Onchain gacha did about $50 million in pack sales of tokenized Pokémon cards and other graded collectibles in June 2025, according to Cointelegraph Magazine. Twelve months later, the same category did $344.4 million, by Blockworks Research’s count, in a year when bitcoin fell.
Then July came in 17.5 percent lower. Collector Crypt, the volume leader, sold fewer packs every month from June to September, per Pine Analytics.
The easy read is that this is a Pokémon craze riding thirty years of nostalgia, and crazes end. That read misses the machinery. Onchain gacha runs on two systems you can measure: a buyback desk that recycles almost nine of every ten dollars, and a distribution layer that decides who sees the pack at all.
This Surgence Labs report covers what onchain gacha actually is, how big it got in 2026, who is winning, how much money the platforms keep, what drives volume, and the regulation every platform is about to meet. It is written for teams deciding whether to launch, integrate or market a gacha product in 2027.
Nothing here is financial advice. Most packs return less than they cost.
Onchain gacha is the trade of selling random card packs, minting each pull as a token, and vaulting the graded card behind it for collectors, with buyback as the exit. Card-backed packs, not NFT loot boxes: every token points at a physical card graded by PSA, CGC or BGS. The card sits with a custodian such as PSA Vault or Brink’s. Ownership settles onchain, where anyone can check it.
And the exit has a price, with Collector Crypt offering 85 to 93 percent of insured value depending on the pack tier, according to Crypto Briefing. Bought-back cards go back into the pack pool, which keeps the chase cards in the machine and the machine running.
A vending machine with a resale desk.
