The goal is to launch Harmony shard 1 as the game shard for all the gamefi projects in the Harmony ecosystem.
*By Leo Chen; (To Be) Approved by Rongjian, Ganesha, Jack and Peter.
The appealing narrative of the game shard should include the following features.
- scaling: dedicated one shard to games can bring attention and branding of the sharding solution we created in Harmony. It is the current scaling solution in the EVM world. Harmony should own the “sharding” as the scaling solution.
- cross-shard NFT: launch NFT in shard 0 and can be used in the game shard as identity and avatar. trading of the NFT happened on shard 0, while utility of the NFT is on game shard
- protocol features:
- account abstraction: use game token to pay gas fee, impose burning mechanism and more utility for game tokens
- vrf: true random number generation to provide games with fast/cheap random numbers
- zkp: configurable privacy asset
PR-FAQ
On June 20th, 2022, Harmony launched a dedicated game shard to support all the gamefi projects in the ecosystem.
Why?
Harmony is the high performance, horizontally scalable layer1 blockchain. Harmony’s scaling solution is sharding. Harmony launched mainnet in June 2019 with 4 shards. Right now, majority of the transactions on Harmony is on shard 0. To showcase the scalability of the sharding solution of Harmony, we will rebrand our shard1 as the game shard to support new gamefi projects launched on Harmony.
There are a few new features will be launched with the launch of game shard. They are:
- cross-shard NFT identity: NFT tokens minted on shard 0 can still be used in the game shard. NFT holders can still trade NFT on the marketplace of shard 0, while using the same NFT on the game shard using the same account.
- account abstraction: gamefi projects can use the game token as the gas fee in transactions. This is the additional utility and burning mechanism for game tokens.
- elastic RPC: elastic RPC will be launched on game shard to support scalable RPC endpoints.
- vrf: verifiable random function to generate the best random number for games.
- cross-shard token transfer using precompile: cross-shard ONE token transfer can be done by calling precompile smart contract.
- cross-shard hrc20 token bridge: HRC20 token launched on the game shard can be tradable on shard 0 via bridging to shard 0 using the horizon bridge.
Technical Comparison
Technology | AppShard (Harmony) | Subnet (DFK) | App Side Chain (BAS) |
Performance | 200 tps | 50 tps | 50 tps |
Gas Fee (tx) | 0.000735 ONE | 0.00006384 Jewel | game token? |
Security | High | Low | Unclear |
Overhead | No | High | Unclear |
Binance Application Sidechain (BAS) is the scaling solution of BSC to support blockchain games. MetaApes is the first game using the BAC solution. It is unclear about the network configuration of BAS and the token model. Ankr is the collaborator of BAS. BAS claim to support game token as gas token.
Subnet is the scaling solution of Avalanche to support blockchain games. DefiKingdoms is the first game launched in DFK chain. DFK team has to run the validator nodes to support DFK chain. The advantage of the subnet is to use DFK’s Jewel token as the gas token.
Harmony AppShard uses the existing shards on Harmony network. Thus the AppShard has the same level of security as the Harmony mainnet. There is no additional overhead of the GameFi project to use the AppShard as they are supported by the Harmony mainnet validators. With the support of Account abstraction, the AppShard can support each gamefi users paying gas fee using their game tokens.
Launch Partner’s Comments
xyz game’s CEO said: “We have launched our NFT on Harmony’s shard 0. Now our players can use the NFT in our game launched on Game Shard w/o any additional work.”
abc studio’s CTO commented: “Harmony’s game shard is fast and reliable. Our games launched on the game shard provides smooth interaction for our players. Harmony’s VRF provides us with a cheap, verifiable, and truly random number in our smart contracts”.
FAQ
- how to deploy games on game shard?
- why shard 1 is used as the game shard?
- how to migrate existing games from shard0 to the game shard?
- what’s the incentive to launch games on the game shard?
Launch Plan
engineering
- game shard nodes readiness
- internal, external
- rpc readiness
- elastic rpc launch
- cross-shard tx
- ONE token
- allow listed erc20/erc721 in a bridge
- UI on explorer/dashboard
- cross-shard tx dashboard
- multisig support in shard1
launch partners
- dex partner on game shard
- game dev
- game guild
- op partner
- aws
- tencent
- biz partner
- venture
- incentive plan
- incubators
PR/marketing
- medium post
- launch party in NYC
- video
- hackathon announcement
- biz partner interview