Why Did They All Go to Initia?

Author: Gink5814.eth

The scene from last night where Stokarz debated fiercely with others is still fresh in my mind, and I can finally talk about the full-chain games that I specialize in. As I have repeatedly emphasized in previous articles, the liquidity trends during a bull market cycle are traceable: starting from meme coins, to celebrity coins, then to liquidity-poor ERC-20 tokens like Friend.tech, followed by NFTs and staking, and finally, it will be Gamefi's turn.

One of the battle screenshots from the English FOCG group yesterday

In the past year, I have witnessed many teams transform. But it is the way we make games that has truly made full-chain games an independent track—this is a unique game design paradigm. It reminds me of 2018, when many of the DeFi founders turned to CeFi in 2019, or adopted a hybrid model, claiming to create new fintech or crypto CeFi companies.

The rise of full-chain games is somewhat reminiscent of the early days of DeFi. Everyone is exploring; some teams stick to their original intentions, while others choose a more "pragmatic" route. Nevertheless, FOCG has become a track that cannot be ignored. Established chains like @arbitrum and @Starknet, along with newcomers like @megaeth_labs, @initia, and @SoniSVM, are all building a stage for full-chain games. As for those application chains, like @HappyChainDevs, @B3dotfun, and @redstonexyz, they are more like supporting roles on the stage; although their parts are small, they are indispensable.

However, for more than half of these chains, I find it hard to see their actual value—they seem more like another data center. When you move most of the computation off-chain, you lose decentralization, liquidity, and even interoperability and composability. Of course, some might say these are not important because not many people play games anyway. But as the bull market progresses, Play-to-Earn will rise again, and interoperability and composability are precisely the cornerstones of mutual assistance.

Developer-friendly, high-performance, and interoperability seem to have become the "impossible triangle" of FOCG. Indeed, those who have tried to achieve this before have not seen significant results. For games, the performance and scalability of the chain are extremely important, which is why Initia has chosen a modular multi-chain system of L1 + appchain L2 + DA to handle and accommodate more users and traffic. Liquidity can be interconnected, but the network conditions do not affect each other, remaining independent yet closely linked.

A system of many rollups that can easily talk to each other

But now, through the practices of @battleforblock and @kamigotchiworld on Initia, we see hope—through interwoven rollups, shared in-game markets, and the real utility we give to these in-game items. Those who have persisted the longest and are still making on-chain games generally convey the same value proposition: without this technology, we cannot achieve the open economy we need. Of course, you can be skeptical and think that players do not really care about these things. Then why not just release directly on Epic or Steam and compete in the Web2 space? There, there is a huge standard player base.

The longest-lasting Web2 game—EVE is also going to make full-chain games

The reason Initia has caught my attention is that it was born with a "halal halo" (I hate this term, but I have to say it's a good meme). Unlike MegaETH, @biomesAW, it is due to the aforementioned games migrating to Initia.

The Kamagotchi team is truly one of my top picks. The only time we met offline was at last year's ETHCC in Brussels, and after our conversation, I felt they had the secret to success.

@0xl3th3 AW's top critic has shared many insights about lattice. @jb0x_ is a Korean-American who asked me if I wanted to take a pill when we first met. @0xstellate is also a girl with aesthetic taste, as can be seen from Twitter. There is also a community manager, a DeFi OG from the OHM era. I think many people overlook that game developers are different from contract engineers; making games is an art and a form of self-expression. They are a team with something to express and have their own understanding of the playbook. For the first time, I heard an accurate DAU number of 5,000 from Lethe; their logic is also reasonable— a small exchange only needs 500 contract gamblers to make a profit. A game only needs 500 players, plus 4,500 companions, to sustain itself.

@0xCitadel and Battle For Block have also been steadfast allies for over two years. Citadel is the largest FOCG position for 1kx Peterpan, which raised $3.3 million in seed funding in 2023, led by 1kx, with participation from Shima Capital, Hashed, Matchbox DAO, Ready Player DAO, and several angel investors. Peterpan surprisingly allowed them to run on Initia instead of Abstract. They have also promised 100% token release to the community, which is a good start. Even if VCs invest, it should be fair; everyone plays games to mine tokens together. Their economic designer comes from EVE Online; I interviewed them during a team call last year. From @rhascau on ARB Nova to now BFB, Stokarz and his @minters have also drifted for half their lives and ultimately chose Initia, which shows that Initia's ecosystem and BD team are indeed strong. But why is everyone rushing to Initia? What makes it so attractive?

Disruptive Technical Architecture - Solving Sharding to Some Extent

• Architecture design supporting multiple VMs (EVM, MoveVM, WasmVM), allowing developers to choose the most suitable development environment

• Each block has a processing capacity of 20M gas and a block generation speed of 250ms, sufficient to support complex game logic

• Achieving scalability of 140M gas/second through Rollup technology, providing ample computing power for large games

Innovative Interoperability Solutions -

• Seamless interaction of cross-chain assets and data through IBC + Celestia DA

• Supporting interoperability of items between games, achieving a truly shared in-game market

• Projects like BFB and Kami have already demonstrated the possibility of cross-game asset interoperability on Initia

Maximizing Economic Benefits

• Gas costs reduced by 90%, significantly lowering game operation costs

• Reasonable valuation (financing valuation of $350 million) provides greater growth space for ecosystem projects

These features, aside from reasonable valuation (Starknet at $8 billion), are not strong selling points in today's modular chain environment. I personally believe that the VIP (Vested Interest Program) mechanism, which ensures that game developers can directly benefit from protocol revenue, is key.

When I saw the VIP mechanism, I realized that this is a market-oriented incubation and accelerator mechanism, compared to the OP superchain. The Move-based Initia L1 allows apps to freely roll up interwoven rollups based on EVM/Wasm/Move. Last year, when I helped a project design its token economics, we created a so-called three-body problem based on the number of on-chain transactions, transaction volume, and TVL, allowing users to vote with their feet by choosing the Dapps they support. Initia is more direct; it has a strong LUNA flavor. I only need TVL, and the higher the TVL, the more esINIT allocation for the interwoven rollups.

With the support of initia-vip, it becomes double P2E: the rewards from the game project itself + VIP rewards. Even if the game is very fun and does not have tokens or rewards, users/players can still receive init incentives from initia-vip while enjoying the game and completing their KPIs. This makes it more competitive for other purely game app projects or other L1/L2s specifically focused on games.

For users, Minitia will share its incentives with users providing TVL in order to have more TVL and receive more esINIT. From the perspective of project development, if your product cannot compete with the most basic bribery protocols on a per capita basis, it indicates that your product does not provide any additional value and is just a shell. It’s better to take a step back, reflect, and adjust direction early. From Initia's perspective, this can better test the market response and actual effects of interwoven rollups, enabling targeted incubation and acceleration to prosper the entire ecosystem.

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