Most Play-to-Earn models have a strange paradox:
The people who make the most money…
are the ones who don’t need the game to survive long-term.
They’re not playing to stay.
They’re playing to optimize and extract value as fast as possible.
And the system is the one paying them to do exactly that.
When incentives reward extraction instead of contribution,
the economy doesn’t collapse because of a lack of players —
it collapses because it’s been “optimized” too well.
That’s not game design.
That’s designing the wrong beneficiaries.
The real question is no longer “how much to pay”
but:
👉 who are you paying — and do they actually want this system to survive?