What Are the Most Used Blockchains for Gaming?

Video games are evolving towards decentralized models thanks to blockchain technology. This technology allows players to own their digital assets and perform secure transactions. Unlike traditional games, blockchain-based games offer total transparency and an autonomous economy. Several blockchains specialize in gaming, each presenting unique characteristics. Some prioritize scalability, while others focus on security or low energy consumption. This article analyzes the most used blockchains in gaming, highlighting their specificities, advantages, and the challenges they face. The goal is to understand their impact on the video game industry and its future.

Ethereum blockchain in gaming

Ethereum is one of the first blockchains to integrate smart contracts. It has facilitated the development of decentralized applications (dApps) and blockchain-based games. Its architecture allows for the automation of transactions and ensures total transparency. Today, Ethereum remains one of the most used blockchains in the Web3 gaming industry.

Ethereum supports smart contracts, allowing developers to integrate advanced mechanics in games, such as managing digital assets in the form of NFTs. The network benefits from a large community of developers, which fosters innovation and the creation of tools suitable for decentralized games. This massive adoption makes Ethereum a reference in the blockchain gaming sector.

Some examples of games using Ethereum

Several games rely on Ethereum, including CryptoKitties, one of the first blockchain games, which allows players to collect and trade unique digital cats in the form of NFTs. Axie Infinity is also an iconic example. This game, based on a Play-to-Earn model, allows players to breed, battle, and trade creatures called Axies while earning crypto rewards.

The advantages of Ethereum

Ethereum has a mature ecosystem rich in tools and resources for developers. Its high visibility in the blockchain universe attracts both players and investors, strengthening its adoption in the gaming industry.

The challenges of Ethereum

However, the blockchain faces technical challenges. Transaction fees, known as gas fees, are often high, making some interactions costly. Moreover, the network’s limited scalability leads to congestion and delays, affecting the smoothness of the games.

Despite these challenges, Ethereum remains an essential blockchain for Web3 game development. Its evolution with solutions like Ethereum 2.0 and rollups could enhance its efficiency and maintain its status as a leader in the blockchain gaming field.

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and its adoption in gaming

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is a blockchain developed by Binance, offering fast transactions and reduced fees. Thanks to its compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem, it attracts many blockchain game developers. Its accessibility and performance make it an alternative to more expensive blockchains like Ethereum.

Technical characteristics

BSC is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, allowing developers to easily adapt their games initially designed for Ethereum. Its fast block time ensures better transaction responsiveness, thus reducing latencies in players’ interactions with the blockchain.

Some examples of games using BSC

My DeFi Pet is a game that combines collection, monster breeding, and DeFi elements. Players buy, upgrade, and trade their creatures in the form of NFTs. Mobox, on the other hand, combines yield farming and gaming, allowing players to earn rewards by interacting with its decentralized ecosystem.

The advantages

BSC stands out for its low transaction fees, making games more accessible to a broad audience. Its interoperability with Ethereum facilitates the integration of assets and tools already existing on other blockchains.

The challenges

Despite its advantages, BSC presents relative centralization, with Binance controlling a significant part of the validators. This governance raises concerns about the actual decentralization of the network. Additionally, several attacks have targeted protocols deployed on BSC, raising concerns about the security of applications.

BSC continues to attract gaming projects due to its speed and low costs, although improvements are needed to strengthen its security and decentralization.

Solana: a solution for large-scale gaming

Solana is a high-performance blockchain, designed to host large-scale decentralized applications. Its architecture optimizes transaction speed while ensuring low fees. This combination attracts many Web3 game developers who seek a faster and more economical alternative to traditional blockchains.

Solana is distinguished by its ability to process thousands of transactions per second, significantly reducing waiting times for players. Its very low transaction fees allow users to interact with games without spending excessive amounts, making the experience more accessible.

Some examples of games using Solana

Star Atlas is a massively multiplayer space strategy game that integrates an economy based on digital assets and NFTs. Aurory, on the other hand, is a Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) that combines Play-to-Earn elements, allowing players to earn rewards while playing.

The advantages

Solana offers high scalability, allowing it to handle a large number of users without network congestion. Its fast and efficient infrastructure is perfectly suited for games requiring real-time interactions and smooth transaction execution.

The challenges

The Solana ecosystem is still under development, which means many applications are in the experimental phase. Moreover, the network has experienced stability issues, especially during activity spikes, which can affect the players’ experience.

Solana continues to evolve to become a reference blockchain in Web3 gaming, despite the challenges related to its stability and adoption.

