An onchain gacha app is injecting new energy into the long-quiet NFT market.
In a new analysis, Bankless senior writer William M. Peaster said Fake World Assets, or FWA, is a random NFT acquisition protocol built by TokenWorks. Depositors place NFTs and a set amount of ETH into a pool. Buyers then pay the pool price to receive a random NFT position and can either keep the NFT or accept the original depositor’s buyback offer. Peaster disclosed that he is an FWA user and a holder of $FWA, saying his conclusions should be read with that bias in mind. The article was translated by ChainCatcher editor Jiahuan.
According to Peaster, the key question at launch was whether the system could keep working after the initial 15-day $FWA reward release period ended. One month after FWA went live on Ethereum, that reward window has closed, but he says the token-economic flywheel is still running and still adjusting. At the same time, the platform has begun to build a visible operating record, while an ecosystem around the core protocol is starting to take shape.
Small in size, but already among the leaders in revenue
Data from the FWA Pulse dashboard shows that FWA has generated more than 17,239 ETH in cumulative volume and completed more than 162,000 draw settlements. More than 5,400 positions remain active, representing about 1,108 ETH in locked value.
The protocol has collected more than 1,777 ETH in cumulative fees. Of that, around 406 ETH has been used to buy back $FWA, while about 138 ETH remains in reserve. For a protocol that has only been live for one month, Peaster said the figures are already meaningful.
FWA has also become a notable source of gas usage on Ethereum mainnet. On July 25, during its busiest stretch, it briefly became the single largest gas consumer on the network, ahead of Tether and Circle. Community members joked that FWA was trying to “save Ethereum” by manufacturing onchain activity. Whatever one thinks of random NFT draws, Peaster argued that the episode at least showed Ethereum mainnet can still handle sharp bursts of demand created by a new application.
An anonymous analyst known as Purposeful later reviewed FWA’s early numbers from a revenue and valuation angle. Measured by token-holder revenue, FWA has repeatedly ranked among Ethereum’s highest-earning protocols. On some days, its revenue exceeded the combined total of Pendle, Sky, and Uniswap, placing it in the top 10 protocols by revenue across crypto.
Purposeful added that, using fully diluted valuation relative to annualized token-holder revenue, $FWA traded at roughly 1.3x, 1.3x, and 2.3x on 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day annualized figures. Comparable protocols, by contrast, were sitting in a 29x to 237x range. By that logic, Peaster wrote, FWA could still have room for a significant repricing even if revenue stops growing quickly, so long as the market assigns it a valuation closer to peers.
Developers are building on top of the protocol on their own
One of the most notable developments over the past month, the article says, is the number of third-party developers beginning to build products on top of the core protocol. These efforts are not being directed by TokenWorks. They are emerging because the protocol is permissionless and composable.
Examples already in the market include:
- FWAAH, an alternative frontend built by Austin Griffith.
- Pull Pool, a group draw tool from onchain artist ripe. Participants can pool ETH to speed up access to FWA positions, then split settlement proceeds and $FWA rewards based on contribution.
- LFWA, a liquid FWA vault from madame/acc. It uses large shared positions to earn $FWA and ticket fees, and adds a “king of the hill” mini-game in which ticket buyers can temporarily become king and claim vault rewards if no one challenges them within the set period.
- FWAP, or Fake World Asset Pools, built by Quit and Jameson. The shared pool pairs depositor NFTs with ETH at a minimum backing amount, feeds them into FWA, and has executors cycle through positions while distributing profit and loss, along with $FWA rewards, to participants.
- Gacha Battles, a multiplayer winner-take-all game built by Eric Conner. Players draw NFTs directly from FWA’s live pools, and the player who lands the position with the highest ETH backing in a round wins the entire prize pool.
- FWA.gg, another game layer built by hov. It adds one-on-one pack battles and an expanding prize pool to FWA’s draw mechanic, with an onchain prediction market reportedly planned for the future.
Peaster said these projects were not built by TokenWorks and were not the result of an organized team push. For a protocol at this stage, he said, this kind of spontaneous, distributed, and inventive developer activity is one of the clearest signals to watch when judging long-term durability.
FWAIR opens a new path for NFT launches and distribution
FWA’s latest mechanism, FWAIR Launches, allows a new NFT collection to enter FWA’s shared random draw pool directly instead of going through a standalone mint.
The structure works like this: supporters first use ETH to back positions in a collection that has not launched yet. Once every position is fully backed, the collection enters the FWA pool. From there, the artist is no longer limited to one-time launch revenue and can keep earning fees from ongoing pool activity.
The first test project, FWAIR PFPs, was created by TokenWorks. It includes 111 PFPs, each backed by 0.25 ETH. According to a postmortem report published by Adam, 591 wallets made 17,735 purchase attempts to acquire items from the collection. By Peaster’s calculation, that made it the second-highest day in FWA’s history for draw count and ETH spent.
He said that suggests similar launches could become genuine growth catalysts for FWA rather than just short-lived gimmicks.
The second FWAIR project is Save ETH by artist Sterling Crispin. The collection includes 1,000 fully onchain NFTs centered on preserving Ethereum’s early history, along with a card game. Each position requires 0.05 ETH in backing. At the time the original article was published, the launch was scheduled for noon Eastern Time on Aug. 27. TokenWorks later confirmed that ETH backing had opened for whitelisted wallets.
Custom pools are shaping up as the next expansion step
Peaster wrote that FWA’s current traction rests mainly on version-one infrastructure. TokenWorks’ two developers still have room to extend the base protocol, and the feature closest to launch is a more flexible set of pool options beginning with user-owned pools.
Requests the team had previously collected include allowing NFT deposits without mandatory ETH, setting up separate pools for specific categories such as Pokémon, blue-chip NFTs, and newly launched collections, and adding fixed withdrawal windows. Once user-owned pools go live, Peaster said, they could support more formats and more products.
FWAIR PFPs can also be staked to gain early access to deploying custom pools. In the article’s view, that shows a more complex relationship forming between the FWA protocol and adjacent products: random draws steer demand toward existing NFTs, new launches attract collector demand, and NFTs that carry feature rights create reasons to hold longer term.
Peaster says FWA is already past the one-off hype stage
The article also says several questions remain open. It is not yet clear whether FWA can grow from an onchain gacha app into a major market for digital collectibles, whether its core pools can absorb a wider range of assets over time, or whether its token-economic flywheel can keep running over the long haul.
Still, Peaster argues that at least one point is already clear: even after the initial reward period ended, FWA continued to generate a substantial operating record; a third-party ecosystem is forming; and new features are being added. At the same time, it has brought real activity to Ethereum mainnet through sustained gas usage, rather than serving only users who enjoy random NFT draws.
Taking those factors together, Peaster said he remains firmly bullish on FWA. One month after launch, he wrote, it has not faded out quickly and has instead brought a level of NFT activity that the market has rarely seen in recent years. The next things he is watching most closely are whether FWAIR Launches can become an important NFT distribution channel and what other mechanisms will emerge on top of the core protocol, whether they come from TokenWorks or from community developers.
His closing point was straightforward: if you had previously viewed FWA as a novel but short-lived product, or had not examined it seriously, it is at least worth another look.