Analyzing games on the chain: the future of complex applications on the chain
Original Author: Maxlion, StarkNet Astro
TL;DR
Why should we pay attention to on-chain games? (1) In the context of blockchain infrastructure innovation, on-chain games may be the prototype of the next generation of killer applications. (2) The growth of users on the chain is facing a bottleneck, and it is expected that games on the chain can sustainably bring more active users to the blockchain. (3) With the acceleration of blockchain expansion, the 4G era of blockchain will promote the innovation of complex applications on the chain. The account abstraction, asset management, parallel processing and ZK features of the new public chain, zkEVM/VM, and modularization have laid the foundation for complex applications on the chain with low unit income and high TPS.
What is the current state of on-chain gaming? (1) At present, games on the chain are in the early stage of exploring product forms and verifying the market. So far, no game on the chain that can be called mature has been born, and the playability and completion of most games on the chain are not satisfactory. (2) Compared with traditional games and GameFi, games on the chain are still innovative, such asDark Forest、Isaac、TreatyAnd other chain games have the characteristics of decentralization, composability, on-chain collaboration, and contractual interaction.
Games on the chain can be divided into two categories: ported and native. (1) Transplanted on-chain games will unlock the possibility of traditional games. Compared with other types of games, simulation business games are more suitable to be transplanted into on-chain games due to their combinability, asynchronous round time and financial game attributes. (2) Native games on the chain are more likely to bring about innovations in complex applications on the chain. Concepts related to on-chain games includeautonomous world，autonomous worldetc., they expand the imaginary space of games on the chain.
What is the current status of on-chain game engines? (1) In the early stages of games on the chain, the game engine team on the chain often shoulders the responsibility of creating game products, and the engine team is far less than the game team.MUDand on StarknetDojo. (2) In addition to the game engine on the chain, there are other game infrastructures on the chain, such as game guildsGuildlyand game storeCartridge.gg。
Why is Starknet the on-chain gaming arsenal? (1) In terms of performance, Starknet can theoretically achieve9000 TPS,ThatSTARKprove that the system can60 million transactionsL2 transactions are merged into one transaction on Ethereum, and Gas is expected to be as low as 0.001 U. Moreover, STARK has a network effect, and transaction costs will decrease as the transaction volume increases, so Starknet is suitable for games on the chain with a large amount of usage. (2) Starknet's original account is abstracted, and the contract wallet is more adaptable to the game interaction scene on the chain than the traditional wallet. (3) Starknet attaches great importance to native application incubation. Its development team, StarkWare, has held multiple rounds of hackathons with partners such as MatchBox, Only Dust, Volt Capital, and Mask Network, incubating a large number of on-chain game ecosystems.
We believe that Starknet is the most important ecology of on-chain games. We will analyze Starknet’s technical characteristics, on-chain game ecology, and on-chain game design and construction in the next research.
What is an on-chain game
image description
https://medium.com/renftlabs/the-on-chain-vs-off-chain-dilemma-in-blockchain-gaming-49 3d 743836 e 7
Blockchain is a brand-new technology. Instead of using it to imitate, transform, and graft old products, it is better to use it to make an original and brand-new product. The horse manure problem of the carriage age was never solved, but was eliminated with the advent of the automobile age. On-chain games are not born to solve the old problems of Web2 games and incomplete on-chain games, but are committed to complete innovation.
Gameplay and content are limited.
Centralized operation, the project party can change the rules of the game.
Known as the Ponzi model, it is often considered a continuation of DeFi rather than a new "game category".
It is only a transplantation of off-chain games, not a native application on the chain.
So can on-chain games solve these problems and promise a brighter future? The answer is: no.
image description
https://www.greensburgdailynews.com/news/messy-issue-of-horse-manure-divides-amish-neighbors/article_bfc 694 bd-7107-55 ab-8 f 1 c-13 2d 194 c 1 f 2 e.html
The horse-drawn train of the 19th century may seem absurd today, but it was a compromise with the popular psychology, policy laws, road conditions and product forms of the time. Today's alliance chain and GameFi are also a compromise of new technologies to the old ecology, and they are horse-drawn trains in the new era, but we can all feel that they cannot become the future. New technologies will eventually gradually reshape the entire ecology, and games on the chain may be an immature beginning.
