Game company MagicBlock develops ephemeral rollup to enhance gaming experience on Solana

Recently, Solana game company MagicBlock, which has attracted attention from the prominent firm a16z, has developed new technology that can accelerate the processing speed of blockchain games. Due to the limited processing speed of on-chain transactions, high Gas fees, and other factors, the speed of game operation has been slow. In order to solve this problem, MagicBlock has adopted a technology called Ephemeral rollups, which temporarily increases the processing capacity of the game engine on the L1 Solana chain.

Backed by a16z, MagicBlock Aims to Optimize Gaming Experience on the Blockchain

Solana gaming company MagicBlock has raised $3 million in a Pre-Seed funding round, including investment from a16z after participating in the accelerator program. MagicBlock is currently a team of six and was founded in September 2023 by Andrea Fortugno and Gabriele Picco. In a Podcast, the two mentioned that they established MagicBlock because they believe "the gaming experience on the blockchain is really bad" and wanted to address this issue.

Founder Fortugno stated that while running video games on the blockchain offers benefits such as decentralization, transparency, and security, and developers can utilize smart contracts in games to create new features, the drawback is the issue of "speed." He also mentioned, "Players can't stand even a 100-millisecond delay in game execution, let alone half a second."

Therefore, MagicBlock has developed Ephemeral rollups technology. Unlike other blockchain game developers, such as Ronin related to Axie Infinity, which is compatible with the L1 Ethereum sidechain, Immutable and Sonic running on L2 blockchains, MagicBlock aims to "expand additional capabilities on Solana's existing foundation or address existing limitations in real-time," while avoiding the dispersion of liquidity on L1.

Ephemeral Rollups Separate State and Operational Logic to Maintain Transaction Flexibility

The Ephemeral Rollups technology allows a sequencer to temporarily process transactions or change account state balances, but the final result will not immediately return to the main Solana chain. Instead, transactions are temporarily processed off-chain and then settled back to the main Solana chain. This approach speeds up transaction processing, while ensuring that the ultimate data is securely recorded on the Solana blockchain.

MagicBlock states that this design enables more flexible transaction handling because Solana separates the account state balances and operational logic. When the state is moved to ephemeral rollups for processing, the logic remains unchanged. Transaction states can be handled in temporary rollups and then returned to the main chain, maintaining system efficiency and consistency.