Softbank partners with startup Oasys as a blockchain game validator

Japanese tech conglomerate Softbank has partnered with Oasys, a game-optimized blockchain built for gamers.

Softbank will become an official validator of Oasys, which means that they will and together they will explore the development of blockchain-based services for the gaming industry. That means Softbank will help provide the security and computing power to Oasys’ proof-of-stake blockchain network, so it can make transactions for its players easier and cheaper.

Through the collaboration with Oasys, Softbank is positioning itself as a player in blockchain gaming. Oasys cited a report by Research and Markets that the blockchain gaming market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.3% from 2020 to 2025, reaching a value of $3 billion by 2025.

The move comes on the heels of another Oasys validation announcement from Japanese game publisher Square Enix, maker of the Final Fantasy games.

Oasys is based in Singapore and Japan.

Softbank and Square Enix were some of the major parties to join Oasys’ blockchain, which already has support from other initial validators including Bandai Namco Research, Sega, Ubisoft, Netmarble, WeMade, Com2uS and Yield Guild Games.

Oasys creates an ecosystem for gamers and developers to distribute and develop blockchain-based games. It solves the problems game developers face when building games on the blockchain. The strategy is to build the fastest network powered by the gaming community, a scalable network powered by triple-A game developers, and a blockchain that offers the best user experience with fast transactions and free gas fees for users, making participants ready to enter Oasys and play .

Oasys is a multi-layer Ethereum virtual machine-compatible, proof-of-stake public blockchain project scheduled for full launch in 2022.

While Oasys eventually intends to move as much of the management of its project to the community as possible (some call it turning into a DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization), it is currently registered as an exempt private company, limited by shares based in Singapore.

This is similar to the organizational structure of other foundations and companies behind other public blockchains such as Solana Labs, Ethereum Foundation, Terraform Labs, etc.

The company is registered in Singapore primarily because Japan (and Korea to some extent) has many regulatory issues regarding the treatment and taxation of crypto assets. Singapore, on the other hand, has a balance between being a global crypto hub and a regulatory framework for a blockchain gaming business hub to succeed in Asia Pacific.

Hailing from Japan, Oasys’ core team is an expert group of developers behind Doublejump.tokyo, one of the most successful Web3 game developers in the world with over five years of experience developing various blockchain games. The two most popular game titles – My Crypto Heroes and Brave Frontier Heroes were the biggest selling blockchain games since their launch in 2018 until early 2020 (the world’s leading blockchain game by trading volume, number of transactions and number of users on Ethereum).

Oasys was conceived with the idea of ​​21 initial validators to provide stability, security and structure to the project, and these include major Korean gaming companies – Netmarble, Com2us, Wemade, NHN and Neowiz.

Oasys also recently partnered with ConsenSys to produce an industry-first, game-optimized wallet for players, as well as announced a partnership with Mythical Games, a leading crypto-native game developer to act as an initial validator.

Current consensus mechanisms are geared so much toward decentralization, security, and privacy that they can come at the expense of speed, performance, and cost. For blockchain-powered gaming solutions to be attractive to game developers and successful in winning the hearts and minds of players, they must be highly scalable with high transaction speeds and low/zero gas fees for users, the company said. They must have a well-designed user interface, be fully optimized for performance, and be interoperable between different multiverses. That’s what Oasys is trying to do.

Blockchain games are designed to be borderless and regionless, so in addition to the benefits for the Korean market to develop high-quality games globally, this also reduces the friction for projects like Oasys to partner with Korean game developers to expand to other markets.