‘Alive and Important’—Yat Siu Champions Web3 Gaming With Public Backing of New Game Tower

ccn.comPublished on 2025-08-02Last updated on 2025-08-05

Key Takeaways

Animoca Brands has invested in hundreds of Web3 gaming projects and startups.
TOWER is trading up 70% following Animoca’s token buyback announcement.
Web3 gaming tokens have surged in July with a 20% increase in market cap to over $20 billion.

Web3 gaming investment giant Animoca Brands is throwing its weight behind Tower (TOWER) and has commenced support with a hefty token buyback that drove the crypto’s price up by over 70%.

Trusted Partners with Special Offers

Token Buyback

“Web3 gaming is alive and important to the development of on-chain economies,” Animoca CEO Yat Siu said as he announced public support for Tower, by pledging to purchase the token on the open market.

The Tower Ecosystem is one of Animoca’s earliest community-centric Web3 gaming projects.

Siu notes it launched without traditional investor rounds, and explains that it is currently trending thanks to its Wreck League game becoming the number one app on Coinbase’s Base and Farcaster.

Tower is also home to Crazy Defense Heroes, and in both games, players are able to leverage crypto for in-game purchases, earn as rewards, and governance.

The TOWER token buyback serves a few purposes, though primarily it provides the Tower Ecosystem with fresh direct capital.

Buybacks can have a positive influence on the price of a token as they usually lower its circulating supply, creating scarcity and demand.

Brilliantly for TOWER holders, the news resulted in a huge 70% gain for the token.

Web3 Gaming

As noted by Siu, the move echoes a similar partnership between Animoca and Cross the Ages (CTA), one of the newest and most ambitious upcoming Web3 games and gaming ecosystems.

In this instance, Animoca threw its support behind CTA, offering industry expertise to aid in the game’s development, marketing, tokenomics, and providing liquidity.

Presumably, Animoca will be offering similar levels of support to Tower, as CTA has become one of the most prominent community-backed, high-quality projects to enter the market in recent months.

Indeed, Web3 gaming is alive, as player-built driven economies and virtual worlds flourish across titles like MapleStory N, EVE Frontier, Axie Infinity, and others — many of which are under Animoca’s gigantic Web3 gaming investment portfolio.

Overall, the market is performing well, with Web3 gaming tokens now comprising a $19.51 billion market cap, an increase of 20% in the past 30 days.

Trusted Partners with Special Offers

Was this Article helpful? Yes No

The Verdict in Choi Tae-won's Divorce Case: Revealing the Inheritance Undercurrent Behind SK Hynix's Trillion-Won Empire

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won's high-profile divorce case, involving a record 1.38 trillion won settlement, has drawn attention to the succession plans for Korea's second-largest conglomerate, especially its crown jewel, SK hynix. Unlike traditional chaebol scripts centered on the eldest son, Chey's three children from his marriage to former President Roh Tae-woo's daughter, Roh Soh-yeong, are carving distinct, non-traditional paths. Eldest daughter Chey Yun-jung (b. 1989) is seen as the most evident successor. With a scientific and consulting background, she holds executive roles at SK bioscience and SK Inc.'s growth support department, focusing on future strategy and biopharma. Her marriage is to an AI infrastructure entrepreneur, not a traditional business alliance. Second daughter Chey Min-jung (b. 1991) took a unique route, voluntarily serving as a South Korean naval officer, including an anti-piracy deployment. She later worked on policy and strategy for SK hynix in Washington D.C. before co-founding an AI-driven healthcare startup. She married a former U.S. Marine Corps officer, connecting her to U.S. defense and policy circles—networks crucial for a global semiconductor giant. The only son, Chey In-geun (b. 1995), who studied physics like his father, worked briefly at SK E&S before joining McKinsey. Despite fitting the traditional "heir" profile as the eldest son, he remains silent and holds no public position or shares in SK, suggesting the old succession playbook is obsolete. As SK hynix's valuation soars, becoming a geopolitical asset in the AI era, the heirs' legitimacy is no longer automatic. They must prove themselves in fields like AI biotech, global policy, and strategic consulting. Their marriages also reflect new elite networks in tech and defense, not old political alliances. Their inheritance is the complex challenge of navigating a globalized, tech-driven world, not just a corporate throne.

marsbit11h ago

The Verdict in Choi Tae-won's Divorce Case: Revealing the Inheritance Undercurrent Behind SK Hynix's Trillion-Won Empire

marsbit11h ago

Banks oppose stablecoin yield deal – Can CLARITY Act find 60 votes?

