When you start your career as a web3 developer, you may need a guide on the main tools. At Mighty Block, we’ve put together this Web3 Tech Stack, which can be a good option to get started.
What do you think? Would you add anything? Would you remove anything?
Welcome to our series of introduction to Web3 blog articles. Web3 is the cutting-edge realm of the internet that’s reshaping the way we interact, transact, and innovate online.
If you’re an enthusiast, a curious newcomer, or a seasoned developer looking to dive into this world, our guide to Web3 is designed to provide you with a foundational understanding and a roadmap for your journey.
This is the first article, specially designed like a beginners guide to Web3. In upcoming editions, we will bring more advanced content 🔥
🛤️ Introduction to Blockchain Get started with the basics as we unravel the key concepts behind blockchain technology, the foundational pillar of Web3, and explore how it’s transforming the digital landscape.
📘Don’t let the terminology overwhelm you. Our glossary provides a handy reference to decipher the jargon and acronyms commonly used in the Web3 ecosystem. Because the best way of explaining Web3 is learning its vocabulary.
If you’re here to gain a foundational understanding of Web3 or to explore specific aspects in depth, our blog series aims to be your guide through this exciting and transformative digital landscape. Join us on this journey of exploration and discovery into the world of Web3.
🚀 Join us on a journey from the traditional Web 2.0 era to the decentralized and user-centric Web 3.0 landscape, understanding the evolution and the reasons driving this revolutionary shift.
🌐 Delve into the world of Ethereum, one of the most influential blockchain platforms, and discover its significance in the development of decentralized applications and smart contracts. Web3 is blockchain based, and Ethereum is an authority to listen to.
💰Uncover the mysteries of Bitcoin, the pioneer of cryptocurrencies, and learn about its impact on the financial and technological spheres. Bitcoin is in your crypto wallet and additionally through many aspects of life today.
🔐 Explore the critical aspect of security in the Web 3.0 ecosystem, gaining insights into best practices, vulnerabilities, and strategies to safeguard your digital assets. You have to learn how to keep safe your personal data.
🌈 5 UX aspects that a decentralized network needs to improve. The World Wide Web needs to be simple for users.
📊 Discover the unique challenges and strategies involved in managing Web3 projects, from ideation to execution, and learn how to navigate this dynamic landscape.
🛠️ For aspiring Web3 developers, we break down the essential tools, languages, and frameworks needed to create decentralized applications and smart contracts. Artificial intelligence plays a central role in this process.
🎙️Stay up-to-date with the latest events and gatherings in the Web3 space, where innovators, thought leaders, and enthusiasts come together. Sharing is the best way to learn about the decentralized network.
This is only the beginning. We hope to be able to accompany you in this process from a simple explanation of what Web3 is to a deeper knowledge of the decentralized world.
The blockchain world can be overwhelming at first. Having a deep understanding of the basic concepts will help you better organize your learning process. Here are some definitions we have crafted to help you get started with, we introduce you: “The Mighty Block Web3 Glossary”.
(in alphabetical order)
Airdrop : Describes token distribution methods used for introducing new cryptocurrencies or tokens to specific wallet addresses. Web3 projects can use airdrops as marketing initiatives by facilitating airdrops to users completing tasks such as app downloads or referrals.
Altcoin: Any of various cryptocurrencies that are regarded as alternatives to established cryptocurrencies and especially to Bitcoin.
Arbitrum: Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution that reduces fees and network congestion by computing transactions outside of the Ethereum Mainnet. Arbitrum’s rollups use multi-round fraud proofs to verify contracts were executed correctly. Blocknative currently does not support the Arbitrum L2 blockchain.
Arbitrage: Arbitrage in the world of web3 is the same as in traditional finance and is a natural mechanism for markets to achieve equilibrium. Whereas arbitrage in the real world is usually possible due to differences in physical realities (the price of a widget is 20% higher in Country A than Country B), arbitrage in web3 is made possible by the value of assets within different web3 ecosystems. Consider a situation where the price of Ethereum is $2000 on Uniswap, but at the same time, it is $1990 on Sushiswap. An arbitrager can take advantage of this gap by buying ETH on Sushi to resell on Uniswap, instantly pocketing $10 per ETH (minus gas fees). Arbitrage is a key factor in MEV.
