The barriers of GameFi (Part 2): Blockchain Complexity
In Part 2, we will talk about the complexity of blockchain technology and why that hinders more adoption coming from the traditional world.
A whole new world
For a newbie starting to enter the market, things can be overwhelmed (the first time I purchase a token is on Binance, and for a while, I just stick to it due to the complexity of wallet address, gas fee, seed phrase, …)
The first barrier is the digital wallet. Setting up a wallet can be a daunting task, you have to pick from dozens of names such as Coin98 Wallet, Trust Wallet, Metamask, … and then you have to send some gas fee into it through centralized exchanges (which can take a few hours for KYC). You also need to store your seed phrase somewhere, either on the computer (not recommended) or write it on a piece of paper. Next, you have to figure out what blockchain the game is on (Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, …) and then add that network to your wallet by typing in the RPC node and name (yikes!).
It is sad to say but the biggest strength and the biggest weakness of Web2 are ads. By sacrificing our attention and privacy, we can use browsers for free and seamlessly access websites by typing in a few keywords. Even the websites have readable names such as widiland.com, while my wallet address looks something like 0xar9… Do you need to know what HTTPS is or why the domain name of some websites contain .com and some .org to use the internet? NO.
Next is the gas fee. For most of you, I believe that you have never made a single transaction on Ethereum due to its high gas fee and low transaction speed even though it is the biggest ecosystem in the industry and has a total value locked of about 200 billion dollars. Thankfully, there are now other options such as Layer-1 blockchains such as Solana, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, … and Layer-2 scaling solutions such as Polygon and Arbitrum.
However, the fact remains that you have to pay the gas fee, no matter how low it is. Want to send an emoji on-chain? Gas fee. Send your characters to the battlefield? Gas fee. Harvest in-game materials? Gas fee. Imagine you play Call of Duty Modern Warfare and whenever you pick up a new gun you have to pay the gas fee, it will seriously damage the gameplay and ruin the flow of gamers.
The great thing about traditional games is that you just need to pay once and play for as long as you want with no interruption. If Web3 games want to compete, they will have to solve this problem.
Finally, it is the process of purchasing tokens that will frustrate new players. It is given that most game’s tokens are not listed on Centralized Exchange like Binance and FTX. Therefore, players will need to go to Dex like Pancakeswap or Quickswap to purchase these tokens. But then, how can you do it? What is slippage? What is the contract address of this token? Complexity after complexity. Not to mention players will run the risk of scams as there are many fake contract addresses on blockchain, rug pull, hack, …
Going forward
For Web3 to reign supreme on Web2, we will need to abstract away all these complexities and allow users to have a seamless and enjoyable experience. If you look at the chart below, the adoption of blockchain and Web3 is comparable to that of the internet in the 1990s, when only a handful of developers and tech-savvy people embraced the internet. We still have a long way to go, Widians.
Unfortunately, for the current time being there is not much we can do to improve the experience for our gamers. Having said that, awareness is always the first step in solving any problem, and we are exploring different innovations and partnerships on this topic. The crypto industry moves at an extremely rapid pace and there is no saying what will come out next in the near future. However, you can be sure that when it does appear, we will actively explore it and integrate it into WidiLand.