The Bank Policy Institute (BPI) has opposed the latest draft of the CLARITY Act, criticizing its provisions on stablecoin yield and illicit finance. The banking industry sought a total ban on stablecoin yield, but the bill's compromise only prohibits passive yield on idle balances. This opposition has influenced lawmakers, reducing tentative Republican Senate support to potentially 49 votes. With the 60-vote threshold needed, securing sufficient Democratic support appears difficult as some pro-crypto Democrats also oppose the bill due to ethics and illicit finance concerns. Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed doubt the bill can pass before the August recess. Market odds for the bill's passage in 2026 have fallen, leaving its future uncertain.

ambcrypto11h ago

Banks oppose stablecoin yield deal – Can CLARITY Act find 60 votes?

ambcrypto11h ago

2 Months, Valuation Soars from $8.8B to $68B! The Largest AI Model Hub OpenRouter May Be Acquired

Stripe is reportedly in talks to acquire AI model marketplace OpenRouter for a price nearing $10 billion, a dramatic increase from its $1.3 billion valuation just two months prior. The deal, which could be announced within a month, would see the payment giant absorb a key "router" or aggregation layer in the AI infrastructure stack. OpenRouter provides developers with a single API to access over 400 large language models (LLMs), automatically routing queries to the most suitable model based on cost, capability, and speed. This allows AI applications to optimize expenses while maintaining user experience. Founded in 2023 by ex-OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah and Louis Vichy, OpenRouter has grown rapidly, reaching $50 million in annualized revenue by April and serving over one million developers. For Stripe, the acquisition of OpenRouter follows its late-2025 purchase of usage-based billing platform Metronome. The combined strategy aims to create an integrated suite for the AI economy: OpenRouter would handle model selection and routing, Metronome would manage granular usage-based billing, and Stripe's core platform would process payments. This positions Stripe to control a critical part of the AI application value chain, influencing which models get used while simplifying cost management for enterprise customers.

链捕手11h ago

2 Months, Valuation Soars from $8.8B to $68B! The Largest AI Model Hub OpenRouter May Be Acquired

链捕手11h ago

From OpenSea to OpenRouter: Is Alex Atallah Repeating His 'Exit at the Peak' Playbook?

From OpenSea to OpenRouter: Is Alex Atallah Repeating His "Exit at the Peak" Playbook? According to the Wall Street Journal, payments giant Stripe is in talks to acquire the AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter in a potential deal valuing the company near $100 billion. This would mark founder Alex Atallah's second creation of a company reaching a $100 billion valuation, following his co-founding of NFT marketplace OpenSea. OpenRouter, founded just over three years ago, has grown rapidly by acting as a unified gateway for developers to access over 400 AI models. It currently has about 10 million users and processes over 200 trillion tokens monthly. While the platform's annualized revenue is around $50 million, its valuation has skyrocketed from $1.3 billion in March 2026. The potential acquisition by Stripe, a company OpenRouter's founder once likened it to, represents a major expansion into AI infrastructure for the payments leader. This move echoes Atallah's previous timing with OpenSea, where he departed before the NFT market's significant downturn. For OpenRouter, selling now may be strategic. Despite its scale, its business model—charging a 5-5.5% fee on AI inference calls—faces pressure from competition, open-source models, and potential price wars among model providers, limiting its profitability narrative for an IPO. A key asset for potential acquirers like Stripe is OpenRouter's vast repository of real-world AI usage data, which offers unique insights into model performance and developer preferences that are difficult to replicate. Whether this potential deal signifies a new valuation benchmark for AI infrastructure or another market peak signal remains to be seen.

链捕手12h ago

Pons V2 brings RWA trading pairs as Robinhood Chain broadens its ambitions

Pons, a key launchpad on Robinhood Chain, has launched its V2 upgrade. The update aims to boost liquidity, remove trading restrictions for most users via an ETH-denominated bonding curve, and introduces support for custom tokenized real-world asset (RWA) trading pairs. This aligns with Robinhood Chain's broader RWA focus. The upgrade also allows creators to collect fees in ETH by default. The network itself is growing rapidly, surpassing $300 million in Total Value Locked. Its cumulative DEX volume has exceeded $9 billion, with about 80% coming from speculative memecoin trading. However, data shows 63% of traders are at a loss, with profits concentrated in a small number of wallets. The introduction of RWAs could help drive more organic adoption for the chain, which is positioning itself as a major player for speculative trading, challenging networks like Base and Solana.

ambcrypto12h ago

Trading

Spot