Polygon Founder Hails Moonveil’s Resilience in Web3 Gaming’s Toughest Years

Key Takeaways

• Roughly 75% of Web3 games launched between 2018 and 2023 have failed.
• Interest in Web3 and crypto gaming is hitting new highs in 2025.
• Web3 gaming tokens now carry a combined market cap of over $21 billion.

The Web3 gaming sector is fiercely competitive, rapidly evolving, and often at the behest of the volatile cycles the cryptocurrency market regularly swings through.

However, some find a way through the crypto winters, uncertainty, and bear market — like Moonveil.

Web3’s Toughest

In a recent post on X, Polygon Foundation Founder and CEO Sandeep Nailwal reflected on the rollercoaster ride of Web3 gaming.

He described how the sector went from “hype” to “dead” between 2022 and 2024, before seeing hope reignited — only for some to now say, once again, that “it’s not working.”

However, as proof that persistence pays off, Nailwal pointed to Moonveil, a Web3 gaming ecosystem built by former Riot Games developers that has weathered the market’s toughest stretches.

The Polygon founder first encountered the project in 2022, the year it was founded, and has since watched it grow from a small game studio into a full-fledged ecosystem — complete with immersive games, a loyalty layer, and soulbound tokens (SBTs).

Nailwal doesn’t skip on mentioning the team’s missteps, noting their rocky token generation event (TGE) in June 2025, when Moonveil’s flagship MORE token launched and quickly lost value.

Still, the token has surged over 240% in the past month.

Moonveil is preparing for a mainnet launch this year, which arrives just in time for Web3 gaming’s big boom in 2025.

Web3 Gaming Up

It’s been a breakout year for Web3 and crypto gaming as the sector enters into an entirely new era, one that comes after years of studios and devs grinding away to bring high-quality titles to the space.

Nail adds that he’s seen many enter the space “with big ambition.” However, most fail to survive “beyond one cycle.” He equates Web3 development with freedom, but will test a team’s resolve.

Very few, like Axie Infinity, Gods Unchained, and The Sandbox, have managed to survive the many difficult market cycles that crypto has gone through.

For a while, Web3 gaming was toying with novelty, mainly through simplistic iterations of play-to-earn (P2E) models that were simplistic, unsustainable, and short-lived.

Now, 2025’s Web3 gaming ecosystem is full of titles with amazing graphics, incredible gameplay, a greater variety of Web3 features, and incredible in-game economies.

Interestingly, the crypto and Web3 features are becoming increasingly optional as titles like Off the Grid and others break into the mainstream.

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