World Engine

The Hub of all Worlds

By tightly integrating composability and interoperability at the protocol-level, the World Engine will unleash massive network effects across thousands of games and empower shared economies that will dwarf web2 social networks.

What is the World Engine?

To understand the World Engine, it is important to understand the definition of Worlds and the role that they play in the World Engine. The World Engine consists of many World canisters that are indexed by the World Hub.

A World canister is the "game server" and "database" of a game. It houses all the game server logic in a smart contract. And it communicates to the World Engine to store all the data for a game.

The World Engine interconnects all the Worlds in the ICP gaming ecosystem. It regulates how Worlds can interact with each other's databases, and empowers complex on-chain economies to exist across games. The World Engine is the Database for All On-Chain Games.

Why is this a big deal?

Network Effects.

It’s abundantly clear that the massive opportunity of smart contracts lies in their ability to coordinate millions of people to build value together. By leveraging the World Protocol, thousands of games can work together to create networks of Worlds that dwarf web2 social networks. The composability and transparency of canisters accelerates this vision because Worlds can read and write data to other Worlds in ways that were never possible before. The walled gardens that plague traditional games will no longer exist, because all game data and logic will exist fully on-chain in the World Protocol. Players can become creators by cloning their favorite game’s World canister and modding it with new functionality. Offering a fresh perspective to interoperability, World canisters tightly integrate with each other at the protocol-level, unlocking major use cases for interconnected gaming experiences.

Imagine completing a quest in Game A and then receiving a sword item in Game B. Then you use the sword item to battle in Game B which results in you getting an achievement in Game A that unlocks a new map to play. All this can happen autonomously through interconnected smart contract code that allows Worlds to modify each other’s data securely.

Now any game can read and modify the data of any other game through composable data standards and powerful access control. A new paradigm of digital creation will emerge as players build mods of your World and request smart contract permission to extend the Entities in your World.

Everything is governed by smart contracts on-chain, empowering cross-game economies where you take an action in one game and the blockchain validates it and gives you a reward in another game. This new era of gaming will transform players into creators as they mod and build on top of their favorite on-chain Worlds.