Crypto Unicorns
The studio planned a smaller team, then switched off its farm game
A browser-based pet-collecting and farming game from the San Francisco studio Laguna Games, in which unicorns and land plots were NFTs.
- Team size before the August 2024 cuts
The company's own figure, given in its August 2024 announcement and repeated by trade press.
- Planned team size after the cuts
The company's own target for the reduced team, given in the same announcement. No later figure was found confirming the final headcount.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed round | 2021 | ||
| RBW token sale | 2022 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aron Beierschmitt | — | Codex Venture Partners | Oct 2026 |
Timeline
15 October 2021
The studio planned to open the game’s market with 10,000 genesis unicorn egg NFTs.
15 March 2022
Token-sale proceeds were held in the Crypto Unicorns DAO treasury, and buyers were given a role in its governance.
May 2022
Players started with a land plot and a unicorn, and could craft, trade and breed. Before launch, Yield Guild Games had bought 10,000 unicorns and 30,000 land plots, according to the launch report.
June 2023
A set of simpler mobile and browser games built on the same characters.
January 2024
Xai is a gaming network built on Arbitrum. The studio cited gas-free transactions and easier onboarding.
May 2024
Holders received one CU for every ten RBW.
26 June 2024
Came with a new marketplace and a two-month play-to-airdrop campaign starting 1 July.
July 2024
Bumpercorns, Mob Run and Unicorn Trivia were shut down, along with their real-money wagering features.
19 August 2024
The company called the core land game its most expensive operation and its largest source of new token emissions.
30 August 2024
Tokens left inside the game became inaccessible, and loot boxes and gems locked in it were lost. Unicorns and land were returned to players' wallets.
How it ended
Laguna Games told players in August 2024 that its structure had become unsustainable "after the recent liquidation event", and shut the core land game on 30 August. Unicorns could no longer be bred or evolved. The company said the marketplace, staking and the separate Shadowcorn gameplay would stay online and that the game would be rebuilt as a fully on-chain experience.
What happened next
- Community takeoverDecember 2024
Trade press reported in December 2024 that the studio had handed development and operations of Crypto Unicorns to its community through the DAO. The date of the handover itself was not established.
- Founder’s next venture11 December 2024
A fully on-chain game on the B3 network, with a first mint planned for January 2025 and a planned OLYMPUS token.
Corrections
Oct 2026
The smaller team size is an announced target.
The company announced a planned reduction, rather than a confirmed final headcount. The figure and headline now preserve that distinction.
Still alive
Open spot
Crypto Unicorns is gone. Is your farming game still running?
Spotlight your project here.
Sources
18 sources behind this page.
- 1Crypto Unicorns (tag archive) · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media)
- 2Crypto Unicorns cuts team by 80% and sunsets core land gameplay · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · Sep 2024
- 3Crypto Unicorns DAO and dev shut down Unicorn Party · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · Aug 2024
- 4Crypto Unicorns goes live on Arbitrum L3 Xai · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · Jun 2024
- 5Crypto Unicorns goes live on Polygon · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · May 2022
- 6Laguna Games raises $5 million for Crypto Unicorns · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · Oct 2021
- 7Laguna Labs unveils new fully onchain game Neo Olympus · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · Dec 2024
- 8RBW token becomes CU as Crypto Unicorns migrates to XAI · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · May 2024
- 9Codex home page · Codex (codexventurepartners.com)
- 10Crypto Unicorns Closes $26M Token Sale Ahead of NFT Game Launch · CoinDesk (syndicated on Yahoo Finance) · Mar 2022
Show 8 moreShow fewer
- 11Core Game Sunset Plan · Crypto Unicorns Blog (the company's own Substack, retrieved after the shutdown) · Aug 2024
- 12Town Hall 60 · Crypto Unicorns Blog (the company's own Substack, retrieved after the shutdown) · Aug 2024
- 13Crypto Unicorns Announced Unicorn Party Closure · GAMES.GG (formerly GAM3S.GG; the request redirected to games.gg)
- 14Laguna Games raises $5M to launch Crypto Unicorns with egg NFTs · GamesBeat · Oct 2021
- 15LinkedIn profile: Aron Beierschmitt - Cyberspace Cowboy @ Codex Venture ... · LinkedIn, as shown in Brave Search API results (self-published profile) · user-editable
- 16Posts on X naming @abearschmitt with Laguna or Crypto Unicorns, including Blockchain Gamer's post of 8 January 2025 · twitterapi.io (X API), retrieved 3 October 2026
- 17X account search for "Aron Beierschmitt" · twitterapi.io (X API), retrieved 3 October 2026
- 18X profile of @0xCodexVC · twitterapi.io (X API), retrieved 3 October 2026
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.