Where Are They Now? Blockchain Gaming's Money-Makers, Five Years After the Boom

Five years ago this month, in November 2021, blockchain gaming was at its peak. Crypto prices were at records, Axie Infinity's maker was valued at $3 billion, Forte had just raised $725 million, and a plot of Axie land had sold for $2.3 million. The people behind those numbers were some of the most talked-about figures in the games industry.

Where are they now? This is a status report as of November 2026, based on the most recent reporting we could verify. It is not a ranking of wealth: almost none of these people has a personal net worth published by Forbes or Bloomberg, and we have not invented one.

The founders who stayed in charge

A surprising number of 2021's founders are still running the companies they started.

• Trung Nguyen, Sky Mavis: still CEO, after the Ronin hack, the collapse of SLP and a 21% staff cut in November 2024. His bet now is Ronin as a home for many games, and a new Axie MMO, Atia's Legacy, which the company has said is due in 2026 (the Sky Mavis story).
• James and Robbie Ferguson, Immutable: still CEO and president, with the SEC investigation into their company closed in March 2025 and a new, non-blockchain marketing product for Steam launched in August 2026 (the brothers' story).
• Roham Gharegozlou, Dapper Labs: still leading the CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot company, much smaller than at its $7.6 billion peak (the Dapper story).
• John Linden, Mythical Games: still CEO, now running sports games with NFL and FIFA licences (the Mythical story).
• Gabriel Leydon, Limit Break: still CEO, still arguing for free-to-play NFTs, with a mobile game in soft launch (the Leydon story).
• Gabby Dizon, Yield Guild Games: still the guild's public face, though YGG shut its publishing arm in July 2026 and is pivoting to AI data work (the YGG founders).
• Yat Siu, Animoca Brands: still executive chairman, though the Nasdaq merger meant to relist the company was suspended in September 2026 (the Animoca story).

The founders who stepped aside

Others have moved on, sometimes by choice and sometimes not.

• Aleksander Larsen stepped down from his operational role at Sky Mavis in February 2026, staying on as a shareholder and board member and turning his attention to defence technology.
• Mihailo Bjelic left the Polygon Foundation board in May 2025. Anurag Arjun now leads the Polygon spin-off Avail, and Jaynti Kanani has also stepped away. Sandeep Nailwal went the other way and became Polygon Foundation CEO in June 2025 (the Polygon founders).
• Sébastien Borget and Arthur Madrid lost their executive powers at The Sandbox in August 2025, becoming "ambassador" and "chairman" as Animoca cut more than half the staff (their story).
• Greg Solano handed the Yuga Labs CEO job to Michael Figge in April 2026 and became chairman, with Otherside still unreleased (the Otherside story).
• Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano stepped back from Decentraland back in 2020. Meilich went on to co-found Big Time Studios (their story).

The ones who ended up in court

Big money brought big legal fights:

• Eric Schiermeyer and Wright Thurston, Gala Games' co-founders, sued each other in August 2023, with claims of $130 million and more than $600 million. We found no public report of a final outcome (the Gala story).
• Chang Hyun-guk, Wemade's former CEO, was charged over WEMIX disclosures and found not guilty at first instance on 15 July 2025. He now runs the listed studio Nexus, which he bought into with 5 billion won of his own money (his story).
• Dapper Labs settled the NBA Top Shot securities lawsuit for $4 million in June 2024.
• Mythical Games sued three former executives in December 2022 over a $150 million raise for a rival venture.
• Immutable received an SEC Wells notice in November 2024; the investigation was closed without action in March 2025.

The players and guild bosses

The people who earned from playing have had the widest range of outcomes.

The best-documented winners of 2021, such as the Filipino student John Aaron Ramos, who bought his parents two apartments, made their money by cashing out during the boom. The scholarship manager Christopher Cruz, who said he made up to 600,000 pesos on his best days, told reporters in 2023 that it had become hard to earn at all. Others, like Gian Carlo McGlay, who lost about 1 million pesos, and Elaine Tinio, who lost five months' salary, came out behind (the scholars; the managers).

In 2024 a new kind of player windfall arrived: Notcoin airdropped about 78% of its token supply to tens of millions of Telegram players (the Notcoin story). As with Axie, the players who did best were those who sold early.

The companies' scorecard

Of the big 2021-22 rounds, the clearest public reality check came from Animoca, whose 2025 Nasdaq deal valued it at about $2.4 billion, against about $6 billion in 2022. Forte, which raised $725 million in 2021, ended up buying and closing studios, including the maker of Dauntless, which shut in May 2025 (the Forte story). The Sandbox lost half its staff. Yuga's Otherside is still in development. Polygon Labs cut 19% of its staff in February 2024, and Mythical's 2023 round was about a quarter of its 2021 one. The infrastructure has held up better than the games: Ronin, Polygon and Immutable's networks are all still running and still courting studios, even where the games that made them famous have faded. The full list is in our guide to the record funding rounds.

By the numbers

• November 2021: the peak of crypto prices and of blockchain-gaming funding
• $7.6 billion: the highest valuation in this story (Dapper Labs, 2021)
• $2.4 billion: Animoca's 2025 deal value, against $6 billion in 2022
• 21%: Sky Mavis staff cut, November 2024
• Half: share of The Sandbox's staff laid off, August 2025
• 15 July 2025: Chang Hyun-guk acquitted at first instance
• 35: jobs cut when YGG Play closed, July 2026
• $37 million: Mythical's 2023 round, against $150 million in 2021

What to watch

The next 12 months will test the survivors. Can Atia's Legacy prove that an Axie game can hold players without paying them? Will Animoca finish its audits and list on a major exchange? Will CROSS, Chang Hyun-guk's new chain, succeed where WEMIX struggled? And will Otherside finally open to the 27,000 people who bought its land in 2022?

The bigger lesson of the five years is already clear. The people who made lasting money from blockchain gaming were mostly the ones who owned the companies, the infrastructure or the assets, and who either sold some at the top or kept building after the crash. For players, the money was real but short-lived, and it went to those who took it off the table while the music was still playing.

Token prices are highly volatile. Nothing in this article is investment advice.