In previous articles, we’ve introduced the concept of fully on-chain games, how they differ from traditional games, and the necessary industry infrastructure. For more details, check out our article A Detailed Overview of Fully On-Chain Games. In this article, we will dive deeper into the latest technological developments and highlight some of the most popular examples.

Latest Technologies and Developments

L2 Redstone Mainnet Launch and Introduction of New Fully On-Chain Games

Understanding fully on-chain games requires a grasp of the underlying infrastructure, and one significant development is the launch of the Redstone Layer 2 (L2) network, dedicated to the fully on-chain gaming ecosystem. Developed by Lattice, Redstone’s mainnet officially went live in May. Notably, Redstone is the first OP Stack chain to use Plasma mode.

To explain briefly, OP Stack chains typically rely on Ethereum’s mainnet to ensure data availability. However, with the introduction of the Plasma mode, users now have the flexibility to choose their own data availability layer for deploying OP Stack chains. This not only significantly reduces transaction costs but also ensures security.

How has Redstone performed in the three months since its launch? Official data shows that at peak times, the gas fee reached 0.005 Gwei, with a block time of 2 seconds. By comparison, Ethereum’s average gas fee is around 0.787 Gwei (according to data from Etherscan), with an average block time of 12-14 seconds.

Redstone Mainnet Data (Source: Redstone)

In addition to supporting newly launched fully on-chain games, several other components have gone live alongside the Redstone network, including the NFT marketplace Redstone Market, the cross-chain bridge Relay, the decentralized exchange (DEX) Redswap, and the on-chain gaming guild GG Quest.

Moreover, the game engine Mud recently released an update featuring a “Multi-namespace” capability. This feature allows developers to expand their game worlds independently and enables seamless data interaction. The client automatically keeps the game world updated. The advantage of this technology lies in its modular structure—each technical component operates independently, ensuring they don’t interfere with one another. This design simplifies maintenance, improves efficiency, and enhances security.

Since its launch, Redstone has introduced seven fully on-chain games: Biomes, DEAR, DF Archon, Sky Strife, Words3, This Cursed Machine, and Downstream. While the graphics in these games are generally impressive, their overall performance has been somewhat underwhelming. Even Sky Strife, one of the more popular titles, has shifted into an autonomous mode. The game no longer offers free daily matches or seasons, and all features, including heroes and maps, are now fully accessible to all users. The community manager has announced the founding of a new company. As for Biomes, the community has reported that they can no longer afford the development and management costs for new users, leading to the suspension of invitation codes.

L3 Game Chain B3

B3 is an L3 game chain developed by NPC Labs, built on the Base platform. According to NPC Labs’ co-founder and CEO, Daryl Xu, B3 is capable of handling high transaction volumes with almost no gas fees. Additionally, B3 has partnered with ChainSafe to integrate chain abstraction technology, allowing players to engage with games without needing to bridge assets or switch networks.

In July of this year, B3 completed a funding round, raising $21 million. Pantera Capital led the round, which included notable investors such as Makers Fund, Hashed, Collab+Currency, Sfermion, Mirana Ventures, Bitscale Capital, and Mantle EcoFund.

According to its official website, B3 currently hosts 24 games, including DEAR (132 players), Coconut Tree (554 players), Mighty Action Heroes (229 players), Nifty Island (164 players), Hidden Objects (80 players), and Kitsune Zenko (457 players). These games span various genres, such as action, shooting, arcade, and horror.

Membership-Based L3 Game Chain Geist

On August 16, Aavegotchi announced the upcoming launch of Geist (also called Gotchichain), a new L3 game chain developed by Pixelcraft Studios. Geist is built on Base, Arbitrum, and Alchemy. According to its official website, Geist will feature an all-chain membership program, highly available developer tools, a native NFT marketplace, centralized exchange (CEX) deposit channels, native VRF (verifiable random function for on-chain random number generation), and support for the latest account abstraction technology with gasless relays.

As of the latest updates, Geist’s testnet is not yet live, but an airdrop campaign is currently underway.

