Good Morning!

In today's dispatch we have:

• Axies are coming to Homeland

• Octopus Network lays off 40% of its staff

• Mango Markets exploiter arrested
  

Axies are coming to Homeland! Axie Infinity finally released the Alpha version of Axie Infinity: Homeland after the first revelations in February 2021.

Homeland is an Axie Infinity version built on the land NFT platform, where players who own Land can farm there to get more resources for developing their Land. 

Things a Landowner can do in Homeland:

• Collect natural resources

• Trade with native Adventurers and other landowners for in-game currency

• Equip native adventurers to battle monsters

• Build buildings on your Land to store resources 

• Increase the number of Axies you can own

• Crafting items and weapons for exploration activities

• Show off your creativity and style by designing and decorating your plot.

And more!

Alpha is available via Mavis Hub for PC and Mac users. This first release is focused on gathering users' feedback on the current features. There will be an open feedback portal for players to report bugs, inconveniences or suggestions.

The developers have a four-phase roadmap ready for the Axies. In the future, Homeland will gradually bring in other features such as AXS token integration, NFT Axie, an in-game trading mechanism, complementary items for Land, mobile accessibility, and much more.

Even dungeon battles are on the list. And if you have no plans to own Land, wait until phase 4. 

This release marks the beginning of Phase 1 and Alpha Season 0. Alpha Season 0 will last around four weeks. During Season 0, top players will earn special titles for climbing to the top of the Homeland leaderboard.

NEAR Protocol project Octopus Network lays off 40% of its staff

Near protocol's Octopus Network announced that it is refactoring to adopt a refined project plan so that it can adjust to current market conditions.

As part of this transition, Octopus network is letting go of roughly 40% of its team. The rest of the staff will also be subjected to a 20% salary cut, and the team token incentive will be suspended indefinitely.

The company says that they are going to focus on building in the next year. This will include connecting various app chains, such as those built with Substrate or Cosmos SDK, to blockchains that support the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).

The Octopus Network's founder, Louis Liu, says that the Octopus community can't afford to onboard a batch of app chains only to lose the majority of them in a year, so they changed the strategy as it takes a significant amount of resources to support an app chain in terms of IT infrastructure and community mindshare.

Mango Markets exploiter arrested for market manipulation

Remember the $110 million Mango Market exploit that happened a few months ago? The guy behind that is arrested in Puerto Rico and charged with market manipulation and fraud.

The FBI charged Avraham Eisenberg with one count of commodities fraud and one count of commodities manipulation.

Flashback: Eisenberg led a team that exploited Mango Markets for $114 million in October by manipulating the price of the exchange's native token, MNGO. Eisenberg borrowed and then withdrew approximately $110 million in various cryptocurrencies obtained from other investors' deposits on the exchange using his swaps, which had increased in value.

The platform became "insolvent" because of all this, and Eisenberg then wrote on Twitter:

"I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are." 

Then he negotiated with Mango Markets and agreed to return $67 million to the DAO that governs the company. And now busted!

According to the FBI's recent complaint, Eisenberg's actions constituted both fraud and market manipulation because he "willfully and knowingly" engaged in a scheme involving the "intentional and artificial manipulation" of the price of perpetual futures on Mango Markets.