#StarkNet is making waves in the emerging Autonomous Worlds space, spearheading the onchain gaming and autonomous worlds movement using the power of the Dojo engine and Madara. It's enabling a world of possibilities for developers and users seeking asset ownership and limitless interoperability.
Introduction
Autonomous worlds represent the convergence of #Technology , #gaming , decentralization, creativity, and innovation. These worlds operate independently, free from central authority, offering users the ability to engage, explore, create content, and interact without permission or censorship concerns.
Starknet has positioned itself as the natural choice for those pioneering the creation of these autonomous worlds. These worlds need a reliable Layer 1 (L1) to ensure their perpetual existence while also requiring a robust Layer 2 (L2) to handle their complexity. The combination of Ethereum as the foundational layer and Starknet as the scaling and creativity-enabling layer makes it possible for these worlds to emerge.
This article explores the new frontier of autonomous worlds and onchain gaming, focusing on Starknet's features that make it an ideal platform for realizing this vision.
What Are Autonomous Worlds?
Autonomous worlds operate independently without central authority and offer features such as:
Constant Accessibility: They are always available.
Multiplayer Interactivity: Multiple players can explore and interact concurrently.
Immunity to Shutdown: Censorship-proof, with no central authority that can shut the game down.
Unrestricted User Engagement: Users can explore, create, and interact independently or in groups without central oversight.
Players, both individually and collectively, create, control, and play in these worlds, marking a new gaming frontier with vast untapped potential and new use cases that challenge existing gaming conventions. The possibilities are enormous.
To exist, autonomous worlds must be onchain, on a network capable of handling the outlined requirements while also being highly performant and cost-efficient. This is where Starknet comes into play.
The Origins of Onchain Gaming on Starknet
In November 2021, StarkWare introduced Starknet Alpha, along with Cairo, a new non-EVM compatible language. This combination of a Validity Rollup with Ethereum-grade security and the Cairo language created new opportunities. Early adopters of Cairo, such as developers from Perama and Guiltygyoza, delved into the language, creating guides and experimenting with physics and neural networks. This level of innovation within the Ethereum ecosystem was impressive.
The first game on Starknet emerged when a proposal to recreate the classic game "Drug Wars" was submitted, a grant was awarded, and a fully onchain game engine took shape.
Teams like Realms, Influence, and Briq were among the early adopters, coming from the Solidity world where building complex games was nearly impossible. Others, like Topology, entered the scene after learning about the limitations of Solidity. For all of them, Starknet made their visions finally achievable. Cairo, as a general computation programming language, removed barriers created by the EVM, providing builders with newfound flexibility.
Escaping the EVM Limit: Online and Autonomous Games on Starknet
After years of research and iteration, Starknet is now one of the first Layer 2 solutions capable of sustainably hosting high-throughput onchain games. It's the platform where game developers can build their complex, permissionless, and decentralized worlds. Starknet has attracted the largest number of game developers and teams among active Layer 2 solutions.
Two key technologies make Starknet the premier platform for building and playing onchain games and autonomous worlds: the Dojo gaming engine and the Madara sequencer.
Dojo Gaming Engine
The Dojo gaming engine is the world's first provable onchain game engine. It empowers Starknet's game builders to provide transparency, provability, and scalability for their games. Dojo offers developers the necessary tools for creating fast, provable onchain games, including physics, graphics, and game mechanics.
Dojo was developed by two early innovators in Starknet-based game development, the Cartridge and Realms teams. Their collaboration aimed to create efficient ways of building games on Starknet. Dojo includes the Entity Component System (ECS) framework, a system for blockchain-based game development that promotes modularity, efficiency, and flexibility. It also provides three additional tools for game developers: Sozo, Torii, and Katana.
Sozo
Sozo is a migration planner that simplifies deploying autonomous worlds onchain. It allows the proposal of new components to the onchain gaming universe using a simple CLI tool, promoting the philosophy of autonomous games where the world can outlive its creators.
Katana
Katana is a sequencer for local game development, enhancing productivity. It enables the testing of various parameters and configurations, making it easy for developers to experiment and fine-tune their games.
Torii
Torii is an indexing layer built on top of the Dojo engine that connects onchain infrastructure with game development clients, such as Unity or Unreal Engine. It creates a GraphQL API for queries based on the developed game's source, facilitating easy access for developers.
Madara Sequencer
The Madara sequencer is a high-performance Starknet sequencer that can create highly customizable and efficient appchains, especially suited for gaming. Madara is built using the proven Substrate framework used by the Polkadot ecosystem.
Appchains are a private instance of Starknet that allows developers to control virtually all parameters configured in a network: sequencing, data availability, settlement layer, governance, and more.
Why is this useful? For example, if a game wants to prioritize the speed of player transactions, they could choose to implement a form of First-Come-First-Served sequencing. But if instead, they want to incentivize users to bid higher for quicker block inclusion, Priority Gas Auction (PGA) sequencing could be implemented with a more profit-driven perspective.
With many other possible parameters (such as block times, frequency of settlement on L2, or utilization of non-native data availability solutions), the possibility to launch their games on a Starknet appchain provides devs with choices and power.
Future Features: Offchain Provable Games
Not every action that the player takes must be onchain. For some games, where the user’s actions should not be public before the state of the game changes, an offchain proof of the user’s action could be generated on the client, with only the proof stating the action took place being submitted onchain. Beyond multiplayer games, this infrastructure holds promise for auctions and voting-system applications where you might want to obscure the user’s input data.
Client-side proving also unlocks the possibility for models where gamers try out a hybrid approach: proofs are published, but only whenever something significant happens in-game (e.g., a level is passed or the character finds a rare asset).
Conclusion
With onchain gaming and autonomous worlds, Starknet is not just refining the present state of gaming; It is shaping the future of how games are played, assets are owned, and communities are built.
The likes of eth_worm, Guiltygyoza, and others, are trailblazing the field of onchain gaming and technical innovation. Teams such as Realms, Topology, Influence, Briq, Cartridge, and Madara are building on Starknet, escaping EVM limits.