Getting Started with Monster on MegaETH

Over the past couple of years, the trajectory of the tokenized Pokémon card niche has been up only, regardless of what's been happening in the rest of crypto.

This blooming has been accelerating, with onchain gacha spends having reached a new height of +$227M in May. The overall success makes sense, as tokenization solves a number of problems here: better global liquidity, de-physicalized trading, DeFi possibilities (like Jupiter's new Offerbook), and etc.

Of course, there's also just something plainly psychologically exciting about pulling a randomized item that has a small chance of being rare loot. It's not rocket science why this is popular, especially when paired with Pokémon's beloved IP.

Personally, I couldn't tell you much about the contemporary Pokémon cards scene, but I do try every culture app I can in crypto, so I have tried all the big onchain TCG platforms just to see what they're about for myself.

In these forays I found that it was a smaller site, Emporium, that I liked the most because of how streamlined and simple its gacha system was. Unfortunately Emporium just wound down recently, though, which put me back on the hunt for another slick onchain gacha I could settle around.

I didn't have to look for long it seems, as I just came across Monster on MegaETH this week. It reminds me of Emporium and what I liked about Emporium, i.e. ease of navigation, but it's also better in every way, at least per my tastes: better UX/UI, better cards, more expansive pack options, built with EVM and not SVM contracts, and so forth.

If you're not familiar with this sort of gacha platform, on Monster you'll start with an empty embedded wallet. You can use the "Add Funds" button to transfer or bridge in from whatever coin, e.g. ETH, and Monster will convert this automatically to USDm, the platform's medium of exchange.

Alternatively, you can deposit directly to your wallet (just make sure you only send USDm on MegaETH!), or you can buy packs via Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa, or Mastercard directly at the point of sale. Up to you.

Then to dive in you'd just head to the Packs page, select your desired tier (Starter for $50, Premium for $250, or Ultra for $1,250), and then press "Buy" to see what you pulled.

Each pack will fetch you one random card that's graded (by either BGS, CGC, or PSA), insured, and vaulted. The gacha page also lists out all the pack odds, so you know your exact chances before you buy anything. A starter pack gives you a 67.05% chance of pulling a common card and a 0.12% chance of pulling a legendary, for instance.

Love your pull? You can hold it in your wallet or have the physical slab shipped to you by providing your address. Don't like your pull? You can instantly sell it back to Monster for 85% of its fair market value. My first rip was a 2023 common Ditto, which I didn't want to hold, so I used the instant buyback option and recouped the funds to put toward another pull.

And that's all there is to it. If you don't do instant buybacks, you can manage your cards from your personal Vault page whenever you want. There's also the Marketplace you can surf if you want to buy certain cards directly.

Is this a revolutionary project that will change the world? Maybe not. But it's slick, easy to use, and fun. And sometimes, here and there, that's enough on its own.

Zooming out, it reflects well on MegaETH that it's attracting consumer projects like this right now. I'm playing Stomp on MegaETH, and now I'm ripping Pokémon cards on MegaETH, etc. There's just entertaining stuff to try here lately, and I'm using these apps firstly for recreation. That's a promising sign for the future prospects of the chain, in my opinion.