Polygon (Matic): enhance gaming experience on Ethereum

Polygon is a layer 2 solution designed to improve Ethereum’s scalability. Its goal is to reduce congestion on the main network while maintaining security and compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem. Thanks to its performance, Polygon has become a preferred alternative for blockchain games requiring fast and low-cost transactions.

Polygon uses sidechains to relieve the Ethereum network, allowing for smoother transaction processing. Its compatibility with existing Ethereum tools facilitates the integration of games already developed on Ethereum, without requiring major code modifications.

Some examples of games using Polygon

Aavegotchi combines DeFi and NFT collection, offering players the ability to manage avatars in the form of NFTs with integrated economic interactions. Zed Run is a digital horse racing game, where players buy, breed, and race NFT horses, with opportunities for crypto winnings.

Advantages

Polygon allows for a significant reduction in transaction fees, making games more accessible. Its infrastructure also improves transaction speed, optimizing the player experience and reducing waiting times.

Challenges

The interaction between layer 2 and layer 1 adds a certain technical complexity to transactions and asset management. Developers must also adapt to new infrastructures, which can slow down the adoption of Polygon in certain gaming projects.

Polygon continues to evolve by providing solutions to enhance the scalability of blockchain gaming while ensuring smooth integration with Ethereum.

Flow: a blockchain dedicated to decentralized applications and NFTs

Flow is a blockchain specifically designed for decentralized applications and NFTs. Developed by Dapper Labs, it addresses the limitations of traditional blockchains by optimizing scalability and user experience. Its innovative architecture promotes the adoption of Web3 by a broader audience.

Flow relies on a multi-node architecture, which separates validation and execution tasks to improve efficiency. This design enables fast transaction processing without compromising security. Flow also aims for a smooth user experience, facilitating adoption by users unfamiliar with blockchain.

Some examples of games using Flow

NBA Top Shot is a platform for collecting NBA highlights, where fans buy, sell, and trade clips in the form of NFTs. CryptoKitties, initially launched on Ethereum, migrated to Flow to benefit from better scalability and enhance the player experience.

Advantages and challenges

Flow stands out with an optimized user experience, simplifying interactions with the blockchain. Its infrastructure reduces costs and accelerates transactions, making games and applications more accessible to the general public.

Flow continues to attract ambitious projects, confirming its key role in the evolution of games and NFTs on the blockchain.

Tezos: an energy-efficient approach to gaming

Tezos is an open-source blockchain that relies on a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism (Proof of Stake – PoS). Unlike blockchains using proof of work (Proof of Work – PoW), Tezos consumes less energy, making it a more sustainable alternative. Its infrastructure aims to provide an efficient and scalable solution for decentralized applications, including gaming.

Tezos uses a Proof of Stake mechanism, thereby reducing energy consumption and making transactions more economical. This model also enhances scalability and security of the network. Its on-chain governance system allows token holders to propose and vote on protocol updates, thereby avoiding the need for forks. This flexibility promotes continuous evolution of the network without community division.

Some examples of games using Tezos

Ubisoft Quartz is a platform developed by Ubisoft that allows players to acquire unique in-game items in the form of NFTs. This initiative marks one of the first integrations of a major video game company with the Tezos blockchain. Emergents TCG is a collectible card game based on Tezos, where players own and trade NFT cards while participating in a decentralized economy.

Advantages

Tezos stands out for its energy efficiency, its PoS model consuming less energy than traditional blockchains. Its on-chain governance system ensures smooth evolution without forks, thereby guaranteeing the stability and sustainability of the network.

Challenges

Despite its strengths, Tezos faces limited adoption, attracting fewer developers and projects than some more popular blockchains. Competing with Ethereum, Solana, and Binance Smart Chain complicates its positioning in the blockchain gaming sector.

However, Tezos continues to innovate and could play a key role in the development of more sustainable and accessible blockchain games.

Hedera Hashgraph: an alternative to blockchain for Gaming

Hedera Hashgraph is a distributed ledger technology that offers an alternative to traditional blockchains. Unlike networks based on proof of work or proof of stake, Hedera uses a directed acyclic graph to achieve consensus.

This approach improves transaction speed while ensuring great energy efficiency. Hedera is attracting increasing interest in the gaming industry due to its ability to process a large volume of transactions with enhanced security.

Hedera relies on a Gossip protocol which allows rapid information propagation between network nodes. Its virtual voting mechanism ensures efficient consensus without resorting to proof of work, thus reducing energy costs.

Its asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (aBFT) model guarantees high security, even in the presence of malicious nodes on the network. This technology makes Hedera particularly suitable for games requiring a reliable and fast infrastructure.

Some examples of games using Hedera

Helix Warp is an anti-cheating platform that leverages Hedera’s speed and security to combat cheating in online games. Tartarus is an adventure game that utilizes Hedera’s capabilities to provide instant and secure transactions to players. These examples demonstrate how Hedera can be integrated into various types of games to enhance the user experience.