Therefore, the more important question is: why do we need to pay attention to and explore games on the chain? What stage of development are on-chain games in?
image description
【I don't know what this thing will be worth in the future, but it's new, so let's do it first.】
——Max, founder of Astro Aerospace Industries, said
https://www.britannica.com/science/galaxy
The inevitability of technological evolution
image description
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-08-23-gartner-identifies-key-emerging-technologies-spurring-innovation-through-trust-growth-and-change
Every technological revolution in history often breaks out some super products after several years. Those secondary innovations and inventions that promote the large-scale popularization of technology are often overlooked by people, but it is these innovations and inventions that promote each other, and the truly innovative products are collided by fate. Behind every innovative product that claims to be "from 0 to 1" in history, there are often several bedding technologies behind it.
image description
https://www.deviantart.com/lightingbolt 666/art/Minecraft-production-tree-353859041
Therefore, currently immature games on the chain may mature with the improvement of technology, or may become another transit station on the road of product development. But in any case, it is worthy of attention and exploration. As the most cutting-edge exploration direction of on-chain applications, even if it is not the ultimate killer application, it may be a field closely related to killer applications—just like every innovation in history The product does what it tells us.
Blockchain needs active users
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https://etherscan.io/chart/active-address
According to the above figure, we can know that there is a bottleneck in the number of daily active users of Ethereum. We have witnessed the explosion of the pan-DeFi ecology, but from the perspective of bystanders, NFT and GameFi are the continuation of DeFi. The blockchain currently lacks large-scale adoption applications that can ensure that users continue to be active on the chain, so gaming has become a target area for further expansion of the blockchain industry. The experience of Axie Infinity and StepN shows that GameFi is not sustainable, so more durable and healthy on-chain games will replace GameFi and become the representative of the next generation of on-chain application innovation. In addition to industry needs, some tech geeks also want to prove that blockchain can enable more interesting, complex, and immersive applications, not just digital currency and DeFi.
Complex applications on the chain
On the one hand, for the blockchain, on-chain games are an inevitable path for the development of the blockchain technology tree, and the blockchain also needs a larger number of active users.
On the other hand, the latest development of the new public chain, zkEVM/VM, and modularization provides a higher TPS and lower Gas network environment for blockchain applications, and they have more superior account abstraction, asset management, Parallel processing and ZK features also lay the groundwork for application innovation.
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https://defillama.com/chains
But on a network with higher TPS and lower Gas, applications with lower unit income (the income of each transaction is very low, so high Gas is tolerated) and higher TPS requirements are allowed—or it is called complex on-chain Apps pop up. We can establish a coordinate system, the horizontal axis is TPS, and the vertical axis is unit revenue. If we rank many applications, we will know which applications are available at different TPS/unit revenue levels, and then roughly infer which applications will be Born on a higher performance network.
Bas 1 s Venturesof Wonder image description
https://www.matthewball.vc/all/epicgamesprimermaster
Looking back at history, the network expansion from 3G to 4G has driven the explosion of mobile Internet applications. During the deployment of 4G, many people questioned the role of 4G technology, what is the use of faster email and more blogs? What's the use of more internet speed? But the subsequent explosion of smartphone applications has dispelled these doubts.
Therefore, in the context of blockchain expansion and acceleration, on-chain games may be the beginning of the next generation of complex applications on the chain, and the early exploration of on-chain games may lay the foundation for the emergence of complex on-chain applications. As described by JacobHyperstructuresIn that way, we have the opportunity to build a civilized infrastructure that can outlast our own life through the blockchain, and create permanently available, composable, and publicly reusable network applications for humans and their descendants all over the world.
Current status of games on the chain
A well-known on-chain game isDark Forest, it is a space conquest theme multiplayer online chain game,dfdaoof members are also building custom infrastructureLight Forestto allow anyone to modify and run their own dark forest rounds with a custom ruleset, creating something likeDark Forest Arena: Grand Prixand so on.
