Decentralized applications (DApps), including gaming applications, have gained attention for their transparency, security and user asset ownership. However, providing high-quality AAA gaming experience through DApps faces challenges.
Existing 2D game DApps run on the blockchain network and use smart contracts for asset management. While they are favored for their simple mechanics and resource efficiency, their limitations become apparent as the complexity of the gaming experience increases.
Scalability is a major obstacle for traditional blockchains such as Ethereum, affecting real-time interactive games due to limitations in transaction throughput and latency.
Performance is also an issue. AAA games require high-performance computing and superior graphics rendering. However, it is difficult for existing DApps to meet these needs, resulting in poor visual experience.
Additionally, developing AAA game DApps is costly due to resource-intensive tasks and blockchain execution fees. Balancing an immersive experience with user-friendly fees complicates the use of traditional DApp frameworks for AAA games.
What is an actor model?
The “participant model” is a communication model that enables parallel computing and asynchronous message transmission within the blockchain protocol, allowing developers to easily build complex DApps.
The Actor model is used in Gear Protocol, and development is led by Nikolay Volf, founder of Gear Protocol and Vara and one of the main developers of the Polkadot and Substrate frameworks.
There are participants in the model – programs or users that send messages to other programs in the protocol. Each participant has a mailbox and a private status, which cannot be changed directly by another participant, but can only be changed by receiving a message from another participant.
Messages between actors are taken from the mailbox and processed in a loop. Once a participant receives and processes a message, they can send a message to another participant, create a participant, or change its status.
How does this benefit DApp development?
Asynchronous message processing in blockchain programming provides several significant benefits that help improve the overall efficiency, scalability, and reliability of DApps.
First, asynchronous message processing allows for non-blocking processing of transactions and smart contracts.
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Unlike synchronous processing, where each transaction must be performed sequentially, asynchronous messaging can perform multiple tasks concurrently.
This parallel processing capability enhances the effectiveness of blockchain networks as it can handle large numbers of transactions and operations simultaneously, thereby reducing transaction processing time and increasing overall throughput.
Jack Platts, co-founder of Hypersphere, a crypto venture capital fund that invests in gaming projects, told Cointelegraph, “In traditional synchronized systems, multiple tasks often have to wait for each other, resulting in slowdowns when processing large volumes of transactions.”
Platts continued: “In the context of blockchain networks, this parallel processing capability is critical to maintaining high transaction throughput. As users initiate more transactions, the system can process them simultaneously, ensuring faster Confirm time and improve network performance overall. This is especially important for blockchain games, where instant interaction and fast processing are crucial to provide a smooth and enjoyable gaming experience.”
Some blockchain games, such as Ember Sword, have integrated parallel processing into their development process. Mark Laursen, co-founder and CEO of game development company Bright Star Studios, told Cointelegraph: “In the development of Ember Sword, we used parallel processing using our ECS (Entity Component System) solution. Normally, manual integration is required Multi-thread and make complex decisions on a system-by-system basis.”
Laursen continued, “In our scenario, however, specifying the requirements for read, write, and order dependencies enables our engine to identify the most efficient ways to schedule and parallelize these systems.”
Suppose a player of a blockchain game wants to transfer an in-game item in the form of a non-fungible token, such as a legendary sword from their chest (a wallet for long-term storage) to their inventory (a wallet for the game).
The transfer process can happen instantly and at little or near zero cost, much like a player can simply click and drag a sword from the inventory and move it to a merchant or chest in a traditional game.
In addition, through asynchronous messaging, blockchain developers can design DApps that are more adaptable to fluctuations in network conditions and temporary failures.
Pavel Salas, chief growth officer of Gear Foundation (the organization behind Gear Protocol), told Cointelegraph that “the participant model actually improves the reliability of applications running on the blockchain,” adding:
“Because participants process information independently, a failure or problem with one participant does not affect other participants, thus preventing cascading failures and improving the overall robustness of the system. In the event of an outage or network failure, the participant model allows the system to quickly Recover and continue to operate seamlessly.”
This is beneficial for blockchain gaming DApps in the event of a network outage, allowing the game to continue running despite any issues with the blockchain.
In addition, asynchronous message processing enhances the scalability of blockchain networks. As the number of users and transactions increases, traditional synchronization methods can cause bottlenecks and degrade performance.
In contrast, asynchronous messaging allows tasks to be distributed across multiple nodes, allowing the system to scale more efficiently and handle higher transaction volumes without sacrificing performance.
Salas said: “As the user base and activity within the DApp grow, the system can easily manage the increased message traffic without causing bottlenecks or slowdowns. Even if a single application grows, it will still manage messages in order.”
This scalability is critical as blockchain networks are designed to support a growing user base and adapt to different use cases.
Salas goes on to explain how this process works: “Through the actor model, each actor program acts as a shard, ensuring that as the number of programs grows, the system can be shared by design. (…) Vara handles all transactions , there is no need to shard across nodes; each node handles everything. However, within Vara, each program runs independently, contains its own state, processes and sends messages according to its specific logic.”
“In blockchain games, real-time interaction and fast processing are crucial. The sharding function of the participant model ensures fast processing of game-related actions and events, supporting a seamless gaming experience.”
“As the number of participant programs increases, the system shards and distributes the workload, effectively adapting to the growing user base and maintaining a responsive and efficient network.”
Another benefit of asynchronous message processing is that it supports event-driven architecture in DApps. DApps can subscribe to specific events or messages instead of constantly polling for updates, allowing them to respond quickly and efficiently to changes on the blockchain.
This event-driven model reduces unnecessary computational overhead and conserves network resources, making applications more efficient and responsive.
Additionally, implementing the participant messaging feature can significantly enhance the overall user experience by reducing extended wait times for transaction verification. Using asynchronous processing allows participants to receive message confirmations of their transactions and the pending transaction ID.
Any computational tasks or external data dependencies can then be managed by the same or alternative participants in subsequent blocks, ensuring efficient processing without affecting the responsiveness of the blockchain network.
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This immediate feedback is especially important for applications that require quick confirmation.
As the blockchain ecosystem continues to grow and diversify, leveraging asynchronous message processing is critical to creating powerful AAA gaming DApps that can meet the needs of an expanding user base and address a variety of use cases across industries .
By taking this approach, developers have the opportunity to expand the limits of decentralized gaming and potentially realize the full functionality of blockchain technology in the gaming space.
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