Starknet: the ultimate ecosystem for crypto gaming evolution

Overview

The gaming industry has been steadily growing in popularity for years and is an ever-evolving market. However, a major change is about to take place!

The introduction of blockchain and cryptocurrency in this market some years ago has already demonstrated the potential of this combination for both players and games. However, this was just the beginning, and its true potential has yet to be fully realized. With the crypto infrastructure now in place, the gaming industry is poised for a major disruption that will change its landscape.

In this quest for disruption, Starknet is perfectly positioned to host this new era of gaming and appears to be the best ecosystem capable of hosting this industry.

Discover why in this article!

To explain how, this article covers these three topics 👇️ 

1. Gaming Industry and some figures

2. The first crypto gaming wave and its issues

3. Starknet solutions

I/ Gaming industry and some figures

The gaming industry is one of the largest and most lucrative industries in the world, estimated to be worth more than $240 billion in 2023, with growth projections estimating it to reach over $370 billion in 2028.

This industry brings together more than 1.25 billion gamers worldwide, which represents approximately 16% of the world's population.

To put this in perspective, the crypto market currently only reaches less than 4% of the world's population (according to the latest researches).

As decentralized finance was the main catalyst during the previous bull market, it is likely that gaming will be one of the main drivers of the next bull run.

But you may ask, doesn't the crypto gaming market already exist since the previous bull run, driven by games like Axie Infinity?

That's true! However, this first wave of gaming was only the precursor to a much bigger one that is about to come crashing in. While promising, the first wave was too limited by the constraints of crypto infrastructure.

Simply put, the crypto world wasn't ready to welcome the gaming world.

II/ The first crypto gaming wave and its issues

The first wave of crypto gaming was promising and received a lot of hype due to the introduction of a feature never before implemented in the gaming industry: the ability for players to truly own their assets in the game and have complete control over them.

In Web2 gaming, players are not the true owners of their in-game items and equipment:

• They can be banned at any time.

• Most games prohibit the sale of in-game items/equipment for real money.

• Trading between platforms/servers/instances is not allowed.

I'm not a big gamer myself, but I have already experienced these issues. During my adolescence, I spent a lot of time playing Dofus, a game that involves farming resources, equipping with increasingly powerful gear, and facing monsters and higher-level players.

Unfortunately, the game had these three major problems mentioned above:

• players could be banned without explanation or recourse

• players couldn't sell their equipments or in-game currency for real money

• inter-server trading was prohibited.

It can be extremely frustrating to have access to your objects and equipment restricted after spending weeks, or even months, acquiring them.

While the main function of a game is to entertain, it is only fair that players who have devoted so much time to these games can actually own their equipment without risking arbitrary access restrictions.

In response to this need, the first wave of crypto games emerged, replacing resources with cryptocurrencies and using NFTs to represent players' objects and equipment. This allows players to truly own in-game items, as the crypto and NFTs are held directly in users' wallets rather than in a database controlled by the game's creators/moderators.

However, two major challenges have limited the actual growth of crypto gaming:

• Crypto infrastructure was not ready; fees were too high and execution times too long to play a game. Additionally, users were required to sign every interaction in games on their wallets, with no specific tools available to help developers--who were forced to build everything from scratch.

• Games could exit scam at any time or were too dependent on their creators.

How can these problems be overcome?

Starknet provides innovative solutions for both of these issues.

III/ Starknet solutions

1. The crypto infrastructure was not ready

Two solutions have emerged to address issues related to transaction fees and long execution times:

• Create scalable but centralized Layer 1 solutions (such as Sui and Aptos).

• Create Layer 2 solutions on top of Ethereum.

Starknet falls into the second category, allowing for fast and low cost transactions (soon with EIP-4844 and Volition), while also benefiting from Ethereum's security and decentralization.

This is a good start. However, on-chain games have specific needs that must be addressed. On one hand, they are probably the crypto dApps that need to optimize performance the most, but on the other hand, they do not require the same level of security as DEXs. In addition, some games need to customize certain elements of their environment.

To meet these specific needs, Starknet has introduced a solution called appchains, which are Layer 3 on top of Starknet, allowing for:

• Hyper scalability (hyper speed and low fees)

• Customization of the layer to perfectly meet the needs of the dApp/game

Therefore, Starknet offers a scalable (Layer 2) and even hyper-scalable (Layer 3) environment while benefitting from Ethereum's security and decentralization.

