News Round-Up: Ethereum Co-Founder Takes a Dig at ‘Unsustainable’ Solana, Avalanche Multiverse Welcomes Wildlife Studios

The Avalanche network is now onboarding users to its Avalanche Multiverse – the incentive program to push the adoption of subnets it recently announced. Elsewhere this week, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin censured Solana, categorically stating that it is leveraging an impractical economic model.

Ethereum co-founder criticizes Solana’s economic model

Joseph Lubin, CEO of ConsenSys and an Ethereum co-founder, has questioned the Solana ecosystem’s long-term survival due to its economic model.

The Canadian-American entrepreneur told the Financial Times in a recent interview that Solana – among other projects within the space that promise users high throughput and meager fees – is unsustainable.

He explained that the economic model behind block production in the Solana network means validators are given “disproportionate rewards” since the network’s transactions fees are really next to nothing – the rewards do not march the volume of revenue generated by transactions.

He instead suggested that projects like Solana either “essentially fake it until they make it” or eventually capitulate and tap out of the market space.

Lubin’s comments go along with the sentiments aired by other critics in the space who argue that Solana sacrifices decentralization – a key element of blockchain tech – to give users extremely low costs.

As a result, the network becomes vulnerable to outages, and true to that, Solana has in the past fallen victim to suspected attacks causing said downtimes. The very low, near negligible fees enable attackers to easily spam the chain with thousands of transactions.

In the long run, the ‘downtimes’ become detrimental to the user’s experience, uptake, and perception of the network.

In response to Lubin’s comments, Solana’s builder, Solana Labs, said that considering a project’s revenue isn’t a solid enough basis to predict its long-term performance. Notably, Solana is one of the leading blockchains that have generally snubbed EVM compatibility.

Also, while several other fast blockchains fall to the same criticism as Solana for their economic models, some are finding new ways to fix their fee structures. Algorand, for instance, does not pay validator rewards but instead has a governance model it uses as an incentive program.

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Gaming developer Wildlife Studios joins the Avalanche Multiverse program

While the space has already seen gaming entities foray into Web3 and NFTs, initiatives have largely been limited to crypto native games such as The Sandbox. Now, the push into mobile gaming is becoming even stronger.

On Tuesday, Avalanche revealed a partnership with Brazilian game developer Wildlife Studios. The former aims to delve into the Web3 space through its subnet – tech that allows users to create L1 or L2 chains on Avalanche.

As part of the initiative, Castle Crush, a flagship war strategy game developed by the Studio and available on android and iOS devices, will soon include new features, experiences, and functionalities. More specifically, the announcement revealed that backed by Avalanche, Castle Crush will be updated mid this year to include optional NFTs.

As a card game, the collectibles will likely be a good fit. The route Castle Crush is taking is to include a new version, Ascended Tier, of cards available as NFTs. Game players could use or alternatively sell, loan or trade them.

The update coming to the game in June will also introduce Ascension Crystals (ACS) tokens. To earn ACS, users will be required to compete in tournaments, win, and rank high in the leaderboards. These tokens will be used to mint or even upgrade their NFTs.

Fernando Sette, the senior director of product at Wildlife Studios, said that his firm has been itching to get into the blockchain space as soon as possible, hence why it chose to develop an existing game rather than create a new one altogether.

Sette told Decrypt that Wildlife Studios needed to move fast and gain direct experience as it aims to deliver new models of ownership. The Wildlife Studios executive explained the choice of Avalanche, citing its highly customizable nature and high performance.

Sette expects that the new “stronger, cooler-looking cards” will bring even better incentives to players, motivation to leverage flexibility in deck building, and of course, social status that comes of the clout of owning an NFT.

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