"The game background of Dark Forest is a cryptographically generated infinite universe, which contains various types of planets and space entities. The most popular game mode of Dark Forest is a week-long melee, thousands of players, Bots , AI, and even smart contracts, face-to-face competition for galactic supremacy. Players are born on a tiny home planet in the universe, and they must harvest resources, conquer nearby Odaily, and interact with neighbors through alliances, trade, negotiations, and even wars. to expand their empire."—— "Dark Forest: The Apocalypse of Three-Year Full-Chain Games (Part 1)"
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https://mirror.xyz/dfarchon.eth/XCJor 0 YF 0 lUMzB 7 B 4 xZSjkXhIWmEN 8 HOMqvLz 8 K_hqY
andIsaac、TreatyandLootRealms。
IsaacBy Starknet onTopologyDeveloped by the team, it is a multiplayer online physics simulation game based on the background of "Three-Body" and "The Wandering Earth", deployed on Starknet. All players need to cooperate to build factories, pipelines and power grids, transforming natural resources into various devices to drive planets to escape the solar system. Its characteristic is that players need to cooperate on the chain to jointly complete an on-chain goal.
Treaty byCurioimage description
https://blog.curio.gg/introducing-treaty/
LootRealmsBy Starknet onBibliotheca DAODeveloped, inspired by Loot, is a sandbox war strategy game, in the first version, players need to hold Realms NFTIn order to start the game, in the second version, you can participate in the game by casting the adventurer NFT. It is worth adding that the adventurer's equipment is the Loot that was popular before. On February 1, 2023, LootrRealms raised a total of nearly 4 million USDC (oversubscribed 6.35 times) in community fundraising. It is characterized by its high playability and completion compared to other chain games. And it took the lead in token distribution and on-chain governance. All transactions in the game are passed through a system calledNexusThe network machine flows, and the player provides $LORDS as the Gas for the Nexus to operate. at presentMask NetworkofKasparWriting an in-depth report for LootRealms, we can look forward to his unique insights. Other sandbox simulation types of fully chained games include:Mithraeum、Conquest。
What types of games are there on the chain?
In this section, the nuances of on-chain gaming will be presented. Judging from the current status of blockchain computing power and cost, games on the chain should have the characteristics of low concurrency to adapt to the low efficiency of the blockchain, but from the perspective of complete innovation, this is not the case. There are two potential contexts that may be overlooked here, they are porting, that is, porting previous games to the chain, and native, that is, developing a game that can only be developed on the chain, if we still call it a game if.
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https://www.teamlab.art/w/flowersbloom/
Porting means that the game itself can be developed off-chain, but we develop a version with on-chain features. As mentioned earlier, a game on the chain will be more composable, reusable, and decentralized than off-chain, and its game features will be maximized in some places. Intuitively, transplanted games on the chain only transfer the storage and calculation of the game to the chain.
byWill Robinson 《Unblocking On-Chain Games: Part Two — The 18 xx Genre》image description
https://www.boardgamemeeplelady.com/2019/02/25/1846-race-for-midwest-good-introduction-into-18 xx/
Games such as 18 xx games are very suitable for porting as on-chain games because:
have enough turn time. In each round time, each player needs to determine a series of decisions, and then submit them at a unified point in time, so its TPS requirements for the blockchain will not be too high, and Gas can be reduced by aggregating or packaging transactions.
It has the property of financial game. In 18 xx, players need to compete with other players in a financial market, such as asset auctions, so it can be well combined with DeFi.
18 xx After the game is ported to the chain, the stocks in the game may be tokens in the "real world" such as Uni and Sushi, DAI, and the trading market in the game is driven by Uni V3; we can also write the past game state into a contract — just like Treaty did. In theory we can replace 18 xx with any simulation business game - as mentioned earlierTreaty、Mithraeum、Conquest、Lootrealms。
Native
image description
https://www.teamlab.art/w/ever-blossoming-life-waterfall/#modal-1
Founder of Dark Forestgubsheepexist"The Strongest Crypto Gaming Thesis" mentioned:
Crypto-native games are games that embrace the architectural patterns and spirit of blockchain application development to the greatest extent:
The source of truth for game data is the blockchain.Blockchain is not just used as secondary storage for data, or a "mirror image" of data stored in proprietary servers. All meaningful data is stored on the blockchain - not just asset ownership. This enables games to take full advantage of the benefits of programmable blockchains: a transparent data store that interoperates without permission.
