Welcome to our first post where we’ll talk about web3 gaming and leading into on-chain gaming and how Sparsity solves the biggest problems in the space.
Hi, I’m Charnjit Bansi, a design and product leader who served at some of the worlds most prestigious web2 and web3 studios across the globe from Polygon, Yuga Labs, Mythical Games, Activision and EA. All my releases have either been critically or commercially acclaimed with my work having sold over 180 million units (and counting!) generating over $5b in revenue. I’ve been a part of tens if not hundreds of web3 projects and have seen the issues facing the industry first hand and am excited about these barriers to entry coming down.
The world of web3 has been rapidly evolving with improvements happening across the board: from new chains, infrastructure development, ETFs coming online, new marketplaces emerging, zero knowledge proofs becoming a reality, more advanced on-chain games to smart wallets.
A common goal that most of us have in web3 is mass adoption, this starts with giving developers better tools and tech to develop with. A lot of efforts are being made to improve the technology and developer experience which will ultimately result in better user and player experiences. We’re starting to see the results of this with things like smart wallets, fiat onboarding and more seamless, web2 esq user experiences.
At Sparsity, we’re particularly excited about speeding up Web3. To date, chains and transaction times are still slow. They’ve improved, for sure, but nowhere near where they need to be.
What if we could have real-time transactions on-chain?
Enter Sparsity, where our goal is to make web3 TPS obsolete.
How does it work?
Sparsity is an infinitely scalable real-time on-chain acceleration layer for all chains. A key concept is ephemeral rollup, a primitive we first proposed in 2023. When one or more end users initiate a real-time application session, a dedicated ephemeral rollup is spun up to serve the session, with asset bridging and the outcome settlement included.
What do we enable?
Sparsity enables real-time transactions
Transactions costs that are a fraction of those incurred today.
Near infinite scalability
Cross chain compatibility with easy integration
We’re starting with games as our first stress test for our technology.
When developing blockchain games, concessions have to be made for the slow speeds when writing to the chain, which limits creativity and design, meaning developers can’t fully realise their vision. With Sparsity, that won’t be a barrier anymore.
What experiences can we unlock?
With speed and throughput issues resolved, Sparsity could power games the scale and scope of World of Warcraft fully on-chain, without restrictions or chain limitations. Millions of players could play concurrently in real-time with all moves, unlocks and purchases and inventory changes being on-chain. We could power on-chain open world, metaverse-esq games like GTA or Elder Scrolls Online with players getting the seamless experience they’re used to.
Here’s a closer look at some of the experiences Sparsity unlocks:
Massively scale autonomous worlds - On-chain worlds where online players and AI agents can interact in real time without scale limitations.
Dynamic content - On-chain experiences or content that can be modified and interacted with in real time e.g. a loot drop getting more and more valuable the more players die in a dungeon.
Real time responses between players - Imagine winning a race with the results calculated in real-time and then collecting a pink slip.
Free flowing economies - Players being able to trade goods, services or UGC content, getting paid and cashing out in real time.
High stakes competitions or winnings - Instant winnings from competitions or tournaments with all results being verified on-chain. When real value prizes, virtual or real money are available for winnings, bad actors are drawn to those competitions and regular players’ suspicion levels increase as to whether results are real or are they playing against bots. Having all moves and transactions verified on chain brings trust and confidence back to players that they’re taking part in a fair competition.
Wagering - Real time wagering on your or other players’ performance to fluid, trustless fantasy sports.
Real-time multi-player state updates - Imagine trustless gameplay modules executing commands in real time and writing the results to the chain promptly, for every player in a multiplayer session, even with multiple players interacting with the same module simultaneously.
Improved user experience - By providing real time, frictionless transactions without hitches or roadblocks players get a much more seamless experience. Players don’t care about the chain, fluctuating gas prices or why transactions take time to settle. Players just want to play, have fun and have access to their inventory.
This is only the start, and focused on gaming. We’re sure to see emergent uses of our tech as well as new and novel use cases the more time developers have with it.
We can’t wait to make real-time on-chain games, at scales that only Sparsity can deliver, a reality.
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About Sparsity - Sparsity is a multi-chain acceleration layer for real-time transactions. By 10x transaction speeds, Sparsity enables highly interactive decentralized applications and on-chain games to deliver a frictionless and secure user experience. Games built with Sparsity will be on major L1&L2.
Founded by technical and product experts from MIT and top-tier gaming companies, Sparsity brings decades of experience in network research and game design to push the boundaries of blockchain performance and bridge the experience gap for mass adoption.