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— Proof of Play (@ProofOfPlay) February 29, 2024
Needing multiple chains might sound odd or concerning. But for Mahajan, who has experience building games in the world of Web2, this isn’t anything new. It’s just a new riff on the same premise of needing scalable architecture to support growing games.
Mahajan worked for Zynga from 2009 to 2011, during this time he headed the development of Farmville. In the Web3 space, rather than worrying about popular blockchain games crashing, developers worry about rising fees due to network congestion.
Back when Pirate Nation was on Polygon, the firm said it was paying up to $4,000 a day in gas fees to abstract them away from players—but that wasn\'t sustainable for a startup. Although launching four or more chains just to run one crypto game might seem like a big hassle, Mahajan sees an upside to the added muscle.
“It was inconvenient to have to run 64 databases for Farmville,” he said. “It\'s inconvenient for us, because we\'re the first people doing it. But then it becomes a product.”
Welcome to Pirate Nation, an on-chain RPG by @ProofOfPlay, built at the intersection of casual gaming, web3 technology, and shared ownership & incentives.
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— Pirate Nation (@PirateNation) July 5, 2023
Mahajan again uses Web2 to put this into perspective. Concepts like load balancing and caching had to be invented, the founder explained, in order for a product like Facebook to be built.
If we can make a game that reaches a million daily active users (DAU), that means that you can build another dapp or a photo-sharing site or something else that can reach a million DAU as well.
—Amitt Mahajan, founder and CEO of Pirate Nation
This is part of Pirate Nation’s multichain offering, in which Apex is the first network to be launched. Multichain plans to open up for other game and dapp developers to launch their own networks powered by Arbitrum Orbit, an Ethereum scaling technology.
“It\'s coming. There\'s definitely been interest,” Mahajan said. “We need to solve our own capacity [issues before we take on others.”
Dedicated players
Pirate Nation’s expansion plans come after the game launched its PIRATE token in June. Its listing on Coinbase saw the Ethereum token’s value jump, but price isn’t what the founder is concerned about when it comes to the token launch.
Instead, he wanted to focus on the 80% of claimed PIRATE tokens currently staked by users, according to a Dune dashboard. By staking these tokens, users earn Proof of Play (PoP) Points which promise to unlock additional benefits within the ecosystem. In part, this high percentage is due to PIRATE tokens not being locked when staked, and allowing users to still spend without any penalties.
To the founder, the high percentage of staked tokens is a bet of confidence by the community and a sign that the game isn’t attracting farmers who just want to dump the token.
“Staking is really a chance for folks to re-affirm that they\'re in it for the long-term,” Mahajan explained, “so the fact that so many people, in such a high volume, have done it is encouraging.”
And for those dedicated gamers, the largest on-chain event is just around the corner.
In the coming month, the second World Boss event will take place. This will see players join arms to defeat bosses together, but also compete for their transaction to be the kill shot. Players would be rewarded for their damage dealt and given a 1-of-1 NFT if they landed the kill shot.
This event will be the biggest in-game event that Pirate Nation has ever seen. With this, the network is likely to be strained, especially with the developers already eyeing up a second chain to split transactions. Will it stretch the Apex chain to its limits?
“We’ll see,” Mahajan replied with a smile.
Edited by Andrew Hayward