Get identity right to get interoperability right in Web3 gaming

Opinion by: Yukai Tu, chief technology officer of CARV

Delivering interoperability across blockchain gaming remains a white whale. It’s great on paper but frustratingly out of reach in practice. Ironically, despite promising to break down the walls built by traditional gaming, Web3 is recreating similar silos by locking assets, achievements, and indeed identities within standalone platforms.

As we move into and through the new year — which is full of reasons to be bullish about blockchain gaming, from improving gameplay to invisible onboarding — we need to deliver on this long-promised yet unfulfilled vision. How? Through connecting identity with interoperability once and for all.

The digital identity challenge

Today’s gamers suffer from digital fragmentation, no matter how you view it. In traditional gaming, their history and items are trapped in isolated ecosystems. Unfortunately, the blockchain gaming sector isn’t faring much better despite promising to shift the digital status quo. Ownership is meant to be the differentiating factor, but the sector mainly recreates the same problems. There is a keen intention to enable interoperability, but without interlinking on the back end, the same mistakes of gaming’s past are being repeated.

Fragmented identities and disconnected data sovereignty hinder platform interoperability, leaving players with scattered information across multiple chains. The effect ripples throughout the blockchain gaming ecosystem. Players lose their achievements between games, developers can’t tell what players have done elsewhere, and studios miss out on complete user information to refine their offerings. 

The lack of interoperability devalues the assets. The utility of gaming data, currency or items increases tenfold if they’re usable across different platforms. Interoperability makes ownership worthwhile and earning those gaming assets more rewarding. Gamers want to show off their skins and win wherever they play. It’s past time we let them.

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The good news? Unified digital identity bridges these gaps by creating a foundation for cross-game ownership. Combining protocols that balance privacy with scalability and open standards that work across platforms, it’s possible to merge identities under a single banner and follow players across the gaming universe. Games can verify who players are and what they own through this unified identity, and assets can move more easily between platforms. 

Developers can improve matchmaking, create loyalty rewards, and achieve more efficient user acquisition and marketing spend. That is how we can deliver on blockchain gaming’s core promise.

Open standards, data layers, and gaming chains

The first piece of this identity and interoperability puzzle is open standards. Developers need to share the same cornerstones and create elements that work across the new internet. The ERC-7231 NFT standard launched earlier this year demonstrates this by merging multiple Web2 and Web3 identities into a single NFT. This “identity of identities” follows gamers’ history, relationships and experiences in one place. 

That approach will be convenient and open new possibilities for self-authentication, social connections and monetization of player-controlled data. The standard gives players granular control over their identity. They can selectively share specific parts while keeping others private, with all data encrypted and verified for security.

Protocols are increasingly adding an identity and data layer to their Web3 tech stack. That does what interoperability requires — securing verified identity management and unlocking data on the blockchain. Again, this leads to several newfound development and experience possibilities, such as crosschain reputation systems, unified gaming logins and privacy-preserved user data, delivering much-needed trust between platforms and players.

Gaming chains complete the picture by providing purpose-built infrastructure that simplifies implementation. Operating on the same chain means identity and items work across multiple titles, making life easier for developers and players. From native gaming tools and scalable transactions to familiar development environments, these chains make it easier for game makers to roll up their sleeves, sidestep bottlenecks and start building. There will be less latency, faster asset transfers between games and lower gas fees for players. Better yet, the technical and tokenomics support encourages traditional developers to dip their toes into Web3 waters — a win-win-win for the entire ecosystem.

Delivering on the interoperability promise

Blockchain gaming is on the cusp of mainstream acceptance. The games are more fun, the onboarding is more accessible, and the players want digital assets for expression and ownership. Importantly, resistance from old-school gamers — who sometimes eyed our sector with suspicion — is starting to thaw. 

To reach the next level, it’s time for digital assets with real gaming utility and value to come to the fore, improving interoperability with a consistent identity.

Standardizing identity and interoperability also solves other critical gaming challenges. For example, implementing the above can optimize player verification, enable privacy-preserving analytics and streamline cross-game content creation. 

The infrastructure is ready, and the path forward is clear. When solving identity, interoperability is solved, too, and blockchain gaming’s white whale will finally be captured, delivering the borderless experience players deserve.

Yukai Tu is the chief technical officer at CARV and holds an MS in computer science from UCLA. Yukai also worked as a software engineer at Google and Coinbase and was a contributor to the Cosmos SDK and a blockchain engineering lead at LINO Network.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.