Introduction to Autonomous World

Special thanks to @apolynya,  @pet3rpan_,  @guiltygyoza,  @0x_baz for reading and reviewing this article.

Key Takeaways

• "Fully Onchain Game" refers to a game that is implemented on the blockchain, including the logic of the game as well as asset ownership.

• While Fully Onchain Games offer the advantages of extreme modding and immersion, they also have several technical limitations.

• Another name for a Fully Onchain Game is "Autonomous World", which signifies an independent universe.

1. Introduction

Historically, games have played the role of “scouts” for new technologies as they emerge, exploring their potential. They could see how the technology could be utilized and how much potential it had, but at the same time, they were not directly connected to the real world, so the risk of side effects was relatively small.

In contrast to what we’ve called “Web3 games,” a “Fully Onchain Game” means that all of the game’s assets and logic exist onchain, or at least in a verifiable form. Fully Onchain Game has many different synonyms, and we’ll look at the concept from three different perspectives: Fully Onchain Game, Autonomous World, and Onchain Reality.

2. Fully Onchain Game

2.1 Definition

According to “The Strongest Crypto Gaming Thesis” by gubsheep, a Fully Onchain Game is defined as follows.

• The source of the game data must be the blockchain, i.e. asset ownership and game logic must be stored on the blockchain.

• Not only the game’s state, but also its logic must exist on the chain.

• The game must be developed according to the rules of the open source ecosystem. External developers should be able to fork it and customize it freely.

• The game should not depend on a specific frontend. If the frontend provided by the game developer goes away, you should still be able to access the game.

2.2 Advantages

2.2.1 Extreme Modding

The biggest advantage of a Fully Onchain Game is that it is the most optimized form of modding.

Modding refers to secondary creative content such as skins, patches, and mods that are essentially tweaks to an existing game. Modding is not done by game makers, but by regular users, called modders. The scope of modding is very broad, ranging from customizing the appearance of characters and objects in the game to acting as DLC to unlock new content within the game. In the case of Roblox, the distinction between those who make games and those who play them is blurred, as Roblox Studio allows anyone to create their own games, and Roblox is really just a platform for them. Many of the games that exist today were created by modding. For example, PUBG was created from DayZ, a mod for a pre-existing game called ARMA2. Dota was a mod for Warcraft 3, and Counter-Strike was a mod for Half-Life.

In this way, modding extends the game’s playability beyond what the game offers, creating new and unexpected experiences for users to enjoy. However, in the current gaming industry, many game developers prohibit unauthorized software modifications in their user license agreements (EULAs), which can lead to legal sanctions for modders, and the lack of monetary rewards for creating interesting mods creates a disincentive.

Fully Onchain Games do not have these problems. First, Fully Onchain Games follow the rules of the open-source ecosystem, so you can inherit the state and do modding without any dependency risk, and you’re also free from legal risks.Mechanisms like Canto’s Contract Secured Revenue (CSR) allow for permissionless financial incentives that are proportional to the usability of the mod. Additionally, Fully Onchain Games have a much wider scope for modders to modify, as all game logic is transparent. For example, if you look at Dark Forest, the leading example of a fully onchain game, you’ll see that the community has built many elements of the game themselves, from the marketplace to the automation tools, the explorer, and even their own guild on their GitHub.

In the end, Fully Onchain Games are much more optimized for modding than traditional games due to the permissionless interoperability, incentive mechanisms, and open-source nature of the blockchain, which can lead to a more fun gaming experience.

2.2.2 Extreme immersion

Fun is a key element of gaming, and a key advantage of Fully Onchain Game is the excitement of unexpected gameplay that extreme modding brings. But the benefits of a fully onchain game don’t stop there. By having all elements of the game onchain, the game can take full advantage of the blockchain’s properties. First, the permanence and immutability of the blockchain makes Fully Onchain Games feel more realistic. Players can feel more immersed in the game as their in-game actions remain and have an impact. In the case of ownership, it allows users to have a stronger emotional connection to their in-game assets, making them more financially and emotionally invested. Additionally, providing the opportunity to earn real-world economic benefits further increases immersion.

Ultimately, while VR increases immersion based on the user’s sight and senses, Fully Onchain Games increase immersion by leveraging the properties of the blockchain, including permanence, ownership, immutability, and economic incentives.

2.3 Reality and Limitations

However, Fully Onchain Game has some issues that need to be addressed. As of May 2023, fully onchain games like Dark Forest and 0xMonaco have a high barrier to entry for non-technical users.