Fully On-Chain Game Engines

In traditional game development, engines like Unreal, Unity, and Phaser provide comprehensive toolsets, including features for motion control, 2D and 3D graphics rendering, collision detection, sound effects, color settings, and programming, along with support for multiple platforms (e.g., PC, consoles, and mobile devices).

On the other hand, fully on-chain game engines are specifically designed for games that run entirely on the blockchain. These engines allow the game state to be fully stored on the blockchain. For example, the first such engine in the Ethereum ecosystem was the MUD engine, developed by Lattice. Over time, other platforms and programming languages have developed their dedicated game engines, such as DojoEngine on Starkware and engines like Keystone and World Engine from Curio.

MUD V2 is the first fully on-chain game engine in the EVM ecosystem, featuring components such as the STORE storage engine, state synchronization, and a native account abstraction module. Its new features allow developers to create a set of laws that define the creation, transformation, and conclusion of digital worlds. These laws are designed to be followed without limitations, forming a standard set of rules that enable both humans and machines to interact and develop societal and technological systems on top of them.

Notable games built using the MUD engine include Sky Strife, Opcraft, Primodium, and Words3.

Originally, Dojo was a fork of the MUD project to implement MUD functionality on Starknet using the Cairo programming language. Dojo consists of several key components: the Cairo state and smart contract development framework, the fully on-chain game engine SOZO CLI, the middleware for indexing and RPC services called TORLL, and the underlying consensus protocol KATANA. Together, these form the unique infrastructure for building fully on-chain games and autonomous worlds.

Games developed using the Dojo engine include Beer Baron, Chess Dojo, Dope Wars: Roll Your Own, Drive AI, Emoji Man, Loot Underworld, Mancala, Moving Mountains With Yu, Pistols at Ten Blocks, and 18 other titles.

Keystone is a rollup framework developed by Curio, built on the Optimism OP Stack. Keystone uses an Entity Component System (ECS) development approach, which significantly improves execution speed and supports parallel processing. Thanks to its compatibility with Optimism’s EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), Keystone allows Solidity smart contracts to interact with ECS states. This is achieved primarily through precompiled functions that retrieve and update data. Moreover, Keystone integrates a game logic clock into the block generation process, where user input from the previous block directly impacts the generation of new states.

Notable games developed using the Keystone engine include Duper and Warcraft.

Paima Engine, developed by Paima Studios, allows developers to build Web3 games using familiar Web2 development skills. This engine integrates JavaScript, databases, and Web2 development tools with Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain technology.

Paima Engine introduces Paima Whirlpool, which enables cross-blockchain interoperability and reduces reliance on a single network. It also provides game templates to accelerate development and is compatible with mainstream game engines like Unity and Unreal. Additionally, Paima has launched Stateful NFTs, which link player behavior with blockchain identities.

Games developed using the Paima Engine include Tarochi, WotJ: Tower Defense, Jungle Wars, and Stateful NFT Auto Battler.

World Engine from Argus Labs employs a unique Layer 2 sharding technology that allows developers to build open, interoperable game worlds. It is designed to create a network of games where each game has its own community-driven, scalable blockchain. A key engine feature is Cardinal, which integrates seamlessly with popular game engines like Unity and Unreal, while supporting the Go programming language to define game rules.

The engine also supports player-generated content and smooth interaction with game shards. Polaris is another engine part designed to customize complex game functionalities.

Games developed using the World Engine include Dark Frontier and Redacted.

Most Popular Game: Pirate Nation

Pirate Nation is a pirate-themed role-playing game (RPG) launched on the Apex chain by Proof of Play. Community players said, “I played casually for a month in March, received an airdrop worth over $1,000, and there was a queue system after the studio entered. However, after expanding to multiple chains, the queue was removed.”

As of August 24, OpenSea data shows that the total trading volume of Pirate Nation NFTs has reached 9,160 ETH, with a floor price of 1.21 ETH. According to CoinGecko, the game’s token $PIRATE has risen by 37.2% in the past seven days, peaking at $0.29.

Pirate Nation NFT Series Data (Source: OpenSea)

When comparing the traffic of new games launched by Redstone and B3, Pirate Nation stands out as the only game with significant traction, making its traffic worthy of deeper analysis.

