Former Blockchain Game Star Wildcard's TGE Valuation Falls Below $1 Million

On March 27, the once-celebrated blockchain game project Wildcard, which raised $46 million led by Paradigm, held its Token Generation Event (TGE) at 1 PM today. The token debuted on Arbitrum, reaching a peak market valuation of $1.1 million before currently reporting $809,000, with a liquidity pool of only $209,000. The community has widely questioned the project’s responsibility, labeling it a ‘soft rug’. Public information shows that Wildcard founders Paul Bettner and Katy Drake Bettner have impressive backgrounds, having contributed to well-known games such as ‘Words With Friends’ and ‘Lucky’s Tale’. In June 2022, Wildcard completed a $46 million Series A funding round, led by Paradigm, with participation from Griffin Gaming Partners and Polygon. At that time, Wildcard announced the establishment of The Wildcard Alliance, focusing on developing the Web3 game ‘Wildcard’ (a PVP game combining card, MOBA, and competitive elements, based on the Polygon chain, with future expansions to Arbitrum and others). Subsequently, the project made multiple changes to its roadmap, and its progress fell far short of expectations. However, the project completed its latest funding round in June 2025: Thousands (an associated Web3 creator protocol/marketing infrastructure, a sister company to Wildcard) and Wildcard Alliance jointly announced a $9 million funding round, co-led by Arbitrum Gaming Ventures and Paradigm. The announcement stated that this funding would be used to accelerate the development of the Wildcard game, the Thousands protocol, and the Thousands.tv platform (a creator-driven user acquisition and live streaming system). However, with the cooling of the crypto market, the popularity of the game and platform has not met expectations. In this context, the project chose to conduct the TGE, which naturally did not attract funding interest, and the token was not listed on any major centralized exchanges.