The blockchain’s throughput limitations are also a major drawback for fully onchain games. Scalability solutions such as ZK technology, Layer 2, Layer 3, and AltLayer, which allows for temporary rollups, are trying to address this issue, but the number of transactions a blockchain can handle is not as high as a centralized database. As a result, most video games that require extreme synchronization (such as FPS and MOBAs) are difficult to implement onchain. Instead, Fully Onchain Games are better suited for games with the following characteristics.

These characteristics are described in Will Robinson’s series “Unblocking Onchain Games” on the Alliance DAO.

• Asynchronous games where users don’t have to wait for each other to play.

• Games that allow users to batch multiple transactions without affecting each other’s play.

• Games with limited moves per turn.

• Games where social interaction is a primary factor and does not need to be recorded as game state.

Other challenges are as follows:

• Developer experience: The infrastructure to create a fully onchain game is still lacking. However, recent developments in frameworks such as Lattice’s MUD, Dojo, and Argus Labs’ World Engine are addressing this issue.

• User Experience: To provide the user experience that platforms like Steam provide, various improvements are needed, such as session keys via AA, batch transactions, convenient on-ramp & off-ramp, embedded wallet, etc.

2.4 Summary

Fully Onchain Games are fundamentally different from traditional blockchain games that only store the ownership of in-game assets onchain. The upside is that they can fully utilize the blockchain to offer new forms of gameplay and fun that were not previously possible. The downside is that there are still a number of practical issues and limitations that need to be addressed.

3. Autonomous World

3.1 World

Every world has an introduction rule. An introduction rule is a rule that determines whether a particular entity is included in the world, or not. For instance,

• The World of the US Dollar: The introduction rule for this world is whether or not an institution, such as a bank or government, authorizes your balance. If they do, then the numbers on your bank account become part of the dollar universe.

• The World of Naruto: The introduction rule for this world is whether or not it was created by Masashi Kishimoto, the creator of Naruto, in the comic. This determines whether a new character is included in the World of Naruto.

• The World of Religion A: The introduction rule for this world is whether or not you believe in the doctrines and ideologies of Religion A. If you do, you can become part of the World of Religion A.

Worlds are built from a variety of materials. Language, writing, code, thoughts, laws, and so on are all used to create the world, and these materials often determine the characteristics of the world. For example, different materials determine how soft or rigid an introduction rule is. Some Worlds have blurry boundaries, such as those embodied in beliefs, while others have very firm introduction rules, such as laws and codes.

3.2 Autonomous

When using a blockchain as the material for a World, you can leverage the autonomous nature of the blockchain. When new entities want to join the world, they can become part of it by following the introduction rules implemented in code without permission. Furthermore, the sudden disappearance or misbehavior of some actors does not disrupt the overall order of the world, and it is possible to penalize them permissionless based on their behavior. Due to these characteristics, a world created with blockchain as a material, such as a Fully Onchain Game, is called an Autonomous World.

3.3 Autonomous World & Real World

In this autonomous world, only the most general rules exist, and users can create their own new rules based on the general rules. This is in the same vein as the modding described earlier as a Fully Onchain Game. With this foundation, the Autonomous World acts like a hyperstructure, where the foundation is immutable, but what is built on top of it is entirely up to the actors in the Autonomous World.

Because of this characteristic, the Autonomou World can be thought of as the world that best mimics the real world. In the real world, actors in this world collectively create new things together. For example, in 2008, the iPhone was created by actors in the real world (Steve Jobs and Apple employees), not by an external entity injecting it into the world. Furthermore, in the real world, actors in the world are constantly creating new meanings, or narratives, about existing things together. For example, ESG, AI, war, financial crisis, etc.

In most Worlds except the real world, there is a clear distinction between the actors who enforce the introduction rule and the actors who follow the introduction rule and become part of the World. However, in Autonomous Worlds, there is no such distinction.

For example, in the Pokémon universe, new Pokémon are only introduced into the world when Nintendo releases a new Pokémon series. This is completely determined by Nintendo, which creates a clear distinction between Nintendo as the entity that enforces the introduction rule and the Pokémon and gamers as the entities that follow the introduction rule and enter the world. If the Pokémon universe were to become an autonomous world, gamers in this world would be able to evolve their own Pokémon, combine different items to create new items, and so on.

