On September 13th, 2023, we embarked on our journey with the launch of Ancient8 Testnet V1. We are grateful to our network members, developers, and partners for their dedication, which has resulted in significant achievements (including over 7.5 million transactions, 1.800 contracts, and 57.000 unique wallet addresses). In recognition of our genesis builders, we have taken their feedback into consideration and implemented crucial improvements to the Ancient8 Chain.

Driven by a community-first mindset, we have decided to launch Ancient8 Testnet V2, upgraded with Celestia – the leading modular data availability network designed to deliver low transaction costs on the Ancient8 Chain.

This integration positions Ancient8 as the pioneering modular blockchain for Web3 games, bringing us one step closer towards our mission of enabling high-performance gaming for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ancient8 Chain, the pioneering modular blockchain for Web3 games with Celestia underneath

With the Celestia integration, Ancient8’s data availability costs are expected to be reduced by a minimum of 100x times, effectively making gas fees on the Ancient8 Chain near invisible for game developers and gamers. This demonstrates our commitment to improve scalability, flexibility and interoperability for the Ancient8 community. 

Celestia addresses the data availability problem, ensuring that blockchain data is published and accessible for anyone to inspect and verify transaction ledger. Data availability is a disproportionate expense in Ancient8 Chain's cost structure, hindering game developers from efficiently working on games and restricting seamless gaming experiences for users due to gas fees.

For Ancient8, solving the challenge of data availability is crucial, especially in a rapidly expanding Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem that leads to increasingly expensive data validation costs.

In addressing this challenge, we decided to integrate Celestia into the framework of the Ancient8 Chain. Celestia, functioning as a modular data availability network, takes charge of organizing transactions and ensuring data accessibility for the Ancient8 Chain. This enhancement plays a pivotal role in advancing the scalability and interoperability of Ancient8 Chain.

To ensure the cost-effectiveness for both game developers and gamers, we emphasize on robust data availability guarantee, while aiming to minimize the need for frequent transaction data downloads. Furthermore, as a community-driven OP-Stack-built Ethereum Layer 2, Ancient8 Chain is well-positioned to seamlessly collaborate with Celestia, contributing to the development of a cohesive Ethereum modularism ecosystem.

Therefore, with Testnet V2 and the forthcoming mainnet, Celestia will function as a network for publishing and ensuring the availability of transaction data on the Ancient8 Chain. This allows Ancient8 to securely leverage data availability on Ethereum while making gas fees maximally affordable to build high-performance games, ensuring a smooth user experience on the Ancient8 Chain.

Key benefits for Game Developers and Gamers

The integration of Celestia addresses limitations in terms of block space and environment options for game developers, avoid negative user experiences, ultimately encourages innovative game development on the Ancient8 Chain. Specifically:

• Scaling Opportunities: Celestia provides abundant block space to accommodate the growth of the Ancient8 ecosystem, keeping transaction fees affordable as more developers and gamers join the network.
• Abundance of Choice in the Execution Environment: Developers are now able to focus solely on the execution environment and experiment with their own game features, specializing in a certain number of functions and offloading the rest to Ancient8 and Celestia infrastructure.
• Reduced Gas Fee and Operating Cost: Celestia integration helps game developers reduce costs related to testing, deployment, and maintenance to a fraction of the original cost.

For gamers on the Ancient8 Chain, Celestia integration creates a better overall user experience, in specific:

• Lower Gas Fees: The integration with Celestia significantly reduces gas fees on the Ancient8 Chain, making transactions more cost-effective for games and dApps built on Ancient8.
• Smoother Gameplay: With abundant block space and scaling opportunities, Celestia facilitates the swift and economical processing of more transactions on Ancient8. Consequently, this ensures a seamless and lag-free gameplay experience for gamers.
• Accessibility: Reduced gas fees lowers the entry barrier for new gamers to start playing games on Ancient8 and exploring Web3 games. This initiative aims to make gaming more accessible and inclusive to all.

With this integration on Testnet V2, developers gain enhanced capabilities to make high-performance games on Ethereum, while gamers can enjoy game experiences with lower gas fees. We welcome game developers and individuals alike to contribute to our Testnet V2 with Celestia and create a vibrant community of builders that share the core values of inclusivity and empowerment.

Following the Testnet V2 phase, we will officially launch the mainnet with Celestia integrated in the Ancient8 Chain backbone infrastructure. This integration will establish a sustainable and cost-effective structure in the long run, ensuring the fulfillment of our mission and bringing us closer to realizing the vision of unleashing the gaming revolution, empowering 1M builders, inspiring 100M gamers at a global scale.

Join us pioneering the future of gaming on Ethereum now with Ancient8 Testnet V2, access docs here.

About Celestia

Celestia is a modular data availability network that securely scales with the number of users, making it easy for anyone to launch their own blockchain.

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About Ancient8 

Ancient8 is a gaming-focused community-driven Ethereum Layer 2 built to onboard the next 100M Web3 citizens. Ancient8 utilizes OP Stack Layer 2 technology to offer blockchain games the best features of Ethereum, at a significantly reduced cost & no code-change needed. Backed by the Ancient8 Collective, games and protocols contributing to the growth of the Ancient8 Chain are eligible for both Ecosystem and Financial support.

Ancient8 has raised $10M in total financing from leading investors including Animoca, Pantera, Dragonfly, Hashed, Makers Fund, Mechanism, Coinbase, IOSG, among others.

Join us in shaping the future of decentralized applications with Ancient8 Chain.

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