Blockchain: A blockchain is a distributed database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. Blockchains store a continuously growing historical ledger of information (e.g. accounts and transactions) into blocks. Blocknative builds APIs for blockchain developers, including mempool monitoring tools, blockchain notification tools, and gas estimation tools.
Bridge: The list of essential terms in web3 would also draw attention toward bridges, which have emerged as promising answers to concerns of interoperability. The bridge is an effective tool tailored for transferring assets from one blockchain network to another. It is also important to note that all bridges do not feature the same design and have different functionalities.
Centralized Exchanges: Centralized exchanges have evolved as one of the popular applications in the web3 ecosystem with promising value advantages. Centralized exchanges are cryptocurrency exchanges run by third-party agencies to sell and buy cryptocurrency. One of the distinctive highlights of centralized exchanges is the fact that they are custodial in nature. Notable examples of centralized exchanges include Gemini, Kraken and Coinbase.
Decentralized Exchange (DEX). This type of crypto exchange enables users to transact in a direct peer-to-peer manner without any intermediary
ERC: Ethereum Request for Comment is the proposal for modification to the Ethereum ecosystem, which has passed the approval stage. It points out a collection of standards used for a specific operation on the Ethereum network.
Gas: Gas is a unit of measurement that represents the computational effort required to complete a transaction. How much a user spends to complete a transaction is determined by the total amount of gas multiplied by the gas price.
Gas Estimator: Gas Estimator is an ETH gas fee tracking tool built by Blocknative that inspects every pending transaction in Ethereum’s mempool to probabilistically estimate transaction fees to get included in the next block.
Gas Fees: Gas fees are the fees users must pay in Ethereum’s native currency, Ether (ETH), to complete a transaction. Gas fees are used to compensate miners for providing the computational work required to process and validate transactions.
Gas Price: The gas price is the amount of Ether (ETH) a user is willing to pay for every unit of gas required to complete a transaction (denominated in Gwei).
Layer 1: refers to the main blockchain in a multi-level blockchain network. For example, Ethereum and Bitcoin are layer one blockchains. Many layer two blockchain offload resource-intense transactions to their separate blockchain, while continuing to use Ethereum’s or Bitcoin’s layer one blockchain for security purposes.
Layer 2 (L2) refers to a secondary framework or protocol that is built on top of an existing, layer one blockchain. Layer 2 blockchains typically improve transaction speeds and cost efficiency. As Layer 2s continue to scale, mempool data gives builders looking to migrate or build new Dapps the tools to create the best user experiences.
Liquidity Pool: Is a smart contract containing large portions of cryptocurrency, digital assets, tokens, or virtual coins locked up and ready to provide essential liquidity for networks that facilitate decentralized trading.
Oracles: Are entities that connect blockchains to external systems, thereby enabling smart contracts to execute based upon inputs and outputs from the real world. Oracles provide a way for the decentralized Web3 ecosystem to access existing data sources, legacy systems, and advanced computations.
POH: Proof of Humanity (or PoH) is a social identity verification system for humans on Ethereum. PoH combines webs of trust, reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans.
Smart Contract: The smart contract is written in virtual language and has the power to execute and enforce itself, autonomously and automatically, based on a series of programmed parameters. With blockchain technology, its main value lies in reinforcing security, transparency and trust between signatories, avoiding misunderstandings, falsifications or alterations and dispensing with intermediaries.
Staking: Staking is the locking up of cryptocurrency tokens as collateral to help secure a network or smart contract, or to achieve a specific result. Staking is a term often used to describe the locking up of cryptocurrency as collateral to help secure a particular blockchain network or smart contract protocol
Swapping: An agreement between two parties that exchange different token types (say token 𝐴 and token 𝐵). In a token swap, one party will pay a certain amount of token 𝐴 to the other party and receive the agreed amount of token 𝐵 in return.
