After the concepts of chain abstraction and account abstraction, Zypher Network further proposes the concept of server abstraction and has launched the first server abstraction solution based on zk technology for the Web3 gaming field. With this solution, game developers can create and run games in a fully decentralized environment without relying on traditional centralized server architecture. The game world can also run on multiple distributed nodes, and has the ability to autonomously dynamically shard and efficiently synchronize data.

The new server abstraction narrative may be the optimal solution for the operation of Web3 games, making the operation of games more efficient, secure, and reliable. It is also expected to become a key driver for a new round of rise in the GameFi track.

BlockChain Game’s Web2.5 Moment

The BlockChain game itself is touted as Web3, retaining the gameplay of traditional games and introducing elements of Token Economy, such as Cryto, Non-fungible Token, and P2E characteristics, making the game content assetized and allowing players to own assets. However, most underlying chains do not have the conditions to support the operation of game logic. Let’s make an assumption: for example, if a game generates 1 on-chain transaction per second for each player (such as movement, skill release, and other state updates), we assume that 10,000 active players are participating in the game at the same time. Then the underlying chain should at least reach 10,000 TPS to support all these players to play the game smoothly. Otherwise, the game will be extremely laggy, and the gas fees will be extremely high (you can see the gas fee situation of major on-chain platforms during the inscription period). Currently, there seems to be no chain that can meet the above requirements through practical verification.

So, in order to ensure a high-quality gaming experience, especially for real-time online games, the game logic is usually run on off-chain servers (storage, computation, etc. all happen off-chain), which brings a smooth gaming experience similar to Web2 games. However, the off-chain on-chain of the game needs to constantly synchronize data to ensure that the state between players remains consistent.

For example, when I buy a sword in the game, the off-chain database needs to synchronize the on-chain transaction data in real time to increase the number of weapons in my backpack and be able to take it out for use at any time I need it, so the process of synchronizing on-chain and off-chain data is continuous and the workload is huge.

In fact, this Web2.5 approach needs to bear a series of problems brought by centralized server, including review, hacker attacks and other risks caused by game single point, as well as scalability issues. Of course, due to the constant synchronization of on-chain and off-chain data, it may also lead to problems such as data theft, game developers’ misconduct leading to data leakage and cheating, especially when it comes to some economic interests, it is difficult to ensure that the executor does not do evil, after all, there is no mechanism to limit misconduct.

Another potential issue is that the Token Economy is on-chain, while the game logic is off-chain, and the two are usually parallel. The game logic and player interaction are typically very complex, involving a lot of real-time decision-making, state changes, and randomness, which also makes it difficult to completely encapsulate the game logic in Smart Contracts. For example, items, character skills, event triggers, etc., in the game are usually dynamically changing, making it difficult to be fully represented by static code. Therefore, developers need to adjust their strategies frequently to match the game.

Development dilemma of Block chain games

So when the on-chain computing power is limited, the Transaction Cost is high, and real-time requirements are high, Web2.5 games usually find it difficult to implement more complex game logic, which also leads to many Web3 games lacking in quality and difficult to achieve profitability through the game content itself. In this context, developers will bet their income on Token Economy and activities such as Non-fungible Token sales. Some resourceful teams rely on financing support, while the game itself usually finds it difficult to maintain daily activity solely through Token gains and P2E incentives. Some typical projects include Axie Infinity, Star Atlas, and so on.

On the other hand, we see many Web3 development teams at this stage claiming to develop blockchain AAA games, which may not be realistic.

AAA games themselves have an extremely long development cycle, whether it’s “Black Myth: Wukong” - a AAA masterpiece characterized by an immersive gaming experience and a captivating cultural background (with a global sales volume exceeding 18.1 million copies), or “Astro Attack” - a game launched by Sony, which only had around 700 peak daily active users on Steam in less than half a month. Both games have gone through an eight-year development cycle, but the huge investment and time spent make it a fantasy to expect returns from the crypto market. Especially for mature Web2 AAA development teams, they may be even less willing to disrupt their business models in the Web3 domain and add unnecessary burdens.

Facing the complex game logic and elements, the existing infrastructure is difficult to provide adequate support, which is also one of the fundamental reasons.

