PYR is the native token of Vulcan Forged, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the in-game currency of a handful of play-to-earn fantasy games, including Block Babies, VulcanVerse and Beserk.

PYR, also known as vulcan forged PYR, launched at $2.10 in April 2021, around the same time that bitcoin (BTC) hit its first peak of that year. PYR reached a high of $5.71 later that month but fell to a low of $1.16 in June 2021.

The token hit its all-time high shortly after bitcoin set its own record in November 2021, and two months after social media giant Facebook rebranded to Meta, spending $10 billion on its metaverse division in 2021 and pledging more investment over the following decade. In early December 2021, PYR reached its all-time high of $49.74 at a market capitalization of $928 million.

PYR crashed later that month after a $140 million hack damaged trust in the platform at the same time interest in bitcoin and the metaverse faded away. By the end of January 2022, PYR had fallen to $8.51. The token’s price kept dropping; by the middle of June 2022, it had fallen to $3.14.

The token was launched as an ERC-20 token with a total supply of 50 million tokens. In December 2021, Vulcan Force also deployed PYR on the Polygon network. The team reserved 20% of tokens for staking pools, sold 40% in initial coin offerings (ICOs) and held another 35% in reserves to grow the protocol. The team initially held the remaining 5%.

After the December 2021 hack, PYR’s developers used funds reserved for the team to refund investors. It also implemented a buyback and burn mechanism. This involved buying tokens from the open market and then burning them to permanently remove them from circulation.

PYR is a utility token. It’s used to buy NFTs and other virtual assets in the Vulcan Forged in-game marketplace and within Vulcan Forged games.

The flagship game of Vulcan Forged is VulcanVerse, an open-world massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The game is rendered in a 3D world, the quality of which lags far behind most modern video games.

At the center of the map sits the Palace of Vulcan. The world is then split into four quadrants that sprawl outwards in all directions from the Palace, each with their own look, design and building materials.

PYR can be spent on buying in-game land (similar to Decentraland or The Sandbox). Players can work the land (read: stake PYR coins) or recruit creatures called Vulcanites to toil on their behalf. They can also add buildings that produce goods, then trade these with other players for PYR tokens. A secondary token, LAVA, is used to upgrade land and buy in-game items.

Vulcan PYR was issued by Vulcan’s British Virgin Islands company, Vulcan Forged LTD. The project’s long-term steward is the Vulcan Foundation. The Singapore-based Foundation governs and markets the project. It also wrangles the community and handles operations.

VulcanForged, the entity that develops the games, is based in Athens, Greece, but is globally distributed. Its CEO is Jamie Thomson.

VulcanVerse launched in beta in July 2021. Other games include Battle Chess, Forge Arena, Beserk and Block Babies.