May 1, 2025 — Pixels has launched $PIXEL Staking, a new system that allows players to support their favorite games, earn rewards directly tied to a game’s success, and have a real voice in the future of the ecosystem. Players can stake their Pixel tokens directly into different games within the Pixel ecosystem, such as Core Pixels, Forgotten Runiverse, and Pixel Dungeons.
$PIXEL Staking uses a stake-to-vote system that lets players help decide which games succeed. Unlike traditional staking models, both players and games benefit as players earn rewards for picking successful games, and games gain visibility and funding through community support. Games with more staking support and player engagement rank higher in the $PIXEL PopRank system, earning more visibility and a bigger share of ecosystem rewards.
This encourages developers to create engaging games that keep players active and invested. The more in-game purchases there are, the higher the potential staking rewards. A portion of every $PIXEL spent in-game goes back into the ecosystem, directly rewarding players who supported that game. Pixels will also use this new data to power its proprietary play-to-earn tech, train smarter prediction models, and ultimately grow the ecosystem by supporting more games.
Staking will roll out in several phases to build a fully decentralized, data-driven publishing ecosystem.
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Phase 1 (Beta): At first, only hand-picked games will be available for staking. Each game will receive a fixed monthly reward allocation, with the majority reserved for Core Pixels. Each game will also decide how much of its rewards go back to stakeholders.
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Phase 2: Rewards won’t be fixed per-game anymore. Instead, the more $PIXEL players stake in a game, the bigger that game’s reward pool becomes.
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Phase 3: The curation aspect of the $PIXEL ecosystem is removed. Any game that hits a minimum activity threshold will be eligible to join the $PIXEL ecosystem.
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Phase 4: As the ecosystem achieves a positive Return On Reward Spend (RORS), Pixels will start supporting more tokens (like USDC) for user acquisition services. $PIXEL will still be required to earn staking rewards.
“$PIXEL Staking is about more than just rewards. It’s about giving players a real voice in the future of our ecosystem. By backing the games they believe in, players help guide resource allocation and ultimately shape the success and strength of the ecosystem in a way that’s organic, player-driven, and built for the long term,” said Luke Barwikowski, Founder of Pixels.
Following a year of strong growth, with one of the most active communities on Ronin and $20M in revenue in 2024, the focus is on building a sustainable, high-quality play-to-earn ecosystem while creating a positive Return on Reward Spend (RORS). As part of this strategic change, the emphasis will shift from Daily Active Accounts to meaningful Daily Active Users, aligning rewards with users who stake, spend, or hold $PIXEL. Players will soon gain access to a new utility token, $vPIXEL, backed 1:1 by $PIXEL and usable across partner games without fees via Limit Break’s ERC20c technology.
Meanwhile, Pixels is enhancing core gameplay and retention with Chapter 3 content and renewed focus on casual, social mechanics, all supported by robust infrastructure for smarter rewards, user segmentation, and predictive analytics. The Pixels ecosystem will continue to expand with more publishing deals and broader use cases for $PIXEL, including the introduction of the new staking system and the recent $PIXEL integration in the popular MMORPG Forgotten Runiverse.
To learn more about how to begin staking $PIXEL, please visit staking.pixels.xyz.
About Pixels
With over 10 million registered players, Pixels is a Web3 social gaming platform blending farming, exploration, and community building in an open-world universe. With its community-first approach, Pixels builds alongside its users and is on a mission to solve play-to-earn while becoming the biggest casual games company.
In 2024, Pixels generated $20 million in revenue, making it the number one Web3 title by revenue and users. The platform’s $PIXEL ecosystem—featuring data-driven reward distribution and strategic publishing deals—sets a new benchmark for Web3 gaming profitability and scalability. Building on this, Pixels is advancing its Return on Reward Spend (RORS) metric in 2025 by developing predictive technology to optimize reward distribution and identify high-value users earlier in their lifecycle.