193 | Why Improbable had to build Somnia

Feb 26, 2025

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Jon Jordan talks to Improbable CEO Herman Narula about why the UK game tech company decided it had to build its own blockchain. Called Somnia, its testnet is now live.

[2:32] The Improbable genesis story: from Cambridge Uni to building games technology.
[3:39] Building economies for virtual worlds means you need a blockchain for ownership.
[4:54] Improbable's first success was The Multiplayer Guys, who worked on CoD, GTA, Fall Guys etc.
[5:27] The biggest thing Improbable has learned is "the tenacity to pursue the mission".
[5:44] The Improbable co-founders have been sanctioned by Russia due to their defence work.
[6:59] The key thing for Improbable's MSquared tech is making the cost of operations so low.
[8:19] Narula describes Improbable as a "venture builder" - it's a "company of companies".
[9:56] What does MSquared do? It's a software platform to build large scale virtual worlds.
[13:32] "We've always bet on the need for human beings to feel relatedness, even in games."
[14:56] Why did Improbable have to design its own blockchain. Do we need another one?
[15:32] The crypto space is obsessed with its token price. That's all they optimize for.
[16:00] Somnia can handle 1 million transactions per second, with sub-second latency.
[17:19] Improbable has almost a quarter of a billion dollars of cash.
[19:08] "Pirate Nation's network costs are astronomical. It would save millions of dollars on Somnia."
[20:55] Our focus isn't getting existing web3 games to move to Somnia, but new games.
[22:23] The current problem for games is cost of UA and cost of development.
[23:34] "I couldn't care less what the Somnia token price is. That's not how we make money."
[25:31] Blockchain games now is like The Hunger Games - people fighting over a small amount of value.
[27:39] How big a deal will AI agents be in future? How is Improbable using AI for development?
[28:34] AI agents aren't going to have bank accounts. They're going to have crypto wallets.
[31:02] In an post-AGI world, "Games are going to become a critical industry for human health."
[35:17] If you're an EVM app, you change one line of code and move to Somnia.