The challenge of full-chain games: the bottleneck is not the block time but the creativity

Block Time

Currently, the block time of most Ethereum Layer 2 is 2 seconds, which means that it takes 2 seconds to complete an interaction with them. This will make users feel very slow, because the time to interact with Web2 applications is generally around 0.2 seconds.

Since response time is one of the key factors affecting user experience, let's make an assumption:

Assume that the block time is increased by 10 times to 0.2 seconds. Without considering the unique entry barriers in the blockchain field such as wallets and Gas, blockchain as an infrastructure has reached the level of being able to replace Web2 infrastructure (mainly centralized database and server solutions, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, etc.).

So at this time, will you use blockchain to rebuild everything on Web2?

My answer is: No!

Even if the blockchain responds 100 times faster than Web2 infrastructure (certainly impossible in the short to medium term), user migration motivation and cost issues must also be considered. And blockchain is a kind of infrastructure that is naturally more "expensive" and less easy to modify than the Internet, and permissionless and self-ownership are not factors that all scenarios and all users care about.

From this perspective, Web2 has already solved the problem, and blockchain is unlikely to intervene, nor is it necessary to intervene. Blockchain is not to replace Web2, but should be used as a supplement to Web2, or to open up new areas outside of Web2, such as meeting those needs that Web2 does not meet well, or creating new needs.

Full-chain games are just a technical proposition

Following this line of thought, full-chain games are not and should not be a re-creation of existing game categories in a full-chain manner. Full-chain games essentially propose a new technical proposition: putting all the service-side logic of the game on the chain, or using the blockchain as a game server. Obviously, this is just a technical proposition, and it does not answer the further and more important question: Which game categories are worthy of adopting this technical proposition?

The advocates of the autonomous world did not directly answer the questions raised above, but jumped out of the scope of the game and tried to give an answer from a broader perspective. The logic is: the trend of the digital evolution of human society is highly certain and constantly accelerating, and the end of this trend is summarized as: metaverse. They believe that the best operating medium for the metaverse is blockchain. Because blockchain cannot be tampered with, runs forever, and resists collusion, it is more suitable as the foundation of the metaverse. The metaverse that runs completely on the blockchain is the autonomous world.

But the reality is that the metaverse will not come in the short term, let alone the metaverse running on the blockchain. The autonomous world is only practiced as the ideal type of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and sandbox games.

Facing the problem

The problems faced by full-chain games and autonomous worlds are also a microcosm of the problems faced by the entire blockchain industry: The highway (infrastructure) has been built but there is a lack of travel destinations (application scenarios). Practitioners have fallen into a whirlpool of nihilism, and Memecoin has become the object of pursuit, as if it has entered the garbage time of history.

In fact, the garbage time of history is just a complaint of followers. For leaders, this does not exist at all. It’s just that the vacuum period of innovation has lasted too long. The current dilemma is not essentially the limitation of technology, but the lack of creativity!