Optimizing the Full Chain Game Experience Using zk-SNARKs Technology: A Case Study of PopCraft

PopCraft is a chain-wide elimination game, with each round lasting 4 minutes. Players must eliminate all elements on the board within the allotted time to earn rewards. However, due to the nature of blockchain interactions, players must wait at least 2 seconds for each action to complete, which significantly affects the gaming experience.

To solve this problem, we conceived the idea of using zk-SNARKs technology ( ZKP ) to reduce the number of interactions with the blockchain during the game process. The specific idea is that the game process does not go on-chain, but ensures no cheating risk through a specific mechanism. Each player's action generates a ZKP, and the ZKP of the next step is generated based on the previous step, forming a self-contained ZKP similar to a blockchain structure. At the end of the game, the ZKP of the last step is sent to the chain, where the smart contract verifies the result.

However, this solution faces many challenges in practical application:

1. It is necessary to verify both the game process and the results simultaneously to prevent cheating throughout.

2. The gradual generation of zk-SNARKs faces technical challenges, such as the dependence of the new zk-SNARKs on the generation and verification of the previous zk-SNARKs, as well as how to ensure the coherence between zk-SNARKs.

3. The game data of PopCraft is already public, using ZKP for information hiding seems redundant.

4. There are questions regarding how operations involving Token consumption handle ZKP generation and verification.

5. The data hiding feature of zk-SNARKs may increase the difficulty of obtaining game data and the complexity of engineering implementation.

After in-depth analysis, we have reached the following conclusion:

For games like PopCraft, data hiding is not necessary. To enhance the gaming experience, it is advisable to only chain the final results and not the game process. The key is to find a way to ensure that there is no possibility of cheating in every step from the start to the end of the game, and finally chain the correct results for verification.

Currently, it seems that zk-SNARKs technology is mainly applicable to two types of scenarios in the gaming field:

1. Information hiding in incomplete information games, such as Dark Forest, Texas Hold'em, etc.

2. Proof of single-step game results, such as lotteries, guessing numbers, etc.