Client: Loop Games — gaming studio with games downloaded over 100 million times across Google Play and App Store, with prior exits of Match 3D and Match Tile 3D to AppLovin.
Project: Pethereum — Free-to-Play and Play-to-Earn metaverse where players collect NFT pets through mobile gameplay and use utility tokens to enhance the in-game experience. Decisions are made by a DAO governed by Pethereans.
Vircon Legal Role: Lead legal counsel to Loop Games on the structural design of Pethereum — compliance architecture, DAO governance, NFT distribution and tokenomics — with cross-border tax and securities risk analysis.
Challenge
Play-to-earn models operating in the grey-zone of blockchain regulation can drift toward token-economy patterns that resemble pyramid schemes when the legal architecture is not constructed correctly from inception. Pethereum had the potential to become one of the larger play-to-earn metaverses globally, which made it essential to set the structural defaults on the right side of compliance — across multiple jurisdictions — before the product reached scale.
Solution
Vircon Legal designed the legal framework end-to-end: jurisdiction selection, DAO governance constitution, NFT issuance mechanics, utility token design, tax positioning, and consumer-protection compliance across the target markets. The architecture was built to scale across multiple jurisdictions without later structural retrofits.
Impact
Pethereum launched with a clean compliance posture and a DAO-governed structure that allowed the team to focus on product velocity rather than ad-hoc legal remediation. Loop Games positioned itself as a credible operator at the intersection of mobile gaming and on-chain economies.
Related
For more on the practice areas relevant to this engagement, see ICOs, Crypto-Currencies & Blockchain, DAO and Startup Law.