and trade unique in-game assets. Listen back here.

Goat Gaming AMA - Skilllevel7, the CEO of the Telegram gaming project, takes center stage for this AMA, deep-diving into his project that uses AI to create agents that work and play for you. AlphaGOATs autonomously compete, earn digital assets, and generate revenue from their fanbases. Listen back here.

Short Scoops

Congratulations to Chr0nicle! He was officially announced as part of the Neo Tokyo team during the January Town Hall! Chr0nicle is now our Business Development Lead, while still leading the Outreach Team and serving as Co-Founder of Rengo, an official NT partner.

Strong candidate for the NT MVP of the Year award category? Feels like a decent bet.

Massive Game Night Incoming! This Wednesday, SuperVerse, SuperChamps, and Neo Tokyo join forces for a $5,000 prize pool Game Night hosted inside the NT Discord!

JUST IN: Sacred Writ holders, time is of the essence! Find the Memory Sanctum.

Until next next week, citizens.

Abstract’s launch was supposed to be the next big thing in crypto, especially for NFTs. For many of us it seemed like a sure bet; a once in a cycle opportunity that doesn't come around very often, and when it does, you should take advantage of it.

But then it… it kinda flopped?

Almost immediately after its launch, it was enveloped by FUD from all sides as the hype around it slowly subsided. There were a bunch of issues the people reported right off the bat, such as:

• Lack of innovation. Some people made the claim that the Abstract chain was just another L2 farm fest with points program, despite them promising that farmers will not be rewarded.

• There were some immediate concerns raised by users regarding the initial setup of the network as well. Mainly around issues like the predominance of rugpulls and honeypots showing as “trending” in the coins category on the homepage, as well as the absence of contract security scanners.

• On the technical side, problems with the account abstraction (AA) system were noted and there were comments about the RPCs failing and some applications still being gated by whitelist codes.

Overall, many people described the launch as feeling “rushed.”

Personally I was a bit shocked that the signature to activate your wallet on abstract required gas. I have been told this is usually a bad sign, and more often than not something that can drain you.

But apparently in this case it was fine? Even mandatory. Anyway, I can imagine I wasn't the only one that waited a day or two because of this, staying cautious instead of chasing hype.

But the heaviest FUD seemed to come from people who wanted to use the chain for minting and trading new NFT collections. As a result, the floors look abysmal across the board.

I mean to be fair we should’ve seen it coming, right?

Over the past few weeks, we have seen dozens of new Discords popping up asking us to retweet their project. For some of them you could absolutely see that they were set up by greedy teams, merely there to ride the wave of this newly created hype and make a quick buck.

Their leadership disorganised, discord teams filled with names we never heard of, art mild at best but usually quite ugly, and mint prices high for the number of NFTs in their collections.

To add to all this, it was quite clear that the Abstract NFT space was not only flooded by low quality projects, but also oversaturated in general, even for legit ones. Many projects “building” on Abstract were setting high floor prices without considering the brutal and honest fact that there is only so much liquidity to go around.

Many active NFT mints were stalled during the mint phase and the teams had to either stop minting, postpone it, or give up altogether. This led to widespread dissatisfaction both from the team themselves as well as “NFT collectors” (read: flippers).

We shall see how all this plays out, but at this moment the future isn't looking too bright. However, some bigger NFT collections such as Kabu, Ruyui & Final Bosu have yet to mint.

I am cautiously optimistic that all this can be turned around in the short to mid term. I remain slightly bullish on Abstract.

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, is not financial advice, and does not reflect the opinions of Neo Tokyo.

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