What if thousands of gamers were using blockchain technology every day without realizing it?
That question has become reality through Playnance, a Tel Aviv-based company that spent five years building Web3 infrastructure in silence before making its first public announcement on February 5, 2026.
The gaming industry has struggled with blockchain adoption since CryptoKitties crashed Ethereum in 2017. Players reject wallet installations, seed phrase management, and transaction fees. Yet Playnance claims to process approximately 1.5 million on-chain transactions daily from more than 10,000 users, most of whom came from traditional gaming environments and never touched a crypto wallet.
The Five-Year Silent Build
Playnance was founded in 2020, during the same period when Axie Infinity dominated headlines and NFT gaming became synonymous with speculative bubbles. While competitors raised capital through token sales and public launches, Playnance took a different approach: building infrastructure without public exposure.
The company developed a Web2-to-Web3 gaming layer that integrates with more than 30 game studios, converting existing games into fully on-chain experiences. Every gameplay action, from character movements to item trades, executes and records on blockchain networks. Users interact through standard account creation and login flows, identical to conventional gaming platforms like Steam or Epic Games, while blockchain operations run invisibly in the background.
This technical architecture addresses the primary barrier to blockchain gaming adoption. A 2023 survey by the Blockchain Game Alliance found that 78% of traditional gamers refused to play blockchain games due to wallet complexity. Playnance eliminates this friction by handling private key management, transaction signing, and gas fee abstraction through embedded wallet systems that users never see or control directly.
The Numbers Behind the Ecosystem
Playnance operates several consumer platforms, including PlayW3 and Up vs Down, which share unified on-chain infrastructure. According to the company’s announcement, these platforms currently serve more than 10,000 daily active users and process approximately 1.5 million transactions per day. For context, Ethereum processes roughly 1.2 million transactions daily across all applications, suggesting Playnance runs on alternative networks optimized for gaming throughput.
The company reports that a majority of its users originate from Web2 environments, meaning they entered through traditional gaming channels rather than crypto-native platforms like Discord communities or DeFi protocols. This demographic shift matters because it indicates sustained on-chain activity from audiences that typically reject blockchain technology. While traditional blockchain games like Gods Unchained or Illuvium primarily attract existing crypto users, Playnance claims to convert gamers who have never owned cryptocurrency.
Playnance’s ecosystem includes G Coin, currently in pre-sale mode and available on the PlayNance official website. The token likely functions as an in-game currency or governance mechanism, though the announcement provides limited details about its economic model or utility beyond the gaming ecosystem.
The Infrastructure Layer Approach
The technical strategy behind Playnance centers on infrastructure rather than individual games. By building a shared wallet system and transaction layer, the company enables users to move across multiple games without repeating onboarding processes. This creates network effects similar to Steam’s unified gaming library, where purchasing power and identity persist across different titles.
Pini Peter, CEO of Playnance, framed the company’s approach around user behavior rather than technology education.
“Our focus was on building systems that people could use without needing to understand blockchain mechanics, we prioritized live operation and user behavior over public announcements, and this is the first time we are formally introducing the company after reaching scale.”
This philosophy diverges from most blockchain gaming projects, which often emphasize decentralization, token economics, and ownership models in their marketing. Playnance instead treats blockchain as backend infrastructure, comparable to how users interact with cloud databases or payment processors without understanding their technical implementation.
The platform remains non-custodial, meaning users technically control their assets through cryptographic keys, but the interface never exposes these mechanics.
The gaming industry has seen similar abstraction strategies succeed in other contexts. When cloud gaming platforms like GeForce Now launched, users streamed games without understanding server architecture or network protocols. Playnance applies this same principle to blockchain, hiding complexity behind familiar interfaces.
Why the Silent Operation Strategy Works
Playnance’s decision to operate without public exposure for five years raises questions about market strategy and competitive positioning. Most blockchain projects announce whitepapers, conduct token sales, and build communities before launching products. Playnance inverted this sequence, choosing product validation over speculative hype.
