We are thrilled to announce our $7.5M Series A round led by @BITKRAFTVC! This new funding will help us further empower developers building provable onchain games and autonomous worlds. (🧵)

Cartridge -- Starknet's rising star ================================== A take by @wmpeaster ✍️ One of my favorite projects in crypto is @cartridge_gg, which builds infra for creating and managing onchain games. They're a star in the @Starknetgaming scene because their offerings on the L2 are as extensive as they are useful. For instance, Cartridge leads development on Dojo, an onchain game engine and toolchain. It offers Katana, a sequencer optimized for gaming. Torii is its indexer and client for gaming worlds built on Dojo. It also boasts Slot, a rollup-as-a-service platform for onchain games. And last but not least is the Cartridge Controller, which is a gaming specific smart contract wallet plugin for easy player onboarding. When you bring all of these pillars together, game devs can readily build really inexpensive, high performance, and low latency games atop @Starknet. All that said, we saw a perfect example of the early possibilities here this week when Cartridge debuted @flippyflop_gg, a tile flipping game, as part of a planned Starknet stress test. Using Slot, Cartridge Controller, and beyond, Flippyflop worked like a charm and facilitated a surge of millions of transactions on Starknet, leading to the network's transactions per second (TPS) peaking at 857, a new record in Ethereum's L2 ecosystem. It was through this app that Starknet was able to better demonstrate its capabilities, and it was through Cartridge's infra stack that such an app was made possible. When you zoom out, its a big win for Starknet to have this kind of gaming infra available on its chain. A lot of cool games are on the horizon here. And zooming out even further, Cartridge's approach can accelerate crypto gaming in general by making it simple to onboard and engage with onchain games — don't sleep on the Starknet gaming scene accordingly!

The Starknet Foundation is excited to announce the Gaming Committee. Chaired by six gaming experts, the Committee's mandate is to analyze, strategize, and recommend programs to expand Starknet's gaming ecosystem. Read more: 👇starknet.io/en/content/gamin…

Over 200k txns on @flippyflop_gg in the last hour

Join the hustle Roll Your Own: Season Two is live Built with @dojostarknet Hosted on @cartridge_gg rollyourown.preview.cartridg…

3/ SP1 is 100% open-source and achieves state of the art performance on real-world workloads. Its speed comes from using the latest ZKP research, with a cross-table lookup architecture, a customizable “precompile” system that can accelerate any performance bottleneck, and more.

Starknet Gaming Stack 👀

Cartridge Paymaster transactions as a percent of total @starknet transactions 👀

What if we just used @CairoLang for what it is, a way to generate zk proofs easily, and built software without actually running all of it on-chain. Ex: P2P game where all players share proofs of play, and the final state is sent on-chain. Is this an L3 with extra steps?

Playing around with StarkNet contracts in Cairo 1.0 today, some insights as I go:

One part of L2 scaling is Ethereum increasing its blob capacity. The other part is rollups becoming more data-efficient. Good to see @Starknet rising to the challenge. Would love to see more EVM rollups increasing data efficiency too (see vitalik.eth.limo/general/202… )

Command & Conquer is now open-source! EA just released the source code for C&C classics under GPL license, meaning anyone can mod, expand, sell, and build on it. Imagine a crypto-first C&C game—fully open-source, player-owned, and built on-chain. Big opportunity to create a decentralized game where players, hosts, and modders can earn from in-game contributions built on pre-existing valuable IP and source code.

[ ☎︎  You have two new messages… ] Dope Wars Playtest: Louie’s Offer ☑︎ Mission 1: Slot - Completed ☞ Mission 2: Testnet - STARTS NOW ☐ Mainnet Launch - Locked ▶︎ Play Now: dopewars.game ◀︎

The @LootSurvivor tournament begins today, and @Cartridge_gg is proud to power this fully onchain gaming experience with our Controller.