Wallet: A Web3 wallet is a software program that stores private keys, which are necessary for accessing blockchain networks and conducting transactions. Unlike traditional wallets, which store physical currency, Web3 wallets store digital assets such as Bitcoin, Algorand, and NFTs.
Zero-Knowledge Proof: A zero-knowledge proof is a method of verification in which a “prover” shows possession of secretive knowledge to a “verifier” without revealing the sensitive information itself. This encryption scheme can ensure data privacy and confidentiality on a public blockchain.
ZK-Rollup: A ZK or “zero-knowledge” rollup is an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution that bundles transactions off-chain into a single cryptographic proof. This transaction is then submitted back to the main chain for validation. ZK-rollups utilize validity proofs to confirm transaction legitimacy.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
On May 2, Sports Illustrated’s ticketing subsidiary SI Tickets launched the “Box Office” platform, a self-service event management and primary ticketing solution powered by the Polygon blockchain.
Built in conjunction with Web3 software developer ConsenSys, Box Office enables “owners, organizers and hosts the ability to create, manage and promote a fully scalable, paid or free ticketed live sporting event.”
As part of the new platform, SI Tickets and ConsenSys are partnering to develop a “Super Ticket” that allows hosts to remain connected to their attendees through highlights, collectibles, exclusive offers and loyalty benefits via NFT technology. “Blockchain is the future of ticketing,” SI Tickets CEO David Lane said.
“From the moment we launched our global event marketplace, which now boasts 50 million tickets to over 250,000 sports, concerts and shows, we have been preparing to enter and disrupt the primary ticket market.”
Through Super Ticket, attendees can scan their NFTs for expedited entry passes, drink coupons and music downloads before the event and can receive post-event video content and rewards thereafter. “Guests will keep their tickets to your event in their digital wallet forever,” the new website tells event organizers.
Launched in June 2021, SI Tickets has grown to over $2.5 billion in marketplace inventory. The platform claims to charge zero transaction fees on any purchase and guarantees a 100% refund if an event is canceled for any reason. Box Office said it would charge $1.40 and 3% commission per ticket plus 3% merchant pass-through fees for event organizers.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
Uniswap, the leading decentralized exchange by trading volume, is set to launch its V3 iteration on Avalanche, an Ethereum-compatible Layer-1 blockchain with over $1.5B in total value locked.
LayerZero has been chosen as the bridge for the Avalanche deployment as it supports both the Ethereum and Avalanche networks. LayerZero investors include Uniswap Labs, a16z, and Coinbase.
“The primary urgency behind this proposal is the upcoming BSL expiration on April 1st.” the proposal reads.
Two years after the launch of Uniswap V3, its Business Source License (BSL) is set to expire on April 1, after which developers will be free to copy the codebase. Under BSL, the V3 codebase is closed-source, and can only be used with Uniswap’s permission.
It can be surmised that Uniswap is looking to deploy V3 across the DeFi ecosystem before any potential forks establish themselves.
Uniswap V3 was launched in March 2021, and its concentrated liquidity feature has been hailed as a breakthrough for automated market makers (AMMs), as it offers far improved capital efficiency.
After the Avalanche deployment is complete, the Uniswap protocol will be available across seven chains, including Ethereum.
Last week, Uniswap was deployed on the BNB Smart Chain, with Wormhole being chosen as the bridging solution.
However, venture capital heavyweight a16z voted against the deployment.
It later came to light that a16z would have voted for the proposal if LayerZero, one of its portfolio companies, had been picked as the bridging solution.
In response to the infighting, Uniswap created the Uniswap Bridge Assessment Committee, tasked with selecting bridges for future deployments of the protocol. The committee is currently assessing 8 bridges and three bridge-agnostic solutions.
Uniswap’s UNI token is down 8% in the past 30 days, according to The Defiant Terminal.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
Polygon has released its Layer 2 blockchain built with zero-knowledge technology, becoming the second company in four days to make a so-called ‘zkEVM’ available to the general public.
Polygon zkEVM remains in beta, and the company stressed that it should be used with caution – a fact that will change in the coming months, according to co-founder Mihailo Bjelic.