So regardless of the technology, investment, timeline, or existing industry resources (including infrastructure, etc.), it is difficult to provide support for them, not to mention the rapid changes in the crypto market.

We see that there has not been a significant improvement in the on-chain gaming field in terms of paradigm, and it is difficult to overcome the dilemma of active user loss and almost no new users, which continues to be in a downturn.

Fundamentally changing the running logic of existing games, breaking free from Web2.5 and transitioning to Web3 in a more reasonable way may be the key to improving the development and rise issues faced by current blockchain games, and the server abstraction narrative proposed by Zypher Network may be the best solution.

Server Abstract Narrative

First, let’s talk about server abstraction.

Chain abstraction and account abstraction are narratives with high industry voices. They are both aimed at lowering the threshold for users to use on-chain facilities by folding the native design of encryption, such as allowing custom account behavior through account abstraction to enable accounts to execute complex Smart Contract logic. It simplifies the user experience and supports flexible designs for various identity verification and transaction methods. For example, based on the features of account abstraction, when generating a Wallet account, I can use some familiar features (such as email or even fingerprints) instead of mnemonic words, or realize Gas payment based on the abstraction layer, and so on. Chain abstraction separates the underlying implementation of applications from a specific blockchain, allowing developers to deploy applications on-chain in different Blockchains without having to worry about the details of the underlying network, thereby improving Cross-Chain Interaction interoperability and development flexibility. With the chain abstraction facilities, developers can seamlessly integrate multiple chains, and users can seamlessly achieve Cross-Chain Interaction transactions.

Fundamentally, account abstraction and chain abstraction both achieve different behavior pointers and function extensions by establishing different execution layers or structures. Different projects have certain differences in the implementation of chain abstraction and account abstraction.

Zypher Network extends the concepts of account abstraction and chain abstraction, and further introduces the concept of server abstraction.

Server abstraction is more like a serverless state, which aims to establish a new distributed resource service layer in a decentralized manner, reducing or hiding the complexity of underlying server infrastructure, ensuring that users and developers can access the required services transparently and efficiently without directly managing or accessing physical and cloud servers. Server abstraction can directly meet the needs of decentralized applications (dApps) or blockchain projects for computing and storage resources, without relying on centralized servers.

As the underlying engine in the Blockchain gaming field, Zypher Network is the first to abstract server narrative into the Blockchain gaming field.

Zypher Network server abstraction solution

Zypher Network itself is a trap-based Web3 game engine infrastructure based on the Zero-Knowledge Proof scheme. It not only provides developers with versatile tools based on Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP), but also lowers the barrier for developers to use ZKP and other technologies to develop Web3 games. After the game is developed, Zypher Network, as a distributed game engine system, provides a powerful and flexible infrastructure for the Decentralization operation of the game, meeting various technical requirements and improving the gaming experience, and further embedding necessary features as needed.

Zypher Network itself does not deploy game logic in centralized servers, but directly writes game logic in on-chain circuits, while work such as ZKP proof generation is done off-chain, and the final proof verification is back on-chain.

The generation of proofs is driven by its off-chain distributed verification Nodes in the Network Layer, where each Node has the ability to generate Zero-Knowledge Proofs and communicate, and can provide strong computational support for the game. This network is driven by Token Economy. We see that both the on-chain and off-chain parts together support the operation of the game, acting as servers in a decentralized manner. Therefore, there are no specific server facilities in this system, but rather an abstraction of servers that performs better than traditional servers.

Running Logic

the off-chain part

When the game is running, the Node in the Zypher Network engine aggregates the action logs generated by some continuous game behaviors of the player into ZK proofs. Within a certain period of time, these game actions (each of which is a transaction) are aggregated into a ZKP proof, and multiple proofs are submitted on-chain in a single transaction, which significantly drops the Gas fee and ensures a latency-free game experience for players in some PvE game deployments.

For some PvP scenarios, Zypher Network has further introduced the Z4 engine based on the Node network mentioned above, which can provide the foundation for multiplayer real-time online play. The Z4 engine supports players entering game rooms through matchmaking. These rooms themselves are stateless, and the Node does not store data, greatly improving the scalability, fault tolerance, security, and responsiveness of the engine. It is easy to distribute computing tasks among multiple Nodes without worrying about data synchronization issues, thereby improving overall performance and efficiency.

