100% On-Chain Games are Not the Best Way Forward

Late last year when I pitched Pocket Arena to crypto VCs, some of them were not impressed that Pocket Arena is basically running on centralised governance and structure (database & private blockchain), and that Pocket Arena will use the public blockchain (Ethereum side-chain which we are currently developing) for end user’s P2P game item trading and the ownership purpose only. 

Instead, they seemed to prefer a project that runs 100% on-chain. Even though I explained why a gaming service should not be 100% on-chain, they were not bothered about that.

However, having experienced that the recent two major disastrous events (The 600M$ hacking of Ronin/Axie Infinity & Terra-Luna collapse) came out of the 100% on-chain projects, investors started to realise that giving a full betting on this kind of project can be very dangerous.

Here are the main overlooked factors.

100% algorithm-based DeFi projects

There are always some structural errors and coding errors in any technology and software development which need constant updates and patches.

Applying this directly to finance can lead to a disastrous situation. That’s why most developed financial centres like Switzerland use human beings for the final release of funds. It takes at least 24 hours for this monitoring process for fund transfer. Conservative approach but it is safe.

100% on-chain GameFi projects

There are always bots, abusers, and hackers who only want to exploit. They are pretty smart but cancerous enough to kill your project. Thus the developers should take into consideration this in their development to prevent these kinds of users and need to move faster than the abusers and should not compromise the security for the users’ convenience.

Today, Pocket Arena runs the following way.

1. Pocket Arena works in a centralised governance manner using database and Hyperledger private blockchain. 

2. Our compliance team and bot detection systems are monitoring user behaviours 24/7. We also receive abuse reports from our community. 

3. For users who withdraw above a certain threshold of POC (bPOC), KYC is required.

4. POC withdrawal is subject to our finance team's manual review and approval. It takes about 1-2 days but there is no risk of system hacking.

5. After most of the malicious accounts cleaned-up, our Public Pool XP has decreased significantly, but the positive takeaway is that users enjoy fair esports and fair rewards. Now the winning rate over land is much higher (it was almost impossible to win any land in a legit way) thus, fair players are more motivated to play Castle Defense.  

“ Most importantly, in order to realise the true gaming assets ownership and P2P trading as a true Web 3.0 gaming platform, POC-powered Ethereum side-chain (Falk) is under development and expected to release the Beta this summer.”

At the end of the day, any Web 3.0 projects need to provide intrinsic values for end users apart from the used technology itself. The end-user normally is not interested to know and they do not need to know which technology is used underneath.

I have no doubt that the paradigm shift from Web 2 to Web 3 has already begun. Having said that, the journey to a reliable and stable 100% on-chain Web.3.0 gaming platform may take some more time than we expected. In the current transitional period, I believe hybrid solutions like Pocket Arena (adding the benefits of public blockchains on top of centralised structure) would be more and more popular and practically useful.

CEO, Emoji Games

Hyong S. Kim