Its release, nevertheless, marks a turning point in Ethereum scaling, he insists.
“If we can maintain the security of Ethereum, achieve scalability, and do not sacrifice developer and user experience — that’s basically all we need, right?” Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic said in an interview with The Defiant before the launch of Polygon zkEVM. “And zkEVM is, to the best of my knowledge, the only solution that offers all three things simultaneously.”
Polygon’s MATIC token is down around 2% over the past 24 hours, according to data from The Defiant Terminal.
Layer 2 blockchains built with zero-knowledge (zk) technology have been called the “holy grail” of making Ethereum cheaper and more performant. On Friday, Matter Labs released ZkSync Era, marking the first public launch of an Ethereum-compatible rollup secured by the technology.
Matter Labs, Polygon, and others have raced to bring their rollups to market and storm a Layer 2 field dominated by optimistic rollups Arbitrum and Optimism, which together account for 88% of the crypto assets deposited on rollups, according to L2BEAT.
Ethereum is slow, and the simplest transactions typically incur a fee of $1 or more. That fee can surge when the network is congested — last May, during a hyped NFT sale from Bored Apes creator Yuga Labs, users incurred an average transaction fee of $474, according to DappRadar.
Layer 2 blockchains, also known as “rollups,” batch and compress user transactions before appending them to the Ethereum blockchain. Doing so dramatically reduces the per-transaction cost and increases the number of transactions Ethereum can handle.
Rollups are considered the most promising technology to scale Ethereum. As such, the companies building them have been valued in the billions. But the field has been dominated by rollups built with so-called optimistic technology, which assumes submitted transactions are valid and provides a seven-day period during which one can dispute potentially fraudulent transactions. This means withdrawals take a week when using the official bridge.
Zero-knowledge technology makes it possible to prove that a statement is or is not true — that John Smith is a millionaire, say — without revealing any of the information that would typically be required to do so — in this example, John Smith’s bank account or employment history.
Many privacy-enhancing protocols leverage zero-knowledge technology, but the first Ethereum-compatible zk-rollups to hit the market will not preserve user privacy or obfuscate their transaction history.
Proponents of ZK rollups have long argued that they would be more secure than their “optimistic” competitors while providing instantaneous transaction finality — no seven-day dispute window required.
“It is not possible to execute malicious transactions” on a zero-knowledge rollup, Bjelic said. “You just rely on mathematics.”
But they’re fiendishly complex, and building one that is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine — the EVM in zkEVM — has proven difficult.
“People familiar with the matter have been estimating that it’s gonna take roughly three to five years to build a zkEVM when we started a little bit more than a year ago,” Bjelic said. “This has been really an exciting journey during which we were able to achieve several important breakthroughs from the engineering and cryptography side.”
Polygon zkEVM has been available for developers to test since October. Monday’s release marks its jump to Ethereum’s mainnet.
On the test network, developers are playing around with “test Ether, test MATIC tokens, whatever, there is no real value there,” Bjelic said. “When you’re on mainnet, you’re bridging actual assets. It’s the real thing.”
Beta is developer shorthand for “work in progress.” Some long-running blockchains are still officially in beta, including Solana and Polygon’s original proof-of-stake sidechain,” Bjelic said. Nevertheless, users should exercise caution in Polygon zkEVM’s first couple of months.
“It’s a bleeding-edge technology that has never been built before,” he said. “We will keep auditing it internally and externally. We have bug bounties etc. It’s a process of the network maturing, and it will take some months, if not a year.”
ZkSync Era was released Friday in alpha, the software development stage before beta.
The race to launch the first Ethereum-compatible, zero-knowledge rollup has been contentious, with rival teams sniping at each other on social media over the past several months. Last year, a developer working on a competing zkEVM said Polygon’s zero-knowledge rollup did not meet the criteria to be called a zkEVM.
Bjelic attributed the “Twitter brawls” to the prestige that would come with delivering the first true zkEVM, and brushed off the criticism.
