A detailed explanation of arcade accounts: costing 20 cents, the golden key for online games.
Thanks to the Play-to-earn model, GameFi games like StepN have quickly become popular and have attracted more and more funds into the field. According to Blockchaingamer, a blockchain game platform service provider, the investment in the blockchain game industry amounted to $2.56 billion as of November 2022. However, due to the immaturity of economic models and infrastructure, the concept of GameFi cooled down quickly under the support of capital.
In 2023, people will shift their focus to full-chain games. For full-chain games, not only the digital assets in the game, but also all the game logic will occur on the chain. This means that every state change of the game contract needs to be registered on the chain, and players need to sign transactions for every operation in the game. This is a terrible player experience for high-frequency operation games like RTS (Real-Time Strategy).
Session Key is a solution to the inherent poor gaming experience of native encrypted games. It aims to utilize account abstraction and some clever innovations on Starknet, allowing encrypted game players to avoid frequent signing of transactions for every operation. Today, Loot Realms has released the first implementation based on Session Key - Arcade Accounts. With Arcade Accounts, players can securely store their keys in browser storage and do not need to sign transactions for every "attack" operation in the game, thus achieving a smoother player experience.
What exactly is Arcade Account? And how does it work? Before answering these questions, let's understand what Session Key is.
What is Session Key?
Session Key is an idea jointly initiated by the Briqs, Realms, and Topology teams at the Starknet hackathon one year ago. It aims to utilize account abstraction and some clever innovations on Starknet to solve the inherent poor experience of native encrypted games - players need to sign transactions for every operation in the game.
In the on-chain gaming scenario, every operation in the game will trigger a wallet pop-up window and require the user to confirm "Do you want to confirm this transaction?", along with some content that most people cannot understand. This may lead to errors, confusion, or even loss of money.
Session Key allows users to pre-approve interaction rules with specific Dapps, such as limited duration, maximum gas limit, restrictions on the maximum transaction amount of tokens, or specific functions of specific contracts, etc. This way, game players can interact freely within these limited rules without having to sign every transaction.
In other words, with a session key, players can enjoy the fun of Dapps while also ensuring that their assets are protected. Session keys have limited what Dapps can and cannot do. This means that when you play blockchain games, you won't be overwhelmed by endless confirmations, and you'll be clear that the most valuable assets in your wallet are secure.
What are Arcade Accounts?
Arcade Accounts is the first implementation of session keys on Starknet using account abstraction by the Realms team.
By adopting (permission-limited) middleware, Realms allows players to create a new type of Arcade Account, greatly improving the user experience of blockchain games.
Essentially, an Arcade Account is a Starknet account with some functional variations, including:
- Each Arcade Account has a primary account
- Non-primary accounts cannot transfer ETH/Tokens
- Other accounts can only sign transactions unless they are authenticated
This means that Arcade Accounts provide limited player functionality, with the limitations of these permissions minimizing security risks. Even if an Arcade Account is exploited, attackers are powerless because the primary account can withdraw all funds and create a new Arcade Account.
Starknet's unique "Declare Contract" method reduces the cost of adding an Arcade Account to around 20 cents.
The experience of Arcade Accounts, how is it? Loot Realms showcases the intuitive experience brought by an Arcade Account to gamers in the lightweight game Loot Survivor - "smooth in-game interactive experience without the need to sign every attack operation."
Without using an Arcade Account, players need to sign every attack operation in the game, resulting in a long confirmation time. After adding the Arcade Account, users can securely store the keys in the browser storage, eliminating the need to sign every attack operation and directly perform attacks in the game.
The above are just some of the basic features implemented by using contracts as accounts. Loot Realms will soon implement two advanced features: automatic recharging when ETH is insufficient and automatic token withdrawal when tokens arrive in the account.
In fact, session keys are not exclusive to Starknet but rather one of the use cases unlocked by account abstraction in full-chain games. With the popularization and expansion of account abstraction solutions, wallets will become more secure and user-friendly, and the Web3 world will welcome more users.
References:
https://twitter.com/lordOfAFew/status/1687976673902538752
https://www.defidaonews.com/article/6773674
