Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak: Fortnite’s Economy Would Skyrocket 10x Onchain—Here’s Why
Fortnite’s billion-dollar virtual economy could hit warp speed—if it ditches legacy rails for blockchain. Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak just dropped the mic: Going onchain would make it 10x more efficient, transparent, and player-owned. No more begging publishers for scraps of digital ownership.
Why settle for V-Bucks when you could earn real equity? Pollak’s argument cuts through the noise: Web2 gaming economies are glorified bank accounts with extra steps. Onchain assets? Actual property rights—minus the Wall Street middlemen skimming 30% off every transaction.
The kicker? Epic Games already flirts with crypto integrations. But full decentralization would let players trade skins peer-to-peer, earn yield on rare items, and even fork the metaverse if corporate overlords get greedy. (Looking at you, Apple’s App Store tax.)
Of course, traditionalists will whine about volatility. Newsflash—your fiat-backed V-Bucks lost 8% to inflation last year anyway. At least Ethereum’s gas fees are transparent about ripping you off.
Roblox, not Fortnite
John Wang, co-founder of Armor Labs and a former product manager at Immutable, a Web3 gaming platform, replied directly to Pollak’s post, asking, “Why WOULD it be better for the game company for their game to be onchain?”
Wang argued that games like Roblox already provide a developer-first platform with APIs for nearly every financial interaction imaginable. “I think going onchain is strictly worse for them because lower fees + worse experience,” he said.
He pointed to Roblox’s DEEP analytics capabilities, including tagging every UI component for retention and clickthrough rates, logging every trade, and regional pricing.
Pollak pushed back, noting that Roblox is not Fortnite. He continued his argument by claiming that a decade of experience working in the field has convinced him that on-chain systems can support a “more expressive and powerful set of financial and other APIs than web2 servers.”
Still, Wang countered that permissioned restrictions in Web2 platforms can sometimes be better for developers and players, urging Pollak to look more closely at Roblox as a model for what sustainable gaming platforms with product–market fit actually look like.
The exchange quickly drew in other voices from crypto Twitter, many of whom pointed to the repeated failures of GameFi projects to scale or retain users.
GameFi is a faltering sector
The back-and-forth brought out the current realities surrounding blockchain gaming, which peaked in 2022. Since then, it has largely failed to maintain momentum. Axie Infinity, once the poster child of play-to-earn, collapsed under the weight of an unsustainable token economy and security failures. Its Ponzi-like dynamics left many players in debt when new user growth slowed.
A recent analysis found that blockchain games suffer from high churn, with more than 60% of users reportedly leaving within 30 days. Other challenges plaguing blockchain gaming are the low adoption and high costs, with more gamers still hooked on gaming on Web2 platforms.
In the meantime, platforms like Immutable are working on bridging both Web2 and Web3 gaming platforms by leveraging partnerships with gaming heavyweights such as Ubisoft.
Critics also argue that most projects have prioritized speculative token models over the actual fun of playing games. The result has been short-lived HYPE cycles rather than sustainable communities.
However, while progress has been slow and challenging, the GameFi industry is still growing, with a market cap of $13.2 billion.
Can on-chain gaming still work?
For Pollak, the ability to build “more powerful APIs” and introduce transparent, composable economies outweighs the current challenges. He also stated that on-chain systems can still incorporate permissioned restrictions when needed, countering Wang’s point about the benefits of centralized controls.
Pollak’s posts may reignite new projects in the GamFi space, and maybe Pollak himself may commit resources to bring games on-chain, find solutions to their unique challenges, and scale. For now, the skeptics seem to have the stronger case as the failures of past GameFi projects loom large.
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