“I think it always, obviously, boils down to the facts,” he said. “Vitalik [Buterin, the founder of Ethereum] helped introduce some clarity when it comes to the concept of zkEVM, and what is, and what is not.…and Polygon is very obviously a zkEVM, I think that’s not a question.”
Polygon is most famous for its long-running blockchain, Polygon Proof-of-Stake. Polygon PoS is popular – with its speed and low fees, it has grown to become the fifth-largest blockchain as measured by total value locked, according to Defi Llama.
While Ethereum-compatible, it is an entirely separate blockchain and does not append its transaction data to Ethereum. Last year, Bjelic said Polygon was working to turn Polygon PoS into a “true” Layer 2 that inherits its security from Ethereum.
Which raises the question: having built the “holy grail” of Ethereum scaling, a true rollup, where does that leave Polygon PoS?
“I think there’s definitely room for both,” Bjelic said. Because rollups submit transactions to Ethereum, they have inherent limitations in terms of throughput and how low they can push down transaction fees.
“Polygon PoS chain still has very low fees and can have higher throughput than any rollup, including the zkEVM rollup,” he said. Some applications, such as DeFi lending platforms, which process a relatively small number of high-value transactions, don’t need the speed of PoS but could benefit from the security of a zkEVM. Blockchain-based games, on the other hand, might need fast and cheap transactions, which PoS is better positioned to deliver.
Bjelic said he was happy to release a zkEVM during a period some consider to be crypto’s darkest, with asset values still well below their all-time highs and heightened regulatory scrutiny in the US that has some entrepreneurs looking to move abroad.
“The climate is generally kind of negative, I would say, and we now more than ever need some excitement,” he said. “And I think the zkEVM is really the technology that can reignite this interest. In some way, it can be kind of like a chatGPT for crypto.”
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
CCP Games has raised $40 million in funding to make a new triple-A blockchain game set in the Eve universe.
The new game is a big project and that’s why Reykjavík, Iceland-based CCP Games went beyond its owner Pearl Abyss to look for external funding. Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) led the round, with participation from Makers Fund, Bitkraft, Kingsway Capital, Nexon, Hashed and additional participants.
This financing will allow CCP Games to build upon the discoveries of its research and development team to enable the full-scale development of a new triple-A title utilizing blockchain technology, said CCP Games CEO, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, in an interview with GamesBeat.
With key game systems developed on-chain, this new project will also leverage smart-contract
blockchain technology, focusing on persistence, composability and truly open third-party development
to create a new relationship between virtual worlds and players.
“Since its inception, CCP Games’ vision has been to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life.
Now, with advancements made within blockchain, we can forge a new universe deeply imbued with our
expertise in player agency and autonomy, empowering players to engage in new ways,” said Pétursson. “This financing has marked an exciting frontier in our studio history as we begin our third decade of virtual world operations. We are humbled by the confidence from our partners in the development of this new title.”
Eve Online launched in May 2003. In September 2018, Black Desert creator Pearl Abyss of South Korea bought CCP Games for $425 million. It was a huge sum for a company running a game that has been around for almost 20 years and is still a big success. But this new idea called for outside investment.
“CCP Games is a pioneer in virtual worlds and digital economies with 25 years of experience creating
living sandboxes with unparalleled depth,” said a16z General Partner, Jonathan Lai, in a statement. “They’re a veteran team and we believe in their ambitious vision to deliver incredible player experiences at the intersection of best-in-class game design and blockchain technology.”
“The depth and nuances of EVE have become a frequent point of reference in blockchain gaming and we
are therefore thrilled to support the team’s impressive vision of expanding the EVE Universe utilizing this
technology,” said Makers Fund principal Alli Óttarsson, in a statement. “As a former employee, it’s a great personal joy to be reunited with CCP and to witness their continued passion for creating truly meaningful virtual worlds.”
“We’ve long marveled at stories of interstellar war, spaceships forever lost, and the constant challenges
of staying ahead of emergent, sovereign play patterns,” said Bitkraft Ventures partner Carlos Pereira, in a statement. “Hilmar and the team’s experience is unmatched, and we’re excited to see how they use blockchain to let players dream further.”
