How Game Channels Will Enhance The Appeal of Blockchain Gaming

Blockchain gaming is one of the crucial industries in the cryptocurrency world today. Concepts like play-to-earn gaming and NFTs introduce tremendous potential. However, these concepts are held back by developers who do not implement game channels into their projects. 

Blockchain Gaming And Limitations

Players can often engage with an interface to perform actions in the current blockchain gaming world. However, to perform actions in the game, they need to wait on the underpinning blockchain to process the action in the following network block. That is not a big issue for some chains, like BNB Chain or Solana, due to low block times. For Ethereum, on the other hand, it can pose quite a bottleneck that needs to be removed from the equation. 

While the concept of decentralized gaming in a trustless environment is appealing, it doesn’t change the rules of the underlying network. Furthermore, like cryptocurrency transactions, blockchain gaming can encounter technical difficulties and delays which affect the player’s experience. Issues like that need to be resolved head-on.

Moreover, as blockchain games become more popular and attract more players, the risk of congestion becomes more apparent. Storing files, data, and non-fungible tokens on the underpinning blockchain can constrain the network. The more games there are on one particular chain, the bigger this problem will become over time. 

One must also consider that blockchain games will become more interactive over time. There are little to no “worlds” and “environments” to explore in the current landscape and nearly no NPCs to interact with. That data needs to be stored somewhere and processed accordingly, yet traditional blockchains will run into scalability issues due to such high demand. Those looming issues force developers to cut out these aspects from their blockchain games, for now. 

Game Channels Provide A Solution

One way of addressing these technological constraints is by introducing game channels. They provide more features to games without compromising decentralization or the trustless aspect of these projects. Game channels help establish off-chain transactions between players, introduce private channels running in real-time, and a significant bump in overall scalability. 

With game channels, developers can provide a real-time gaming experience between players. Game developers can take all gameplay actions off-chain to cut down the time between moves or actions. There is no need to wait for blocks to be confirmed by the network, allowing for a smoother user experience. Such a solution can benefit competitive PvP games, trading card games, and much more.

One platform focusing on game channels for some time now is XAYA. Their game channels enable real-time games while reducing blockchain bloat. The approach is simple: record the start and final outcome of a game – or action – on the main chain the game is built on, and move all in-between details off-chain. It cuts down on data being stored in the following network block and removes delays for all participants. XAYA recently tweeted that their game channels have been tested on Ethereum and Polygon and are now functional.

Blockchain games like Taurion – a decentralized MMO – embrace the concept of XAYA’s game channels already. Moreover, the XAYA team – inventors of the game channels concept – develops and co-develops games in-house, bringing the concept of game channels to a broader audience. 

Conclusion

It is good to see this necessary evolution in the blockchain gaming world. Technical limitations in blockchain technology require a craft workaround, and game channels check the right boxes. However, moving much of the gaming data off-chain and only storing the necessary details on-chain is a big step in the right direction.