Following the DAO holiday break, our team–and our portcos–began ramping up operations for a brand new year. During January, we focused on Council onboarding, 2026 financial planning, lining up Q1 press announcements, and preparing our upcoming Transparency Report.
Read on to learn more about what the AGV team has been up to in the past weeks.
A Warm Winter Welcome to our Newest Council Member
During January, we onboarded the newest member of the AGV Council: @JoJo! Since his involvement with the Arbitrum DAO began in 2023, @JoJo has made numerous contributions to governance, including serving as Program Manager of the D.A.O. Grants Program and acting as an interim council member of the Gaming Catalyst Program.
We look forward to working with @JoJo and the entire AGV Council this year!
Transparency Report #3 Coming Soon
We are working toward our early February release of our third Transparency Report and expect no significant delays. We’ve noted all feedback and requests for specific information from the forums, AMA calls, and private conversations, and have been exploring how to best address these with support from the AGV Council and key delegates.
Portfolio Updates
The Lost Glitches Secures New Partnerships
The Lost Glitches has entered into a partnership with Twitch: an official TLG category, Twitch Drops, an interactive deck-tracker Extension, and a Creator Program are now live. Twitch is actively supporting the game with CTA messaging and a curated newsletter to ~500 genre-relevant streamers hand-selected by the Twitch team.
Additionally, the team has signed a publishing agreement with a small, China-based team called INFINITE PLAY LIMITED, whose members also work at leading local companies such as Bilibili and Transcend. They focus on bringing indie titles to the Chinese market and have a strong network across platforms, creators, and communities, giving The Lost Glitches a zero-cost, low-overhead path into China without building local operations themselves.
Wildcard Continues to Refine their Game
Here are some updates from the Wildcard team:
- Successfully hosted two major Preseason Open tournaments (Dec 19 with $5,000 and Dec 26 with $2,500 prize pools) as part of large-scale stress testing.
- Partnered with Stripe so users can receive direct tournament payouts in USD to their banks
- Executed a major gameplay refocus and simplification based on player feedback and tournament data:
- Removed deck-building; turned summons into fixed, champion-specific parts of their kit.
- Added in-match leveling progression so summons unlock over time, creating clear early/mid/late game phases.
- Overhauled the objective and flow (non-respawning goalie, always-active summon waves, visible wildcard power spikes, and clearer “kill goalie → score” win condition).
- Significantly improved match readability, skill expression, momentum, and counterplay while reducing randomness and exploitative patterns.
- Used real tournament data to rapidly iterate, setting the game up for the official Wildcard Ranked Season 1 coming next in early February.
Thought Leadership & Earned Media
- Rick Johanson shared his thoughts on how culture-native products are replacing consumer tech in his recent thought leadership piece, “The Death of Categories”.
- Ethan Sy, our Venture Associate, appeared on the Wolves Co podcast to share his views on web3 gaming.
A Busy Q1 Ahead
Our team has been hard at work lining up PR support for new and existing AGV portfolio companies, and we’ve got a lot of exciting news to share with you all in the coming weeks. We can’t provide specifics just yet, but be on the lookout for AGV in the press beginning in early February.
Thanks for your continued support as we strive to establish Arbitrum as the leading ecosystem for web3 gaming. We look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks; feel free to reach out with any questions or comments.