Alongside independent financing, this new title’s production is separate from current and previously disclosed projects, including Eve Online, which is now in its landmark 20th year.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
Playing is the most original form of human learning, and gaming brings a new way of problem solving to the business world. Gamification is all about taking the features that make games so engaging and applying them in other kinds of activities. There are many ways of gamifying the employee experience and the work environment.
Let’s take a look at some common techniques we used at Mighty Block to have fun while achieving goals while working.
There are many different features that can be applied to gamify an activity such as:
In 2022 the Mihgty Bloclk team grew very quickly. We celebrated our first anniversary in July, doubling the headcount from January.
There were a lot of questions about the new team members: their roles, objectives and also their experiences.
So we decided to help the team get to know each other better, but how?
One of the first workshops took place in July 2022: For the very first time the team was all together. Before the workshop, we asked the team for a picture from their childhood. However, they did not know the objective of it. With these pictures we made a big mural and numbered each of them.
Upon their arrival on the first day, they found the mural and then we set the game’s rules:
It was a very special event because the team not only had a fun time, but was able to share more about their personal lives.
It was a moment where we could move from our professional mindset and connect from a personal point of view.
As we are on a mission to bring Web3 products to the masses, the team should have experience using the most used tools because their knowledge helps us to build better products. We realised that we had a gap to fill in this field so the team created the “defi challenge”
The main objective was to learn about Decentralised Finance, and have fun! The challenge has 2 levels and each one has specific goals such as: Download and install Metamask , obtain a token using a Decentralised Exchange or Mint an NFT using a marketplace, open a lend/supply position and stake a coin.
The competitor that saves more gas (expressed in ETH) receives a Gas Saver badge. Also, there is a special mention for the Gas Guzzler
At the end of the first edition, we got great insights:
🚀Level 1 was completed by 100% of the participants and they acquired knowledge of: Web3, decentralised protocols, NFTs platforms and token management.
🚀100% of the level 2 participants acquired knowledge of: lending/staking, complex DeFi protocols and operations with NFTs.
🚀Possible Web3 projects were identified as a result of the experience during the challenge
In this article, we talked about how we design some Mighty Blog culture elements (Edgar Schein). As we described, to design our core values we created a fictional scenario in order to introduce the team in a creative way.
We imagine an unreal situation where we need to clone 3 people from the team to achieve a big goal.
With a description of the team characteristics we wrote a very long list of abilities, capabilities, highly valued skills and this was the base for the core value design.
The gamification in this example was to set up an unrealistic environment, with us as players or main characters in a big story. We use Storytelling with the purpose of engaging the team in the activity: creating the culture elements.
Playing a game together to define our core values was key to establishing our culture. When we talk about having a “white belt attitude” or being “team players”, we know exactly what we mean because everyone on the team was involved in its creation and development.
The success of the gamification method is that people have fun while achieving another objective at work. Several investigations highlighted the importance of fun and laughter. For example, it improves short term memory, reduces stress and protects against heart disease.
“Focusing on the good isn’t just about overcoming our inner grump to see the glass half full. It’s about opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective and successful at work and in life”, says The Happiness Advantage author Shawn Achor, an expert on happiness psychology.
We can conclude that having fun has a lot of benefits for our wellness, and it has a huge impact on our company culture, so let’s encourage ourselves to start gamifying our day-to-day.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
There are a lot of people who want blockchain games to stand and deliver. And 2023 is likely to be the year when we get some answers about whether high-quality games will show up using the technology.
Urvit Goel, vice president of games at Polygon, recently talked to games beat about how the blockchain protocol company is trying hard to make that happen.
“Specifically in gaming, 2023 will be the year that blockchain and gaming will be judged heavily on all of the promises that are being made about great games,” Goel said. “We need to start seeing some of those games. There will be enough to start making a determination about quality. A lot of these builders in stealth mode haven’t launched a product yet.”
He notes that Polygon has been at the forefront of Web3 gaming with its recent integration of the popular NFT marketplace Magic Eden as well as top games in the industry such as The Sandbox, Dencentral Games, and more.
