Improbable's Chunked Brings Minecraft to the Blockchain
Date: 2025-04-21 Author: Gabriel Deangelo Categories: BLOCKCHAIN
MSquared, a division of Improbable, has announced the launch of an experimental game project called Chunked, inspired by Minecraft. The novelty of the new product is that all game activity is fully recorded on the Somnia testnet blockchain. MSquared CEO Rob Whitehead noted that the goal is to create a long-lasting Web3 game that exists independently of centralized servers.
Unlike traditional games, Chunked does not use traditional servers — it is based on smart contracts that regulate all mechanics. Thanks to this, even if the development team stops participating, the project will remain accessible via the blockchain. The community will be able not only to play, but also to develop the game on their own.
Every action — be it player movement, resource extraction or crafting — is recorded in the on-chain environment. Chunked was the first game to be released within Somnia and serves as a kind of test of the capabilities of the fully on-chain gaming technology. As Whitehead noted, the developers are trying to determine the limits of how far one can go in creating autonomous virtual worlds that are managed in a decentralized manner.
Despite its on-chain nature, Chunked demonstrates good performance. The gameplay is smooth - there are no serious delays when placing blocks or interacting with the world. However, technical imperfections are still present, for example, temporary disappearance of objects when they are created. Also, the size of the world at this stage is limited, which somewhat hinders the freedom that Minecraft fans are accustomed to.
The idea of Chunked fits into a growing trend of autonomous worlds - games that function entirely on the blockchain. An early example of this approach was Dark Forest, which uses zero-knowledge proofs to preserve elements of secrecy in the gameplay.
According to Whitehead, the limited capacity of first-level blockchains was previously the main obstacle to the development of such projects. But with the advent of new high-bandwidth networks, the situation has changed. This opens the way to the creation of large-scale on-chain games that can compete with classic projects.
MSquared is already making plans to develop and expand gaming experiments in the Somnia ecosystem. After the network enters the mainnet, which is planned for this year, the most successful ideas can turn into full-fledged commercial products.
