MagicBlock, a gaming company based in Solana, has raised $3 Million in pre-seed financing. This includes an investment by venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz after MagicBlock participated in a16z’s Crypto Startup Accelerator earlier this year.
MagicBlock has developed a gaming engine to allow video games to run onchain. This is a difficult task due the slow speed of blockchains. It does this by using a piece of novel technology that it calls “ephemeral” rollups. These temporarily transfer Solana’s current state into a rollup with higher throughput before returning to layer-1.
MagicBlock caught the attention of online Solana after it posted a video on X that attracted 429,000 views.
With this new round of funding, six-person company will be able to increase its staff and develop their technology. They plan to bring its game engine on the Solana Mainnet as well a partner with Onchain games.
MagicBlock, founded by Andrea Fortugno & Gabriele Picco in 2023 was launched. Fortugno said that the duo created the company after realizing the poor user experience while creating a game onchain.
MagicBlock thinks that games which run on-chain are better off if they’re composable, meaning other developers can add to the smart contracts of a particular game. This also means that there’s less reliance on third parties. However, it is difficult to get a computer program running at the speeds required by gamers.
“Players get pissed off if they have 100ms latency, so forget half a second,” Fortugno said.
MagicBlock, on the other hand, is working to develop ephemeral rollsups. This makes a different wager than most of its competitors. Axie’s Ronin, which is linked to Axie infinity, created an Ethereum compatible blockchain. Immutable, Sonic and both use layer-2s. MagicBlock, on the other hand, is attempting to develop technology which extends Solana’s foundation layer. The layer-2 system on Ethereum is often criticized for fragmenting the liquidity of layer-1 or stealing fees.
In order to perform ephemeral rolling ups, a special version of Solana’s software is used. This allows the sequencers to temporarily modify account numbers before they are returned back Solana. Initially, rollups use optimistic confirmation, preferred by EVM giants Arbitrum and Optimism. They then verify transactions using zero-knowledge evidence.
The idea behind ephemeral rolls is that Solana’s state, logic or programs and accounts are separated. This allows the logic to remain in place while the state switches over to an ephemeral rolling.
This is a new approach to developing games, especially in the crypto-gaming space which has attracted a lot of investments but delivered minimal returns.
Fortugno, however, believes gaming to be at the forefront of new technology. Fortugno gave GPUs as an illustration: before they powered the AI boom the circuits had been used to accelerate the graphics of video games.
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