This past year has forced Ultra to slow down, reassess, and confront some uncomfortable realities.
That’s not something founders or teams like to admit publicly. There’s a strong instinct in this industry to always project momentum, certainty, and confidence, even when the landscape is shifting beneath your feet. We’ve seen plenty of narratives suggesting that the only acceptable response is to push harder, ship faster, and double down.
We don’t believe that approach serves the long term. So we took some time over the last two weeks to reset and reflect.
Over the last year, Ultra has faced a combination of market-wide pressure, sector-specific changes, and internal challenges. Some assumptions no longer hold. Some initiatives did not reach the scale we expected. Rather than filling the air with noise or pretending otherwise, we chose to step back, consolidate feedback, and focus on what is actually working.
Part of this was opening up the question forum to create a single, transparent place to surface concerns, provide context, and respond clearly.
Below, I’ll address the questions raised by grouping them into clear categories, so the direction and rationale behind our decisions are easier to understand.
Ultra Business Model
Our immediate priority is to generate meaningful network activity and sustainable revenue opportunities.
At its core, Ultra is a high-performance infrastructure with fast execution, zero transaction fees, a feeless bridge (soon), and the ability to enable high-throughput applications. The focus is now on identifying where this infrastructure delivers the most value in today’s market.
Through plenty of research and observation it has become clear that gaming as a sector (both within and outside of Web3) is facing structural challenges, including weak sentiment and limited appetite for new platforms. In the current environment, gaming alone cannot realistically serve as Ultra’s primary growth engine.
What is being consistently validated is demand for fast, low-friction applications where reliability, cost efficiency, and user experience matter more than narrative.
Based on this we are assessing use cases that align closely with Ultra’s technical strengths. This includes exploring scenarios where the team itself may focus on building applications on Ultra, not as a pivot away from infrastructure, but as a way to activate the network and prove its capabilities in practice.
Rather than abandoning gaming, we are exploring our horizons to find the best match for our technology.
UOS Token
UOS was designed at a protocol level to coordinate access to network resources, specifically transaction prioritization. That design only becomes meaningful when there is sustained network usage.
If an application succeeds in generating network activity at scale, staking UOS becomes a functional requirement for managing execution priority.
UOS is intended to operate as a technical coordination mechanism, rather than as a financial instrument.
Ultra Games
At this stage, the Ultra Games store does not justify the level of spending required to expand or significantly upgrade it.
We do not currently have a clear, defensible standalone business model for the store that does not require significant investment. As a result:
- No near-term expansion of the games catalogue should be expected
- No major upgrades to the existing client are planned
This is a conscious choice to preserve resources rather than dilute focus.
If overall network activity increases, flagship titles such as Empires and Citadels succeed, and broader gaming sentiment improves, the store will be reconsidered from a stronger position.
Uniq Marketplace
The Uniq Marketplace faces similar realities.
Across the industry, NFT marketplaces have struggled due to declining demand, a lack of high-quality content, and fundamentally unsustainable economics. Under current conditions, we do not see a viable standalone model for the Uniq Marketplace.
Accordingly, it will remain inactive while resources are concentrated on core infrastructure and areas with clearer paths to value creation.
Uniq Standard
During testnet development, Empires implemented a temporary custom NFT standard to unblock progress.
This decision was driven by integration and performance constraints, specifically a preference for a fully on-chain approach rather than reliance on the existing Uniq API. It was a short-term solution.
Since then, the necessary improvements to the Uniq standard have been scoped. These changes will allow Empires to adopt the Uniq standard as originally intended, without workarounds and with production-level performance.
UltraDAO
UltraDAO initiative was proposed in response to community sentiment and a desire for greater decentralization.
We still believe there is meaningful potential in this direction. However, conversations with experienced operators have highlighted that clear positioning, real activity, and momentum are required before a DAO structure can attract the right leadership.
The discussion remains open, but its timing and structure must align with Ultra’s next phase.
For those interested in the details, the full proposal remains available on Discord.
Development Updates
Bridge
The Ultra bridge audit is complete, it is now being deployed on lower environments for additional testing. We remain on track for a January 2026 release.
Web Wallet
The web wallet is fully functional on testnet and requires a security audit before mainnet deployment. It will be a key component of the Empires mainnet launch, currently targeted for Q1 2026.
Side Questions
UOS Buybacks
Buybacks were originally designed as a feature, but Ultra has not generated sufficient surplus revenue for buybacks to make economic sense. Ultra already holds a significant amount of UOS, making buybacks an inefficient use of capital under current or previous conditions.
Porting Games from Steam
From a technical standpoint, porting from Steam is relatively straightforward due to equivalent SDK functionality.
The larger constraint is economic. Developer onboarding typically involves minimum guarantees which can exceed $1M per AAA title. These costs must be justified by clear returns, and historically what moves the needle is Day-1 launches, which carry significant upfront risk.
Our decision at the time was to pursue investment in exclusive content that leveraged our technology rather than mainstream titles with no integrations. In hindsight, we could have done it differently.
Partners
Ubisoft
The partnership is currently paused due to internal strategy changes on their side, including block production. This may change in the future.
AMD
The partnership remains legally active but has not been activated, primarily due to insufficient game content suitable for distribution to their user base.
17173
China’s largest gaming media, marketing, and community platform, working with all major publishers including Tencent. Their mandate was local operation and promotion of Ultra using their existing reach. The outcome is similar to that of AMD.
“Secret Sauce”
The term “secret sauce” always referred to Dimensions.
Dimensions is a highly viral, open application network designed to scale gaming communities. Through it, Ultra moved closer to the concept of a broader UOS (Ultra Operating System): a universal gaming layer across platforms.
The original strategy was to build the game store, attract content, and then use Dimensions as the layer to grow and connect gaming communities at scale. In hindsight, we underestimated the complexity of building a competitive game store, integrating a layer 1 blockchain, and launching exclusive content simultaneously.
While the vision was ambitious, we did not reach the scale required for that approach to fully materialize in the market environment we faced.
Closing
2025 tested Ultra in ways that were impossible to fully anticipate.
Not everything worked how we thought. Some bets were wrong. Some paths proved less viable than expected. Instead of forcing momentum where it didn’t exist, we’ve chosen restraint by preserving resources and narrowing our focus.
Ultra today remains a high-performance infrastructure with real technical strengths. The work now is to ensure those strengths are applied where they can generate real activity, even if that path looks different from what was originally imagined.
As we move into 2026, the lessons are learnt and the focus is sharper.
Thank you to everyone who continues to engage constructively and hold us to a high standard.
Wishing you all a great start to the year ahead.
Best,
Nicolas