Advantages

Hedera offers high throughput, capable of processing thousands of transactions per second, making it ideal for games requiring immediate responsiveness. Its aBFT model enhances network security, reducing the risk of attacks and ensuring increased stability.

Challenges

The limited adoption of Hedera remains a hurdle for its development in the gaming industry. Its positioning as an alternative technology to classic blockchains requires outreach to developers. Governance by a limited council, perceived as centralized, raises questions about the true decentralization of the network.

Hedera Hashgraph represents a promising solution for Web3 gaming, offering speed, security, and energy efficiency, but its adoption by the industry remains a challenge to overcome.

The other emerging blockchains in the gaming sector

The Web3 gaming does not solely rely on the most popular blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, or Binance Smart Chain. Other blockchains are emerging by offering solutions tailored to video games, particularly by optimizing transactions and reducing costs. Some specialize in NFTs and collectibles, while others aim to improve the scalability and fluidity of real-time games.

WAX (Worldwide Asset eXchange)

WAX is a blockchain dedicated to digital asset transactions, particularly collectibles and NFTs related to games. Its infrastructure facilitates the integration of Play-to-Earn games and the management of digital assets on the blockchain.

WAX allows users to make transactions without fees, making the platform particularly attractive for games that incorporate frequent microtransactions. Its design is based on a mechanism optimized for NFTs, facilitating their creation, exchange, and use in games. These features make it a preferred blockchain for developers looking to integrate exchangeable digital elements into their games.

Several games operate on WAX, including Alien Worlds, an economic simulation game where players explore planets and extract resources, thereby participating in an immersive virtual economy. Farmers World is another popular game based on WAX, offering an agricultural simulation where players cultivate land, raise livestock, and trade resources in the form of NFTs.

TRON

TRON is a blockchain aimed at decentralizing the entertainment industry, with a special focus on gaming applications. Its infrastructure is designed to support a large number of transactions per second, providing the high scalability essential for real-time games. TRON also integrates smart contracts, allowing developers to design complex and interactive games without intermediaries.

Thanks to its efficient infrastructure, TRON hosts several games based on the blockchain. WINk is a decentralized gambling platform, offering a wide range of games using the TRON blockchain to ensure the transparency and fairness of transactions. Blockchain Cuties is another game integrating TRON. It is a game of breeding digital creatures, where each Cutie is a tradeable NFT on multiple blockchains, including TRON.

These emerging blockchains bring solutions tailored to the specific needs of Web3 gaming. WAX positions itself as a benchmark for NFT-based games, while TRON focuses on scalability and transaction speed to attract developers and provide a better experience for players. Their growing adoption reflects a diversification of blockchain solutions in the gaming universe.

Factors influencing the choice of a blockchain for gaming

The choice of a blockchain for gaming is based on several essential criteria. Developers must select an infrastructure suitable for the demands of modern video games, particularly in terms of performance, costs, and security. These elements directly influence players’ experience and the viability of blockchain-based games.

Scalability

A blockchain must be capable of processing a large number of transactions per second to meet the needs of real-time games. A congested network can lead to execution delays, harming gameplay fluidity. Solana and Polygon offer high scalability, thus facilitating the integration of games requiring great responsiveness. In contrast, Ethereum still suffers from limitations despite scaling solutions like Ethereum 2.0.

Transaction fees

Blockchain games often involve frequent microtransactions, especially for purchasing digital items or transferring assets. Excessively high fees can discourage players and hinder the adoption of a game. Blockchains like Binance Smart Chain, WAX, and Flow offer reduced fees, making interactions more accessible. Ethereum, on the other hand, remains costly, although layer 2 solutions like Polygon reduce these fees.

Security

Blockchain-based games require protection against attacks and assurance of the integrity of digital assets. A vulnerable network can compromise players’ investments and harm a game’s credibility. Hedera Hashgraph and Tezos stand out with advanced consensus protocols, enhancing transaction security.

Developers must consider these elements before choosing a blockchain. A suitable infrastructure ensures a smooth experience, reasonable costs, and optimal security, thus guaranteeing the success of a blockchain game.

Blockchains are transforming the video game industry by introducing new economic mechanics and reinforcing the digital ownership of assets. Each network has its own strengths and limitations, influencing the development and adoption of Web3 games. Developers choose their infrastructures based on scalability, costs, and security. As technology evolves, new solutions emerge and improve accessibility and player experience. Innovation in the operation of Web gaming should continue to reduce technical barriers, making these games smoother and more attractive to an ever-wider audience.

Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.