Right now, my X feed is full of people who are giving up on Web3 gaming. I get it. Over $12 billion of venture capital funding has gone into it since 2020 and they haven’t seen the sort of breakout success that many expected. Even the best games haven’t reached anything close to mainstream scale. Token prices are down. Studios are shutting down. And everyone is exhausted.

But measuring Web3 gaming by token prices alone is like calling the internet a failure because of the dot-com crash — it ignores how far the technology has come and where it’s headed. It’s missing the real story.

At its core, Web3 gaming is about giving players real ownership — not just of the in-game items that they buy and earn, but also their identities and achievements. In traditional games, players invest time, effort and money into digital assets that ultimately belong to the publisher. Web3 changes that. By putting assets on-chain, players can truly own what they earn—whether that’s tradable items like weapons or land, or non-transferable badges of reputation, guild history, or verifiable skill. It’s not just about buying and selling stuff — it’s about agency, persistence, and getting proper recognition for what you’ve built and what is really yours in the ecosystem.

The concept isn’t new. Players have wanted more control over their in-game assets for years. Look at the massive markets for CS:GO skins or World of Warcraft gold. But until now, those economies have been fragmented, restricted, or at risk of being shut down if a centralized publisher decides to shut it down or change the rules. Web3 makes these economies open, interoperable, player-owned and player-driven.

Ownership has always been the foundation of Web3 gaming, and play-to-earn was an experimental model that showed the potential for open and permissionless virtual economies on blockchain. Now, the industry is evolving with a stronger focus on sustainable economies and better tokenomics, deeper gameplay, and long-term player engagement.

But if you’re comparing Web3 gaming to Web2 gaming, you’ll be disappointed. Traditional gaming has had decades to fine-tune game design, build massive player bases, and develop business models that work, while Web3 gaming is still in its experimental phase. Sure, billions of dollars of investment can speed things up, but throwing money at a brand new category doesn’t magically buy it a track record or instantly create new games that people love.

I’ve been making games for over 20 years and I have seen every major shift get dismissed before it took over. Nobody believed mobile gaming could compete with PCs or consoles until it became bigger than both. Free-to-play was called a scam until it made more money and reached more players than ever before. Esports was a joke until stadiums sold out and prize pools hit millions. Digital skins were “worthless” before they became a multi-billion dollar market.

And now, Web3 gaming is at that same inflection point.

When I first heard about blockchain in 2018, everyone I knew in FinTech was talking about it. So of course I thought it was boring and I ignored it. It wasn’t until I learned about CryptoKitties that I actually took notice. When I saw people collecting, trading and actually owning these cute on-chain cats, that’s when I got excited because I knew they weren’t like other in-game assets. CryptoKitties were digital things that no one could take away from you. As someone who’s spent their life grinding in games, and their career convincing others to grind the same — without really getting anything for it — that idea of digital ownership gave me a whole new way to think.

So I went all-in on blockchain games. But 2018 and 2019 were really tough times. Pretty much no one else cared back then. There was no support, no real funding, no clear idea of what these games could be beyond speculation, and (outside of a handful of believers) there was very little conviction. The market was in a deep bear cycle, and many teams either gave up or ran out of money before they could launch. Still, some of us kept building. We stayed lean, experimented, and learned everything the hard way. It feels similarly bad now, but not as bad as it was then. Looking back, I’m so glad we didn’t pack it in when success was just around the corner.

When Axie Infinity broke through in 2021, everything changed. Web3 founders like Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin of Sky Mavis, Yat Siu of Animoca Brands, Sebastien Borget of The Sandbox, and me, went from being called crazy to visionary overnight. Suddenly, we were speaking on the main stage at conferences where we used to watch in the audience. We made news headlines and “Most Influential” lists. Investors who ignored our emails were asking how much they could put in. My email inbox filled up with fundraising decks pitching the next YGG.

Then in 2022, the market crashed, and just as quickly, we went back to being crazy. But that never really bothered me because crazy people are the ones who make big things happen.

Now, everyone’s asking: When is the next big Web3 game? The answer is this: good games take time. And if you look past the red candles to take notice of what exists already today, you’ll see we how much progress we’ve made since our industry was seeded in 2018:

In 2020, Axie Infinity had fewer than 500 daily players. Today, Ronin — the blockchain it built — has millions of active users, with 17 new games launched, and 134% growth in NFT trading volume in 2024 compared to 2023. It’s also gone permissionless, which means there will be more games, faster development, stronger network effects, and unpredictably big breakthroughs. Some of the biggest innovations in gaming like modding, free-to-play and esports came from unexpected places. By lowering the barrier to entry, a permissionless Ronin invites the kind of experimentation that could lead to the next Axie-scale success.

