Luke Barwikowski recently did something quite interesting - when everyone in the industry was chasing the AI trend, he openly stated, 'AI won't make you rich,' and then turned around and pushed his AI reward engine, Stacked, to the market.
While the entire Web3 community is blindly following the AI narrative, the leader of Pixels boldly exposed the emperor's new clothes in front of the media.
Event recap: A long-planned 'anti-AI marketing'
In February of this year, Luke clearly stated in an interview: The AI boom is meant for VCs and Silicon Valley elites; ordinary people dreaming of getting rich through AI is basically just that - a dream. He advised people to 'stay in the crypto space, where ordinary players still have a chance.'
As soon as the words were spoken, on March 26, Stacked officially launched.
This is not a coincidence. Luke explained it very clearly: Stacked is the culmination of all the work done at Pixels over the past four years, using AI effectively—not having AI write poetry or paint pictures, but using AI for anti-cheat and anti-bot measures, accurately delivering real monetary rewards to actual players, rather than to hundreds or thousands of script accounts. This system has run internally at Pixels for four years, handling over 1 million daily active users and driving over 25 million dollars in revenue.
Impact analysis: from 'internal tools' to 'commercial products'.
The positioning of Stacked has changed.
Previously it was an internal reward engine for Pixels; now it is an open SDK that any game studio can integrate. The initial four first-party games that integrated are: Pixels Main World, Pixel Dungeons, Chubkins, Sleepagotchi. The business logic is simple: redirect the advertising budget that game companies originally spent on acquiring users from Facebook and Google directly to real players.
However, the team adopted a 'soft launch' strategy—first running the economic model in their own game before opening it up to external studios. Luke clearly stated on March 26: "Partners are welcome to join and use Stacked, but our primary focus is on growing first-party games."
The ambition behind this move is significant. Pixels has transformed from a 'game developer' into an 'infrastructure provider,' instantly raising the ceiling by an order of magnitude. Luke himself also said: The only way to save chain games is to not make games for crypto players, but to make them for mainstream players.
Data support: AI doesn’t make money? But using AI to save money is real.
Does Stacked really have something genuine? Let's look at a few numbers:
Stacked has run internally at Pixels for four years, driving over 25 million dollars in revenue and handling over 1 million daily active users.
A reactivation campaign targeting players who haven't purchased in 30 days increased the conversion rate by 178%, and the reward ROI reached 131%.
Current daily active users have exceeded 264,000, setting a new historical high.
The circulating supply is approximately 3.38 billion PIXEL (67.6% of the total supply of 5 billion), with a market cap of approximately 25.6 million dollars.
On May 19, 91.18 million tokens were unlocked, accounting for 11.83% of the circulating supply, valued at approximately 4.7 million dollars.
The data is very cold: on one hand, building a moat, on the other, releasing floodwaters. Who can outpace whom is the real highlight.
Citing authority: What did Luke say exactly?
"Stacked is the culmination of everything we've done at Pixels over the past four years. Most reward systems treat all players equally, optimizing for the wrong metrics. The design of Stacked is to incentivize truly valuable actions—returning, advancing, consuming, and supporting a healthy economy."
He also made a harsher judgment: the team once had the opportunity to create their own PIXEL chain but refused strategically—"Burning tokens through transaction fees alone is not enough; the revenue model of the chain lacks convincing power. Focus on product value, and don't get caught up in chain gimmicks."
Refusing to chase the trend when others are pursuing it, and refusing to be part of the chain when others are forming one. This kind of restraint is actually a rarity in Web3.
Self-refutation: Can this logic work?
Of course, some may question: 25 million dollars is what they claim; can external studios replicate the same effect after integration? After all, there haven't been any publicly visible external cooperation cases yet.
This is a fact; currently, Stacked's client list includes only Pixels' four games. External validation data is zero.
But because of this, Stacked chose to run in its own games for four years before opening up to the outside, rather than making promises right away. The biggest obstacle to commercialization is not the technology itself, but whether external studios are willing to entrust their reward budgets to a 'Web3-born' platform. This needs time to verify, and there is no rush.
What is the essence of Pixels' 'anti-AI marketing'? It's not about denying the value of AI but denying the illusion that 'AI can make ordinary people rich.' In Stacked, AI plays the role of an economist and anti-cheat police, not a wealth generator.
This is what is truly scarce in the chain game industry: using technology effectively instead of chasing trends to exploit others.
Do you think this AI reward engine of Stacked can become the 'infrastructure' of the chain game industry?
👍 Yes, 25 million in revenue is real strength.
👎 No, the B2B story is too far away.