Game logic and rules are implemented through smart contracts.For example, in-game battles, not just ownership, are on-chain.
The game is developed according to the principles of open ecosystem.The game contracts and accessible game clients are open source. Third-party developers have the power to customize or even fork their own gaming experiences through plugins, third-party clients, interoperable smart contracts, and even complete redeployments. This in turn allows game developers to leverage the creative output of an entire (incentive-aligned) community.
The game has nothing to do with the client. This is closely related to the above three points. The touchstone of whether a game is encrypted and native is: "If the client provided by the core developer disappears tomorrow, can this game still be played?" If and only if the game data storage is permissionless , if the game logic can be executed without permission, and the community can interact with the core smart contract without relying on the interface provided by the core team, the answer is yes.
The game contains digital assets of real world value. Blockchains provide a native API to the concept of value itself, and digital assets are interoperable with cryptocurrencies by default. This allows game developers to build new positive-sum incentive structures for their player and developer communities.
Topologyfounder ofGuiltyGyozaexist《On Medium, Validity Rollup, and Digital Physics》Borrowing from the words of Alan Kay and McLuhan: Blockchain is a brand-new medium, and cutting-edge innovators need to create native applications unique to blockchain on it, such as "Autonomous World" (Autonomous World) Worlds). For more information about the autonomous world, you can refer to "Autonomous Worlds》 。
A simple example of a native on-chain game is Game of Life on StarknetGO L2. About the Game of Life, also known asconway game of life(Conway's Game of Life), or Conway's Game of Life, is a cellular automaton invented by British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. The rules of the game of life can be summarized as follows: cells arranged in a square grid either live or die. A live cell with 2 or 3 live neighbors can survive; a dead cell with 3 live neighbors can be resurrected; otherwise the cell dies.
The game prototype looks like this:
Go L2 still refers to the basic rules of the traditional game of life, players create an initial configuration on the grid, and then cells will evolve (live or die) according to the rules of the game, forming multiple combinations. Players can use GO L2 tokens to restore selected cells or create new games.
GO L2 utilizes the features of the blockchain to generate game content on the chain, but it has the problem that the game mechanism is too simple and the playability is insufficient - any "achievement" in the game will not bring any sense of accomplishment to the player, maybe we You can look forward to the iteration of native games on the chain.
Current status of on-chain game engines
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https://techblogcorner.com/2020/02/06/most-popular-game-engines-for-game-development/
But the game engine is directly related to the game production process and user experience, especially if user-generated content (UGC) plays an important role in the game. Therefore, in the early stage when the games on the chain have not yet been verified, the game engine on the chain often shoulders the responsibility of creating a game product. Regarding the game engine on the chain, there may seem to be two venture capital ideas that are actually one. Whether it is directly making a game on the chain or making a game engine on the chain, you need to make a game first.
The truth about on-chain game engines is that far fewer teams are currently building it than on-chain games.
An example of an on-chain game engine isMUD, which is a development framework for Ethereum's complex applications, but it is more used to develop games on the chain.
It adds some conventions for organizing data and logic, and abstracts away low-level complexity, thus allowing developers to focus on the application's functionality. It standardizes how data is stored on-chain to provide all network code to synchronize contract and client state. This includes synchronizing state directly from RPC nodes or generic MUD indexers. MUD isMIT Licenseimage description
https://mud.dev/
On 11/22/22, the development team behind the MUDLatticeCompleted an on-chain MineCraft (my world) using MUD——OPCraft。
autonomous worldautonomous world? Lattice sees OPCraft as an autonomous world: “It’s an on-chain 3D voxel world, and every aspect of the world—every river, blade of grass, and flake of snow on a mountaintop—exists on-chain. Every action is As the world of Ethereum transaction execution." Lattice's idea is to develop the engine first, and then develop the game through the engine.
andStarknetOn-chain game development teamTopologyfounder ofGuiltyGyozaIt is believed that the game engine should not be designed first and then the game should be developed, but the engine should be designed according to the needs of game development. Topology is a team of knowledge and action, they have developedIsaac、MuMuWaiting for on-chain games, the new on-chain AI fighting game will be tested in February. Incidentally, the developers of the Starknet ecosystem are working on a project calledDojoThe on-chain game tool chain of Starknet, the development language of Starknet is Cairo, so it is similar to the Cairo version of MUD.
