Pirate Nation CEO predicts thousands of dedicated Crypto Game Blockchains

Amit Mahajan—founder and CEO of Play Proof, developer of crypto game Pirate Nation—predicts that eventually there will be thousands of dedicated blockchains, each supporting individual applications.

This comes after the experience of building the viral Facebook game Farmville. While developing the casual farming simulator, Zynga made about 64 databases to keep the game from crashing. For Mahajan, blockchain is just an advanced database.

“At the highest level, [Farmville] There were about 30 million active users per day. “So we had like 64 databases to scale a game to that,” Mahajan said. DecryptGG. “In this world, blockchain is our database. We are basically using the chain as our data store. So we need to chain transactions to scale to the correct number of uses.

Previously, Pirate Nation was built on the Ethereum scaling network Polygon, but Moved to Arbitrum Nova As polygon gas charges increase. However, the project has seen the problem of trust in common networks, starting a new project can increase the gas bills for everyone in the chain.

in FebruaryPirate Nation saw an opportunity to launch chains for itself and other developers using Arbitrum – in a project called Multichain.

On-chain game Pirate Nation is now traveling on its own app-based chain Apex, and its founder believes this is the only logical future for other apps as well.

“You need to be able to predict your gas costs with any level of application,” Mahajan said. Decrypt. “My prediction is that there will be thousands and thousands of chains as people diverge from these common layer-2s to application-specific chains.”

We have seen this trend across many blockchain networks. Several games being built on Avalanche are using their own dedicated subnets, such as Shrapnel and the upcoming Off the Grid with the GUNZ network. In another example, Treasure is building its own arbitrage-based treasure, featuring a web of “Infinity Chains” or dedicated gaming networks.

After Mahajan launched his own app-based chain, Pirate Nation says he's started filling the chain with transactions — the team is already looking at a second chain for support.

“We've basically reached the apex capacity,” Mahajan explained. “Now, to continue scaling the game, we need to add B-chain, C-chain, D-chain,” he said. “We will be adding more chains in the future so that we can continue to increase and balance the number of users in the game.”

Searching for multiple chains may seem strange or overwhelming. But this is nothing new for Mahajan, who has experience building games in the Web2 world. It's a new riff on the same situation, requiring a scalable architecture to support growing games.

Mahajan worked for Zynga from 2009 to 2011, during which time he led the development of FarmVille. In the Web3 space, instead of worrying about the congestion of popular blockchain games, developers worry about increased fees due to network congestion.

When Pirate Nation was at Polygon, he said, the organization was paying up to $4,000 a day in gas bills to keep players away — but that wasn't sustainable for a startup. Although launching four or more chains just to run one crypto game seems like a big deal, Mahajan sees upside for the added muscle.

“Running databases for Farmville 64 was inconvenient,” he said. “It's awkward for us, because we're the first people to do this. But then it becomes a product.

To put this into perspective, Mahajan again uses Web2. Concepts like load balancing and caching had to be developed to build a product like Facebook, the founder explained.

– Amit Mahajan, Founder and CEO of Pirate Nation

This is part of Pirate Nation's multi-chain offering, in which Apex is the first network to launch. Multichain plans to open its Orbit powered networks to other game and app developers. Ethereum Stretching technology.

“It is coming. There was really interest,” said Mahajan. “We have to solve our own problems [issues before we take on others.”

Dedicated players

Pirate Nation’s expansion plans come after the game launched its PIRATE token in June. Its listing on Coinbase saw the Ethereum token’s value jump, but price isn’t what the founder is concerned about when it comes to the token launch. 

Instead, he wanted to focus on the 80% of claimed PIRATE tokens currently staked by users, according to a Dune dashboard. By staking these tokens, users earn Proof of Play (PoP) Points which promise to unlock additional benefits within the ecosystem. In part, this high percentage is due to PIRATE tokens not being locked when staked, and allowing users to still spend without any penalties.

To the founder, the high percentage of staked tokens is a bet of confidence by the community and a sign that the game isn’t attracting farmers who just want to dump the token.

“Staking is really a chance for folks to re-affirm that they're in it for the long-term,” Mahajan explained, “so the fact that so many people, in such a high volume, have done it is encouraging.”

And for those dedicated gamers, the largest on-chain event is just around the corner.

In the coming month, the second World Boss event will take place. This will see players join arms to defeat bosses together, but also compete for their transaction to be the kill shot. Players would be rewarded for their damage dealt and given a 1-of-1 NFT if they landed the kill shot.

This event will be the biggest in-game event that Pirate Nation has ever seen. With this, the network is likely to be strained, especially with the developers already eyeing up a second chain to split transactions. Will it stretch the Apex chain to its limits?

“We’ll see,” Mahajan replied with a smile.

Edited by Andrew Hayward