Last summer, I was determined to seriously study the blockchain gaming space. Not to speculate on cryptocurrencies, but to truly see what new things blockchain can bring to games. As a result, the experience over those two months was simply a disaster—I tried seven or eight so-called "popular blockchain games," each of which made me question my life. The most exaggerated experience was playing a certain card game; just registering a wallet, adding ETH, and authorizing the contract took nearly an hour. When I finally entered the game to draw my first pack of cards, the gas fee showed $35. I was completely stunned at that moment—before I even started playing, I had to pay a "entrance fee" of $35?
What was even more frustrating was the game experience itself. In that card game, every time I played a card, I had to wait for blockchain confirmation. After I clicked the 'attack' button, the screen froze and spun, and only after more than ten seconds did it respond. When my opponent played a card, I had to wait another ten seconds to see the effect. A game would take at least half an hour, with about 20 minutes spent waiting for confirmations. I really couldn't take it anymore. When I exited the game and saw the little ETH left in my wallet, thinking that the amount wasn't even enough for gas fees for another round, I completely gave up.
Later, I chatted with some chain game players on Discord and found that everyone had similar experiences. One guy told me: 'Chain games are just a false proposition now; the technology is simply not mature. You see those promotions saying 'play and earn', but in reality, most of the time is spent fighting with wallets and networks, where is the time to play the game?' I somewhat agreed with this view at the time, thinking that chain games might need another five or ten years to truly become popular.
The turning point was in March this year. A friend who develops games sent me a link, saying there was a new chain called @Somnia_Network dedicated to games and entertainment applications, and asked me to try it. To be honest, I was quite reluctant at the time because I had been burned before. But my friend kept urging me, so I clicked the link with the mindset of 'it's just wasting half an hour'.
The first thing that surprised me was the registration process. There was no need to download any plugin wallets, just register directly with an email. I entered my email, received a verification code, clicked confirm, and then the system prompted 'Wallet has been automatically created'. The whole process took less than a minute. I was still wondering if this was another centralized fake chain game? Later, I found out that Somnia uses a technology called 'social recovery wallet', which hides complex key management in the background; users only need to remember their email and password.
A friend recommended that I play a space exploration game. After clicking in, the interface was very simple, and it was no different from ordinary mobile games. The tutorial guided me to pilot a spaceship, gather resources, and build a base. The whole process was very smooth, with none of the previous 'click and wait ten seconds' lag. I specifically paid attention and found that almost every action responded in seconds, with resource gathering animations and building progress bars all as smooth as Web2 games.
After playing for about half an hour, I collected some rare materials, and the system prompted me that I could mint them into NFTs. I clicked confirm, expecting a complex gas fee setup interface to appear. The prompt that popped up only had one line: 'Minting fee: 0.002 $SOMI, approximately 0.0008 US dollars'. Less than a cent? I thought there was a system error, but still clicked confirm. Two seconds later, the NFT of that rare material appeared in my collection. I specifically checked on the blockchain explorer, and the transaction was indeed on-chain, with a confirmation time of 1.8 seconds, and the fee was really only 0.0008 US dollars.
This experience completely overturned my understanding of chain games. In the past, I thought chain games were slow, expensive, and difficult to use, which were inherent technical problems. But on Somnia, these issues didn't exist at all. I later studied its technical architecture specifically and understood why there was such a big difference.
#Somnia uses a mechanism called 'MultiStream consensus', which is different from traditional PoW or PoS. In simple terms, it means that different types of transactions are processed through separate channels — game-related transactions go through a dedicated 'fast lane', while DeFi transactions take another. This way, even if the overall network transaction volume is high, game players will not be affected. It's somewhat like a dedicated lane on a highway where ambulances and fire trucks have special lanes and won't be blocked by ordinary vehicles.
Another key technology is 'pre-execution'. When a player performs an action (such as gathering resources), the client first simulates the execution locally to give the player immediate feedback. At the same time, this action is packed and submitted for verification on the chain. Because the on-chain confirmation is very fast (1-2 seconds), the local simulation and on-chain confirmation are almost completed simultaneously. This allows the game to maintain fluidity while ensuring that all actions are genuinely on-chain.
After more than a month of playing, I have completely immersed myself in that space game. I built a small base and recruited a few NPCs to help gather resources. One day, I suddenly realized something magical: I had completely forgotten that this was a 'chain game'. I didn't need to constantly pay attention to gas fees, didn't have to worry about whether transactions would fail, and didn't need to jump between multiple platforms. I was just playing a game, and all the blockchain parts were naturally running in the background.
This is what blockchain games should look like. Technology shouldn't be a burden for users; it should be an imperceptible infrastructure. Just like when we send messages on WeChat without needing to understand the TCP/IP protocol; or binge-watching on Netflix without needing to know how CDN works. What Somnia is doing is exactly this — hiding all the complexity of blockchain and only presenting a smooth gaming experience to users.
Of course, #Somnia is not perfect. I also discovered some issues during the process. Firstly, the ecological applications are still not enough. Although the official promotion says there are dozens of projects, there are probably only seven or eight really fun games. After playing that space game for more than a month, I indeed got a bit tired and wanted to change games, but found that there weren't many options. Compared to the hundreds or thousands of applications on Ethereum or Polygon, the gap is still very obvious.
Secondly, there is the issue of the sustainability of the economic model. In that space game, I can earn
. At first, it was indeed quite enjoyable, earning a few dollars by playing for one or two hours a day. But later I noticed that more and more players were flooding in, and the output of resources did not increase correspondingly, leading to a decline in earnings per unit time. I checked the on-chain data and found that SOMI's inflation rate was quite high, with a large number of tokens being released through game rewards every day. Although the official statement is that they will balance it through a burning mechanism, it currently seems that the amount burned is far less than the amount released. This made me a bit worried about the long-term value of the tokens.
Another issue is the degree of decentralization. Although Somnia claims to be an L1 public chain, I carefully looked at the distribution of verification nodes and found that there are currently only dozens of nodes, and most of them are operated by officials or partner organizations. In comparison, Ethereum has tens of thousands of nodes distributed globally. The small number of nodes means that the network's censorship resistance and security may be weaker. While this may not be a major issue for ordinary players, it is indeed a shortcoming for those who truly care about the decentralization principle.
However, even with these issues, I still believe that #Somnia is heading in the right direction. The future of blockchain games should not be about making players adapt to the various limitations of blockchain, but rather making blockchain adapt to players' needs. High TPS, low latency, simplified wallet management, and almost free transactions — these are the key elements that will truly popularize chain games.
Recently, I also noticed that Somnia is promoting some interesting collaborations. For example, collaborating with Google Cloud to create AI-driven NPCs, and discussing the integration of Web3 features with some traditional game studios. If these collaborations can be realized, it might bring a qualitative improvement to the entire chain game ecosystem. Just imagine, if games of the level of (World of Warcraft) or (League of Legends) could integrate Somnia's blockchain features, allowing players to truly own their gear and characters, what a revolutionary change that would be.
Now, looking back at that painful chain game experience from last summer, and seeing the daily routine of playing games on Somnia every evening, I really have a feeling of 'after the dark comes the dawn'. Perhaps the spring of chain games is really coming.
