Quick Take
- Somnia founder Paul Thomas argued that blockchain needs to be invisible to users, comparing it to how Web2 apps hide backend systems like cloud providers and authentication layers
- Games like Chunked and apps like FanFree already show how users can interact fully onchain without dealing with wallets, tokens, or bridges
- Somnia’s infrastructure supports over one million transactions per second and powers tools like Gamers LAB to help developers build composable, onchain games at scale
The Louvre Palace in Paris hosted a wide range of voices from across the crypto landscape during this year’s Proof of Talk 2025 summit. Among the sessions, a keynote by Paul Thomas, founder of Somnia, focused on the structural challenges holding Web3 back and what’s being built to address them.
Thomas opened his talk by outlining the original vision behind Somnia, a new EVM-compatible Layer-1 chain designed specifically for gaming and real-time digital experiences. Drawing on his experience at Improbable, where large-scale multiplayer tech was developed for partners like Yuga Labs, Universal Music, and Major League Baseball, Thomas described the unmet need for infrastructure that could handle “millions of users on-chain at the same time without breaking.”
He referred to this as a need for “transparent infrastructure”, systems that work invisibly in the background, like in traditional applications, rather than forcing end users to navigate blockchain’s complexity. “Today’s onboarding is insane,” Thomas said, walking through the multistep process users face just to swap tokens on a DEX. “The fact that anyone uses these apps at all is kind of incredible.”
Somnia’s solution includes a high-throughput chain capable of over one million transactions per second, with near-instant finality. Combined with account abstraction, gas sponsorship, and a concept Thomas called “chain abstraction,” Somnia aims to let users interact with apps without understanding or even realizing they’re on-chain.
Several examples are already live in Somnia’s testnet ecosystem. The most prominent is Chunked, a Minecraft-style sandbox where every player movement, mined block, or crafted item is logged directly to the blockchain. As covered previously, Chunked has already processed millions of transactions during Somnia’s ongoing testnet campaign. Despite the fully on-chain nature of the game, Thomas emphasized that players are not exposed to any blockchain UX—no wallet popups or gas token management.
Another app mentioned during the presentation was FanFree, which connects fans to celebrities using NFC-based interactions and digital collectibles. “It’s all on-chain, but no one using it knows or cares,” Thomas said.
The talk also pointed to a broader evolution across Somnia’s ecosystem. Identity, composability, and game logic are moving on-chain in ways that allow developers to build faster and smarter, while enabling new experiences entirely. Thomas referenced the role of AI in accelerating app creation and how data permanence opens doors to new types of composable gaming infrastructure, similar to the DeFi wave of 2021.
For users already active in Somnia’s testnet, these themes have been reinforced through projects like Gamers L.A.B., which tracks on-chain gameplay data for titles like Maelstrom, QRusaders, and Variance. That infrastructure allows for seamless reward tracking, cross-game identity, and the kind of ecosystem-native questing that underpins a likely (but still unconfirmed) Somnia token airdrop.
Somnia’s momentum continues to grow following its $270 million funding round and the rollout of its Dream Catalyst program. Alongside Chunked, which remains one of the most active games on the network, titles like Netherak Demons, Dark Table, and Sparkball are showing what fast, composable, and fully on-chain gameplay can look like in practice.
Proof of Talk wrapped with a broader call from Thomas: to get blockchain out of the user’s way. “Nobody buying food on an app asks what cloud it’s hosted on,” he said. “The same should be true for Web3.”
