Who were the 31 most impactful people in the blockchain gaming sector during 2024?
#31: Anthony Palma, Gaming Partnerships & Investments, Mysten Labs
One of the surprises of 2024 was the rise of Mysten Labs’ Sui blockchain. Most recently, improving sentiment around the L1 blockchain has been demonstrated in the performance of the SUI token, which recently surged to an all-time-high of $3.92.
More specifically, the chain has landed some key partnerships when it comes to gaming, notably signing NDUS’ pop shooter Xociety from Polygon, Animoca’s Darktimes, Gumi’s Brave Frontier Versus, SNK’s Shodown Samurai R and the relaunch of esports outfit Team Liquid’s loyalty program MyBlue. But the most surprising announcement has been its dedicated $600 PC-based gaming portable SuiPlay0X1, which is due for release sometime in 2025.
All-in-all then, an impressive show-of-force from Mysten Labs’ business development team, reflected in the inclusion of gaming partnerships & investment exec Anthony Palma.
#30: Rebecca Liao, CEO, Saga Labs
In a year in which companies announcing their new gaming L2 and L3 blockchains was en vogue, it took ambition to launch a new L1. Indeed, Saga was keen to highlight that it wasn’t really just an L1; instead “the L1 to launch L1s”.
Riding the year’s early wave of play-to-airdrop events, Saga’s own mainnet went live in April, with its SAGA token well-distributed through numerous partnerships with games and other blockchains.
Since then, it’s revealed its Saga Origins game publishing division, as well as highlighting key titles including K4Rally, Cluaido and Angelic: The Chaos Theatre.
And that activity has been headed by Saga’s CEO Rebecca Liao; someone always enthusiastic to make the case for why blockchain can disrupt the game sector.
#29: Michael O’Connor, CEO, Today
These days everything is a hostage to fortune, end-of-year write-ups as much as AI agent-led memecoin launches! The latter is certainly the current state-of-play for Michael O’Connor following the launch of AI agent Limbo and its associated LIMBO token.
Things really did not go according to plan but blockchain is nothing if not generous when it comes to providing opportunity for second and third acts. Equally, it shouldn’t be forgotten that as a very high concept AI-led social game announced in 2022, Today is way ahead of the curve when it comes to web3 agent interactions.
In that sense, very few other projects have its heritage or have built a reputation for overcoming obstacles and building towards an exciting goal, especially during the long bear years. Hence, it’s to be hoped that Limbo’s launch will quickly be forgotten – a bump in the road – as Today moves closer to playability and (eventual) launch. After all, the higher the ambition, the harder the path.
#28: Simon Davis, CEO, Mighty Bear Games
From the outside looking in, it’s easy to position the pivot of a company’s business model as a failure of its existing operations. And while that may be the situation in some cases, in others the pivot is instead predicated on the stark realization that a company’s expertise can be much better rewarded by a new arising opportunity.
To some extent, of course, the outcome of Mighty Bear Games‘ pivot from building a gaming ecosystem around its Mighty Action Heroes brand into building Goat Gaming, an Telegram-first platform of action games with high stake rewards remains unclear.
However, as the first established web3 game dev to understand and act on the opportunity, also quickly embracing the AI agents meta with the launch of GOAT AI, CEO Simon Davis deserves our recognition.
#27: Luca Netz, CEO, Igloo Inc.
Luca Netz made his name in the crypto space with the acquisition of the Pudgy Penguins’ NFT collection for $2.5 million in 2022. What a deal! The subsequent narrative such as selling plushies into Wal-mart has turned Pudgies into a blue-chip NFT collection; one which continues to reach all-time-highs.
However, his inclusion on our list is all about how Petz has built out the IP, especially when it comes to gaming, with an ecosystem including its Pudgy TCG Vibes, Pudgy World social platform, and mobile game Pudgy Party, which is in development with Mythical Games, not forgetting its Abstract consumer-facing blockchain.
#26: Yellow Panther
2024 has been a year in which many online influencers have stamped their reputation on the blockchain gaming space. And as well as those KOLs shilling coins – often their own bags – there have also been a collection of enthusiasts who have attempted to grow the market and educate their followers about what blockchain gaming is all about.
One of the most active has been Yellow Panther, who’s particularly focused on the dynamic southeast Asia market, and now also launched his own AI agent project in the shape of Agent YP.
#25: Manish Agarwal, KGeN
Well-known as an entrepreneur in the Indian mobile gaming market over the past decades following his CEO roles in companies such as Reliance Games and Nazara, Manish Agarwal got the blockchain bug in 2021, realising how decentralized technologies would enable the creation of new gaming communities.
