I just noticed that SOL is in a quite critical position on the chart. The head-and-shoulders pattern formed since the end of 2023 is still clearly visible, and the price now at $84.94 is far below the right shoulder which was once at $250. Looking at the technical forecast chart, there is still potential for a deeper fall toward the Fibonacci 78.6% level around $70. The indicators like RSI and MACD are also still bearish. What’s interesting is that interest in futures continues to decline—SOL open interest has dropped to $6.35 billion from $8.82 billion last month. The funding rate remains negative, meaning traders are still pessimistic about the future price. Liquidations have also increased drastically this month. From a technical forecast perspective, all signals point in the same direction: more price pressure in the near future. But there’s one interesting thing—network activity on Solana has surged by 72% with 100 million active addresses. Transactions also increased by 36% over the past month. So despite the price being under pressure, the network fundamentals remain strong. This creates a bit of a contradiction—price forecast charts point to bearishness, but network adoption continues to grow.

Ethereum gives you the best opportunity to earn money onchain. Solana gives you the opportunity to lose money onchain.

The hottest topic of recent months is the collapse of blockchain games. Not long ago, the president of the Solana Foundation, Lili Liu, wrote something very decisive on X: blockchain games won’t come back. They’re completely dead. It sounds harsh, but when you look at the numbers for 2025, it’s hard not to agree. Let’s start with what happened. One major project after another announced closures. Pirate Nation by Proof of Play—the game that raised $33 million—shut down after 30 days. The PIRATE token plunged 92%. Ember Sword on Ethereum, which raised $203 million through NFT land sales, also stopped operations. Nyan Heroes on Solana, which was on a wishlist of 250,000 players, also closed. The NYAN token fell by more than 99%. Then came Symbiogenesis by Square Enix, an MMORPG by Gala Games licensed with The Walking Dead, and MetalCore—the list just doesn’t end. The most telling example is Wildcard. After its TGE in March, its market capitalization reached a peak of $1.1 million. The project received $46 million in funding from Paradigm, and founder Paul Bettner had experience developing Words With Friends and Lucky’s Tale. But even that wasn’t enough. The community accused the project of unprofessionalism and a soft rug pull. A figure that says it all: investment in blockchain games fell from $10 billion in 2022 to $293 million in 2025. This isn’t just a decline—it’s a collapse. The Blockchain Game Alliance called it a “necessary reboot,” but let’s be honest—it’s a crash. Why did this happen? The problem is that the entire sector was built the wrong way around. First, they created an investment structure based on tokens and NFTs, and only then went looking for players. But Web2 players want a good game, while Web3 players want to make money. When blockchain games couldn’t satisfy both sides, projects fell one after another. MoOnfrost is a vivid example. Oxalis Games raised $6.5 million, ran a year-long Play-to-Airdrop, and sold 1,833 NFT boxes priced at $150 each. Then in November 2025, the team announced they were exiting Web3 and restarting on Steam as a regular paid game without NFTs. CEO Rick Moore had even spoken publicly about “slow and meaningful Web3 games” just a day earlier. Three years and millions spent. The BGA report shows that 36% of respondents believe the main threat to the industry is “fraud, deception, or rug pull.” And while most of the closed projects weren’t malicious, from the outside the cycle of “fundraising—token launch—bankruptcy” looks exactly like a rug pull. A crisis of trust is the worst outcome. But wait—before burying the entire sector. The BGA says that 65.8% of professionals remain optimistic about the next 12 months. And this optimism isn’t without reason. Infrastructure and market conditions have changed for the better. NEXPACE CEO Sun Jion Hwan laid out the key idea: wallets, gas fees, and tokenomics are obstacles—not advantages. Blockchain should operate in the background, ensuring real ownership of assets, while players should focus on the game itself. If infrastructure intrudes into the gaming experience, that’s a design failure. Robbie Yang from Animoca and Christina Macedo from PLAY Network agree on one thing: the retention rate is the only truth. D1, D7, and D30 mattered in the console era, mattered in mobile games, and remain important in crypto. The mobile games benchmark: D1 35–45%, D7 15–25%, D30 5–10%. Most Web3 games don’t even come close to these numbers. Gabby Dizon from Yield Guild Games puts it bluntly: the industry has been measuring the wrong things for too long. Venture investments, token prices, NFT sales volumes—everything in that category is secondary. The real metrics are when players are willing to pay because they see value in the gameplay experience. Now it gets more interesting. Stablecoins and AI are opening up new possibilities. More than a quarter of respondents believe stablecoins are a key factor for success. Unlike volatile gaming tokens, they’re easier for new users. They’re used for prize pools, rewards, and international payments. Lower fees and instant settlement are changing the economics. And one more thing: AI is radically changing development costs. Simon Davis from Mighty Bear Games says that AI-based teams achieve results higher than those of traditional studios, spending only a fraction of the resources. Animoca believes the key to sustainability in 2026 will be AI-driven development practices. So blockchain games aren’t dead, as some claim. The market is simply moving into a new cycle. First, build a game that can stand up to traditional market metrics, then let blockchain at the lower layer realize real value. Stop treating tokens as a user-acquisition tool and focus on gameplay. This isn’t the death of the sector—it’s its evolution.