Lily Liu, president of the Solana (SOL) Foundation, declared Friday that “gaming on a blockchain is not coming back” – a pointed verdict from a senior figure at one of the networks that had been most closely associated with crypto gaming’s commercial potential.
The comment arrived the same week Meta confirmed it would shut down its Horizon Worlds VR platform by June 15, after Reality Labs accumulated roughly $70–80 billion in losses since 2020.
Liu was responding to a Polymarket post about Meta’s move when she added her own assessment of blockchain gaming.
While Meta’s metaverse vision never involved blockchain or cryptocurrency, the two projects shared a central premise: that people would spend meaningful time and money in immersive digital worlds.
The Record on Blockchain Gaming
Solana’s speed and low transaction costs once made it the blockchain of choice for gaming developers. Projects including the ambitious space strategy game Star Atlas and move-to-earn app Stepn both launched on Solana and attracted significant early attention.
Neither delivered lasting user bases.
The broader GameFi sector absorbed billions in venture capital from the likes of a16z, Framework Ventures, and Animoca Brands during the 2021 bull cycle. Since then, token values across the sector have largely collapsed.
The play-to-earn model, best illustrated by Axie Infinity, briefly generated global attention before its economy unraveled – a pattern critics say has repeated across the category.
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What Survives
Not all developers agree the category is irretrievably broken. Mythical Games continues to build mobile titles incorporating blockchain assets for FIFA and Pudgy Penguins, though its CEO John Linden acknowledged in 2024 that the blockchain itself was “not really the secret sauce.”
Gunzilla Games’ shooter Off the Grid made blockchain interaction entirely optional, allowing players to access the full game without touching any NFT systems.
Liu’s statement drew pushback on X. One video game designer argued she was conflating legitimate blockchain game development with the failed play-to-earn model.
“Solana is a great place for everyone to build on,” the user added – a reminder that the foundation’s president had effectively written off part of her own network’s builder community.
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