Folius VenturesofAikoalso in"Sandbox, simulation game, and fully on-chain game engine"A game engine based on physics + chemistry + time was proposed in . She believes that a completely on-chain game based on physical rules is meaningless, because it allows players to passively "discover" logic. Corresponding to this type of game on the chain is game physics (the physical rules in the game discovered by the player during the interaction process, such as combating soil dropping equipment), which allows players to have more fun than plot-style "passive games". The sense of interaction is a kind of "active game".
on the other hand,Bas 1 s Venturesof WonderSaid: Some game engines on the chain now mainly transmit the conditions triggered by some key events (such as geographic coordinate information) to the chain in the form of data structures, but a considerable part of the complete logic is executed in the centralized server. And for high concurrent games such as MMORPG and MOBA. If all logic is carried out in a decentralized environment, there are high requirements for the efficiency and cost of network transmission, so that the game experience will not be significantly affected during state transition.
In addition to the game engine on the chain, there are other game infrastructures on the chain, such as game guilds and game stores.
GuildlyIt is an on-chain game guild that allows players to share accounts and NFTs. It is still in the development stage.
Cartridge.ggIt is a game store on Starknet, where players can learn about and access multiple games on the chain. Users can create and log in accounts by scanning QR codes with mobile phones without the need for encrypted wallets.
On-Chain Gaming Arsenal: Starknet
image description
https://medium.com/starkware/part-1-starknet-sovereignty-a-decentralization-proposal-bca 3 e 98 a 01 ef
Starknet is very suitable for on-chain game deployment in terms of performance. On the one hand, Starknet can theoretically achieve9000 TPS, its unique STARK proof system is able to60 million transactionsimage description
https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/582.pdf
Compared with traditional wallets, Starknet's contract wallet based on the abstract design of native accounts is more suitable for the interactive scenarios of on-chain games. Most Ethereum and EVM-compatible public chains/L2 adopt a dual-account design, while Starknet is a single-account design, and all accounts are contracts. Simply put, this will give user accounts a high degree of programmability. For example, the Metamask (traditional EOA wallet) we commonly use on Ethereum cannot customize the specific usage scenarios, functions, or even transaction limits of an authorization, and does not support functions such as multi-signature and password-free payment (session key). Traditional wallets in the blockchain designed by traditional accounts cannot adapt to on-chain game interaction scenarios that require high-frequency authorization and complex interactions, which happens to be the strengths of contract wallets.
And Starknet attaches great importance to native application incubation. Its development team, StarkWare, has held multiple rounds of hackathons with partners such as MatchBox, Only Dust, Nethermind, and Mask Network, which has promoted the development of a large number of on-chain game teams.
But Starknet has some problems. On the one hand, Starknet's sorter and prover are currently centralized, and it is necessary to wait for the design of the decentralized protocol to be completed and the prover to be open-sourced in the future to ensure the decentralization of the network. On the other hand, due to the network speed limit, the performance of Starknet has not been unlocked, high gas and network congestion occur from time to time, and the user experience is poor. The main network may be updated in Q1. In the short term, it is not recommended to directly deploy large-scale projects on the Starknet main network .
But in general, we still believe that Starknet is the system with the most potential in the entire on-chain game ecosystem. We will analyze Starknet’s technical characteristics, on-chain game ecology, and on-chain game design and construction in the next research.
thank you
Starknet AstroIt is the most creative media in the Starknet ecosystem, providing cutting-edge and in-depth research. This study also receivedBas1s VenturesThey are also the most cutting-edge and professional investment institutions for Web3.
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