This approach aligns with broader trends in enterprise blockchain adoption. IBM’s 2024 blockchain report found that 67% of production blockchain implementations prioritize backend efficiency over public visibility. Companies using blockchain for supply chain tracking, cross-border payments, or credential verification rarely publicize their infrastructure choices because the technology serves operational needs rather than marketing narratives.
By focusing on live operation and measurable user behavior, Playnance avoided the cycle of inflated expectations and subsequent disappointment that plagued earlier blockchain gaming ventures. The company’s metrics, 1.5 million daily transactions and 10,000 active users, provide concrete evidence of product-market fit rather than theoretical adoption models.
The gaming integration model also reduces dependency on cryptocurrency market cycles. Traditional blockchain games experienced user exodus during the 2022 crypto winter when token values collapsed. Playnance’s Web2 onboarding strategy theoretically insulates user acquisition from crypto market sentiment, since players enter through gaming interest rather than investment speculation.
Why Gaming Is The Future for Web3: Marketing Timing and Industry Analysis
Playnance’s public emergence coincides with renewed institutional interest in blockchain gaming infrastructure. Immutable announced $200 million in strategic partnerships in late 2025, while Epic Games began allowing blockchain games on its platform after years of resistance. The regulatory environment has also stabilized, with clearer frameworks for digital asset classification in major markets.
The 30-game studio integration that Playnance claims suggests partnerships with established developers rather than crypto-native startups. Converting existing games into on-chain experiences requires cooperation from studios that own intellectual property and player communities. This differs from building new games around blockchain mechanics, which has been the dominant model since 2017.
However, the announcement lacks specifics about which studios participate, which blockchain networks host the transactions, or how economic models distribute value between players, developers, and the platform. These details matter for evaluating long-term sustainability and competitive positioning against platforms like Ronin, Polygon, or Avalanche, which also target gaming infrastructure.
The Stealth Operation Gamble
Playnance’s strategy carries both advantages and risks. Operating in stealth mode allowed the company to iterate on user experience without public scrutiny or competitive pressure. The reported metrics suggest product validation, but they remain unverified by independent sources. Daily transaction volume and active users can be manipulated through bot activity or incentivized behavior, common problems in blockchain gaming.
The Web2-to-Web3 conversion model addresses genuine user friction, but it also introduces questions about value proposition. If users do not recognize they are using blockchain technology, what benefits do they receive compared to traditional gaming platforms? The core promises of blockchain gaming, provable ownership, cross-game asset portability, and player-driven economies, become invisible if infrastructure runs entirely in the background.
Playnance’s emergence also reflects a maturing blockchain gaming sector that prioritizes usability over ideology. The shift from “play-to-earn” rhetoric to seamless integration suggests the industry is moving toward practical applications rather than speculative narratives. Whether this approach can compete with established gaming platforms that offer superior content, graphics, and social features remains uncertain.
The company states it will continue expanding based on observed user behavior and platform performance rather than speculative adoption models. This evidence-based approach could distinguish Playnance from competitors that prioritize token appreciation over user retention, but it also requires continued transparency about operational metrics and partnership details.
My Final Thoughts
Playnance represents an interesting test case for blockchain abstraction in consumer applications. The five-year stealth operation demonstrates patience uncommon in crypto markets, where projects typically seek visibility and capital through public launches. If the reported metrics are accurate, the company has achieved meaningful scale without relying on crypto-native audiences or token speculation.
The broader question is whether blockchain infrastructure adds value when users cannot perceive it. Gaming platforms succeed through content quality, community engagement, and accessible gameplay. If Playnance offers competitive experiences while providing blockchain benefits invisibly, it validates the abstraction strategy. If the technology becomes a cost burden without differentiated features, the model fails regardless of transaction volume. The company’s next phase will reveal whether silent operation translates into sustained growth or whether visibility and community building matter more than Playnance anticipated.
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This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYO
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