Crypto Game Infected Ditches Base for Solana Over 'Demand' Issues, Pushback Ensues

Infected, a pandemic-simulation crypto game that gained viral popularity, has announced its decision to abandon Ethereum's layer-2 network Base and migrate to layer-1 blockchain Solana. 

The move follows technical difficulties during the game's launch, with Infected alleging the platform failed to handle the high transaction volume, resulting in gas price spikes and frustrated users. 

“Base couldn’t handle the volume of transactions coming in at once,” the team said in an X post on Thursday, noting that this disrupted the user experience and ultimately destroyed the game’s momentum.

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While the team initially suspected the issue was related to frontend problems, they later confirmed the issue stemmed from a gas spike, which caused transaction failures during the crucial first 30 minutes of the game.

Infected concluded that the bottleneck was likely to persist across EVM chains despite some early optimism that Ethereum’s L2 solutions would address scalability.

The team pointed to Solana’s active focus on “real-world applications” and its growing user base as key reasons for their decision.

“We want to build where users are,” the creators explained, saying that many users had expressed a preference for the game to be on Solana to avoid bridging.

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Pushback ensues

Jesse Pollak, the architect behind Base, disputed Infected’s claims, adding: “Base did not crash—the chain hummed along, just as it should.”

Pollak explained that Base had reached out to the Infected team to help address frontend issues, detailing how the chain has millions of users and the team had worked to support the game’s growth. 

Base’s total value locked (TVL) is $3.05 billion, with 1.2 million active addresses, DeFiLlama data shows. 

However, Infected stood by their position, clarifying that while front end issues may have played a role, the root cause was still the gas spike, indicating that Base’s limitations were to blame for the user issues they encountered.

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The fallout has led to a flurry of commentary from the crypto community. 

Some have rallied behind Infected, with others questioning the game's handling of the launch and allegations over a lack of data they provided to back their claims.

In the midst of the conflict, Base developer Saedeh critiqued Infected's actions, saying, “Honestly, the way you guys launched and communicated shows how inexperienced your team is.” 

The developer pointed out red flags of the game, such as launching multiple tokens at once and making overly ambitious claims about market cap before launch, as signs of a lack of experience.

Infected and Jesse Pollak have not yet responded to Decrypt’s requests for comment.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair