Ethereum NFT Games: The Settlement Layer

ByNFT Video Games Editorial Team

Ethereum mainnet is where blockchain gaming’s oldest assets still live — and almost nobody builds games there anymore. Our twelve tracked records split three ways: the living worlds and RPGs that kept small persistent audiences, the endings that closed on record, and the ones gone quiet. The cluster is small on purpose — Ethereum’s gas prices pushed every game that needed cheap transactions to L2s years ago, and what remains is the blue-chip layer.

The cluster at a glance#

  • Decentraland — active; the original open metaverse (2020). LAND and MANA are mainnet assets, while wearables and the Marketplace run on Polygon for cheap transactions — the shape every surviving Ethereum game adopted.
  • Somnium Space — active; the social VR world that auctioned mainnet land in 2019 and is still running, retooling for Steam after Valve’s 2021 crypto purge.
  • Continuum World — active; the browser MMO where land NFTs sit on mainnet and the game runs free without a wallet.
  • Lost Relics — active; the action RPG that began on Enjin in 2019 and still ships content — the registry’s longest continuous development streak.
  • Otherside — early access; Yuga Labs’ metaverse bet, built around mainnet Otherdeed and Koda land NFTs — now extending onto its own ApeChain for gameplay.
  • My Pet Hooligan — early access; the shooter whose development restarted on a new engine in January 2026 — mainnet collection assets, gameplay gated behind paid access.
  • The Six Dragons — early access; the open-world RPG still in a free Epic alpha, its on-chain layer optional.
  • Wildcard — shut down; the card battler that closed with traction and returned its USDC treasury to asset holders — the registry’s cleanest documented exit, with the NFTs left on mainnet.
  • Etheremon — shut down; the 2017 monster battler — blockchain gaming’s first quiet death, ended by funding exhaustion while its assets stayed on-chain.
  • My Crypto Heroes — sunset; the Japanese RPG that ran eight years at the top of the category — end-of-service announced September 2026, with a Polygon rebuild planned.
  • Ethermon — unknown; the Etheremon successor’s official signal decayed past our verification standard — listed unknown pending the next sweep.
  • Voxels — unknown; the oldest persistent world we track (2018, as CryptoVoxels) — mainnet land parcels, but no dated official activity in months, so the registry refuses to call it alive.

The pattern: the settlement layer, not the playground#

Ethereum stopped being where games run and became where their most valuable assets settle. Decentraland keeps LAND on mainnet but moved its marketplace to Polygon; Otherside kept Otherdeeds on mainnet but built ApeChain for the game itself; Voxels stayed pure-mainnet and quietly fossilized. The lesson repeats across the registry: mainnet is for assets that justify the gas, everything interactive moved to L2s, subnets, or app-chains — Wildcard’s holders kept mainnet assets even as the game closed, and My Crypto Heroes is leaving for a Polygon rebuild at end-of-life. See the Arbitrum and Avalanche explainers for where those games landed, and the migration explainer for the pattern.

That makes this the least liquid-gaming cluster in the registry — assets here are expensive to move, so what survives is what was worth keeping. It’s the opposite failure mode from the new chains: Ethereum games didn’t die of platform collapse; they either outgrew the chain or simply faded.

What ownership looks like on Ethereum#

The highest-value NFTs in the registry: mainnet ERC-721 land and collectibles, traded on OpenSea and the games’ own marketplaces. The tradeoff is cost — every transfer or sale pays mainnet gas, which is why the living records mostly show optional or assets-only wallet requirements for playing but mainnet assets for owning. For the mechanics — custody, marketplaces, end-of-life scenarios — see what game NFTs actually do.

How we classify this cluster#

Four active, three early access, two unknown, two shut down, one sunset — small, old, and asset-heavy: Ethereum mainnet in the registry is a settlement layer more than a games platform. Per-record evidence sits on each profile; the set is browsable via the registry index and the Ethereum collection, verified on the schedule described at how we verify.

Verified September 24, 2026 · Sources: registry records for the twelve tracked Ethereum games · how we verify

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