Decentralization and protocolization of full-chain games

This article is a transcript of @hicaptainz’s speech at MuChiangmai.

In the past six months, full-chain games have been popular among everyone. Let’s first take a look at how other VCs and institutions view full-chain games. In the past two months, Paradigm and Coinbase have successively given out the top ten tracks that they are optimistic about in the future. Two of them are jointly optimistic, which are on-chain games and RWA. In Paradigm’s list, the descriptions are on-chain games and on-chain treasuries (that is, national debt), while in Coinbase’s list, the descriptions are on-chain games and Tokenizing Real World Assets. Therefore, in the next bull market, onchain gaming is still likely to become a mainstream narrative.

Since so many people are optimistic about this track, let’s first understand what is a full-chain game? A simple definition is this,

A fully onchain game means that all game logic and status (assets and others) are on the chain and implemented through smart contracts. Sometimes, we also use the term “onchain game” to refer to it. In the literature on on-chain gaming, we often see terms like “Autonomous World” or equivalently “On-Chain Reality”.

Other times we will also see concepts such as so-called Web2.5 games and GameFi games. What is the difference between them? You can refer to the table below:

| | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | Web 2.0 Game | Web 2.5 Game | Web 3.0 Game | | How it works? | No blockchain | On-chain Asset Off-chain Logic | On-chain Asset On-chain Logic | | Terms | Traditional Game | GameFi | FOC Game |

To explain a little bit, Web2.0 games do not use any blockchain technology, that is, those traditional games. Web2.5 games only have assets on the chain, and game logic is implemented off-chain, just like the GameFi games mentioned before. The real Web3.0 game has assets and game logic on the chain, which is called a full-chain game.

Maybe someone will ask at this time, the performance of the chain is so low now, why should all the game logic be uploaded to the chain? I've tried to answer this question before from a narrative (autonomous world) and technology (composability, serverless, etc.) perspective, but it didn't work well, so I'm now trying to answer it from a "historical" perspective. First of all, let me ask a question, why is there DeFi? You can try to think about it for yourself first. The answer is not that simple.

Let’s go back to 2012-2018. During this period, we did not have the concepts of “DeFi” and “Web3”. The mainstream narrative of cryptocurrency was “payment”. For example, BTC was considered a P2P electronic cash system. , electronic cash, of course, is used for payment. A typical feature of this narrative perspective is that whenever an online retail giant announces that they have begun to accept BTC as a means of payment, the market rises sharply.


The blockchain of this period has not yet introduced smart contracts, so most of the chains are forks of BTC. Each chain will have a Native Coin, and most of them are based on POW's "proof of work."

In 2015, Ethereum was born and became the first smart contract platform. His appearance has greatly changed the way ICO (Initial Coin Offering) operates. Its changes are as shown below

| | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | Before | After | | Medium | BTC | ETH | | Procedure | Sending BTC to one person's address and receive altcoins manually | Sending ETH to ICO contract address and receive tokens automatically | | Altcoin term | Coin (LTC, Doge) | Token (USDT, UNI) | | Paradigm norm | Centralized Investment | Decentralized Investment |

In the initial ICO, the project party used BTC as the financing medium. To participate in the ICO, users needed to send BTC to the project party's address, and then the project party manually returned the altcoin. When talking about altcoins, the word "coin" was used. ". After the emergence of Ethereum, the financing medium has become ETH. Users participating in ICO only need to send ETH to the ICO contract address, and the contract will automatically return the corresponding altcoin. When talking about altcoins at this time, the word "token" is used. )". From an investment perspective, this is a paradigm shift, from the previous "Centralized Investment" to "Decentralized Investment", or "DeInvest" for short.

Then from 2019 to 2022, DeFi infrastructure began to appear. For example, on-chain exchange "Uniswap", on-chain lending protocols "AAVE" and "Compound", on-chain stablecoin protocol "MakerDAO". At the beginning, all on-chain protocols were called "Open Finance". In 2018, Brendan Forster of Dharma Labs first proposed the term DeFi, which became popular all over the world.


