Three years ago, we embarked on a journey to build an open-source, fully onchain world.

Today we release the comprehesive guide to Eternum an onchain MMO dropping on @starknet in Q4.

Eternum is a browser based onchain strategy game with a real world economy.

Inspired by 4X and RTS games players forge alliances across an infinite hexagonal map. Build resource stockpiles, train troops, trade, and strategically cooperate or deceive to achieve victory in this world of diplomacy, resource management, and tactical decision-making.

This thread is 3 sections:

1. Background
2. Realms World Architecture
3. Eternum guide

👇 Before we go deeper, let's wind back 3 years...

Inspired by the @lootproject project and @darkforest_eth we set out to build an onchain sandbox with no boundaries. Must be CCO and open source in the ethos of Loot.

Interestingly every serious onchain gaming team is realizing the limits of bare EVM / solidity

@ArgusLabs_ - New execution engine closer to the metal
@latticexyz - Iterating on MUD to be more performant and closer to the bits.
@0xcurio - Building their own chain for games This is an incredibly exciting space right now, and I am rooting for every team. They are the best and most curious builders in the space.

Along with @cartridge_gg @briqNFT @LootRealms @StarkWareLtd we are building an onchain gaming engine - @dojostarknet which uses the Cairo VM

Dabbling in a dual token design to create an on-chain app-store-like marketplace for games

It is always the chicken and egg problem when creating a platform. Incentives must align and builders must know a market exists.

Play to Earn?

It’s time for Play to Die & Build to Kill This design revolves around players minting a Character NFT and escrowing an erc20 token within the contract.

Permissions are granted by the owner of the NFT to access their escrowed tokens. They give access to games in order to play the game and die...

What an insane 24hrs of sweaty coding at the @starkware hackathon with the giga brains @rvorias @wraitii @sylvechv @0xbellemere

The sheer amount of innovation in one room in 24hrs was mind-blowing 🧠

Recap of why we built the session key
@Briq @LootRealms @topology_gg #devconnect for me has been about on-chain gaming (no surprise) however, we are *early* (not a meme).

On-chain gaming is the intersection of economics, game theory, and technology. But the current UX is clunky as players have to sign every transaction.