CoinDesk Report:
Author: WPeaster, Translation: MetaCat
Is this a preview of the future of gaming scenes on Solana? A beginner’s guide to the Solana full-chain gaming engine? The full-chain gaming engine makes game development easier without external dependencies other than the underlying blockchain.
To me, this is one of the most exciting development areas in the crypto space today, which is why my curiosity was piqued when I recently encountered MagicBlock Engine. MagicBlock is a gaming engine that innovates a new architecture called Ephemeral Rollups (ER) to support flexible and high-performance full-chain games on Solana. I believe MagicBlock offers an interesting look into the future of gaming on Solana, so let’s delve into all the foundational knowledge.
What is MagicBlock?
MagicBlock is a gaming framework built on Solana aimed at facilitating the development of full-chain games and applications. Recently, MagicBlock Engine showcased its capabilities at a16zcrypto Demo Day. The demo featured a real-time, full-chain game deployed entirely on Solana. Due to MagicBlock’s ability to delegate accounts to fast Solana validators, two clients can play the game simultaneously without any latency.
What are Ephemeral Rollups?
MagicBlock extends Solana’s capabilities by introducing Ephemeral Rollups (ER), designed to effectively facilitate state transitions without fragmenting the game state. ER runs as a specialized runtime atop the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) to support features like gasless transactions, transaction scheduling, and faster block times. The process starts with developers delegating specific accounts from existing Solana smart contracts to the MagicBlock engine. This delegation temporarily shifts the state to a secondary layer, ER, which can process transactions with higher throughput. During this phase, the delegated account remains locked but still readable on Solana. This design ensures that all underlying programs and assets continue to reside directly on the mainnet, preserving their composability within the broader Solana application ecosystem. After ER completes state transitions, validators submit them for verification and settlement on the mainnet. Control of the delegated account reverts back to the original program without any state fragmentation.
Other Key Features of MagicBlock
BOLT: A framework utilizing the Entity Component System (ECS) pattern to simplify on-chain game development. It enables developers to rapidly create modular, reusable, and scalable game components and logic.
SOAR: Solana On-Chain Achievements and Rankings system. This reputation system allows developers to easily define achievements, track and display user rankings based on on-chain activities, and deploy rewards.
Session keys: MagicBlock recently added support for session keys in the Solana Unity SDK, making it easier for game developers to securely eliminate repetitive wallet pop-ups during frequent in-game interactions.
Why Choose MagicBlock?
In the Ethereum gaming space, various promising on-chain gaming engines exist, such as MUD by Lattice, Keystone by Curio, and Dojo by Cartridge. However, in this early stage, a common design pattern is deploying games on their rollups, which may present composability and fragmentation challenges that are still being addressed. MagicBlock takes a different approach by bypassing these fragmentation issues through retaining assets on the Solana mainnet, maintaining the potential for atomic composability while achieving scalability through ER. This allows for high throughput, customizable runtimes, and seamless interaction between games and applications without the need for interoperability solutions.
What to Look Forward to with MagicBlock?
1. MagicBlock is a nascent entity still on the rise. Which on-chain game will be the first to formally utilize this engine?
2. The recent MagicBlock demo achieved a 50-millisecond delay, comparable to modern gaming standards. Can we expect further optimizations to reduce this delay, enhancing real-time gaming experiences?
3. Earlier this year, Parallel announced that its AI game Colony would be based on Solana. Perhaps the Parallel team will adopt the MagicBlock Engine to meet its infrastructure needs?
4. With MagicBlock maintaining assets on the Solana mainnet, developers have the potential for atomic composability. What are some use cases for this feature?
5. On-chain gaming greatly benefits from User-Generated Content (UGC) and User-Generated Logic (UGL). Will the SOAR system be used to incentivize such creations?
6. MagicBlock is not limited to game-building. What non-gaming applications might adopt this framework in the future?
In Conclusion
While MagicBlock is still in its early stages, it seems to catalyze the potential of the Solana full-chain gaming scene, as its Ephemeral Rollups architecture can help bypass critical challenges faced by other gaming engines while ensuring high performance.