Proof of Play, the studio behind onchain pirate game Pirate Nation, told followers on X on Aug. 4 that it “will be ceasing operations.” A company built on the idea that blockchain-based games could anchor a new kind of internet, folded.
“When we started out, we believed games using blockchain tech had the potential to usher in a new, decentralized internet,” the company wrote. “Ultimately, we couldn’t build a product and sustainable business that proved out this thesis at scale.”
The studio raised $33 million in a September 2023 seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Greenooks, with Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan among the backers, according to Blockchain Gamer. Founder and CEO Amitt Mahajan co-created FarmVille, the Facebook title that helped define an earlier era of casual gaming economics. Tokens replaced crops this time around. The model did not hold.
Pirate Nation lived deep in the chain. Game logic and data spread across more than 300 smart contracts. At peak activity, over 1 million transactions a day, per Blockchain Gamer. Proof of Play built two dedicated Ethereum layer-3 networks, Apex and Boss, rather than share infrastructure with anyone else. Mahajan told the outlet each chain cost roughly $60,000 a month to run. Hit-game overhead. Pirate Nation was not a hit game.
The PIRATE token launched in June 2024. Stakeable for in-game points. Founder Pirate NFT holders got staking multipliers and a 10% discount on in-game purchases when they staked. Layered incentive structures were the hallmark of the blockchain-gaming category during its 2023-2024 buildout. None of it arrested the decline.
By August 2025, Proof of Play had already closed Pirate Nation’s active gameplay and killed both the Apex and Boss chains. Audience too small to justify the spend, per Blockchain Gamer. First retreat. The company kept a smaller operation running afterward under the name Proof of Play Arcade, hosted on the Abstract network, and licensed out infrastructure pieces including a verifiable random-number generator. Onchain game Gigaverse used some of that tooling. One web2 title, Shiba Story Go!, went to a third-party acquirer.
Now the full stop. Proof of Play open-sourced the Pirate Nation Unity client, its smart contracts, and its internal development tools. Founder Pirates artwork and branding went out under a CC0 public-domain license, per Blockchain Gamer. A separate, independent Pirate Nation Foundation says it intends to keep supporting the PIRATE token, even though the game that gave the token its original utility no longer exists.
Crypto.news also reported the closure, framing it as a case study in a well-capitalized studio failing to scale its Web3 gaming model despite a16z backing. The broader shutdown narrative tracks, even where that outlet’s own reporting was not independently re-verified here. Cointelegraph first surfaced the story for this desk’s assignment. This report draws primarily from the company’s own statement and Blockchain Gamer’s subsequent detail.
The math is unforgiving. More than a million transactions a day at peak. Private chains at $60,000 a month. Now the code goes public for free. The $33 million in seed capital came from two of crypto’s more prominent venture names. The gap between backing and outcome tells the story.
What is not on the record: how much of that $33 million remains unspent, whether a16z or Greenooks issued any comment, and what happens to Proof of Play’s staff. The company’s statement, as captured, cuts off mid-sentence after “We are…” The fuller text of the announcement, and any transition plan for employees, has not surfaced in public channels as of this writing.