While the collapse of FTX set the industry back, DappRadar reported that the Web3 blockchain gaming sector has seen continued investment north of $500 million between October and November, even after the FTX debacle.
“Our focus will be on helping these builders come to market, whether that is with broad tooling to make it easier to launch or new technology for scaling,” Goel said.
Goel joined Polygon about a year ago, diving into Web3 for the first time after a decade of service at Amazon in game-related roles. He serves as the head of games at Polygon, with the goal of driving the adoption of blockchain technology by game developers. He reports to Ryan Wyatt, who previously headed YouTube Gaming and now oversees all of the vertical industries at Polygon.
Goel’s job is to connect developers to technology and marketplaces to build better products. Polygon set up a $100 million fund to invest in Web3 gaming and other verticals, using a lot of its own money from when it raised a $450 million funding round.
Goel believes that the blockchain game industry is getting closer to being an adult. In its early years, during the bull run for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, people brought out very simple experiences that took advantage of the financial opportunity but were viewed as a bunch of noise by gamers.
With the bear market, Goel believes the “true builders” who have been working for multiple years are pushing through and removing a lot of the noise.
“What’s left is the high-quality builders in the space who are committed to building great and fun experiences for customers,” Goel said. “These are well-funded teams that have the runway to build great games. Or it’s large Web2 developers who have Web3 initiatives and can continue to build. I’m not seeing a slowdown.”
As for the competition among blockchains, he believes we’ll see many successful blockchains. He doesn’t view others as competition. Rather, the main task is to evangelize the tech so that more people are willing to adopt Web3 gaming. Different blockchains are trying different experiments.
“A rising tide lifts all boats because we are in this phase of the mission where there are a lot of trials,” he said. “We’ve seen what hasn’t worked quite clearly. And if we continue to go through the trials, we can find what it is that will work. It’s similar to how mobile games took off. We’ve only seen the first iteration. The number of chains out there is actually helpful.”
The FTX crash is definitely a negative event that is hanging over the industry, Goel said. He said it’s worth noting there is a difference between a centralized exchange versus true blockchain technology enablement. The fallout from FTX will take months to unfold, he said.
The $100 million fund is an ecosystem fund that focuses on multiple verticals including gaming, where the company deploys capital to game builders. The fund is still operational and the company is looking at the builders applying to it. Goel said the fund has made hundreds of investments so far.
“The thought behind it is there are a lot of Web3 native builders, and they need support and they need capital,” he said. “We are in a lucky position to deploy part of our treasury to help the ecosystem. It gives builders confidence to see we support them.”
Goel said blockchain games are already strong, as the number of active wallets has been consistently going back up in recent months. And games are accounting for a large part of all blockchain transactions, according to DappRadar.
“The sector is down, but it has held quite strong,” he said. “The thesis is that players are going to play games whether we are in a bull market or a bear market. The other piece is there are a lot of free digital collectibles ready to drive the top of the funnel.”
It reminds him of the early day of free-to-play games where players eventually started making premium purchases.
“We’re still in the early early stages of blockchain gaming. So if you zoom out a little bit, it’s like making predictions about mobile games back in 2000 [before the iPhone came along] That was hard,” he said. “The focus is on helping developers get to the market. Consumers will tell us what they like.”
Goel said he doesn’t think of various segments of the blockchain gaming population yet because the industry is still so small. There is a contingent of crypto-savvy blockchain enthusiasts, and there aren’t enough blockchain games on the market yet. Goel believes the game startups and indie studios will lead the way in blockchain games, as they’re the ones who aren’t afraid to adopt new technology.
And coming up with new kinds of games is better than launching the blockchain equivalent of a Call of Duty game, he said.
“I think you will continue to see a disproportionate amount of funding go into blockchain games,” he said. “I’m bullish for blockchain games. There are more shots on goal at the end of the day.”
Of course, not everything is going swimming. Yosuke Matsuda, CEO of Square Enix, announced he will step aside and promote a younger executive to the top role in June. He was a big advocate of blockchain games and sold off the company’s Western studios to focus on new technologies. (It’s not clear if the new CEO will also focus on blockchain games). The number of active wallets in the blockchain is still pretty small. And the funding could dry up if the economic downturn starts to hurt companies even more.
