Ahoy, Arbitrum!
Pirate Nation is a role-playing sport (RPG) with a boxy voxel-art aesthetic and dynamic NFTs, and is sort of solely on-chain. However whereas many video games announce that they’re constructing on the Ethereum sidechain Polygon, studio Proof of Play is as a substitute setting sail for brand spanking new shores with Pirate Nation.
Proof of Play co-founder and CEO Amitt Mahajan—a veteran of Zynga and the smash informal sport Farmville—advised Decrypt that Pirate Nation wanted to maneuver to a extra inexpensive and scalable platform. Regardless of what some may take into consideration scaling networks, he mentioned, these Polygon transaction charges actually do add up.
Since launching the sport in December 2022, Mahajan has seen elevated charges on the backend as extra gamers get into the sport. Whereas some Pirate Nation gamers purchase NFTs on the Ethereum mainnet earlier than opening the sport, any “transactions” or backend actions the place gamers purchase objects inside the sport don’t pressure the person to signal with their pockets or pay gasoline charges.
It is a transfer to simplify the sport’s Web3 expertise, making it as seamless and immersive as doable with out the friction and cumbersome nature of partaking with good contracts—which maintain the code that powers autonomous Web3 apps and video games. It has already turn out to be the norm for a lot of blockchain video games.
Whereas some studios go for pre-authorization strategies in order that customers solely should signal as soon as, different studios as a substitute eat the price of in-game transactions. Both method, somebody has to pay these charges in-game for customers to have interaction with good contracts—and Proof of Play has been overlaying these in-game gasoline charges itself to spare customers the trouble.
“As extra individuals have migrated to Polygon, we simply began to run into scaling points with the Polygon chain,” Mahajan advised Decrypt. “We had been paying between $3,000 and $4,000 a day on gasoline. And so it simply acquired untenable. It was stopping us from with the ability to scale the sport.”
Mahajan mentioned that many choices had been explored for Pirate Nation, together with migrating away from Ethereum solely or contemplating a non-public community—like a Polygon Supernet or an Avalanche Subnet. Nevertheless, it selected Arbitrum Nova, one other Ethereum scaling resolution (a layer-2 community) for the sport, as a result of it supplied help for Pirate Nation’s technical options like OpenZeppelin safety merchandise and nodes already applied into the sport.
Whereas there’s lots of buzz round zero-knowledge (ZK) scaling networks, together with the newly-launched Polygon zkEVM community and the upcoming Immutable zkEVM gaming community based mostly on Polygon’s personal, Mahajan admitted that he does not need to take a threat on one thing that will not but be absolutely optimized.
“There’s lots of hype across the ZK stuff,” he mentioned. “We don’t need to be the primary adopters of those applied sciences. We’re simply attempting to offer an excellent expertise to customers. So we need to see proof of ideas, examples of initiatives which are operating [in] manufacturing earlier than we’re prepared to maneuver over.”
Decentralized Focus
Whereas Pirate Nation’s crew is cautious about anchoring on new shores, Proof of Play has developed its personal tech resolution referred to as “mirroring” for the transfer to Arbitrum Nova.
As an alternative of “bridging” property via a course of that successfully mints a brand new model of the NFT on the goal chain, Pirate Nation has its good contracts arrange in order that customers will see the property they purchase on the Ethereum mainnet mechanically seem of their sport on Arbitrum Nova.
In different phrases, because the title suggests, it mirrors the sport property on each chains. And since Pirate Nation is almost solely on-chain and operated by way of automated good contracts, nearly each facet of the sport is saved on a blockchain.
“Most Web3 video games which are on the market, they use NFTs and tokens as the premise for in-game objects and foreign money. However the majority of gameplay nonetheless occurs in a centralized style,” Mahajan mentioned.
He likened most Web3 video games to a sport of chess, the place the items are NFTs.
“However for those who really need to play the sport chess, you need to nonetheless go to somebody’s web site and hook up with their servers. And if for some purpose that firm goes away, your chess items are actually ineffective, as a result of you do not have the board or the sport guidelines to associate with it,” Mahajan mentioned of most Web3 video games.
Pirate Nation is at the moment constructing an on-chain sport engine, and in addition has what Mahajan calls the “equal” of a sport server on-chain. Quite a few good contracts function the sport’s mechanics as properly, that means that the one main component of the sport that isn’t at the moment saved on-chain is its artwork, which is saved on IPFS. And compressing and transferring the artwork on-chain wouldn’t be solely out of the query, Mahajan added.
As for whether or not customers will discover any modifications with Pirate Nation’s migration, Mahajan believes that’s unlikely: “From a person’s perspective, it’s going to be seamless—and, the truth is, much less friction.”
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