One of the emerging approaches to on-chain scalability in the next few years is horizontal scaling via launching multiple "hidden" app-rollups running the same application

Introducing the Model Context Protocol (MCP) An open standard we've been working on at Anthropic that solves a core challenge with LLM apps - connecting them to your data. No more building custom integrations for every data source. MCP provides one protocol to connect them all:

Over 1500 rounds of RYO played over the last 4 days, 35k+ txns Fully onchain, running on our Katana sequencer, optimized for onchain gaming, deployed on Cartridge Slot managed infrastructure Barely utilizing 1/20 of a CPU core Incredible testament to @starknet ecosystem progress

Eternum ☁️ was overrun by a lordly horde, but now a vast and scalable hosting power runs through the world. Head on in.... 🏰 Lords take note! You should defend your Realm immediately 🏰

Paymaster go brrrrr 15k txns on @starknet in the last 30mins Only with @cartridge_gg controller

Introducing: BEAST SLAYERS Hit Thing, Kill Thing, Earn Thing A fully onchain collaborative Telegram game on @Starknet Demonstrating Controller with Passkeys, Session Keys, and Paymaster to enable the most seamless fully onchain experiences possible. Play now: t.me/HitThingBot

Web3 gaming is early, and @starknet is racing for an early lead These are the rising gaming opportunities in the Starknet ecosystem you should have on your radar👇 There has been a lot of buzz about Fully Onchain Gaming (FoG) as an upcoming narrative within crypto, from the Ethereum Foundation’s push towards Autonomous Worlds and related infrastructure like @darkforest_eth and @latticexyz’s MUD engine, to Paradigm’s research on The Open Problem of Onchain Games Starknet has carved a niche by fostering a vibrant community of builders working towards the vision of having games built fully onchain Wait, what even is Fully Onchain Gaming? We’ve seen different approaches to tying blockchains in with games For the most part, minor aspects are brought onchain -- the clothing that your in-game character wears is an NFT, or the in-game currency happens to be an ERC20 token However, this only utilizes the blockchain as an auxiliary feature rather than a core principle upon which an entire game is built Fully Onchain Gaming attempts to configure as many components of a game onchain as possible From the physics engine that dictates how objects interact with each other to items within the game that can be composed upon and “modded,” there are clear and transparent parameters upon which players of the game can interact From this, players can create bots, build mods and frontends on top of the existing game logic, and develop downstream secondary markets for any aspect of the game, actions that, in traditional gaming, were entirely subject to the whims of the original game developer Try out some of these games that are already playable! 🎮 Shoshin by @topology_gg 🥷 Shoshin is a fighting game that allows a player to first create a sequence of actions and reactions for their fighter and subsequently deploy the character into a fight As with most fighting games, it requires strategy; knowing to set dodge or parry actions if the opponent starts an attack sequence, building up for a long-range attack when the opponent strafes back, and cleverly pre-programming a set of instructions is key to outplaying opponents Roll Your Own by @cartridge_gg 📉 Roll Your Own is a drug dealing game adhering to the basic principle of “buy low, sell high” (principle also applies to trading crypto) Players travel to different regions to make money ($PAPER in this case) by buying cheaply priced drugs in one region and selling them higher in another Loot Survivor by @LootRealms + @BibliothecaDAO 🧌 Loot Survivor is a fight-to-survive game where players fight monsters, upgrade weapons and armor, and stay alive while gaining XP Influence by @influenceth 🪐 Influence is a space strategy MMO game where the player and their crew colonize planets, mine resources, and forge a new civilization Why do we even need games to be onchain? Many argue that onchain games are strictly worse than web2 games due to added restrictions incurred from building onchain and a relative lack of fidelity compared to the most popular games played by billions today Similarly, many waved off mobile gaming for many of the same reasons, but as games such as Doodle Jump and Angry Birds came out, critics saw what was unlocked by utilizing the new design space that touchscreens, haptic feedback, and other features unique to phones enable Instead of trying to directly compete with desktop and console gaming on graphics and computing power, it created a new path for both developers and users to realize the different types of games that could be created outside of the confines of usual gaming traditions Onchain gaming is still nascent and takes time, but an Angry Birds moment could catalyze a new paradigm of gaming The focus should be on teams that are actively working towards building innovative, new features within their games and being open-minded toward how this space could evolve to eventually onboard millions of gamers Why Starknet? There are several features within the Starknet architecture that make it an attractive ecosystem for building games: Enhanced user experience through Smart Contract Wallets One of the main complaints of existing onchain actions is the EOA (externally owned account) Wallet User Experience, which is what the vast majority of wallets, including MetaMask, are built on Due to native account abstraction inherent within the Starknet architecture, Starknet uses Smart Contract Wallets such as Argent and Braavos, substantially improving upon the user experience abstracting away the frustrations that users have when interacting onchain Smart Contract Wallets allow “Session Keys” to be made Instead of signing every transaction one by one, imagine signing one transaction – similar to “logging on” in a traditional game – that automatically signs any subsequent action until the game session has ended. Actions are still written onchain, but any UX issues are abstracted away, and interacting with the game is as seamless as in any other online game Dojo provable game engine Dojo is a provable game engine built by the Starknet onchain gaming community led by Tarrence of Cartridge The emphasis on “provable” means that instead of having to write every action that a player makes onchain, a proof can be created at certain intervals that shows the correctness of previous actions within that interval that are processed offchain This allows games built with Dojo to scale beyond the TPS restrictions that onchain games currently face and is especially useful for games that require many actions per second, from Real Time Strategy (RTS) games to First Person Shooters (FPS) Crypto-native builder community Game developers in crypto typically: 1) Only build a small part of their game on a blockchain A simple NFT mint or ERC20 token as in-game currency to supplement their otherwise web2 game is the status quo for most games 2) Are chain-agnostic or otherwise hold little loyalty and community towards the chain they are building These approaches may very well work, but Starknet’s ecosystem is unorthodox in that the community of builders attempts to think from first principles how building onchain enables unique features for their game Additionally, because the ecosystem is still nascent, teams within the ecosystem build developer tooling and infrastructure that other would-be competitors utilize and also build upon It is less of a zero-sum game but rather a discovery process that teams within the ecosystem are aligned on and are working towards in tandem Where do we go from here? The Angry Birds moment for onchain gaming has yet to come, and the bear market has dampened the enthusiasm for a lot of sectors and chains However, developer talent has continued to rush into Starknet, many of them looking to build games that heavily utilize blockchain components that enhance the enjoyability of their product We are currently still in the zero-to-one stage of onchain games, both in general and specifically on Starknet, similar to DeFi in 2019, which experienced a Cambrian explosion in the subsequent year Starknet is a particularly interesting gaming ecosystem to keep track of, but there are also many different approaches in different ecosystems, from Arbitrum Orbit and custom OP stack instances powered by teams like Caldera and Conduit, Polygon zkEVM where ImmutableX has made its home, to other alt L1s such as Solana, Avalanche, and Sui Article by Pascal So

