Gigaverse Switched Off Its 'Degen RPG'. Now It Wants to Be a Cartoon Brand

Most blockchain games that close simply fade away. Gigaverse threw a final event, called it "The Awakening", and switched itself off. Its founder now says the future is not a crypto game at all, but a small, hand-animated cartoon character that millions of people watch on YouTube.

Gigaverse, a high-risk, high-reward browser RPG that launched on the Abstract blockchain in early 2025, went offline on 9 October 2026. Founder Dith has announced a new persistent MMORPG, Gigaverse Online, due "soon", which will be a multichain browser game built for a broader audience, with tutorials and less pay-to-win design. It is set to launch on Robinhood's blockchain.

What Gigaverse was

In crypto slang, Gigaverse was a "degen" RPG: a game built for risk-takers, with high risks and high rewards. That design attracted big-spending crypto "whales", but it was not built to welcome newcomers, which is exactly what its successor promises to fix. The studio has not published player counts or revenue, so how big it really got is unclear.

Its timing was also unlucky. Abstract, the network it launched on, is itself heading for a shutdown, and at least one other project on the chain is already moving its assets elsewhere.

The Giga Noob bet

The pivot centres on Giga Noob, a small, hand-drawn animated character. The numbers are striking for a crypto studio:

• The Giga Noob YouTube channel has more than 2.3 million subscribers.
• It drew 35 million unique monthly viewers in September 2026.
• Dith claims that one in eight American family households has watched the character, a figure the studio has not independently backed up.

The plan is a character-driven brand: a limited online store of first-generation Giga Noob items due around Christmas, another game said to be close to release, a third in early development, a second character with its own channel, and Nooby, a habit-tracking mobile app whose site does not mention crypto.

A familiar pattern

Gigaverse's arc will sound familiar to anyone who followed Pixels or Illuvium. A game designed around crypto rewards found an enthusiastic, high-spending core, but that core was never going to become a mass audience. Each studio's answer has been the same in spirit: keep the existing community, but build the next product for people who do not care about tokens. In Gigaverse's case, that means a gentler MMO and a cartoon first, with NFTs as a side door.

Why the pivot makes sense, and why it might not

The thinking behind it is that AI is making copyable content cheap, so characters people genuinely love become more valuable over time, and can be turned into money through collectibles and gacha-style draws. It is a coherent idea. It is also unproven: Gigaverse has attracted crypto whales on one side and young adult YouTube viewers on the other, but has not shown it can join the two into one mass-market business.

WGC's take

Gigaverse's closure is a small story with a big lesson. A game built for high-stakes crypto players can make money fast, but it does not build an audience that lasts. The studio's most valuable asset turned out to be a cartoon that most of its viewers have never connected with a blockchain. If Gigaverse Online really does lower the stakes and welcome newcomers, it could be a better game. If not, the cartoon may outlive the crypto entirely.