Proof of Play

Proof of Play was a decentralized game studio and blockchain technology company based in Silicon Valley that built fully on-chain games and the infrastructure to run them. Its flagship title was Pirate Nation, a free-to-play role-playing game designed as a "forever game" whose logic, assets and player ownership sat on-chain so that play could continue without reliance on external servers or intervention by the original developer. Players could evolve the game by adding or removing content and reshaping the in-game world, and the studio planned to open-source its technology framework so other creators could build additional on-chain games and applications on top of it. The company also operated its own chains for the game, Apex and Boss, and shipped a mobile title, Shiba Story Go.

The company was founded by veterans of Epic Games, Zynga, Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard, with CEO Amitt Mahajan, a co-creator of FarmVille. It raised a $33 million seed round in September 2023 co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Greenoaks, and former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear joined its board at the same time.

On August 4, 2026 Proof of Play announced it was ceasing operations, stating it could not build a product and sustainable business that proved its thesis at scale. It released four public repositories: the Pirate Nation Unity client and smart contracts under MIT licences (archival and reference releases, with commercial Unity assets, SDKs, credentials and backend services removed), Pirate Nation artwork and IP including Founder's Pirates NFT files, logos, combat cards and voxel assets under CC0, and PopBot, an internal tool for coordinating multiple AI coding agents. The independent Pirate Nation Foundation said it would continue supporting the PIRATE token, while the company's internal reward points were declared non-redeemable. Shiba Story Go was acquired by an undisclosed third party and continues independently.

Founding story

Proof of Play was founded by veterans of major game studios including Epic Games, Zynga, Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard, led by CEO Amitt Mahajan, a co-creator of the Facebook game FarmVille. The company launched with the thesis that blockchain technology could give players lasting ownership of in-game assets and allow games to persist beyond their original developers, contributing to a decentralized internet.

Business model

The studio developed and operated free-to-play on-chain games together with the underlying blockchain infrastructure, including its own Apex and Boss chains, and an associated token, $PIRATE, administered by the separate Pirate Nation Foundation. The company stated it could not build a sustainable business model around this approach, and did not disclose revenue, expenses or operating results.

Traction

Pirate Nation reached a reported peak of more than 100,000 daily active users before declining to roughly 10,000, with monthly infrastructure costs of approximately $150,000. Following the shutdown announcement, the PIRATE token fell nearly 14% over 24 hours to around $0.00112, with a market capitalization of about $803,000 and daily trading volume of roughly $209,000. The company did not disclose revenue, player or financial data at closure.

Latest developments

In August 2026 the studio announced it was ceasing operations, published four public repositories (Unity client and smart contracts under MIT, artwork and IP under CC0, and the PopBot AI agent tool), stated its reward points were not redeemable, confirmed the independent Pirate Nation Foundation would continue supporting the $PIRATE token, and disclosed that Shiba Story Go had been acquired by an unnamed buyer.