Crypto play-to-earn games

The claim

We collected one tweet for this scheme, with a few thousand views¹. We name an account only if it has about 10,000 followers or sells something tied to the claim; this small account meets neither, so we paraphrase it¹.

The tweet says the author made $9 in one video of a game while risking $3, that players are paid for beating other players, and that the author could do it all day¹. The page judges the scheme, not the person who tweeted.

The tweet tags Trenches, a shooter in which players deposit SOL, the coin of the Solana network, and each room has a fixed stake per kill, paid by the player who dies to their killer¹². A winner’s money is money another player lost. The evidence mostly says real money is in play, but we did not deposit or withdraw⁵⁹⁶³.

The sums

The game’s scripts state that the house, the company running the game, keeps 4% of each kill’s stake⁴⁵. The landing page describes a flat entry fee instead, and we could not see the live value². At 4%, a kill pays 96% of the stake and a death costs all of it, so break-even needs just over 1.04 kills per death (our estimate)⁴⁵.

Kills needed in a month to clear $1,000 (our estimate)³⁴⁵:

Every kill needs an opponent who stakes the same amount and loses. The most active account has 10,251 kills since launch, with staked and free play mixed together¹⁰. We found no data on how many players use the higher-stake rooms.

What happens to most people who try

For Trenches we do not know: we found no independent player who published tracked results. The game’s public profit board stops at 50 accounts, all ahead, so losing accounts are out of sight⁹. Because of the house cut, players as a group must lose.

The best measured comparison is one 2015 study of daily fantasy sports, a paid skill contest. It found “91 percent of DFS player profits were won by just 1.3 percent of players”, and the 80% it called “minnows” lost $25 on $49 of fees³⁸. It is a different game and an old study, read on McKinsey’s German site because the main site refused our agents³⁸.

Earlier games paid in their own tokens, digital coins the game creates. In Axie Infinity, owners called guilds lent the game’s creatures to players for a share²⁹. Players reported up to $2,000 a month at the peak, by their own account; by late April 2022 the largest guild’s players were at “around $20 a month”²⁴.

The upside

• Trenches. At least 50 accounts show a net gain on the five-cent board; the best all-time result is about $30 and the middle of the 50 about $0.67 (our estimate)⁹¹⁷. Most of the profit appears to have been won within a few weeks in July and August 2026 (our estimate)⁶³. These are the operator’s records, not independently verified, and higher-stake results are not published. We found no documented case of a player earning more.
• Fantasy sports. The top 11 players averaged $135,000 profit in half a season on $2 million of entry fees each, by operators’ data³⁸. They had many thousands of weaker paying players to win from; the Trenches boards show no such market^9123862.
• Axie, 2021. Borrowers put in no money and, by the largest guild’s own figures, received very roughly $1,550 each over the first months (our estimate)²⁵. One owner said he made $20,000 a month at the peak, by his own account²².

We did not research the token games running today, such as Pixels or the current Axie. In the searches we did run, we found no checkable report of a continuing income from a crypto game in 2025 or 2026.

What it takes to compete

Those who win have skill well above the room, plenty of weaker opponents, and volume³⁸. Opponents are the tightest limit: the duel board lists five players¹². In token games, the winners were early and sold before the price fell²⁴²⁵.

Costs in Trenches: a deposit from about $1.10 (our estimate), up to ten times the stake per session, and the 4% cut²⁴⁵¹⁷. The game holds the keys to the wallets (coin accounts) it creates for players; whoever holds a key controls the money, and its policy says checks may “place withdrawals on hold”⁸. Test a small withdrawal before depositing more.

How to tell early:

1. Count kills and deaths over a few hundred staked fights at the lowest stake. Below break-even, you are paying the others⁴⁵.
2. Check the weekly profit board. No recorded staked profit this week means few people to win from¹¹. It was empty when we read it, though the weekly kills board listed 10 accounts; we could not tell why¹¹⁶².
3. Look for the “+bots” mark, which shows computer-run opponents, before staking in a room³.
4. Check whether staking money on a game of skill is lawful where you live; in some places it is not⁵¹⁵²⁵⁴. We are not saying Trenches or its players break any law.

Who else makes money from it

The house takes its cut on every kill, and by default half goes to whoever referred the player⁴. Trenches also pays people in its own token to post gameplay videos, so a video of someone winning can be a paid post¹⁴. We do not know whether this tweet was one.