Pixels, a farming game on Ronin, hit a peak of 1.3 million daily active users (DAUs) and is holding strong now with around 250,000 DAUs even with its token down 96%. Players are spending more than they cash out, buying land, upgrading assets, and actually putting money back into the game, fueling the economy instead of extracting from it. This is how virtual economies should work, with real demand and strong retention. Most importantly, it is an indication that the play-to-earn model can work if done right.

Parallel, a trading card game (TCG) on Ethereum, just hosted a world championship in Las Vegas at the HyperX Arena — a venue that has hosted some of the biggest esports competitions from “League of Legends All-Stars” to “Street Fighter V’s Capcom Cup.” This was a prestigious event that saw some of the world’s best TCG players crossover from traditional titles like Hearthstone to become some of the first Web3 esports legends.

These are just a few examples, but they show the kind of traction we’re seeing: better infrastructure, growing communities, more sustainable virtual economies, digital ownership.

Those who FUD Web3 gaming today don’t understand it. They missed CryptoKitties in 2018, Axie in 2020, YGG in 2021, and they’ll miss the next wave too because they’re measuring the wrong metrics. Web3 is growing and innovating faster than any other sector in gaming. It’s not time to quit. It’s time to double down. Let them call us whatever they want: crazy, delusional. Visionary, pioneering. It doesn’t change what we do. We’ve been here before. Stay the path.

The German financial supervisory authority BaFin said it identified «serious deficiencies» in Ethena’s synthetic USDe stablecoin.

Ethena is the yield-generating protocol. The stablecoin has a market cap of $5.4 billion.

Ethena said on X that it will «continue to evaluate alternative frameworks,» after being notified that the «application under the MiCAR regulatory framework will not be approved.»

In a statement, BaFin said that the deficiencies are related to the «bank’s business organization and violations of MiCAR requirements, such as those regarding asset reserves and compliance with capital requirements.»

«BaFin also has reasonable grounds to suspect that Ethena GmbH is publicly offering securities in Germany in the form of ‘sUSDe’ tokens of Ethena OpCo. Ltd. without the required securities prospectus,» the regulator said.

Ethena’s ENA tokenhad dropped 6.5% in the past 24 hours, extending losses following the announcement, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Markets-wise, crypto was flat this week. Bitcoin was rangebound ($83,000 to $84,000). And the CoinDesk 20, which tracks about 80% of the market, stayed at about 2,600. Crypto prices suffered from being increasingly correlated with the wider financial markets, which are down on tariff worries and decreased corporate earnings. Some even said the bitcoin bull market was over.

But markets, of course, only tell part of the crypto story. There was a ton of stuff happening and much of it was positive for the industry’s future.

On the regulatory front, Washington agencies are gearing up for an historic “market structure” bill in Congress, Jesse Hamilton reported. Paul Atkins, someone who knows crypto intimately, is nearing confirmation as SEC Chair, as is OCC pick Jonathan Gould. Congress continues hearings on a stablecoin bill, as Tether continues to show its systemic importance (Kris Sandor reported). EU officials are fussing about USD hegemony of stablecoins, and are readying plans for a digital euro or CBDC (Jamie Crawley).

Eric Trump joined Metaplanet, Japan’s answer to Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy, as the Trump family continues to bet privately and publicly on crypto’s success.

Our reporters did some great deep-dives on protocol projects. Oliver Knight lifted the lid on Cardano’s price surge following ADA’s (sort of) inclusion in a putative national crypto reserve. Interestingly, that project doesn’t measure success in total value locked (TVL), an otherwise universal metric, preferring real-world use cases.

Danny Nelson looked at Pump.fun’s aspirations to dominate DeFi trading on Solana DeFi (following its domination of Solana’s memecoin issuance).

Meanwhile bitcoin miners are feeling the pinch of lower hashrates and declining transaction fees, which has erased post-election gains, Tom Carreras reported.

Jamie Crawley explored the efforts of bitcoin developers to introduce zero-knowledge proofs to that blockchain. (TLDR: it’s hard to soft-fork blockchains with decentralization as good as bitcoin’s).

Our Asia team continued to kill it, particularly in markets coverage. Resident technical analysis wiz, Omkar Godbole, correctly reported on the Fed ending QT as well as highlighting how the Turkish lira’s flash crash led to a surge in bitcoin volume in that country.

Shaurya Malwa continued his strong reporting on XRP, writing about Ripple boss Brad Garlinghouse’s comments on XRP’s chances of being added to the strategic reserve and on Ripple’s IPO plans. Malwa also reported on Raydium’s plan to start a pump.fun rival.

Sam Reynolds, who is based in Hong Kong, covered North Dakota passing a crypto ATM bill as well as reporting on how the man who stabbed Haru Invest CEO could face over a decade in prison.

And lastly, Parikshit Mishra’s swift coverage of Kraken buying NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion trumped most of the competition.

It was one of those weeks when a lot happened under the hood. Prices may be in a plateau. But the industry continued to move forward on lots of fronts.