Uniswap dev team wins web3 gaming Battle of Titans competition

Quick Take

  • Uniswap’s dev team won a web3 gaming competition among teams from top crypto companies.
  • They beat out the likes of Ledger, Polygon, NEAR, Yield Guild Games, Chainlink, OKX and Bybit.
  • Entirely on-chain, 0xMonaco is a Mario Kart-style racing game where each car is a smart contract.

Uniswap won the web3 dev gaming competition, 0xMonaco: Battle of Titans.

The event, run by Starkware-based on-chain gaming ecosystem MatchboxDAO and streamed on Twitch, featured teams from web3 companies including Ledger, Polygon, Uniswap, NEAR, Yield Guild Games, Chainlink, OKX and Bybit.

Uniswap, Polygon and security auditors OtterSec made it to the finals. The three competed in a hotly contested final with Uniswap emerging as the eventual winner.

Developers competed in a Mario Kart-style racing game rewarding technical abilities where each team’s cars are a smart contract. MatchboxDAO described it as a web3 version of "chess and poker."

"I've been in the Ethereum ecosystem since 2016. This is actually my first experience with a web3 game like this," said Daniel Gretzke, technical lead of smart contracts at Polygon Labs.

Dev games

While there is a trend towards web3 games only having assets on-chain rather than the gameplay itself, 0xMonaco is a fully on-chain game.

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Teams need to create a strategy for each car before the race that involves properly managing resources for accelerating, firing shells, super shells or buying a shield, each of which costs coins. Players are allocated 17,500 coins at the beginning of the game.

In addition to coding skills, competitors also need to anticipate what other players are planning.

"I enjoy this type of competition because it allows you to show your skills,” said Jonathan Giamporcaro, a blockchain research and development engineer at Ledger.

It’s not the only web3 game that allows devs to flex their coding muscles though. Giamporcaro told The Block he’s also a fan of Node Guardians, a platform for web3 builders which offers a range of coding challenges.

Uniswap's team said it would open-source its winning code for 0xMonaco.


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Callan Quinn is an NFT, gaming and metaverse reporter. She started her career working for the expat magazine City Weekend in Guangzhou, China. She also has worked as a business journalist in the UK, Somaliland and the republic of Georgia. Before joining The Block, she was a freelance journalist covering the Chinese tech industry. She speaks Mandarin, French and German. Get in touch via Twitter @quinnishvili or email [email protected].

Editor

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