CoinDesk reports:
Amitt Mahajan, founder and CEO of Proof of Play, developer of the crypto game “Pirate Nation,” predicts there will ultimately be thousands of specialized blockchains, each supporting a single application.
This comes after his viral Facebook game Farmville, during which Zynga managed about 64 databases just to prevent game crashes. For Mahajan, blockchain is simply an advanced database.
Mahajan told Decrypt’s GG, “At its peak, Farmville had around 30 million daily active users. So, to scale the game to that number, we had about 64 databases. In this world, blockchain is our database. We essentially use chains as our data store. So, to scale to any real usage numbers, we need cross-chain transaction splits.”
Previously, Pirate Nation was building on Ethereum scaling solution Polygon, but moved to Arbitrum Nova due to rising gas fees on Polygon. However, the project encountered issues relying on shared networks, as launching new projects could increase gas costs for everyone on-chain.
In February this year, Pirate Nation explored launching on Arbitrum with the Multichain project, considering it for themselves and other developers.
The role-playing game Pirate Nation now sails on its own application-specific chain, Apex, with the founder seeing this as the logical future for other applications too.
Mahajan told Decrypt, “Once you’re an app of any scale, you need to be able to predictably control your gas costs.” “My prediction is that as people move from these shared second layers to application-specific chains, there will be thousands of chains.”
Screenshots from Pirate Nation. Image: Proof of Play
This trend is seen across multiple blockchain networks. For example, games built on Avalanche are using their own dedicated subnets like Shrapnel and the upcoming Off-the-Grid with the GUNZ network. Similarly, Treasure is constructing its Arbitrum-based Treasure Chain, featuring an “infinite chain” or specialized gaming network.
Mahajan said since launching on their own application-specific chain, Pirate Nation has started filling up the chain with transactions — the team is already considering a second chain for support.
“We’ve essentially hit the capacity of Apex,” Mahajan explained. “Now, to continue scaling the game, we need to add Chain B, Chain C, Chain D,” he added. “We’ll be adding more chains in the future to continue increasing and expanding the user base in the game.”
Needing multiple chains may sound strange or concerning, but for Mahajan, who has experience building games in the Web2 world, it’s nothing new. It’s just a new iteration, requiring scalable architectures to support growing games.
Mahajan worked at Zynga from 2009 to 2011, leading the development of Farmville. In the Web3 space, developers worry not about popular blockchain game crashes but about fee hikes due to network congestion.
Even back when Pirate Nation was on Polygon, the company said it was paying up to $4,000 in gas fees daily to snatch it from players — but that’s unsustainable for startups. Though launching four or more chains just to run a crypto game might seem cumbersome, Mahajan sees the benefits of beefing up.
“Running 64 databases for Farmville was inconvenient,” he said. “It was inconvenient for us because we were the first to do it. But later, it became a product.”
Mahajan uses Web2 to frame this again correctly. The founder explained that to build products like Facebook, concepts like load balancing and caching had to be invented.
“If we can make a game with 1 million daily active users, that means you could build another dapp or photo-sharing site, or something else that reaches 1 million DAU,” said Amitt Mahajan, founder and CEO of Pirate Nation.
This is part of Pirate Nation’s multi-chain offering, with Apex being the first network launched. The Multichain plans to open up to other game and dapp developers to launch their own networks, supported by Ethereum scaling tech Arbitrum Orbit.
“It’s coming. There’s definitely interest in this,” Mahajan said. “We need to solve our capacity issues before competing with others.”
Dedicated players
Pirate Nation’s expansion plans were laid out after the game’s Pirate token launch in June. Its listing on Coinbase saw Ethereum token values soar, but the founder wasn’t focused on prices at launch.
Instead, according to Dune’s dashboard, he wanted to concentrate on the 80% of PIRATE tokens currently held by users. By staking these tokens, users can earn Proof of Play (PoP) points, with these points expected to unlock additional benefits in the ecosystem. In part, the high percentage is due to PIRATE tokens not being locked up during staking and allowing users to spend them without any penalties.
For the founder, the high token ratio is a community confidence bet, indicating the game isn’t attracting token-dumping farmers.
“People are really betting on this being a reaffirmation of their long-term engagement, so many people have staked such high amounts,” Mahajan explained.
For dedicated gamers, the biggest on-chain event is just around the corner.
Over the next month, the Second World Boss Contest will be held. This will see players teaming up to defeat bosses, but also competing for their transactions to be the fatal blow. Players will be rewarded based on the damage they inflict, with a 1 in 1 NFT for a fatal blow.
This event will be the largest in-game event in Pirate Nation’s history. As a result, the network may be tense, especially since developers are considering a second chain to split transactions. Will it push the Apex chain to its limits?
“We’ll see,” Mahajan replied with a smile.
Andrew Hayward edited
