In Brief:
- Anichess (official site) says its games and Public Staking Pool already run on Base, and it’s telling players to migrate stakes and bridge $CHECK off Abstract.
- Abstract, the consumer Ethereum layer 2 built by Igloo Inc., shuts down Dec. 15, 2026. Funds left on the chain become inaccessible.
- Anichess has spent most of 2026 unwinding its Abstract setup, moving M8 points, claims and staking back to Base, where it launched in April 2025.
Anichess is pulling the last of its onchain footprint off Abstract, telling players their games already run on Base and that staked or idle $CHECK must move before the chain shuts down Dec. 15.
“Abstract is winding down. Anichess already lives on Base, so your games carry on exactly as they are,” the studio said in a post on X this week.
Abstract is winding down. Anichess already lives on Base, so your games carry on exactly as they are.
The Public Staking Pool is already on Base. Migrate your stake here: https://anichess.com/staking/migrate
Got $CHECK still sitting on Abstract? Bridge it over to Base:
The Public Staking Pool is already on Base, according to the post, which sent stakers to a migration page at anichess.com/staking/migrate. Holders got a blunter message. “Got $CHECK still sitting on Abstract?” the post asked, followed by a link to a bridge.
Dec. 15 deadline
Abstract said Oct. 6 that it will shut down its chain on Dec. 15, 2026. Funds not bridged off the network by then will become inaccessible, the project said. Users can exit through the Migration Hub at migrate.abs.xyz or the native bridge, which carries a three-hour delay. Stargate is listed as a third-party route.
About $76 million in bridged value still sat on Abstract as of Oct. 7, according to DefiLlama.
Igloo cuts its losses
Abstract was built by Igloo Inc., the parent company of Pudgy Penguins. Igloo Chief Executive Luca Netz said the company had funded the network for 18 months and lost tens of millions of dollars doing it.
“Unknown to most, Igloo, Inc. had been funding Abstract over the last 18 months. After losing tens of millions of dollars over two years, building consumer products, assembling an all-star team, onboarding some of the biggest brands in the world, and building a community of millions, we still had not found product-market fit,” Netz said.
“We could no longer justify taking from the Pudgy Penguins PENGU $0.008069 ▼ -19.4% business,” he said. Igloo raised more than $11 million in July 2024 in a round led by Founders Fund to build the chain, which launched its mainnet in January 2025. Abstract counted more than 400,000 users and processed more than 325 million transactions. Netz said Igloo weighed launching a token to keep the network alive and rejected the idea.
The decision came four days after Blast, another Ethereum layer 2, said on Oct. 2 that it would shut down because operating costs exceeded revenue.
Back where it started
Anichess launched its M8 points layer on Base in April 2025. The split came with the token. $CHECK became the game’s native token on Nov. 13, 2025, closing a rollout that began Nov. 12, and staking, claims and M8 accrual moved to Abstract. Base kept liquidity and trading through Aerodrome Finance, so players had to bridge between the two chains to trade or provide liquidity. The Ethernals NFT collection stayed on Ethereum.
The return trip began in August. Anichess opened an M8 migration opt-in on Aug. 25, set a Sept. 7 deadline and took final M8 claims on Sept. 13. On Oct. 2, the studio loaded 300,000 M8 into its public staking pool for payout over 30 days.
M8 is the game’s nontransferable points layer. Players earn it by finishing 15 Standard matches a week or by staking $CHECK, and it gates entry to Checkmate Arena, the weekly draw that pays 50 players a minimum of 500 $CHECK each.
$CHECK has a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens, with 59.38% earmarked for ecosystem growth and player rewards. It listed on Coinbase on April 2, 2026.
What the post didn’t address
The post singled out the Public Staking Pool, the open Timewish Fountain venue. It didn’t mention the Queen of Time OG pool, which is restricted to Season 1-4 players and Ethernal holders and pays a permanent 5x multiplier on Checkmate Reign emissions.
Abstract’s updated terms of service, published with the wind-down announcement, warn that no post-discontinuation recovery process is promised once normal transaction processing on the chain ends.