✅ Issues of cost and execution time are on their way to being fully resolved ✅ 

However, to create real games that can compete with Web2 games, two other important problems need to be solved: wallet security and the need to sign each transaction.

Starknet natively supports Account Abstraction, which is one of the most important innovations for onboarding users to crypto. I will publish a specific thread about this topic soon.

What's important to remember is that Starknet natively supports this innovation, allowing it to maximize its usage (unlike other L2s). This innovation has notably enabled:

• The integration of 2FA and 3FA on the Braavos wallet.

• The creation of the Argent web wallet, which allows for web3 interaction without the need to download a wallet or remember a seed phrase.

• The implementation of multicall on Starknet.

So far, these three innovations have enabled ultra-secure wallets (Braavos' 2FA/3FA ensures that even if someone steals your seed phrase, they cannot steal your funds), web3 interaction without a wallet (Argent's web wallet), and an improved user experience when signing transactions (aggregation of interactions to request only one signature instead of several).

While these advancements are positive, they are not sufficient. For example, it is not feasible to play an MMORPG if you have to sign transactions for every interaction.

Session Keys come into play here, enabling users to approve all transactions upstream with parameters such as duration, maximum gas fee usage, volume used of a specific asset, etc.

For example, you can pre-approve a 30-minute gaming session by setting up this duration, and the amount of gas fees and crypto you want to use during this session. Before reaching these limits, you will not have to sign any transaction!

Here's an early prototype of this concept created by a well-known gaming expert on Starknet 👇

In addition, to optimize the UX to the maximum, Starknet plans to improve the interoperability of Starknet games, and even globally, by integrating Herotodus' storage proofs. These storage proofs allow for the ownership of an asset on one chain to be proven, enabling users to use them on other chains without having to move them!

Here is a thread that explains this concept in detail 👇

✅ Wallet, signature, and interoperability issues are about to be solved ✅ 

Last important point, the devs experience: in order to encourage and motivate them to create both high-quality and high-quantity games on Starknet, they need adequate tools to carry out their mission. This is where Starknet's introduction of Dojo comes in.

Dojo is a crypto-provable game engine that enables the creation of on-chain games and autonomous worlds.

ELI5: a game engine is a software framework that allows developers to build games without having to code fundamental systems and functions from scratch, such as graphics, game physics, and game mechanics. Dojo is to on-chain games what Unreal Engine is to Web2 games, with the ultimate goal of making game creation easier for developers.

With all of these features, Starknet offers a perfect gaming environment that significantly enhances the user experience. It brings the user experience progressively closer to that of Web2 games and provides developers with cutting-edge tools for creating real-world games that are interesting, fun, and complex.

2. Games could exit scam at any time or were too dependent on their creators.

There are numerous examples of Web3 games that ended badly due to excessive dependence on their creators. What's the point of giving players full ownership of resources, objects, and equipment if they can become worthless or useless overnight?

This is where autonomous worlds come in. Autonomous worlds allow for game creation without a central authority (at least once the game is launched in production), with permissionless development and permanent gameplay that lasts as long as the blockchain it runs on is alive.

In this context, the history and future of the game depend entirely on the will and choices of the players, not its creators or a central entity.

I invite you to check out this thread by Odin to learn more about the benefits of such a system:

Conclusion

What we need to remember from all of this is that the gaming industry is about to undergo a revolution, marking the advent of the third cycle of video gaming:

• Cycle 1: Rise of single-player video games (one player vs. AI)

• Cycle 2: Rise of multiplayer video games

• Cycle 3: Rise of on-chain video games, with the rise of autonomous worlds and real asset ownership by players

Gaming is one of the most lucrative industries in the world. On the other hand, cryptocurrencies are probably, along with AI, the most promising sector of the next few decades.

Starknet is a perfect fit for both narratives, as it offers the most promising L2 (Validity Rollup) on the market and the layer that best meets the needs of the gaming industry.

One more reason to closely follow Starknet!

I am planning to public a specific thread on the Starknet gaming projects landscape. Even though most of the projects are not yet mature, exciting things are already starting to emerge (hello Influence, Realms, NoGame and Tsubaka 😏).

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