Oasys: The Gaming Chain Run by SEGA, Square Enix and Bandai Namco

Most blockchains try to impress with technical numbers. Oasys opened with a guest list. When its mainnet went fully live in December 2022, the companies helping to run it included Square Enix, SEGA, Bandai Namco and Ubisoft. For a moment it looked like the Japanese games industry had found its own answer to Ethereum.

Four years on, Oasys is still running, but its pitch has changed.

A chain built by game people

Oasys appeared in 2022 with roots in Japan's games business and a second base in Singapore. In July 2022, when it was only about five months old and had around 20 staff across Singapore, Japan, South Korea and the US, it raised $20 million through a private sale of its tokens in a round led by Republic Capital. Director Daiki Moriyama told TechCrunch that selling tokens rather than shares meant the round "doesn't dilute the equity" of the project. He also pointed to Japan's strict crypto rules as the reason for setting up in Singapore.

The mainnet rolled out in three steps, from 25 October to 12 December 2022: first the core network and its validators, then the game layer, then tools such as a portal for managing activity across the ecosystem.

Two layers: one for safety, one for play

Oasys's design is its most interesting idea, and it's easy to explain with a gaming analogy.

• The Hub Layer is the main chain, a layer 1. It runs on proof of stake, uses the OAS token and is built on a lightly modified version of Ethereum's main software. It is deliberately slow and careful. Validators must lock up at least 10 million OAS, and new smart contracts reportedly needed approval from the Oasys team.
• The Verse Layer sits on top as a layer 2, and each game company can run its own "Verse". These are fast, Ethereum-compatible networks using a modified kind of optimistic rollup that approves transactions almost instantly, rather than with the week-long challenge window standard optimistic rollups use. They are permissioned: Oasys controls who can run one.

Think of the Hub as the bank vault and the Verses as the arcade floors. Each publisher runs its own arcade, and the records are periodically locked in the vault.

The headline feature for players: on a Verse, gas fees are covered by default. Gamers don't pay them; the developer running the Verse does. Oasys still markets this today as "zero gas fees".

The games that moved in

Oasys's best-known early hit came from inside its own circle. My Crypto Heroes, a pixel-art fantasy RPG from Tokyo studio double jump.tokyo, moved to an Oasys Verse and by January 2024 had recorded more than 33 million transactions from over 684,000 wallets. The same studio built Battle of Three Kingdoms on an old SEGA licence.

Other names included Summoners War: Chronicles from Com2uS, and an experimental AI-driven virtual pet game that Bandai Namco released on Oasys in 2023. Ubisoft chose Oasys for its blockchain strategy game Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles.

The pivot: from games to "tokenized Asian assets"

Visit Oasys's website in late 2026 and you'll see a different headline: "Gateway for tokenized Asian assets." The chain still promises zero gas fees and still mentions cross-game NFTs and "immutable battle records", but the lead story is now real-world assets, or RWAs: turning things like property into tokens.

The clearest example came in July 2025, when Japanese real-estate firm GATES announced plans to tokenize about $75 million of property holdings on Oasys. The site still says that game companies "develop and operate Verses and games" and help govern the chain.

That shift mirrors the wider market. As blockchain gaming shrank in 2024 and 2025, several gaming chains looked for other uses for their infrastructure. Oasys didn't abandon games, but it no longer bets everything on them.

Why it matters

Oasys was the most serious attempt to build a gaming blockchain with the traditional industry rather than around it. Its two-layer model, where studios run their own fast networks and pay fees on players' behalf, has since become a common pattern across web3 gaming.

Its story is also a reminder of how much has changed. In 2022, the biggest names in Japanese gaming were willing to put their logos on a blockchain. By 2026, the chain they helped launch leads with property tokens. Whether Oasys finds its next big game, or becomes mainly a finance chain with a gaming past, is the question to watch.

For a wider look at the race between gaming chains, read our long feature on Polygon and its rivals.