Then, we can try to make a summary of DeFi. How does the financial industry integrate with blockchain technology? Refer to the table below:

| | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | Before | After | | How to utilize | Token | Smart Contract | | Method | Tokenization | Write Financial rules into smart contract | | Narrative | Open Finance | DeFi |

When we look at the later DeFi projects, they all tried to write "financial rules into smart contracts", so the initial combination was just "issuing coins" or "tokenization", and later began to transition to "using smart contracts". The narrative has also changed from “open finance” to “DeFi”.

So now let’s also think about the combination of games and blockchain technology. So do we "tokenize" or use "smart contracts"? If it is "tokenization", should we use "fungible tokens" or "NFTs"? What needs to be explained here is that currencies and securities in the financial industry are homogeneous, while game assets and characters are non-homogeneous. This is why NFTs are often seen in chain games but less often in DeFi. essential reason.

Let’s continue looking back at the history of blockchain gaming.

Going back to 2017-2020, why did you choose 2017 as the starting point? Because CryptoKitties was born this year, all cats are NFTs (they are also the inventors of NFTs), and the breeding rules are written into smart contracts. But, they didn't issue coins. The next 2020-2022 years will be GameFi’s star moment, with a large number of star projects appearing, such as Axie Infinity, Starsharks, Metamon, and StepN. The typical characteristics of these projects are the use of sophisticated multi-token systems and the use of NFT to represent game characters. , but does not use smart contracts. So they are still centralized games (CeGame).

It’s 2023, it’s still crypto winter, and it seems like 90% of GameFi projects are dead. Is making a game just for the purpose of "issuing coins"? What if the game rules are also written into the smart contract? So we discovered the full-chain game "Dark Forest". Following DeFi parlance, maybe it should be called “DeGame”.

Following DeFi's argument, we can draw a conclusion that full-chain games can help games achieve decentralization and protocolization. Decentralization means that the rules of the game are written into smart contract code, and the code is usually managed by a DAO. "Protocolization" refers to the process of standardizing specific functions or operating methods. This standardization means that this function or mode of operation is no longer private or proprietary, but becomes a "public good" or standard that can be adopted and used by a wide range of developers or organizations. Projects in DeFi are usually called "DeFi protocols" based on composability, and full-chain games can also be called "game protocols" based on their high composability. At this time, the game has also become a "public good".

Now we can answer the question we asked at the beginning, why is there a “full-chain game”? The answer is actually very similar to DeFi:

• The game lasts forever: there is no centralized entity or server, and it will always exist on the blockchain.
• No trust required: Code is law.
• No permission required: anyone can participate
• Interoperability: Different systems, devices or applications can communicate and interact effectively.
• Composability: Various components or systems can be combined to lay the foundation for creating larger or more complex systems.
• Promote innovation: Any developer can create a new application or service without starting from scratch. Avoid "reinventing the wheel".

So can all game types be made into full-chain versions?

No, my idea is that only those that meet the following characteristics are suitable for making a full-chain version:

• A game with relatively simple rules
• Games that don’t require immediate feedback *PvP instead of PvE
• An open system *Online play, not single player

Next let’s discuss narrative.

The term full-chain game is actually more of a technical discussion. The more popular narrative term currently is "Autonomous World", which comes from Ludens of Lattic. He wrote a small paper in 2022 to explain his ideas. For specific details, please refer to here:

In addition, following DeFi, funblock and I also proposed the term "decentralized game (DeGame)". For specific details, please refer to this link:

The above is what I want to talk about about full-chain games. But finally, I want to discuss a little bit about the social track.

Following the same example of finance and gaming, are there two ways to combine social networking with blockchain? It’s currency issuance and smart contracts. Then should we also call those social projects that only issue coins and do not use smart contracts "SocialFi" or "Web2.5 Social", while projects that write social rules into smart contracts are called "Onchain Social"? What about "DeSocial" or "Web3.0 Social", or even "Open Social" or "Autonomous Social"? Let’s classify the currently well-known Social projects.

| | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | FT | NFT | Smart Contract | Web ? | | FriendTech | Yes | No | No | Web 2.5 | | Social Protocol | Yes | Yes | Yes | Web 3.0 |

If you are interested in the above concept of "on-chain socialization", you can contact me. I also have some new ideas in this regard and you can exchange them. thank you all.