3.4 Summary

Autonomous worlds that use blockchain as a material have a different character than other worlds. Autonomous worlds have great potential to reproduce the diversity and change of the real world because the actors in the world can create and impose their own rules and meanings based on the underlying system. Therefore, in the current trend of accelerating digitalization, autonomous worlds can serve as a test bed for understanding the world we live in.

4. Onchain Reality

4.1 Four kinds of reality

There are four main types of reality in the world.

• Objective reality: This is the reality that is driven by the laws of physics, such as the universe we live in. It exists independent of human perception, belief, or thought. Examples include mountains, horses, and horns.

• Interobjective reality: Intangible, which is an idea or system that cannot be touched, but whose existence or definition is collectively recognized by individuals. Examples include money, religion, and love.

• Subjective reality: This includes the feelings, experiences, and beliefs of each individual.

• Intersubjective reality: This includes feelings, experiences, beliefs, and perspectives that are shared among multiple individuals. An example of this would be the shared reality among people attending the same concert.

4.2 What we need

4.2.1 Intersubjective reality is important

First of all, I believe that shared reality, especially intersubjective reality, plays a major role in shaping human interactions, i.e., various relationships such as cooperation or competition. Other realities certainly contribute, but if there were only objective reality or interobjective reality, there would be no agreement or disagreement about anything in the first place, and if there were only subjective reality, each person would understand the world from their own perspective, completely isolated from the others. I believe that diversity in relationships occurs when several people have a common idea or point of view, and they empathize, sympathize, or conflict with each other.

4.2.2 The role of objective reality

Objective reality acts as the most basic layer from which other kinds of reality can grow. For example, consider a unicorn: it is an interobjective reality, and if the objects corresponding to “horse” and “horn” did not exist in objective reality, it would not be possible to define a unicorn in our minds in the first place. The same is true for other realities that are not interobjective. If objective reality was not clearly defined in the real world, there would be a limit to the creation of other realities.

4.2.3 What about the digital world?

The problem arises in the digital world. It may depend on how you define objective reality, but I believe that objective reality can only be defined in the real world of physical laws because it must be able to take physical form regardless of human perception, and it cannot be defined in the digital world. Therefore, we can say that there is no foundation layer in the digital world for other shared realities to fully develop, which is related to why the digital world cannot form as many diverse and dynamic relationships as the real world.

4.3 Onchain Reality

I believe that Onchain Reality, which we previously called Fully Onchain Game, Autonomous World, can serve as a “good” interobjective reality in the digital world and act as a foundation layer on which other realities can grow. In fact, digital hubs like Google, YouTube, and Twitter already serve as interobjective realities. However, I do not believe that these platforms are “good” interobjective realities. A “good” interobjective reality is one where the rules are not arbitrarily changed by a particular entity, and is stable and reliable from the user’s side, which is where blockchain technology is strong. I believe that areas such as Self Sovereign Identity (SSI), Onchain Organization (OO), Digital Reputation, etc. can also have real use cases based on Onchain Reality.

If we look at the current enterprise-led AR & VR-based ‘metaverse’ as a concept of reality, it is trying to mimic objective reality as much as possible through human senses. However, this metaverse can only exist when humans directly experience or observe it, so it cannot be seen as objective reality in the pure sense. In addition, although the metaverse may be a form of interobjective reality, it is difficult to say that it is a “good” interobjective reality because its rules can be arbitrarily changed by certain entities.

4.4 Summary

Each of the four realities has an important role to play, and the interaction between them is essential to our society, community, and human relationships. Objective reality provides the foundation for all other realities, while intersubjective reality contributes to our social interactions and dynamic relationships. In the digital world, there have been limitations in the representation of these realities, but new approaches such as Onchain Reality seem to pave the way to overcome these limitations, as it can serve as a base layer for a ‘good’ interobjective reality. With the implementation of Onchain Reality, I believe we will be able to create more vibrant digital societies and communities.

5. Closing thoughts

Autonomous World and Onchain Reality, or Fully Onchain Game, are more than just a game genre, they are expected to serve as a container for replicating the real world in the digital world, and as a foundation for a dynamic digital world. There are so many possibilities that can be derived from the Autonomous World, and I will continue to keep an eye on the sector.

5.1 Recommended Reading

• The Twitter thread by pet3rpan of 1kxnetwork is a great source of information on the Autonomous World and is a great resource for understanding this topic.

• The document AUTONOMOUS WORLD, presented at the Autonomous Worlds Symposium in London in 2022, provides an in-depth look at Autonomous Worlds from multiple perspectives, and is a great resource for further understanding the topic.

Thanks to Kate for designing the graphics for this article.