Session Keys integrated into the Solana Unity SDK

We are thrilled to announce that we have partnered up with Gum and integrated Session Keys into the Solana Unity SDK.

Magicblock is a powerful and versatile open-source framework designed for building on-chain games on Solana/SVM. It provides the tools to abstract away a lot of complexity and focus on creating the best experience for users.

Solana Unity SDK provides a set of open-source tools to radically simplify the process of building games on Solana. It natively supports wallets, NFTs, DEXes, custom programs and now, Session Keys as well.✨

This integration will allow game developers on Solana to effortlessly implement sessions in the games they create with Unity.

Why on-chain gaming

On-chain gaming is a new exciting category of games where both the game state and logic are stored on-chain. This enables players to enjoy benefits such as easy UGC (User-Generated Content) and UGL (User-Generated Logic) due to the public and permissionless nature of smart contracts.

Another benefit of building on-chain is persistence. The game and its progress are preserved indefinitely and the lack of a centralized server opens up the scene to “Autonomous Worlds”, virtual realities owned by the community that can’t be stopped or shut down.

Despite all the buzz, a notable challenge is the poor user experience. Due to their nature, every player interaction is a transaction, which leads to incredible friction in gameplay.

Sessions to Supercharge Games

Gum has always been at the forefront of simplifying the UX for developers and end-users alike and Solana is perfectly suited for this. Its speed and scalability allow for real-time, interactive gameplay without the worry of network congestion or high transaction fees.

Session Keys act essentially as secondary signers in the game. They are used to create ephemeral keypairs and issue session tokens to users, meant for frequent interactions but for a specific session of play.

With Session Keys integrated into the Solana Unity SDK, game developers can now build on-chain interactions within a game without having to worry about the UX problems and constant wallet popups that they come with. This is a huge leap in the overall gameplay experience.

Session keys also solve the security issues that may arise with an in-game wallet auto-approving all the transactions, because developers can specify a target program for their validity, expiry and scope.

The future of on-chain gaming

Gum and Magicblock are excited to work together to trailblaze the next phase of on-chain gaming on Solana and bring this exciting new category into the mainstream.

If you are excited about the vision around on-chain gaming, we are organizing Speedrun - the first-ever Game Jam on Solana - where you can compete for the Gum prize for the best Session Keys integration.