The Avalanche Foundation is looking to support the future of on-chain gaming by committing to mint $500k worth of Beam Node tokens and running validator nodes for the gaming network.

What Benefits Does Avalanche Bring to the Beam Network?

The Beam Network represents the largest project to be building on one of the most popular blockchain gaming platforms, making this collaboration one that significantly benefits the future of on-chain gaming on this network.

To date, both sides have closely worked together on important topics such as infrastructure, marketing, deal-flows, and events. This has made it possible to have the gaming subnet run smoothly ever since it launched using Avalanche tech, with continuous upgrades making the layer 1 even better for game developers looking to build in the web3 gaming world. Both ecosystems have also helped each other out in marketing, and thanks to recommendations from the Avalanche Foundation, various studios chose to launch their games on the gaming-tailored network instead of creating their own. There has also been significant teamwork amongst the two when it comes to notable gaming events, with the Avalanche Foundation helping showcase games at GDC in San Francisco, while the Beam Foundation brought the team to its own event during Gamescom in Cologne.

With such a close partnership already established, it perhaps comes as no surprise to see this foundation continue to be built in an effort to drive the future of blockchain gaming together.

How Is Avalanche Supporting the Future of the Beam Network?

That being said, Avalanche is supporting the Beam Network in 2 important ways. One includes the foundation’s minting of $500k worth of Beam Node tokens, while the other includes their commitment to running a couple of validator nodes once the Horizon upgrade is complete, according to the official Medium announcement. This all helps in decentralizing the layer 1 network, delivering infrastructure that is crucial to the chain’s stability, security and speed, all of which are important in ensuring a smooth, user-friendly blockchain gaming experience.

The Horizon upgrade is made possible thanks to the launch of the Etna upgrade on mainnet, which was released thanks to the Avalanche community’s approval of the ACP-77 proposal, enabling permissionless validation and delegation of this ever-growing chain. With the Etna upgrade, the Beam Network and all subnets are able to gain more freedom and flexibility, making it possible to transform into their own layer 1 blockchain and decide on the consensus mechanism they’d like to use for it. This led to laying out the plans for the Horizon upgrade, which when completed, will enable the creation of a permissionless, proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

By transitioning to the new consensus mechanism, anyone meeting certain requirements will be able to validate and secure the network using Beam Nodes, which were also introduced this December to allow anyone to validate and secure the network, potentially earning rewards in the process. These rewards are generated from transaction gas fees, validator incentive grants, and protocol fees. To run or delegate a Beam Node, you will need to stake at least 1 ERC-721 Node Token and 20,000 $BEAM, with each node having a staking limit of 1000 Node Tokens and 50 million $BEAM. Check out the official documentation to learn how to mint a Node Token, as well as how to run a validator node once the Horizon upgrade is completed potentially before the end of January 2025, or before the end of Q1 2025.

It’s been quite a big month for the Avalanche ecosystem and the Beam Network. This news comes shortly after the launch of the first gaming-focused investor fund in Abu Dhabi, Beam Ventures, who will look to invest $150 million to support the capital in becoming a global leader in the gaming industry. Outside of Beam, we recently saw popular anime series Solo Leveling land on Avalanche with a gamified collectibles platform, bringing fans into the world of web3 in a browser-based experience that anyone can easily jump into without knowing anything about blockchain technology. Avalanche was also one of the top ecosystems nominated for the PlayToEarn Blockchain Game Awards 2024 – check out the nominee’s top 5 play to earn games for more web3 fun!