In Brief:
- Anichess (official site) is returning M8, its onchain points layer, to Base, and players have until 23:59 UTC on Sept. 7 to opt in.
- Opting in means using a migration banner inside the game: tick a box and save. The studio says the whole thing takes under a minute.
- When $CHECK launched in November 2025, M8 accrual shifted to Abstract, separating points and staking from the chain where the token’s liquidity sat.
Players have a deadline of 23:59 UTC on Sept. 7 to opt in to shifting their M8 points over to Base, Anichess has said.
Everything happens in-game. “Open the migration banner in-game, tick the box, hit Save changes. That’s the whole job,” the studio wrote in the post that set the deadline. According to Anichess, the same opt-in is available on the game’s homepage and takes less than a minute to complete.
Migrate your M8 to Base.
Open the migration banner in-game, tick the box, hit Save changes. That's the whole job.
Deadline: September 7th 23:59 UTC@AnichessView on X ↗
The studio presented the points migration as the opening move in a broader homecoming, writing “Back to @base we go, mates.” Which other pieces of the ecosystem will follow, and on what timeline, has not been spelled out.
What is actually moving
M8 serves as the game’s onchain points layer. There is no way to buy it, because it is not a token. Two routes earn it: completing 15 Standard matches inside a week, with the reward scaled according to rating class, or staking $CHECK.
The claim window opens at 08:00 UTC. M8 left unclaimed piles up rather than expiring, and while weekend claims can show up behind schedule, they remain valid across a 24-hour window.
Spent M8 buys entry to Checkmate Arena, where 50 players are drawn at random every week and each of them walks away with a minimum of 500 $CHECK. That positions the points as the ticket into the competitive layer rather than a decorative score.
The split this reverses
Base was where M8 originally launched, in April 2025. Points accumulated during Season 3 — the public alpha attached to the Yield Guild Games distribution deal — were turned into M8 automatically, with nothing for players to do by hand.
It was the token that pulled the chains apart. $CHECK became the native token on Nov. 13, 2025, wrapping up a phased rollout that had started a day earlier on Nov. 12. Abstract became home to staking, claims, M8 accrual and the early $CHECK mechanics.
Liquidity and trading, though, remained on Base via Aerodrome Finance. That left anyone wanting to trade or provide liquidity bridging across from Abstract to Base. Throughout the whole period, the Ethernals NFT collection never left Ethereum.
Abstract was also the venue for the Pudgy Takeover, promoted as the first major Anichess event on that network. It featured a PenguBoard mode alongside a PenguBlast spell, placed as much as 600,000 $PENGU on the line, and limited tournament entry to players signed in via Abstract Global Wallet.
Where the game stands
April 2026 brought Season 8, titled “Overpowered,” which came with a spell rebalance that strengthened every spell in the game and reset both the Gambit and Standard ladders. In total the season is worth 700,000 $CHECK, a figure that includes a 600,000 $CHECK Gambit prize pool.
Supply of $CHECK is capped at 1 billion, of which 59.38% is set aside for ecosystem growth and player rewards. Its uses span tournament entry, staking that produces M8, in-game purchases and governance via Checkmate Improvement Proposals. Coinbase listed the token on April 2, 2026.
A subsidiary of Animoca Brands (official site), Anichess runs in partnership with Chess.com. King’s Gambit, a casual survival title, is slated for the fourth quarter of 2026 and is intended to broaden the range of things $CHECK does.
What the studio wants right now is a single checkbox. As for players who leave it unticked past Sept. 7, nobody has told them what becomes of their points.