- Earlier this year, MagicBlock started promoting its technology after completing a16z’s crypto startup accelerator.
MagicBlock, a Solana gaming infrastructure firm, has revealed Lightspeed that it is releasing its ephemeral validator, which generates transient Solana rollups that accelerate up transaction processing, open source.
MagicBlock thought of itself as the infrastructure for creating onchain games when it passed through a16z’s crypto business accelerator and started promoting its technology earlier this year. However, when I recently spoke with Andrea Fortugno, the CEO and co-founder of MagicBlock, he presented me with a more expansive idea: MagicBlock’s ephemeral rollups might enable all developers to abandon traditional web servers and make programs “unstoppable.”
To be clear, MagicBlock’s architecture is still being used to create games. MagicBlock is the foundation of Supersize, which took first place in the gaming track of the Solana-focused Radar hackathon last month. Windfall, Radar’s third-place gaming project, is also in line. MagicBlock provides a mechanism to run onchain for both games without compromising speed.
Before a security committee verifies the state and settles it to the layer-1, MagicBlock can temporarily make computer resources “elastic” by running a non-voting Solana validator in parallel with Solana. In other words, for certain time- or resource-sensitive operations that are often carried out offchain on centralized servers, Solana’s data is temporarily transferred to a rollup (similar to Optimism on Ethereum).
According to Fortugno, this recently released open-source technology is initially covered by a license that will prohibit other projects from using the ephemeral validator in commercial goods unless they reach an agreement with MagicBlock. Currently, MagicBlock also levies a protocol-level fee.
The shift to other cryptocurrency sectors is also evident in MagicBlock’s messaging, even with the new gaming clients. I questioned Fortugno if this was because, aside from a few exceptional exceptions like Off the Grid, cryptocurrency gaming hasn’t lived up to the promise up to this point.
Fortugno disputed the notion that cryptocurrency gambling is having trouble, stating that ephemeral rollups could be used with “zero effort” in various use cases.
According to Fortugno, “it would be foolish not to try to tackle the other use cases because the technology is already there.” Perpetual futures DEXs and SocialFi apps are considering expanding on MagicBlock, he added. DeFi is a logical use case in this situation: To combat with centralized exchange speeds, Solana-based perps DEX Zeta Markets is constructing its own Solana layer-2.
In our conversation, Fortugno used the word “unstoppable” a lot, which is what makes ephemeral rollups so awesome. Because it is not financially feasible to run everything on a blockchain, many Solana programs have components that are managed by centralized organizations. MagicBlock has the potential to make these programs far less reliable if it performs as promised.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
