Top 5 Best Blockchains for Building NFT Games
Blockchain technology has made significant impacts across various industries worldwide, and the gaming sector is no exception.
As NFT games began dominating the industry in 2020, they enabled gamers to play and earn money as they pleased. Blockchain integrates finance, NFTs, and gaming to offer not only passive income opportunities through play-to-earn (P2E) programs but also benefits to investors and artists via GameFi and NFTs.
Recognizing the potential of this industry, experts have developed several blockchains focused on building GameFi.
Key Blockchain Terms in the Gaming Industry
In the blockchain gaming industry, several terms are commonly used:
Blockchain
A decentralized ledger with features like immutability, cryptography, interactivity, and programmability.
These features enable permanent transaction records, ownership of gaming collections, using game collections across different blockchains, and seamless automated transactions—something desirable in the blockchain gaming industry.
NFT (Non-Fungible Token)
Also known as irreplaceable tokens, NFTs are valuable digital assets that cannot be substituted for similar items.
NFTs exist in various forms, including artworks, images, music, videos, clips, animations, etc. Once assigned a unique digital identity, they become personalized assets.
Game NFT
A general term used in the blockchain industry to refer to blockchain games.
GameFi
A combination of "Game" and "Finance," it's a useful term as it merges gaming with decentralized finance (DeFi). The most popular model in GameFi is play-to-earn.
Key Features Needed in Blockchain for Building NFT Games
Smart Contract Compatibility
Blockchains used to create blockchain games must be compatible with smart contracts.
NFT Compatibility
In games, NFTs can be bought, sold, and earned. In other words, NFTs are a crucial element in the gaming economy. The best blockchains for building blockchain games must be compatible with NFTs and ideally facilitate easy transfers.
Metaverse and Interoperability
This means items collected in blockchain games must be interoperable for use in other games, interactable within the metaverse, and have access to some stored markets for easy trading.
Interactivity capabilities are still scarce but becoming more popular, especially with bridges like we've seen with WAX and BSC.
Top 5 Best Blockchains for Building NFT Games
There are several blockchains available for building blockchain games. However, the most effective features include those mentioned above, among other attractive features.
1. Ethereum
Ethereum is one of the most famous blockchains and one of the first built, maintaining an unerasable position with industry experts.
Furthermore, the Ethereum blockchain has continuously sought to improve and adapt to various platforms under development.
The Ethereum blockchain is considered one of the best blockchains for building games because it is easy to call one of the most important blockchains, as well as one of the first blockchains to provide smart contracts and NFTs.
Therefore, it is very suitable for blockchain games. However, it has famous disadvantages such as transaction speed, gas costs, and network speed, although many second-level solutions have been able to overcome those disadvantages.
2. Binance Chain
The Binance Chain is a blockchain network designed to run smart contracts.
It is popularly known for its lower transaction fees and faster speeds (it can complete transactions in just three seconds).
Achieving these, in addition to NFT compatibility and the ability to interact with many blockchains, BSC is prominent as one of the top blockchains for building games.
Built using the Ethereum model, it is a blockchain designed for those who run with high Ethereum fees. Some game manufacturers are aware of the BSC network’s advantages, and this has led to a large number of game manufacturers building their games on BSC.
Therefore, the BSC blockchain stores top-ranking games such as Mobox: NFT Farmer, Battle Pets, and more than 430 other games.
3. WAX
The WAX blockchain is considered one of the top blockchains for building blockchain games for the following reasons:
NFT and smart contract compatibility
Scalability, able to process more than 15 million transactions per day
Its users have access to thousands of dApps (decentralized applications) and interesting NFT markets such as Atomic Hub and NeftyBlocks.
Uses a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism to be environmentally friendly, more efficient than 125,000 times of networks using Proof of Work (PoW) like Bitcoin and Ethereum
Games available on the WAX blockchain include Alien Worlds, R-Planet, Kolobok Adventures, and more than 60 other games.
This is not a complete list, as there are several other blockchains on which some of the top games have been built. Blockchains like Hive, Ronin, Polygon, EOS, Tron, and Immutable X are currently hosting more than 100 outstanding games to be noted.
BAS:
What is BNB Application Sidechain? Overview of Meta Apes Project on BAS. Will GameFi Trend Return Through BAS?
Launching sidechains on the BNB Chain offers several advantages for BNB Chain. First, the main network will experience reduced traffic.
Since this first BAS is dedicated to GameFi, it will migrate many games to the sidechain, enabling network scalability.
Moreover, a AAA game can easily reach 1 million daily users, causing congestion on a main network. We all know the significant impact this has had on Ethereum. Therefore, alongside reducing traffic, BNB Chain stands to benefit.
This benefits gamers with faster transactions and lower costs. Developers can now transfer assets and data through BAS.
BNB Chain will accommodate more traffic. Importantly, all this new GameFi traffic will shift to a sidechain. BNB Chain benefits from additional traffic without the burden of heavy user access.
Klaytn
Klaytn is an open-source public blockchain for anyone interested in building, working, or playing in the metaverse.
The project is evolving into Generation 2.0 for improved performance, decentralization, and scalability needed to enhance metaverse trust layers.
With its low fees, high throughput, and low latency, Klaytn is paving the way for businesses looking to leverage blockchain technology.
Furthermore, Klaytn aims to facilitate flexible scalability, ensuring that businesses and developers can keep pace with the rapidly evolving blockchain world.
Summary
Blockchain games are reshaping the industry as we knew it, revolutionizing gaming by incorporating features such as:
Play-to-Earn
Creating virtual worlds with land ownership (metaverse)
Ownership of exclusive in-game items (via NFTs)
With these features and more, it's reasonable to expect exponential growth in the number of games built on these top-ranked blockchains.
