Amitt Mahajan, founder and CEO of Proof of Play, developer of the crypto game Pirate Nation, predicts that eventually there will be thousands of purpose-built blockchains, each supporting a separate application.
This was born out of Zynga’s experience developing the viral Facebook game Farmville: At the time, Zynga was running around 64 databases just to keep the game from crashing, when they were developing the casual farming simulator. To Mahajan, blockchain is just a more sophisticated database.
“At peak times, [Farmville] “At that time we had around 30 million daily active users. To scale the game to that scale, we needed 64 databases,” Mahajan said. DecryptionGG’s“In this world, the blockchain is a database. You’re essentially using the chain as a data store. So to scale with real-world usage, you need to split transactions across chains.”
Previously, Pirate Nation was built on the Ethereum scaling network Polygon. Moved to Arbitrum Nova This is due to an increase in Polygon gas fees, but projects have realized that relying on a shared network is problematic, as the launch of a new project could increase gas fees for everyone on the chain.
in FebruaryPirate Nation has explored the possibility of using Arbitrum to launch a chain for itself and other developers, in a project called Multichain.
On-chain role-playing game Pirate Nation currently sails on its own application-specific chain, Apex, and its founders believe this is the only logical future for other apps as well.
“Applications of any scale need to be able to predictably control their gas costs,” Mahajan said. Decryption“I predict we will see thousands of chains as people split off from shared Layer 2 to application-specific chains.”
Screenshot from Pirate Nation. Image: Proof of Play
We have already seen this trend across multiple blockchain networks: several games built on Avalanche use dedicated subnets, such as Shrapnel and the upcoming Off the Grid with its GUNZ network. As another example, Treasure is building its own Arbitrum-based Treasure Chain, which will feature a web of “Infinity Chains” or dedicated game networks.
Mahajan said that since Pirate Nation launched its own app-only chain, it has started filling it with transactions, and the team is already looking at a second chain for support.
“Apex has basically maxed out its capacity,” Mahajan explained. “Going forward, we need to add B chains, C chains, and D chains to continue to scale the game,” he added. “We’ll continue to add chains and grow and add more users in the game.”
The need for multiple chains may sound odd, even worrying, but this is nothing new for Mahajan, who has experience building games in the Web2 world: this is just a new venture based on the same premise: you need a scalable architecture to support a growing game.
Mahajan worked at Zynga from 2009 to 2011, during which time he led the development of Farmville. In the Web3 space, developers aren’t worried about popular blockchain games crashing, but about rising fees due to network congestion.
At the time Pirate Nation was featured in Polygon, the company said it was paying up to $4,000 per day to collect gas fees from players, which wasn’t sustainable for the startup. While launching four or more chains just to run one crypto game may seem like a lot of work, Mahajan sees benefits to the ramp-up.
“It was an inconvenience to run 64 databases for FarmVille,” he says, “and it’s an inconvenience for us because we were the first people to do it. But it becomes a product.”
Mahajan reiterates this point with Web2: To build a product like Facebook, the founder explained, it was necessary to invent concepts like load balancing and caching.
Being able to create a game that reaches 1 million daily active users (DAU) means you can build another dapp, or a photo sharing site, or whatever, that can reach 1 million DAUs.
—Amit Mahajan, Founder and CEO, Pirate Nation
This is part of Pirate Nation’s multi-chain service, with Apex being the first network to launch. Multi-chain will enable other game and dapp developers to launch their own networks powered by Arbitrum Orbit. Ethereum Scaling techniques.
“It’s coming. There’s definitely interest,” Mahajan said. “We need to resolve our own capabilities issues before we take on others.” [issuesbeforewetakeonothers”
Avid Player
Expansion plans for Pirate Nation were announced after the game’s release. Pirate Token In June. Listed on Coinbase While the value of Ethereum tokens has skyrocketed, price isn’t what concerns its founders about the token launch.
Instead, he wanted to focus on the 80% of PIRATE tokens currently held by users. Dune DashboardBy staking these tokens, users will earn Proof of Play (PoP) points, which will allow them to receive additional benefits within the ecosystem. This high percentage is due in part to the fact that PIRATE tokens are not locked when staked and can continue to be used by users without penalty.
To the founders, the high percentage of tokens staked is a sign of trust in the community and that the game is not attracting farmers who just want to dump their tokens.
“Staking is an opportunity for people to reaffirm that they’re in it for the long term,” Mahajan explained, “so the fact that we’re seeing so many people staking in such large quantities is encouraging.”
And for avid gamers, the biggest on-chain event is just around the corner.
Next month, we’ll be holding our second World Boss event, where players will not only work together to defeat a boss, but also compete to see who can land the kill shot with their transaction. Players will be rewarded based on the damage they inflict, and each kill shot will be rewarded with a 1:1 NFT.
This event will be the biggest in-game event in Pirate Nation’s history. This will likely put a strain on the network, especially with developers already considering a second chain to split transactions. Will the Apex Chain be stretched to its limits?
“We’ll see,” Mahajan replied with a smile.
Editor: Andrew Hayward
