Mech shooter game MetalCore moves to Solana

Game development company Studio369 is moving its mech shooter title MetalCore to the Solana blockchain.

According to an Oct. 24 announcement, the migration seeks to enhance gamers’ experience with faster transactions onchain. The Solana blockchain is currently processing an average of about 3,000 transactions per second — one of the key metrics to measure the network’s performance.

MetalCore will also use Solana Labs’ GameShift platform, which integrates a storefront and payment systems for in-game purchases. The game — a free-to-play open world with player-versus-player (PvP) and player-versus-environment (PvE) battles — allows users to obtain assets from defeated opponents and convert them into Web3 assets for trading.

“Solana’s high throughput will ensure that all in-game actions requiring blockchain interactions will be near-instantaneous,” said the gaming developer in a statement. Other titles in Studio369’s portfolio include Rune II.

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The Solana network has been attracting more protocols seeking to improve scalability at lower costs, with gaming and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) protocols migrating to its blockchain.

In April, MetaBlox’s Roam network, which focuses on decentralized proof-of-location and WiFi access points, announced its migration to Solana, citing faster transaction speeds and scalability. Previously, in 2023, the decentralized wireless communications protocol Helium also moved to Solana .

According to blockchain data platform Artemis Terminal, Solana’s monthly active addresses reached over 100 million in early October , setting a new record for the network and representing a significant increase over the 509,000 addresses tracked at the beginning of 2024.

Solana has experienced several significant periods of downtime over the past few years, with outages raising concerns about its reliability. Its latest outage, which lasted about five hours, occurred on Feb. 6, 2024 . The Solana Foundation plans to release a full version of the Firedancer upgrade in 2025, with “pared-down versions” rolling out in the meantime to accommodate its growing activity.

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