Game Channels in Blockchain: A New Gaming Experience

Game Channels are the latest technological advancement in the world of blockchain-based gaming, as they enable fast gameplay by eliminating the wait time for block confirmation.

What are Game Channels?

The role of game channels is to understand the role of game channels, you need to know how blockchain games work. At the same time, this removes centralised power and ensures proven fair play, blockchain games still face the common “technical problems”.

For example, as more players join the game and storage all files and data on the underlying blockchain network will lead to scalability issues. As more players join the game it is possible to store everything in the database of an existing platform for information about the player’s account at the same time. In addition to this, when it comes into the game of multiplayer games or other PvP (player versus player) matches, it is important that each player can make his or her moves quickly. But most blockchain-based games do not provide this function, as they need to create a transaction in order to complete every move. This is due to the fact that many of them have no such feature, as they need to create a transaction with each move, and it takes time depending on network congestion.

Gaming channels solve this problem by offering more options for blockchain-based games. By design, game-channel applications are protocols that facilitate secure off-chain transactions between players.

Game channels can be used to create private channels that operate in parallel with the main chain, but in their own space (off-chain) and in near real time. With game channels, any blockchain network can increase its scalability to support multiple games and dApps without reducing transaction speed.

In addition, game channels provide a purely decentralised and gratuitous resolution of disputes, without the need for a third party or central authority. In a sense, gaming channels can be considered as individual payment channels for specific games.

How do gaming channels work?

The main purpose of game channels is to facilitate the gameplay between players in real time. Since most blockchain games add transactions for each turn, and these transactions need to be mined into blocks before they become "active" there is a noticeable delay that players have to get used to before they can make another turn.

Play channels give players the opportunity to conduct their gameplay in a secure off-chain network. This shortens the time between moves by a significant amount, allowing players to enjoy the game in near real time.

Let’s break down an example to understand how game channels function. Suppose two players create a game channel to compete in a turn-based card game for prize money (tokens). Both players agree on the rules and guidelines for the game, jointly fund the prize money and open a game channel. They start playing the game channel, and once the set win/loss criteria are reached, the smart contract transfers the funds to the winner’s account, all entries are made in the ledger (on the main chain), and the game channel is closed.

At this time, both players are still connected to the public blockchain network on which the card game was originally supported. If either player tries to cheat and enters an invalid result into the public ledger, the other player can reliably prove this and correctly enforce the rules of the game.