This resulted in the formation of the Kratos Gamer Network (KGeN), which as well as building on its strong roots in the Indian esports scene, has also seen strong global expansion in 2024 with particular focus on LATAM and Nigeria.
#24: Saro McKenna, CEO, Dacoco
Launched in 2021, Dacoco’s Alien Worlds is one of the longest running-blockchain games and also one of the most misunderstood. Running on the WAX blockchain, with modes also on BNB, at first impressions it seems like a simple NFT-based resource clicker.
However, getting deeper into the experience, it becomes clear that this is just the trojan horse on which the community is building a set of fully decentralized autonomous organizations, with their own set of leaders – voted for by each DAO – treasuries and objectives.
2024 has seen it push into creating share lore for the game, which despite its age still has a daily active user base of around 100,000 wallets.
#23: Marco Van Den Heuvel, CEO, Merit Circle
Starting out as an investment-focused gaming DAO with its MC token four years ago, Merit Circle has radically changed its business model since, making games itself and now operating its own Beam infrastructure. Its timing was great too, with the migration of the MC token to BEAM at the end of 2023 enabling Merit Circle to ride one of 2024’s key trends, and propelling BEAM into the top 100 crypto rankings.
#22: Karel Vuong, CEO, Treasure
2024 has been an interesting year for Treasure and its CEO Karel Vuong. One of the year’s biggest stories saw the then-Arbitrum-based gaming ecosystem successfully proposing and then lobbying for a Gaming Catalyst Program on the L2 blockchain, which eventually passed, setting up a fund worth around $220 million (at that time).
Hence, Treasure’s subsequent move from Arbitrum to launch its own Treasurechain on the rival ZKsync’s infrastructure was a big surprise, and one that put the spotlight on Vuong and Treasure as it enters 2025.
#21: David Johansson, CEO, MetaKing Studios
While its main PC strategy game has been available in beta via Epic Games Store since October 2023, the big news in the Blocklords’ ecosystem this year was the launch and success of browser companion game Blocklords Dynasty, which peaked at 180,000 DAUWs during its first token airdrop event.
Combined with the launch of the LRDS token, which is now live on Ethereum and Base, and the recent launch of the master validator node for the Base-based Lordchain L3, Johansson has steered the project through some significant milestones. 2025 will see the focus switching back to the main PC game as new modes go live and the community is activated to get more involved in development decisions.
#20: Leah Callon-Butler, director, Emfarsis
As well as being the director of blockchain strategic investment and communication advisory outfit Emfarsis – including clients such as YGG, Confiction Labs, Sovrun and My Pet Hooligan – Callon-Butler is also a board member of the Blockchain Game Alliance.
And her most recent project is Metaverse Filipino Worker, a five-part series “exploring how Filipinos are embracing web3 as a new frontier for work”.
#19 Giulio Xiloyannis, CEO, Mon
Having bought out infamous NFT gaming project Pixelmon in 2023, Giulio Xiloyannis made the transformation complete this year, renaming the company previously known as LiquidX into Mon. For not only is it working on various Pixelmon-themed games, but the launch of the MON Protocol and MON token in Q2 2024 were key elements for Xiloyannis’ overall vision.
Other additions during the year included MON Ventures and the Eternal League IP franchise.
#18: Paul Bettner and Katy Drake Bettner, Playful Studios
The only husband-and-wife team in our roundup, Paul and Katy have emerged as an intriguing double act in 2024, with Paul the enthusiastic over-talkative creative and Katy the stern operative, always aware of the perils of “saying too much”. How much of this is an exaggeration of real-life it’s hard to judge. Could such a marriage dynamic ring true for other blockchain gaming couples? Maybe!
Nevertheless, 2024 has been a very interesting year for Playful as it moves beyond just being the developer of much anticipated PVP moba hybrid Wildcard, also revealing its equally-ambitious web3 game streaming platform Thousands.tv, which is currently in early beta.
#17: Grail.eth
One of the most interesting trends of 2024 has been the emergence of web3 gaming-focused KOL/investors. These came to the fore particularly in the opening months of the year with the explosion of gaming token launches, with the likes of Grail taking to X to provide a mix of real-time analysis as well as the aggressive shilling of his bags. No matter whether you think the trend is positive, negative or a blend of both, it’s one that’s here to stay.
#16: Sebastien Borget, COO, The Sandbox
Surely one of the busiest executives in blockchain gaming – and high scoring in terms of his air mile rewards – Sebastien Borget combines his day job as the globe-trotting COO of Animoca Brands-owned UGC metaverse platform The Sandbox with his role as the president of the Blockchain Game Alliance, the member-led organization for the sector.
