When it comes to the adoption of blockchain technology, many have pointed to gaming as the first major use-case to garner significant attention from a mainstream audience.
Within the Ethereum ecosystem, we’ve seen numerous companies explore this sector, all with a unique focus on the creation and spread of web3 assets.
Today, a notable gaming project – Enjin – has officially launched on mainnet.
“At a core level, Enjin democratizes the ability to create, mint and manage next-generation blockchain assets.”
Backed by a native token – ENJ – the platform strives to make it easy for developers to integrate NFTs into their gaming economies in a permissionless fashion.
It’s important to note that Enjin helped pioneer the ERC-1155 token standard, a popular spin which allows for more flexibility and modularity regarding in-game tokens.
“ERC-1155 is a standard interface for contracts that manage multiple token types. A single deployed contract may include any combination of fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens or other configurations (e.g. semi-fungible tokens).”
Let’s explore some of the new aspects introduced via the official launch.
Web Portal
As many of us know, blockchain development can quickly become overwhelming for those who aren’t well versed in Solidity or smart contract development.
With Enjin’s web portal, game developers of all backgrounds can enjoy a dashboard for easy token creation without having to write a single line of code.
Let’s take a look at how creators interface with the web portal:
- Start a new project. Team members can be added for additional support at any time.
- Link a mobile-first Enjin wallet and add ETH + ENJ. (asset creation requires ENJ to be locked).
- Create an asset with various characteristics. Enjin leverages on-chain (name, type and value) and off-chain (image + description) data, along with defining the amount of ENJ per asset, the asset type (fungible vs non-fungible), supply model and redemption value which are hardcoded upon creation.
- Once the parameters are set, creators mint their asset with a minimum supply/budget. It’s important to note that creators can always mint more assets in the future and that this step is simply the “soft cap” upon creation. Asset creation follows a diminishing curve, meaning the more tokens a creator mints, the cheaper it becomes to do so.
For more information on asset creation, please visit this resource.
API & SDKs
Once new assets have been created, Enjin’s platform provides a suite of tools for easy integration into both new and existing games. In particular, the GraphQL-based tools include:
- Platform API – Pull data from anything in the Enjin ecosystem.
- Platform SDK – Integrate various aspects ( Design, Funding, Monetization and Marketing) into your application.
With these tools, creators can quickly leverage the Enjin ecosystem with minimal blockchain experience. Supported SDK languages include Unity, Java, NodeJS, and Godot.
Why Should I Care?
With more robust web3 tooling, it becomes easier for Ethereum-based assets to play a role in user-friendly games.
As these assets garner traction, it’s likely that games will take a new form of income-opportunities through the secondary sale of in-game rewards.
To this point, a number of Enjin-based assets have amassed substantial market value, signalling there is likely to be new volume on DEXs like OpenSea.
Moving forward, Enjin will experiment with distributing assets via QR codes, a trend made popular within the Ethereum ecosystem with projects like Proof Of Attendance Protocol (POAP).
Tying this all back to DeFi, asset creation is permissionless, meaning anyone can create unique in-game schemas so long as they have the capital to do so.
Paired with the opportunity for applications to integrate payment mechanisms like Dai, it’s likely that gaming economies will soon tie into the larger DeFi composability.
Specifically within the Enjin ecosystem, there’s a strong focus on cross-game items – essentially allowing players to take their items from one game to the next. Paired with emerging eSports DAOs like MetaClan, it’s safe to assume web3 gaming is heating up.
With a strong focus on mobile-first gaming experiences, it’s exciting to see how blockchain-based games will be received when presented in a more intuitive fashion.
In light of the public launch, Enjin is also hosting a giveaway in which early adopters may win rewards by supporting the platform on popular social channels.
In the meantime, we’ll be keeping a close eye on their Twitter and official blog to monitor the adoption of the platform for any notable news!
Cooper is the Editor of DeFi Rate and an active contributor to leading DeFi media outlets like The Defiant, DeFi Pulse, and Bankless. He works with early-stage teams through Fire Eyes DAO to incubate governance models and grassroots community development. He is an ambassador to Set Protocol and an author of a weekly publication called Token Tuesdays. To stay up with Cooper, follow him on Twitter.