Off the Grid’s popularity is about ‘best of breed technologies’ 

Gunzilla’s Theodore Agranat said that blockchain technology helps “enhance’ gamer experience

article-image

Off the Grid modified by Blockworks

share


This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


The Off the Grid hype is still going strong, and anecdotally, I have to say that even my non-crypto husband has been playing it.

Anyway, on Empire today, Jason Yanowitz and Santiago Santos sat down with Gunzilla’s Theodore Agranat

Some of Agranat’s answers really help explain the popularity of Off the Grid — specifically, that’s it’s not necessarily about crypto.

Instead, “it is about best of breed technologies. In this case, blockchain technologies that will enhance the user experience. It’s all about the gamer and it’s all about the gamer experience.”

The team also had to innovate in order to incorporate the crypto elements. 

“To build up the marketplace, but we had to build our own blockchain because we didn’t find anything out there that really was up to the standards that we had … we ended up going with an Avalanche subnet that we highly customized, that we built on top of,” Agranat explained.

One of the things helping to differentiate Off the Grid is the use of a storyline. In a battle royale game like Fortnite, storylines aren’t always incorporated, but — putting aside the crypto of it all— perhaps that’s also what speaks to players. 

Admittedly, I’m not a PC player and I stick to my consoles, so I haven’t picked up the keyboard to test it out, unlike David. However, I am a sucker for a good storyline and that would be enough to get me into a battle royale game, which isn’t normally my cup of tea. 

Remember the a16z State of Crypto report from last month? I went back in and looked for gaming-related data to see if the data backs up a potential boom or if Off the Grid is alone on its own island, kind of like its in-game characters. 

Hot crypto subcategories — i.e. where everyone’s building this year — remain pretty focused: we have DeFi, blockchain infrastructure and socials at the top of the list. Gaming is a much smaller piece of that pie at 6.3%.

Source: a16z State of Crypto

To be fair, creating a AAA game takes time, and a decent amount of money. So perhaps we just needed a game like Off the Grid to prove the interest before we saw some pickup.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Unlocked by Template (7).png

Research

Union’s improvements upon Tendermint consensus through CometBLS, coupled with ZK proving through Galois, allow for a broadly scalable, cost efficient, and low latency IBC implementation that is feasibly scalable across every existing blockchain, virtual machine and runtime. The implementation offers modular crosschain interoperability without the need for trusted intermediaries.  

article-image

Ripple is eyeing ways to boost its financial profile, on top of social usefulness

article-image

Hal Finney joined the Bitcoin network in its first seven days

article-image

Bill Gates expects that within a decade, humans will no longer be needed “for most things”

article-image

A newly submitted SEC pilot proposal aims to tokenize US equities

article-image

As Schwab plots crypto trading upon “more clarity in the regulatory environment,” Morgan Stanley is reportedly interested too

article-image

Over 50 countries, including 8 of the 10 largest gaming markets, aren’t allowed to access the upcoming crypto game