GameFi Before 2025: Lessons We Had to Learn
GameFi Before 2025: Lessons We Had to Learn
Sandbox, What is Next for GameFi?
If the earlier boom of GameFi was built on token driven incentives, today’s industry exploration is increasingly focused on uncovering deeper sources of value. In the wake of the initial hype, project teams and developers have begun to realize the limitations of the old "play to earn" and are reevaluating the relationship between incentive mechanisms and user behavior.
A new line of thinking is beginning to take shape: Rather than treating token rewards as an end in themselves, they should be integrated with real world actions and measurable service contributions. The goal is to build systems underpinned by genuine utility and external value. “Move to Earn” was an early attempt in this direction, aligning fitness behavior with token incentives. While exercise itself has intrinsic benefits, the collapse of its token economy revealed a key limitation. The intrinsic value alone is insufficient to sustain user engagement in the absence of financial motivation.
This has led to a new direction: Anchoring token incentives to additional, externally verifiable sources of value. These may include quantifiable services generated by user behavior—such as providing bandwidth, electricity, or data or funding flows from outside the ecosystem to reinforce reward structures. One of the most promising explorations along this line is the rise of DePIN. By deploying and operating physical devices, users contribute real world services such as connectivity, energy supply, and location data in exchange for on chain rewards. This model aims to break away from closed-loop incentive schemes, linking native value creation with real world supply, and holds potential for improving both user retention and system sustainability.
