#883 How fully onchain Minecraft changes web3 gaming
BCGW #199 with Rob Whitehead
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*Definitely not investment advice
It’s Wednesday so — finally — time for another episode of Blockchain Gaming World.
In #199, I talk to Rob Whitehead, who as well as being a co-founder and CTO at UK tech unicorn Improbable, is also now the CEO of Improbable subsidiary MSquared.
MSquared arose from R&D work Improbable did during lockdown to further extend its ability to create large scale virtual worlds. Famously, the company spent its first decade building out the SpatialOS platform, which didn’t work out for games but was successfully used in various defence applications, resulting in that part of the business being sold off in 2023.
However, what it originally called Project Morpheus caught the attention of Yuga Labs, with the result that MSquared is the technology behind the Otherside ecosystem, which is launching in its first forms this summer. MSquared is also working with the MLB amongst others.
Describing MSquared as something like “building AWS for web3”, Whitehead — rightly in my opinion — says the biggest issue with blockchain games to-date is that despite their use of blockchain, most projects remain fragmented in terms of their wider interoperability.
MSquared’s vision is to fix this.
“DeFi is one of the big success stories of web3. I make an exchange. You make a wallet. Someone else makes a marketplace. Someone else makes a lending protocol. And like Lego pieces, they connect together and without even having to cooperate, we're building this whole ecosystem,” says Whitehead.
“In web3 gaming, where's that composition? Where's that ecosystem happening? Who's building the Lego blocks that are gonna be sticking together?
Of course, to do that you do need to plug into blockchain. MSquared supports EVM chains such as ApeChain for Otherside, but its focus is integrating with Improbable’s new Somnia L1 chain, which promises 1 million transactions per second.
One example of how Whitehead says this combination changes the sector’s potential is its proof-of-concept fully onchain Minecraft-style game Chunked, which peaked at over 1,000 concurrent players during its first test. The second test starts soon.
“It gets people thinking maybe you don't want to do fully onchain Minecraft, but if you can do fully onchain Minecraft, what else can you do? It's proving that watermark of capability that I want to put all the data onchain so I can do different things based upon that,” Whitehead muses.
And we certainly need developers trying different things!
Check out the full transcript at BlockchainGamer.biz.
Sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing 📈 in the future 🔮 of gaming 🎮
Calendar
Tavernlight’s idle RPG RavenIdle launches — 4th July
Play EVE Frontier for free until — 7th July
Craft World’s DynoCoin goes live on Ronin — 10th July
First matches in Soccerverse Season 2 - 19th July
Wildcard launches on Steam — October
Jobs news
Sky Mavis’ bizdev director Kathleen Osgood has joined launchpad-turned-web3 game dev Moku as its chief business officer. The news wasn’t a massive surprise given that Osgood joined Sky Mavis in 2022 to lead its efforts to onboard game devs to Ronin when it was a permissioned blockchain. That activity has wound down following the blockchain’s move to permissionless access in early 2025. Osgood had also recently been on maternity leave.
As for Moku, it minted its genesis NFTs on Ronin but is looking to expand as it prepares for the launch of its Grand Arena game — a TCG supporting multiple NFT collections — and what it calls a “modular infrastructure stack”, which includes its own wallet solution and AI agents. (Echoes of MSquared!)
It raised $5.35 million in an investment round co-led by Sky Mavis and a16z Speedrun, which was announced in September 2024.
As for Osgood, she says, “Moku’s vision stands apart. From smart game design and an AI-native gaming loop to a tongue-in-cheek IP and unmatched community-building instincts, this team deeply understands web3. They’re not just onboarding users to crypto, they’re making them fundamentally web3. I’m excited to help scale this success and bring more institutional visibility, capital, and partners into the fold.”
MapleStory Universe Expansion news
While I’ve been obsessing over MapleStory N’s data, it’s always good to be reminded that Nexon’s long term plan isn’t to build a successful game but a thriving ecosystem. This is something it’s highlighted in its most recent monthly roundup, saying that it’s received 84 requests from third party developers for API access, with 45 projects — mainly analytics and guild tools — granted access. Other use cases include a trading assistant, prediction market and bot rental.
Nexon also hopes to release its Builder Center, which will further accelerate this ecosystem expansion, by the end of 2025.
🔗 Additional Links 🔗
Ronin-based MMORPG Lumiterra is now available to play in your browser.
Immutable has a vibe specialist.