Both come with their own challenges and opportunities, particularly as the current uptick in sentiment around crypto coincides with The Sandbox gearing up for its much anticipated launch. 2025 is already shaping up to be another year of being very busy in both virtual and physical locations.
#15: Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO, CCP Games
To have attended blockchain game conferences in recent years is to have heard CCP Games’ CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson impress with the deep knowledge that comes from successfully operating a 20-year MMOG day-in-day-out in the face of an often hostile community, albeit one also prepared to pay you a monthly subscription.
Whether he can now turn that expertise into operating a successful blockchain-based MMOG that’s fully onchain and fully composable will start to become clear in 2025 as EVE Frontier makes its way through its closed beta.
#14: Dingaling
Love him or hate him, few individuals have impacted the blockchain gaming sector in 2024 as much as the pseudonymous KOL Dingaling. The ex-Binance exec started out as a big collector of Azuki NFTs and has since become a very active angel investor and advisor, especially for gaming projects looking to tap into the degen whale community in terms of launching tokens.
However, dealing with Dingaling is a double-edged sword. He’s very happy to publicly call out what he considers bad – or non-accretive – behavior, especially if it impacts his bags!
#13: Gabe Leydon, CEO, Limit Break
Another year gone, another year with no news of Limit Break’s mobile project DigiDaigaku but CEO Gabe Leydon and his merry crew haven’t just been sitting on their hands and shitposting about XRP and AI on X. Well, Gabe’s been doing the latter, obviously.
When it comes to work, however, Limit Break has been putting in the hard yards, working on foundational protocols including ERC721C, which is now being used by the majority of new EVM NFT collections and marketplaces, as it allows them to enforce creator royalties for the first time.
Other technical innovations include Wrapped Native, a refresh of the wrapped ETH standard, and DN404, which modifies the ERC404 standard that combines the use of ERC721 and ERC20 tokens within the same smart contract in a more gas efficient manner. The next target is revising the ERC20 standard to ERC20C. The only other thing to expect in 2025 is more shitposting.
#12: Pavel Durov, CEO, Telegram
Putting aside the arguments about his contentious – or otherwise – links to Russia, the reported 100 IV-conceived children, not to forget his current arrest in France … in any other year, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov would be a shoe-in for the Most Hardcore CEO of the Year award.
He did his best but it’s Elon’s once again!
Nevertheless, Durov’s long term commitment to blockchain was fulfilled in 2024 as every Telegram account got a custodial TON wallet and the option to create a non-custodial wallet too. Combined with fullscreen mini-apps and the platform-wide Stars currency, the result has been an explosion in Telegram activity around crypto, including its now default status as the go-to option for scaling audiences with increasingly complex games, and even linking out to blockchains other than TON. Significantly all this has also seen Telegram becoming a profitable company for the first time ever.
#11: Sam ‘Inevitable’ Steffanina, KOL
Whatever you think of the phrase “web3 gaming is inevitable”, it’s undeniably become a meme in the blockchain gaming sector, used by many companies and individuals to nail their belief in the future of gaming to the mast of social media rough-and-tumble.
But more than being the instigator of a popular phrase, Inevitable Sam is also a key influencer in the sector, both as part of the Wolves DAO, and through his Gamified podcasts.
#10: Heidi Christine, CMO, Pixels
While the sector has plenty of focus on technical smarts and number go up, consistently building a community for a single product is one of the most challenging roles and one very few people manage to balance in terms of acting as a bridge between the dev team and fans who won’t agree with every decision, and tell you so in no uncertain terms.
Pixels’ CMO Heidi Christine has performed that role with passion and verve in 2024. As she told us “Set expectations and don’t over-promise“.
#9: Robbie Ferguson, president, Immutable
If 2024 would have been won in terms of having a message and sticking to that message, Robbie Ferguson would be number 1, with a score of 366. As he never stopped telling us, Immutable gained a lot of new games this year – more than any other chain (excluding all those casual mini-apps on TON). It also continues to be the most valuable gaming blockchain token, with IMX ending the year with a marketcap of $2.3 billion. More big numbers came with the news that its email-based Passport wallet broke the four million mark.
Plenty for Immutable to be pleased about then but 2025 must be the year in which generally large numbers become very big numbers about at least one big game.
#8: Kathleen Osgood, director of bizdev, Sky Mavis
If Ronin has had a great 2024, then it means that the people operating the gaming blockchain have also had a great year, and none less than Sky Mavis’ director of business development, Kathleen Osgood.
Key wins during the year included signing up the likes of Lumiterra, Ragnarok Landverse, Fableborne, Tatsumeeko and Wild Forest. And who knows what’s coming in 2025 as Ronin goes permissionless?
