The second season of Crypto: The Game (CTG) sold out in 13 minutes. Thousands of fans scrambled for one of 800 coveted spots on the survival game built on the Base blockchain. Given this popularity among crypto’s core community and the growing interest of outsiders, decentralized exchange Uniswap Labs announced announced today it has acquired the game.
“We’ve seen CTG generate a ton of excitement and Uniswap is focused on making on-chain experiences more human and fun,” Uniswap Labs’ chief operating officer Mary-Catherine Lader told Fortune. The purchase amount is undisclosed, but is a mixture of cash, tokens and equity.
As part of the acquisition, founders Dylan Abruscato, Tyler Cagle, and Bryan Lee, will join Uniswap. Together the companies are currently working on developing season three, while also exploring new interactive consumer crypto experiences. However, the game will not simply become an advertisement for Uniswap’s wallet or exchange, the companies explained on a call.
“Now we have the full force of Uniswap Labs behind us, we think that’s going to help us make season three the best one yet,” Dylan Abruscato, the game’s co-founder, told Fortune. Abruscato’s entertainment career spans beyond crypto, as his previous gigs include working as a producer for Saturday Night Live and developing once-viral mobile game HQ Trivia.
CTG has drawn inspiration from TV shows that pit contestants against each other like Survivor, Hunger Games and Squid Game. In the first two seasons of CTG, contestants bought in with 0.1 ETH (about $367), joined eight tribes of ten, participated in daily challenges, and voted each other out over ten days, until one person won the entire pot. A Japan-based player won the grand prize pot of over $150,000 in season one, with the prize pool growing to around $250,000 by season two.
Uniswap Labs sponsored a challenge in season two, joining the likes of Adidas—who created branded tracksuits for each…