In terms of gameplay, Pirate Nation is relatively simple at first, involving basic point-and-click mechanics. However, as players progress, they must spend money to build higher-level ships, which can be sold for profit. The game has a low entry barrier but incorporates a pay-to-progress model that encourages players to spend money to reduce time spent on upgrades. This approach helps mitigate the “death spiral” common in token-based games.

From a tokenomics perspective, unlike most blockchain games that use a dual-token system, Pirate Nation operates with a capped supply of $PIRATE tokens. In the past, blockchain games often required players to invest in NFTs upfront and earn tokens through gameplay, but poor tokenomics management often led to inflation and token price collapse. Pirate Nation’s tokenomics model avoids this issue by limiting token supply, preventing inflation in other games. During its Token Generation Event (TGE), the development team distributed a portion of $PIRATE as a reward to players. If players want more tokens afterward, they must earn them by playing the game. This design not only rewards early participants but also encourages continued player engagement.

Additionally, Pirate Nation has introduced a staking mechanism where players can stake $PIRATE to earn Proof of Play points. These points could potentially provide advantages or rewards in future in-game infrastructure projects.

The team behind Pirate Nation has significant financial and institutional support. In June of last year, they completed a $33 million funding round led by Greenoaks Capital and a16z Crypto. With backing from prominent institutions like a16z, the game benefits from strong financial and community support. The team is also highly experienced. CEO Amitt Mahajan has extensive industry experience as a former engineer at Epic Games, director of development at Zynga, and co-creator of FarmVille (the prototype for QQ Farm).

According to official announcements on X (formerly Twitter), Pirate Nation is regularly updated, ensuring the game mechanics are refreshed to keep players engaged. Frequent updates and timely adjustments to gameplay features are crucial in attracting and retaining users.

Community and Player Engagement in Fully On-Chain Games

After studying fully on-chain gaming communities and interviewing several players, we found significant differences in the motivations and interests of different players. For instance, Mr. B, a pirate player, primarily engages in games for financial gain and is not particularly enthusiastic about gaming in general. However, due to the potential for profit, he has started to pay attention to and become optimistic about blockchain games. Mr. B believes that the playability of blockchain games is improving, with the quality gradually reaching that of traditional games. He typically plays short-cycle AAA games and casual mini-games. Regarding fully on-chain games, Mr. B mentioned that game operations like transactions, task completions, and opening loot boxes are recorded on-chain in real time, with almost no gas fees involved.

However, Mr. B also noted that he does not fully understand the advantages of fully on-chain games, stating that as long as the game is fun, whether it is fully on-chain or not doesn’t really matter to him.

In contrast, Mr. H, an experienced player, takes a more reserved view of the current state of fully on-chain games, believing that they are still mostly popular with tech enthusiasts and the “geek” community. Unlike Mr. B, Mr. H values the entertainment aspect of games more than financial gain, arguing that the “play-to-earn” model is too dependent on market conditions. He points out that while blockchain-modified games have attracted a lot of attention, conversion rates remain low. Fully on-chain games, on the other hand, find it difficult to grow their user base and typically receive significant attention only during their initial launch. Afterward, they mostly exist as PvP (player-vs-player) battles among a smaller player base.

Mr. H further explained that fully on-chain games tend to stick to their original vision, while blockchain-modified games represent a compromise driven by market forces. Both players agreed on one key point: the ultimate standard of a good game is whether players enjoy it.

With the rapid development and widespread application of blockchain technology, as well as the active cryptocurrency market, the transparency, fairness, autonomy, and real economic interaction offered by fully on-chain games are increasingly attracting more players. The player community is rapidly growing, and fully on-chain games provide multiple entry points for a broad range of participants, from seasoned blockchain veterans to tech enthusiasts. Additionally, token-based economic systems allow players to earn through in-game activities and asset trading. However, despite the potential advantages brought by blockchain technology, its complexity and security challenges could undermine player confidence and community stability. As the player base grows, some fully on-chain games may face issues like network congestion and high transaction fees, which could negatively impact the player experience and hinder long-term game development.