Industry giant Xsolla backs revolutionary tech in bid to redefine future of interactive entertainment.

Gaming commerce company Xsolla is integrating blockchain functionality into its broader gaming ecosystem through Xsolla ZK, President Chris Hewish told Sandmark during a one-on-one interview at Consensus Miami 2026.

"We’ve been around for 20 years," Hewish said. "We work with thousands of game companies and games all over the world." While the traditional game industry has largely solved for scale and commerce, participation, trust and ownership still flow through third parties, he said.

Game companies are shifting towards direct-to-consumer channels alongside app stores and platforms. "One, there’s just control, full control over your business," Hewish said. Hewish cited Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) privacy changes as an example of platform risk, saying the changes disrupted mobile game user acquisition for years. Owned channels, he said, allow publishers to avoid abrupt platform policy shifts while giving them fuller access to gameplay and commerce data.

Participation economy

Hewish described Xsolla ZK as a layer that integrates onchain functionality into the company’s product suite of payments, commerce tools and MarTech solutions. "We’re not trying to build a Web3 gaming business," he said. "What we’re doing is using Web3 functionality and features to unlock new opportunities for all the Web2 games that are already out there."

The approach keeps infrastructure largely invisible to players, while enabling verifiable ownership and programmable value. "Players could actually get paid for their data," Hewish noted, "because they’re onchain now." This redirects spend from ad networks that often retain up to 60% of budgets in a black-box model. "It’s a lose-lose for everybody," he added.

Xsolla pushes feature updates into products already used by roughly 300mn paying users and touching an additional 2bn gamers. The strategy contrasts with early Web3 gaming attempts that "failed" by building infrastructure and ecosystems simultaneously while requiring users to change behaviour, Hewish said.

IP ownership

On tokenized intellectual property (IP) rights, Hewish said he sees limited initial overlap with traditional gaming royalties. "You’re going to have the big studios that always want to, I’m thinking like Marvel, Disney, right? They’re not going to share," he said. New IP holders, however, could offer fractional ownership to players as an engagement incentive.

Hewish expressed optimism on US policy. The potential passage of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a proposed US legislation aimed at clarifying oversight of digital assets, "is a big unlock" that would provide regulatory certainty, redirect capital now flowing to more crypto-friendly jurisdictions and aid job recovery in the industry after recent layoffs, he told Sandmark.

With 1,400 employees and 18 global offices, Xsolla, headquartered in Los Angeles, spent about five years developing this infrastructure. Hewish called it a major strategic bet. Success by the end of 2027 would mean broad adoption across partner titles, improved retention and revenue per user, signalling a shift towards ecosystems where developers and players capture more value than third parties.