Building the Future of Gaming: How Proof of Play Scaled Pirate Nation with Arbitrum

Pirate Nation, a fully on-chain blockchain game developed by Proof of Play, faced scalability and cost challenges as its user base grew. Initially deployed on Polygon and later Arbitrum Nova, the game consumed excessive blockspace and incurred high transaction costs. To overcome these limitations, the team adopted Arbitrum Orbit, the Layer-3 framework which is perfect to build custom chains optimized for gaming performance and cost-efficiency.

Key Ideas

Arbitrum Orbit for Custom Scaling: Proof of Play created dedicated Layer-3 chains (Apex and Boss) using Arbitrum Orbit, enabling infrastructure-level cost control and parallel processing of player activity.
High Performance Gains: The new setup achieved up to 70 million gas per second and 250ms block times, dramatically improving responsiveness and scalability for on-chain gameplay.

Developers should explore Arbitrum Orbit and similar Layer-3 frameworks to build high-performance blockchain applications. Technologies like Conduit can help tailor chain configurations to specific throughput and latency needs, especially for gaming, real-time data, or interactive dApps. There are many use cases where verifiable ownership and on-chain logic add value – such as gaming, collectibles, or logistics. Layer-3 solutions offer a scalable foundation for launching cost-effective services with transparent mechanics and user-controlled assets.