What Is SERAPH? The Blockchain ARPG Explained

The Origin Story: From Loot NFTs to a Full-Scale ARPG

The project traces its conceptual roots back to 2021, when the Loot NFT project made waves across the Ethereum ecosystem. Loot introduced randomly generated, text-based adventure gear as composable on-chain assets. The Seraph team saw this model and recognized its potential for a fully realized game with actual equipment with stats, rarities, and gameplay impact.

The development team had already spent years building ARPGs for video and mobile platforms. They understood loot systems, gear progression, and what keeps players engaged across hundreds of hours. So instead of building another DeFi wrapper disguised as a game, they started from gameplay fundamentals and layered blockchain functionality on top.

The core problem they set out to solve was specific and well-documented. Early Play-to-Earn titles like Axie Infinity attracted millions of users but collapsed under unsustainable tokenomics, shallow gameplay loops, and high barriers to entry for non-crypto players. SERAPH's development philosophy directly addresses each of these failure points through capped token supply, deep ARPG mechanics, and an in-house wallet that abstracts away crypto complexity entirely.

Who's Building SERAPH?

One of the strongest signals for any blockchain gaming project is the team behind it. SERAPH has a roster of over 60 members, and several key figures bring decades of traditional game development experience.

• Tobin Kuo (CEO) - A long-time MMORPG player inspired by EverQuest and World of Warcraft, Kuo bridges the gap between gaming passion and Web3 expertise.
• Joseph Lim (Game Producer) - With 20 years in the industry, Lim previously worked on titles like Dragon Nest and Legend of the Swordsmen, games that each served millions of players.
• Alan Chu (Blockchain Tech Director) - Former encryption and security specialist at Amazon and Google, Chu handles the blockchain infrastructure layer.
• Victor Kwon (Technical Director): Over 20 years of game development experience focused on the technical backbone.
• Ken Choung: Senior designer responsible for the in-game economic system, arguably the most critical role in any blockchain game.
• Yezi (COO): Oversees operations and has emphasized how Web3 enables genuine player co-creation rather than one-way content consumption.

Beyond the internal team, the studio is incubated and backed by Actoz Soft, a South Korean gaming company established in 1996 and listed on the KOSDAQ exchange. Actoz Soft operates as a sub-organization of Shengqu Games (formerly Shanda Games), which adds another layer of institutional credibility. This isn't a team that materialized during a bull market. They have roots in an era when game studios had to ship working products to survive.

How Has the Project Been Funded?

SERAPH has secured over $10 million in total investment. The studio initially self-funded the project, which is notable because it means the core development wasn't dependent on external capital or token sales to get off the ground. External financing rounds came later, aimed at expanding the ecosystem rather than funding basic development.

The revenue picture adds further context. By early 2025, the game had generated $10 million in total game revenue. Of that, $3 million came in fiat currency during the testing phase alone, a meaningful detail because it shows real consumer spending, not just speculative token activity. On the NFT side, transaction volume reached 17,000 ETH (roughly $42 million) by September 2024. The studio also allocated over $1 million for token buybacks during testing, signaling a commitment to ecosystem health over short-term extraction.

$SERAPH Tokenomics: Supply, Distribution, and Utility

The native utility token, $SERAPH, is deployed on both Ethereum and BNB Chain. Its total supply is capped at 1,000,000,000 tokens, with no inflation and no unlimited minting.

Token Distribution Breakdown

The distribution is heavily weighted toward the community at 40.5%, which is a deliberate design choice. The investor allocation at just 6.42% is unusually low for a project of this scale, and it reduces the risk of large unlock-driven sell pressure that has damaged many token launches.

What Does $SERAPH Actually Do In-Game?

The token isn't just a speculative asset sitting outside the game. It has direct mechanical utility within the gameplay loop:

• Reforging NFT equipment affixes so players can spend tokens to re-roll stats on their gear.
• Revealing hidden attributes on dropped equipment, adding a layer of discovery and risk.
• Mercenary Auctions, a marketplace mechanic where players bid on AI-driven companions.
• Seasonal event participation, providing access to time-limited challenges and exclusive rewards.

This integration matters because it creates organic demand tied to actual gameplay activity rather than pure speculation. When a player wants better gear, they need the token. That's a fundamentally different demand driver than "buy and hold for governance rights."

How the Game Actually Works: Features and Player Roles

SERAPH operates on a "Play-and-Earn" model rather than the older "Play-to-Earn" framing. Anyone can play for free, but NFT equipment is required to unlock advanced earning potential. This creates a natural on-ramp where casual players can experience the game before deciding whether to invest.

The ActPass Wallet is one of the more thoughtful infrastructure decisions. It's an in-house custodial MPC (Multi-Party Computation) wallet that lets Web2 players log in with just an email address. There are no seed phrases to manage, no gas fees to worry about, and no MetaMask popups interrupting gameplay. For a game trying to attract mainstream players, this kind of abstraction layer is essential.