In the game room of the Z4 engine, players’ operations will also be packaged and sorted in a ZKP manner, uploaded to on-chain for verification, and execution of the results. It is worth mentioning that Z4 Node supports running game logic using the Virtual Machine (wasm/evm/…) to build smart contracts, economic models, and game logic in a composable manner. Additionally, if higher efficiency is required, developers can directly write game logic in the Node without using the Virtual Machine. The game process will not involve transactions or gas fees, significantly reducing developers’ development costs and players’ game costs, and greatly improving the running efficiency and load capacity of online games.

When the Node completes the above series of tasks, it will be able to receive incentives from the network. Of course, the Node also needs to stake some Tokens to increase the cost of misconduct. Misconduct will result in slashing.

on-chain part

Zypher Network’s on-chain part has launched a modular Layer3 system (Zytron Engine) dedicated to the game ecosystem, supporting developers to build their own APP Chain in a modular way. By providing plug-and-play series of tool components, developers can build autonomous worlds, small-scale strategy games, or migrate AAA games to on-chain at the lowest cost and without a steep learning curve, while retaining production-level UE. At the same time, the complex computational process corresponding to the game logic can be offloaded to the off-chain Node. Based on Layer3, the off-chain Node can automatically scale according to the load, further ensuring efficient operation of the game and a seamless user experience.

From the verification of off-chain proofs, on the one hand, the Zytron engine itself is customized and modularly deployed in a Layer3 manner, and it can achieve 0 Gas design through a series of technological optimizations. At the same time, it has some pre-compiled contracts on-chain, which has a very high verification efficiency compared to the majority of chains. On the other hand, the Zytron engine has also been integrated with EigenLayer, and in

Deployed the AVS calculation layer on Eigenlayer, which can also achieve extremely efficient and secure verification efficiency, and ensure Decentralization. For different game scenarios, customizable choices can be made to match the verification method with specific game scenes, ensuring a more efficient overall operation of the game.

In addition, the Zytron engine also integrates Celestia as the default data availability (DA) option, further reducing the burden on the on-chain system in terms of data.

In short, all designs are made to ensure the more efficient and decentralized operation of the system or game.

It is worth mentioning that Zypher Network has recently launched the first Layer 3 Mainnet designed specifically for game developers on Linea, indicating a new milestone in the ecosystem’s technological progress.

From Web2.5 to Web3

The shortcomings of Web2.5 mainly manifest in several aspects such as security, trustworthiness, and efficiency. At the same time, it is difficult to realize complex game logic, leading to the low quality of on-chain games, causing developers and players to focus mainly on the economic ecosystem.

The advantages of Zypher Network’s server abstraction scheme are very obvious, that is, through a distributed Node network, it can support the operation of the game in a parallel manner, without the need to synchronize data between on-chain and off-chain at any time. This system also has a high level of scalability that traditional centralized servers do not have, and there is no single point of failure. The entire operation process is trustworthy.

On the other hand, in this system, because of its unique architectural design and modular integration with external systems, the chain does not

Because of the high pressure involved in the calculation and verification process of the game’s running logic. At the same time, its unique architecture design supports localized programming and is compatible with various EVMs. Usually, the economic model, smart contracts, and game logic are no longer parallel, they can be dynamically combined.

With Zypher Network, the Web3 game industry will no longer be limited to some small and medium-sized games. Large games with complex game content and game logic, as well as AAA games, can all be Web3-enabled and continuously supported with high compatibility. Block chain games can also win by high-quality game quality, and developers can gain a larger market through the game itself, rather than blindly following the fear of missing out economic model and the value and increase of Token.

In fact, if Web3 games can achieve the same or even better gaming experience as Web2 games, I believe that with the support of features such as P2E and asset ownership, Web3 games will have greater appeal, influence, and be able to reach a broader market, continuously attracting new growth points.

Server abstraction narrative is expected to become a key to maintaining the vitality of the GameFi track and advancing to the next stage, and is expected to become the mainstream architecture of future Web3 applications, and Zypher Network is also becoming the initiator of the server abstraction narrative.