Web3 Gaming 2025 8 months

Launching the transaction layer for a gaming ecosystem

Game7 wanted to own the transaction layer for its games and community — with no network, no bridge, and no one in-house who had ever launched one.

40K+ Users
$23.9M Transaction volume
$6M+ Staking deposits

The problem

Game7 is a DAO. It wanted to own the transaction layer underneath its games and its community — control over network economics, and genuine utility for the G7 token as the network’s gas asset.

Owning that layer meant launching a Layer 3 blockchain and every product surface around it: a bridge to move funds in and out, wallets, liquidity, treasury controls, and data. None of it existed, and nobody on the team had built it before.

I led the product team that did. Eight months later the platform was live, carrying real users and real money.

What I did

  • Ran discovery across 27 interviews with external game studios and internal stakeholders to define what the platform actually had to do
  • Led a 16-person product team to deliver in 8 months — roadmap, prioritization, sprints, QA, and launch
  • Built the ecosystem partner stack — Conduit, Thirdweb, Safe, Camelot, Relay, Circle, Blockscout, and Moonstream — defining requirements, running vendor evaluation, and working with engineering through each integration
  • Chose to build the canonical bridge on the Arbitrum SDK rather than buy one, keeping control of risk and letting us add assets on our own schedule — including official Circle USDC, which competing networks couldn’t offer
  • Productized staking, replacing bespoke per-campaign contracts with an audited factory contract that cut campaign setup from two weeks to 5–10 minutes
  • Instrumented the platform with analytics and customer success — product analytics and a support pipeline live from day one
  • Supported go-to-market with marketing on positioning, product messaging, and lead capture
  • Coordinated launch day across every product team on the network
Game7 L3 platform architecture A settlement path running from players and studios through the Game7 platform, the canonical bridge, the G7 network, Arbitrum and Ethereum, with partner integrations, on-network services and a data layer attached at the layer each one serves. Players & studios Game7 platform one product surface Canonical bridge built on Arbitrum SDK G7 network (L3) deployed on Conduit Arbitrum settlement Ethereum Thirdweb wallets & auth Relay fast routes & swaps DATA LAYER Moonstream indexed chain data Blockscout customized explorer ON-NETWORK SERVICES Camelot dex liquidity Safe treasury multisig Staking campaign pools we built partner integration underlying chains
Platform architecture — the settlement path runs down the centre, with partners attached at the layer each one serves

Results

  • 40,000+ users on the network
  • $23.9M in cross-chain transaction volume
  • $6M+ in cumulative staking deposits
  • 100% network uptime and 99.7% transaction success across the network’s operating life
  • 100K+ leads captured through go-to-market

After launch

Launch was the start of the work, not the end of it.

More than 200 complaints arrived in the first 72 hours, all about withdrawal times — the canonical bridge required a seven-day confirmation period. At the same time, usage data showed users were choosing Relay over the canonical route for speed.

So I shipped against both signals:

  • Worked with Conduit to cut the confirmation period from seven days to one hour
  • Made Relay the default bridging experience — and enabled its monetization, so the platform earned revenue on every swap and bridge initiated through it

Complaints dropped 98%. The friction became a revenue stream.

"Manuel has a rare ability to balance strategic thinking with day-to-day execution, always keeping the user and the team in mind."

Anonymous colleague, PIE360 review
← All work