AI integration goes beyond marketing buzzwords here. AI-powered companions analyze a player's behavior patterns and provide strategic advice. Think of it as a coach that learns your playstyle. AI also streamlines character design and in-game dialogue generation, which helps the small studio produce content at a pace that would normally require a much larger team.

The ecosystem supports distinct player archetypes, each with a different relationship to the economy:

• Soul Spar Hunters are focused on farming the in-game currency through grinding.
• Chest Hunters are dungeon explorers who chase rare loot drops.
• Merchants are players who profit from trading gear on the player-driven marketplace.
• Leaderboard Climbers are competitive players chasing rankings and seasonal rewards.

This role diversity is important because it creates a multi-sided economy. Farmers generate supply, merchants provide liquidity, and competitive players create demand for top-tier equipment. When all these roles interact, the result is an ecosystem that can sustain itself rather than relying on a constant influx of new money.

Key Milestones: A Timeline of SERAPH's Development

The timeline reveals a development cycle spanning roughly four years from concept to live token. That is significantly longer than most Web3 gaming projects, which often rush to TGE within 12 to 18 months. The extended runway allowed the team to iterate through multiple testing phases and generate real revenue before the token even existed.

How Does the Infrastructure Work?

On the infrastructure side, the game launched on Arbitrum One for its core operations. Arbitrum's low transaction costs and high throughput make it well-suited for a game that generates frequent on-chain interactions. Every gear drop, every reforge, and every auction bid benefits from that efficiency. The dual deployment on Ethereum and BNB Chain for the token itself gives players flexibility in how they interact with the asset.

The choice to expand onto BNB Chain paid off quickly. Within a single week of early 2025, SERAPH attracted over 1.2 million users and claimed the top spot among all dApps on the chain. That kind of adoption spike, while it needs to be sustained to be meaningful, demonstrates that the game can capture attention at scale.

How SERAPH Compares to Other Web3 Games and NFT Projects

Most blockchain games fall into one of two categories: DeFi mechanics with a thin game layer on top, or simple clicker-style games that exist mainly to distribute tokens. SERAPH sits in a different category entirely. Its visual quality, combat systems, and loot mechanics are closer to what you'd expect from a mid-to-high budget Web2 title.

The NFT model also differs from the typical "artwork" or "PFP" approach. In SERAPH, gear NFTs derive their value from functional gameplay utility. They enhance stats, improve farming efficiency, and directly affect a player's ability to compete. Their value is tied to supply and demand within an active, living game ecosystem, not to floor price speculation or brand hype. A sword with the right affixes is valuable because it makes a measurable difference in a dungeon run, not because a celebrity tweeted about it.

This distinction matters for long-term sustainability. When NFT value is anchored to gameplay function, it can persist as long as the game has an active player base. When value is anchored to hype, it tends to evaporate the moment attention shifts.

The Biggest Risk: Can SERAPH Keep Players Around?

The report highlights a challenge that SERAPH's own CEO has openly acknowledged. Over 60% of users abandon Web3 games within a month, and the primary reason is poor gameplay quality. This isn't a SERAPH-specific problem. It's an industry-wide issue that has plagued the sector since its inception.

SERAPH's strategy to mitigate this risk is straightforward: invest heavily in production value, gameplay depth, and continuous content updates. The "AAA" positioning isn't just marketing language. It reflects a genuine resource commitment to visual fidelity, combat design, and the kind of loot systems that have kept players engaged in games like Diablo and Path of Exile for years.

But retention risk remains real. The $3 million in fiat revenue during testing is encouraging because it indicates players were willing to spend real money before any token incentive existed. That's a much healthier signal than user counts inflated by airdrop farming. Still, the transition from testing hype to sustained live-service engagement is where many promising games, both Web2 and Web3, have stumbled.

The seasonal structure (starting with S1 Genesis Season) is designed to create recurring engagement loops, similar to how live-service games like Destiny 2 or Path of Exile maintain their player bases through regular content cycles. Whether the Seraph team can maintain that cadence with a 60-person studio remains to be seen.

What SERAPH Tells Us About the Future of Blockchain Gaming

SERAPH: In the Darkness represents a specific thesis about where blockchain gaming needs to go. That thesis is simple: the game has to be good enough that people would play it even without token incentives. The blockchain layer should add ownership and economic participation on top of an already compelling experience, not serve as the primary reason to engage.

The project has institutional backing, a team with legitimate credentials, meaningful revenue traction, and a thoughtful approach to tokenomics and user onboarding. It has also been transparent about the risks it faces, particularly around retention. For readers evaluating blockchain gaming projects, SERAPH offers a useful benchmark. Not as a guaranteed success, but as an example of what a serious, well-resourced attempt to solve the sector's core problems actually looks like.