In the past few years, on-chain gaming has greatly benefitted from the establishment of standards and adoption of open-source fundamentals. This week, we’ll dive into the history of on-chain gaming and explore the core innovations that have driven its evolution.

• 2017: The draft of Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard gave rise to pioneering on-chain games (e.g., CryptoKitties). Though simplistic implementations, these games highlighted the potential for collectibles that could be evolved, bought, and sold.
• 2018: More complex game mechanics emerged with the advent of the play-to-earn (P2E) model—which was most effectively scaled by Axie Infinity. Combining entertainment with economic incentivization, P2E games popularized a novel user acquisition channel in offering the possibility of a material income stream. Even today, the design space for in-game economies with real-world earning potential remains largely untapped.
• 2020: The proliferation of NFTs ushered in “Metaverse games.” These virtual realms, where in-game economies exist on-chain, allow players to own land, build assets, and interact with others in a decentralized environment (with the added benefit of interoperability). While still largely aspirational, the promise of this gaming category swells as AR and VR mature alongside the blockchain substrate.
• 2021-present: The landscape today has seen relative diversification. Strategy games have come to the fore; for example, Gods Unchained recently launched in the Epic Games store after years of testing and development. Multiplayer games (e.g., Star Atlas) have also begun to flourish in earnest. And role-playing games (e.g., The Sandbox), which allow players to create characters and explore different worlds, have emerged and continue to be refined.

Looking forward, technical innovations—including more performant oracles, higher throughput smart contract platforms, and zero-knowledge proofs—will improve user experience, increase game fairness, and spur long-tail developer experimentation. These enhancements are likely to inspire waves of new games (like Dark Forest) that offer a more immersive and engaging gameplay experience. The influx of users they’ll bring on-chain will not only help cement crypto's place as a viable and diverse compute platform, but also introduce a meaningful use case not subject to the same level of regulatory oversight as financial applications.

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Weekly explorations into emerging crypto trends and how to navigate 2023 from the Slow Crypto Team, Sam Lessin, Clay Robbins, and Caroline Cline.

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