#7: Gabby Dizon, YGG
In a year when almost all other gaming projects announced their own blockchain, web3 gaming community YGG was significant in its absence. For – as co-founder Gabby Dizon put it – “we don’t want to create blockspace but fill it”.
And, more generally, YGG had a strong 2024, launching its token on Ronin, onboarding thousands of players in Pixels, running the successful YGG Play Summit in the Philippines, as well as announcing its Onchain Guilds protocol; tools which enable other communities to plug into its reward system, and in the process, filling up blockspace on the Base blockchain.
#6: John Linden, CEO, Mythical Game
As its narrative informs, 2024 will be seen as a crucial year for Mythical Games and its CEO John Linden. Most significantly, it was the year that its Mythos chain finally entered the mainstream with all its existing assets migrated over to its new permanent home as a Polkadot parachain.
It was also the year that many foundational features went live on the Mythical Market, including the ability to bundle together and quick trade cheap assets in order to buy more rare items. As a proof-of-concept, NFL Rivals broke $10 million of lifetime trading volume.
However, with games such as Pudgy Party, FIFA Rivals and Blankos Mobile all due to go live on Mythos during 2025, it’s the next 12 months that will really count.
#5 Aleksander Larsen, COO, Sky Mavis
In what should be considered a difficult year for blockchain gaming in terms of mass engagement, Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain was one of the brighter spots. Not only did it host the most popular blockchain game of 2024 in the shape of Pixels, but also incubated several titles which have a decent opportunity to launch well in 2025.
As for Sky Mavis itself, its founding team of CEO Trung Nguyen, growth lead Jeff Zirlin and COO Aleksander Larsen feels as its come as part of a triumvirate, with Larsen getting the nod in this context for his often pithy X interactions.
#4: Alex Paley, CEO, Faraway Games
Going somewhat under the radar, nevertheless US studio Faraway Games – and its CEO Alex Paley – have been some of the busiest web3 game devs during 2024. Thanks to its relationship with Yuga Labs, it was the co-developer on mobile game Dookey Dash: Unclogged, as well as working on its own Mutant Ape-themed city builder Serum City with Mutant Ape DAO Mutant Labs.
More Yuga-related news came with Faraway acquisition of the Legends of the Mara and HV-MTL IPs, and the later has already been integrated with PC shooter Shatterline, also leaning into the AI agent trend with the launch of HV-MTL agent (and memecoin) J3FF.
And the action will continue apace in 2025 with the launch of Faraway’s Avalanche-based L1 Fchain.
#3: Amitt Mahajan, CEO, Proof of Play
Following the successful launch of Pirate Nation’s PIRATE token in June, US developer Proof of Play has been quietly building out one of the most impressive fully onchain gaming ecosystems. It’s now operating two of the highest performant L2 blockchains in terms of daily activity to handle demand for Pirate Nation, which is in its season three play-to-airdrop event.
However, for CEO Amitt Mahajan, the key element will be the launch of the Proof of Play token, which is expected in 2025 and will enable the project to address to mass market audiences, in terms of scalability as well as allowing third party developers to engage with the ecosystem, and eventually even launch their own games.
#2: Yat Siu, chairman, Animoca Brands
With great power comes great responsibility. It’s a balancing act that Animoca Brands’ chairman Yat Siu treads with gentle aplomb as he continues to stress the fundamental benefits of blockchain-enabled assets for everybody – also quick to highlight trends such as memecoins and Telegram – while promoting some of the over 500 web3 consumer projects that Animoca Brands has invested in.
Also underrated is Siu’s presence in terms of acting as a crypto advocate with governmental and institutional bodies. He also seems to have a lot of fun with projects such as the proposed tokenization of his 300-year-old Stradivarius violin.
#1: Luke Barwikowski, CEO, Pixels
Across 2024, browser-based social RPG Pixels was the most popular blockchain game in terms of daily active unique wallets. But that headline masks much volatility as the game first rode the success of launching its PIXEL token, followed by some very sharp declines as its reward system was heavily changed.
Yet from a peak of over 1 million DAUWs to a low of under 250,000, CEO Luke Barwikowski was always clear that his initial goal wasn’t audience scale, rather building an engine that would reward engaged players; those for whom the rewards would further their engagement and investment into Pixels.
To be fair, this goal remains a work-in-progress, but progress has been made. And as the first playtest of Pixel Dungeons in December demonstrated, once a solid foundation has been laid, the Pixels’ ecosystem will be a great shape to add more games and leverage the power of play-to-earn to onboard millions of the right sort of players.