Technology

With EVE Frontier we want to create a world that will outlive all of us. This means that the world of EVE Frontier cannot rely on any single person or entity to exist and thrive. This requires select building blocks which enable the realization of this vision over time, which has led us to choose to build EVE Frontier on a blockchain. While a blockchain presents short term challenges, we believe these can be overcome as new technologies and techniques continue to develop, especially in the field of cryptography.

A key driving force behind EVE Frontier’s architectural structure is to overcome the technical and legal constraints that have long limited traditional MMOs and virtual worlds, including EVE Online. In these systems, players contribute immense value through content creation and community engagement, yet their efforts are often curtailed by End User License Agreements (EULAs) due to various legal and operational factors. Over the past years, blockchains have emerged as reliable platforms for decentralized development, particularly in adversarial environments - such as virtual worlds with player vs. player mechanics, like EVE Online - where the potential for conflict is ever-present.

Blockchain, via smart contracts, enables third-party developers to contribute to the game’s ecosystem without needing approval from anyone. This permissionless system allows anyone to build new features and content, fostering an open, innovative ecosystem where the Frontier’s ecosystem can expand naturally.

Blockchain also solves a critical challenge in MMO development: retrofitting tools and APIs after the game has launched. In many MMOs, communities and third parties develop external tools to extend gameplay or support the ecosystem, but these are often constrained by the proprietary nature of the original game code. EVE Frontier leverages blockchain to build a distributed, composable, extensible, open infrastructure from the start, enabling anyone to contribute to it at any time. This eliminates the bottlenecks caused by a single controlling entity and fosters greater emergence, as the game evolves through the collective contributions of the entire community. Blockchain’s application layer (the smart contract environment) becomes a natural fit as a standardized “API layer” for decentralized development of the Frontier’s gaming core.

To support this decentralized approach, EVE Frontier will be a fully open-sourced codebase, including the gameplay client and the entire CDP game engine. This commitment to open-source ensures that EVE Frontier will not only overcome the traditional limitations of MMOs but also evolve continuously, driven by both developers and players in an open and transparent ecosystem. We hope that with these community-focused steps, EVE will live forever.

Thus, building on blockchain is not a flippant buzzword-chasing decision. Rather, it is the most pragmatic answer to the technological limitations encountered when building virtual worlds.