Real Chain-agnostic Architecture
Snook has designed and implemented a true chain-agnostic architecture based on cross-chain messaging technology. The idea behind this technology is deviously simple. The potential is difficult to overestimate.
Blockchain is also known as Decentralized Ledger Technology. As such we tend to think about it, and the Smart Contracts that execute its operations, in accounting terms, as messengers of monetary transactions. Extending the blockchain utility beyond keeping records of ownership is not new. We’ve been living in the age of Vitalik Buterin for a while now. Nevertheless, some basic conceptions are difficult to shake off, and every now and then we discover new implications of his vision that in hindsight seem inevitable.
Interaction is something that happens when at least two things affect each other. It spawns two types of activities:
- Transaction – The exchange of things
- Communication – The exchange of information
They in turn sometimes result in added value, which is our definition of collaboration: Collaboration – an interaction that creates value. Blockchain allows us to interact, transact, communicate, and therefore collaborate.
Smart Contract messaging seems almost underwhelming. The fundamental ERC protocols share syntax, and cross-chain inter-smart-contract communication is obviously no news. The question is what can you do with that. Snook used this technology to build a gaming environment in which different players using different chains and networks can play together and settle accounts seamlessly without the risk, or certainty of asset fragmentation, and without the cumbersome use of bridges.
We were able to do that because of a technology that enables the inter-chain transfer of information between smart contracts, or as we like to call it DCG (Decentralized Cyber-crypto Gossip).
Interaction across multiple chains, especially in the NFT context, architecturally and therefore inventively leads to asset fragmentation. On-chain records of the asset, and changes to its state, are kept on each chain separately. Keeping track of the asset’s echoes across chains has been a deterrent for cross-chain implementation of interactive environments such as games. The few claims for the implementation of multichain architecture do not offer cross-chain interaction. They offer segregated environments implemented as “stand alone” in multiple chains.
Moreover, hopping between chains via different bridge solutions, although not impossible, is an almost insurmountable barrier for most players. (Not because they cannot figure it out. Because they lose interest long before they venture into learning how to use it.)
Snook of course wants to be open to all players from all networks and chains, and it wants it (being chain-agnostic) not to diminish the gameplay experience in any way. That was the motivation that led us to develop this solution.
Last modified 8mo ago