The blockchain companies are also competing with each other for gaming customers, with ImmutableX poaching studios from both Solana and Polygon and so on.
Goel noted that some of the largest companies in South Korea and some of the largest gaming companies in Japan are still taking their intellectual properties into the blockchain space.
“We’re starting to see some of those dominoes fall. And then what’s that mean for Western game developers? I think that remains to be seen. But this industry is very global,” Goel said.
Meanwhile, the industry needs to improve its infrastructure, whether that is marketplaces, data analytics, wallets, or payment solutions. Game companies shouldn’t have to dedicate their internal staff to do that kind of work.
“We want to partner more closely with developers and help them,” he said.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
Layer 2 Sets March 27 Launch Date for Ethereum Scaling Offering
Polygon, the Layer 2 blockchain, plans to deliver an Ethereum-compatible rollup powered by zero-knowledge proofs on March 27, the development team said on Tuesday.
The offering, which is called a zkEVM, is expected to offer enhanced privacy features and validate transactions faster than other Ethereum scaling solutions. Unlike other L2s powered by zero-knowledge proofs, developers will easily be able to deploy code written for Ethereum on Polygon’s offering.
“After more than a year of intense and inspiring research, development, and testing, we are incredibly proud to launch the first-ever zkEVM mainnet,” Mihailo Bjelic, Polygon’s co-founder, said onTwitter.
The DeFi community is counting on rollups to scale Ethereum, which, despite its ubiquity, has proven ill equipped to handle the workload for decentralized finance. Rollups work by bundling together transactions on a Layer 2 network before submitting the bundle to Ethereum’s mainnet for processing. In other words, this innovation may be crucial in enabling Ethereum to fulfill its promise.
Arbitrum and Optimism, the top Layer 2 networks by total value locked, both use optimistic rollups. Optimistic rollups offer easy compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ethereum’s core smart contract engine — meaning developers can easily port their from Ethereum’s mainnet to Layer 2.
Rollups powered by zero-knowledge proofs have long been touted as the holy grail for Ethereum scaling due to their improved performance and faster settlement compared to optimistic rollups.
“[ZkEVMs] will definitely help scale Ethereum to support more transactions in the future and will be a sorely needed addition to support the next bull cycle,” Bobby Ong, co-founder of CoinGecko, told The Defiant.
Ong added that the teams that are earliest to secure zkEVM market share will enjoy a significant first-mover advantage over their competitors.
However, existing solutions are not compatible with the EVM, meaning developers historically have needed to build code from scratch to deploy it on ZK-rollups.
But on July 20, 2022, Scroll, Polygon, and Matter Labs all announced they were developing rollups secured by zero-knowledge proofs, or zkEVMs. Consensys, the blockchain software company chaired by Ethereum co-founder, Joseph Lubin, also revealed it was working on a zkEVM in November.
While Polygon is the first team to publicly reveal a date for the launch of its zkEVM, Scroll has outpaced its rivals in terms of testnet adoption.
More than 900,000 unique wallets have interacted with the testnet for Scroll’s zkEVM, compared to 544,309 for Matter Labs’ zkSync 2.0 testnet, 85,166 for Polygon, and nearly 20,000 for Consensys, according to Messari.
However, the high levels of testnet activity for Scroll and zkSync 2.0 may be driven by speculation that the projects may airdrop native tokens to early adopters in the future.
Zero-knowledge proofs are a privacy-preserving encryption method that was pioneered in the 1980s but struggled to find product-market-fit until Zcoin and Zcash leveraged the technology for privacy coins in 2016.
Mighty Block is one of the partners of Forte, a platform to enable game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their games. We believe blockchain will enable new economic and creative opportunities for gamers around the world and have assembled a team of proven veterans from across the industry (Kabam, Unity, GarageGames, ngmoco, Twitch, Disney), as well as a $100M developer fund & $725M funding, to help make it happen. That’s where you come into play.
Feel free to browse all our current open job opportunities in the following link 👇
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