Re the "gamefi is the next wave" bullposting, buyer beware ... True ownership is largely a meme with such reliance on the efforts/budget of the developer. This also makes it difficult to legally share revs back to the player base (fiat in app purchase revs are not shared with the token economy). You're left with a thin veneer of value in the form of gated NFTs that promote a tallest midget syndrome, or a governance token that has no real economic value beyond speculative hype. Properly designed virtual currencies have their place in the context of games with no live ops and 100% player/LP-owned economies. But to move forward, the developer must first relinqush control, so that the community can sow the seeds of the movement.

Dojo v0.3.0 is officially here! A massive collective effort to deliver, right in time for this weekends Game Jam. It incorporates many new features and improvements, let's take a look! github.com/dojoengine/dojo

The White Wizard agent has taken his first steps in fully onchain game Eternum 🧙 He will soon be able to actually raise armies (short) 🧵👇

Time to unlock L3! We are excited to announce that the launch of a Cairo Verifier on Starknet is coming soon! Following a collaboration between @HerodotusDev and @StarkWareLtd, the Cairo verifier will enable the verification of Cairo proofs directly on Starknet. This means: ✅Opening the door to Layer 3 appchains on Starknet ✅Verifying storage proofs will become cheaper and have reduced latency As a first test, the team already successfully verified a proof produced by the Stone Prover. Further optimizations are in the works. This is an important piece of infrastructure that will expand what can be built on Cairo and Starknet and will enable new Cairo/Starknet L3s. Keep an eye out for more details!

Wild. @RealmsEternum taking up 36% of all txs on @Starknet And this is Season 0 with around 4-500 players All thanks to the @cartridge_gg controller for paymaster and session keys Wait until I inject 10k @ai16zdao agents into this all trading, building and fighting.

Day 10/28: @evolute_studio on hackathon [███████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 36% 🧙 vs 🧙‍♂️

no more "crypto stacks" where you need to wire 3+ services together, can i get a fantastic bundle for it all? start bundling already, industry is too small for how unbundled it is. no surprise nobody wants to really pay for crypto saas stuff.