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Pudgy Penguins launches its Club Penguin moment, and the game doesn’t feel like crypto at all

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(CoinDesk)

Pudgy Penguins shipped its flagship game to the general public on Monday, and the most notable thing about it is that you wouldn’t know it had anything to do with crypto unless someone told you.

Pudgy World, the browser-based game first announced at Art Basel in late 2023, went live with 12 unique towns across a world called The Berg, narrative quests where players help a penguin named Pengu find someone named Polly, and a set of mini-games.

CoinDesk played a 10-minute session and came away with a simple takeaway. It’s smooth, responsive, intuitive, and clearly not built with a crypto-first user in mind.

The game could be pure Club Penguin nostalgia for some users. The game was Disney’s browser-based virtual world that ran from 2005 to 2017 and peaked at over 200 million registered users, mostly kids who customized penguin avatars and played mini-games.

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It remains the template for what a mass-market penguin game looks like, and the comparison Pudgy World could be measured against in the broader audience.

(CoinDesk)

The NFT gaming space has spent years producing products that feel like wallets with gameplay bolted on. Pudgy World goes the other direction, building something that works as a game first and connects to the token economy second.

Whether that translates to retention and revenue is a different question, but the UX approach is a deliberate break from the pattern.

The PENGU token responded, jumping 9% on the day. Pudgy Penguin NFT floor prices held flat in ETH terms, though ether itself was up 5%, meaning the dollar-denominated floor rose with it.

(NFT Floor Price)

The broader context is that crypto gaming has mostly failed to produce anything people actually want to play. Projects that led with token incentives attracted mercenary farmers who left the moment monetary yields dried up.

Pudgy’s bet is that building an audience through toys, memes, and brand affinity first, then giving that audience a game, works better than the other way around.

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One game launch doesn’t prove the thesis. But shipping a product that feels like a game rather than a DeFi dashboard is further than most NFT projects have gotten.

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Crypto World

How United Nations Development Programme is using blockchains for public infrastructure

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United Nations

A new United Nations Development Programme report outlines how blockchain can support public systems.

United Nations

Public institutions are under pressure to modernize faster than their systems were built to handle. In its recent report, New Tech, New Partners: Transforming development in the digital era, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) outlines a model for using blockchains as part of a broader effort to modernize public systems. The publication showcases over 40 pilot projects around the world that apply blockchain technology to improve transparency, speed and accountability of public systems. This ranges from payment infrastructure and social safety nets to climate finance and community-level funding mechanisms, enabled by fundraising platforms, wallets and digital certificates. 

The UNDP uses a pipeline model, which creates purpose-built partnerships that bring governments, blockchain startups and local companies together to solve public sector problems. Institutions get an opportunity to test new tools through small, problem-led initiatives and specific use cases. These tools are implemented on a local level and designed to solve specific problems, such as inefficient payment rails for micro-entrepreneurs or regional ESG control.

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In its framework, UNDP treats blockchains as a trusted ledger for coordination and verification. The ability of blockchains to support shared records, traceable transactions and rule-based processes across multiple actors makes them a useful tool for governmental systems. UNDP also makes clear that these benefits are conditional. Poor governance, weak privacy protections and flawed technical design can create serious risks, such as defects in smart contracts or Illicit use of payment systems. The report reaches a pragmatic conclusion: Blockchain can be useful, but only when institutional safeguards are built in from the start and the technology is adopted responsibly with robust oversight.

Central to UNDP’s approach is a commitment to platform-agnostic ways of working, which ensures that no single provider or protocol creates new dependencies, and that the digital infrastructure being built today remains open, interoperable, and genuinely in service of people and public purpose.

The report showcases how blockchains can be used to make public institutions more efficient and transparent, with examples from more than 40 countries across payments, financial access, identity systems and climate-related programs. Examples include projects such as crypto wallets for informal business payments, the use of eco-credit tokens and more. The cases also show how digital tools can help institutions extend services in developing nations, where trust is limited and infrastructure is fragmented.

Explore the full UNDP report to see the complete framework, lessons and portfolio of use cases.

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This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as, legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. Cointelegraph does not endorse the content of this article nor any product mentioned herein. Readers should do their own research before taking any action related to any product or company mentioned and carry full responsibility for their decisions. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.

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Vitalik Buterin Envisions One-Click Institutional Staking

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Vitalik Buterin Envisions One-Click Institutional Staking

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has revealed the Ethereum Foundation used a simplified distributed validator technology called DVT-lite to stake 72,000 Ether in February, tech he says could make staking for institutions much easier.

“My hope for this project is that in the process, we can make it maximally easy and one-click to do distributed staking for institutions,” said Buterin on X on Monday.

Buterin explained that with DVT-lite, users can “choose which computers run their nodes, make a config file where they all have the same key, and then from there everything gets set up automatically.”

DVT-lite is a simplified form of distributed validator technology tailored for easier deployment, especially in institutional or semi-professional Ethereum staking setups.

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In regular solo staking, everything is run on one computer, which can result in “slashing” or penalties if it crashes, gets hacked, or loses internet. Full DVT splits the secret keys across many computers that constantly communicate, which is very secure, but complicated to set up.

DVT-lite uses the same validator key on several computers, so if one computer dies, another quickly takes over, resulting in almost no downtime and very low risk of penalties.

The Ethereum Foundation started its staking program using the technology in late February, and the assets are currently sitting in the validator entry queue waiting to be staked on March 19.

Basic representation of a full DVT setup. Source: Ethereum Foundation

“One click” staking for institutions

Buterin said that the idea that running infrastructure is this “scary complicated thing” where each person participating must be a professional is “awful and anti-decentralization, and we must attack it directly.”

He added that there should be a “docker container” or “nix image” or similar, which has “one click” or command line per node that automates the process of staking.

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Related: AI ‘vibe coding’ could put Ethereum roadmap ahead of schedule: Vitalik Buterin

Buterin said he plans to use DVT-lite soon and hopes more institutions holding ETH can stake in this way.

“We want the authority over staking nodes to be highly distributed, and the first step to doing this is to make it easy.”

In January, he suggested “native DVT” network integration, which would allow stakers to “stake without fully relying on one single node.”

Big demand for staking despite low prices

There is still a huge demand for Ether (ETH) staking despite its bear market price action.

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There are currently 3.2 million ETH in the validator entry queue, with a 55-day wait, and just 29,000 in the exit queue with a 12-hour wait, according to ValidatorQueue.

There are currently 37.5 million ETH staked, worth around $76.5 billion at current prices (around the same as the market cap of DoorDash or Motorola), and representing 31% of the total supply.

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