The firm currently develops Solana’s only SDK designed to onboard GameFi developers to the blockchain.

Addressing Infrastructure Gaps for Solana Gaming Developers

Despite Solana's rising popularity, the blockchain faces significant infrastructure challenges, particularly for game developers. Chris Zhu, CEO of Mirror World, highlighted these issues in a recent interview with Cointelegraph, pointing out that essential decentralized finance features like cross-chain swaps and crypto on- and off-ramps are currently inadequate on Solana. This lack of infrastructure makes it difficult for gaming applications to internalize value on a shared Solana layer, which is not tailored for specific applications needing custom features like privacy, instant settlements, and compliance rules.

Mirror World's Solution: Sonic

To address these gaps, Mirror World Labs has raised $12 million in Series A funding, led by Bitkraft, Galaxy Interactive, Big Brain Holdings, and others, to develop its gaming rollup, Sonic. Launched in March, Sonic aims to provide the necessary infrastructure for gaming on Solana.

Key Features and Developer Feedback

Sonic has received positive feedback from developers regarding its technical capabilities. However, developers have expressed the need for main token liquidity to remain on the Solana mainnet. To meet this requirement, Sonic leverages the HyperGrid Framework, a rollup deployment kit that allows developers to deploy new game engines and virtual machines within the Solana environment. This framework facilitates atomic interoperability, enabling games to maintain liquidity on the mainnet while processing game logic on Sonic.

Targeting High Transaction Throughput

Mirror World is targeting a controlled aggregated transaction settlement of 12,000,000 transactions per second on Sonic and HyperGrid. This high throughput is necessary to support various multiplayer real-time gaming transactions, such as inventory purchases and quest drops. To achieve this, Mirror World collaborates directly with Solana validators to prioritize and submit transactions, with significant support from Galaxy Interactive, the largest validator on Solana.

Competitive Landscape

Sonic is currently the only software development kit (SDK) on Solana specifically designed for gaming. Its main competitor, Eclipse, is building a Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) layer 2 on Ethereum rather than a Solana-native SDK. Other notable competitors include Ronin, which focuses on Web3 games, and Redstone, a leading gaming chain on top of Ethereum. Mirror World aims to bring gaming assets and developers to the Solana Virtual Machine, enhancing the ecosystem's capabilities for GameFi projects.

The Future of Gaming on Solana

Mirror World acknowledges that while Solana has benefited from the memecoin boom and the growth of decentralized applications, its gaming sector has not seen the same level of success. The novel Sonic protocol could change this by enabling other developers to deploy SVM chains for their GameFi projects. This development is expected to bolster Solana's position as a viable blockchain for gaming, providing the necessary infrastructure to support a growing number of applications and transactions.

In conclusion, while Solana's gaming infrastructure currently faces significant challenges, efforts by Mirror World and its partners to develop solutions like Sonic are paving the way for a more robust and scalable environment. This could potentially unlock new opportunities and drive further adoption of Solana in the gaming sector.