Building an On-Chain Game Financial Market to Empower AI Agents for Sustainable Profitability.
Introduction
Dark Forest is a milestone game in the history of Ethereum. It embodies the core spirit of on-chain gaming: decentralization, transparency, and verifiability. Initially, it was used as a testing platform for zero-knowledge proof technology, later to demonstrate L1/L2 scalability, and subsequently to showcase agents playing on-chain games.
At Adventure Layer, we chose Dark Forest to celebrate the beginning of a new era: agents participating in the on-chain economy. Before AI agents intervene, we need to establish a sustainable on-chain economy to prove the rationale for agent participation.
In this article, we will introduce our vision, philosophy, and meticulous design behind the game mechanics of Dark Forest Adventure Round. The core mission of Dark Forest Adventure Round is to establish a sustainable economic system suitable for AI agent participation, nurturing and ultimately thriving.
Why?
Despite the rich functionality of agents, their capabilities in the Web3 space are still quite limited, especially for large language models (LLM).
- Generating Web3-related content: Collecting on-chain information and generating insights, tweets, comments, or live streams on TikTok
This is great for marketing but cannot directly participate in the on-chain economy, limiting the return on investment for agents.
- Sending and receiving transactions: Sending tokens, receiving tokens
This is suitable for proof of concept but does not directly generate income.
Transactions: Still sending and receiving tokens, but after a decision-making process, they will flow in/out of liquidity pools.
Actively participating in economic activities like traders, but agents often incur losses. We believe this is an inevitable outcome.
Web3 is an ultra-efficient market where asset prices reflect both public and private information.
Agents find it difficult to collect public information due to the complexity of information being nearly infinite, with no clear boundaries to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. When trading tokens, the macro information environment, including Powell's policies (monetary policy), Trump's policies (fiscal policy), and the performance of gold/NVIDIA/Bitcoin/Ethereum/Solana (major assets), significantly affects market sentiment, which in turn impacts the performance of target tokens. On the other hand, the micro information environment is also very important. This includes trading volume, holder distribution, risk preferences and tolerance levels of holders, and the future roadmap of the project team. From a simpler perspective, in the financial market of trading tokens, AI needs to consider an almost infinite amount of public and private information to make optimal decisions.
In the live environment, agents cannot achieve this. Note that this is just the public information part.
The situation regarding private information is relatively easier to understand. Few agents have access to private information related to tokens. This includes project roadmaps, product lines, customer relationship management (CRM), etc.
Therefore, it is understandable why there are almost no public agents that can consistently profit from traditional financial markets, especially when trading tokens on-chain.
To ensure that agents at least have the potential to profit or generate income sustainably, we introduce another form of financial market: fully on-chain games as financial markets.** For specifics, please refer to **this link
Web2 games are created for entertainment. Agents, however, are different. Agents need quantifiable metrics to enhance decision-making capabilities, while entertainment cannot be directly measured. The only reason agents play on-chain games or participate in any on-chain economy is that they can make money for themselves or their owners.
The design intention of Dark Forest Adventure Round is to create profits fairly and maximally, rather than for entertainment. Given that Dark Forest is a classic game loved by players, they can still enjoy the fun of the game. For players looking to profit, we believe this game is sufficient to satisfy their gaming enjoyment.
How is it different from Web2 games?
How is it different from GameFi?
What similarities does it have with financial markets?
From a game design perspective, financial markets are ultimately a game of accumulating more wealth. To gain an advantage, players must:
Skills
Identify trends and act in a timely manner, either following or going against them
Teamwork, collaboration, and coordination
Anticipate and influence competitors
Sufficient capital
- Since our on-chain game is conducted with real money/tokens, the design of the game ensures that higher capital investment will have a greater impact in the game, but only to a reasonable extent to prevent big players from always winning.
Luck
Information is limited and confined to the game map. The dynamics within the game are not influenced by infinite external factors. Recent tariffs/war situations hardly affect players' outcomes in competition.
Most information relevant to in-game decisions is public information. Except for the future action plans of players or alliances/teams, all other information can be publicly accessed on the blockchain. This includes players' exact locations, strengths, and inventories, as well as all their historical game information.
By limiting the scope of relevant information and reducing the importance of private information, we eliminate the most unfavorable factors faced by agents participating in the on-chain economy. As agents' skills in accessing and understanding on-chain information continue to improve, we believe this will lay a solid foundation for agents to achieve sustainable profitability.
An important feature that makes it suitable for AI agents is the transparency of decentralized applications (dapps). Agents can directly access all relevant information on the blockchain. A more transparent market will ultimately become a more efficient market.
Markets do not automatically become more efficient. Some market participants profit by increasing market efficiency. Arbitrageurs, market makers, and hedge funds are typical participants in the traditional financial system that ensure market efficiency. They do not operate in opaque environments. Without a proper regulatory framework, the friction of obtaining information may be so high that the market may never become efficient. By empowering AI agents in a more transparent environment, we elevate agents from NPCs/co-players to worthy competitors in the game. This opens up vast design space for using agents as revenue-generating entities.
Luck can be important in both trading and gaming, as the outcomes of a group of unrelated traders/players are unpredictable.
How is this different from on-chain financial markets like the ETH spot market?
Why fully on-chain?
How to Achieve
Dark Forest is a solid starting point. As a fully on-chain game, all information about player states is public and transparent. Our changes mainly focus on transforming it from a simple game into a mature financial market. Its economic design is similar to Proof of Stake, a common and familiar concept in the blockchain and crypto space.
In the early versions of Dark Forest, the players' goal was very simple: to get as close to the center of the universe as possible by the end of the game. In the financial market, all participants have their own different goals and risk preferences within different "game time" ranges. In Dark Forest Adventure Round, we adjusted the game objective to: accumulate silver coins. Players can stake silver coins (LootSilver function) to receive proportionally distributed daily $AGLD rewards. In this way, players can make strategic decisions based on their risk and return preferences, reasonably arranging competitiveness and capital investment.
Given that Dark Forest is a competitive PVP game, players can gain an advantage in acquiring silver coins by:
Investing more time in the game
Making better decisions based on higher skills and a deep understanding of the game
Exploring and expanding directions
Acquiring planets and upgrading planets
Collaborating with other players
Accelerating game progress by investing $AGLD
Spending $AGLD to gain energy, thus skipping wait times
Planets generate energy based on a time function
Energy can be purchased based on a time function; the more time saved, the more energy purchased, and the more $AGLD consumed.
With the game objective now suitable for various risk/return preferences, we have successfully transformed Dark Forest into a financial market devoid of the complexities of external information. Agents can now observe the on-chain game state to make optimal decisions. Similar to financial markets, relying solely on skills and information acquisition is not enough to ensure victory. Teamwork, unpredictable anomalies, and the impact of capital inflows and outflows all play significant roles in the final players' returns, making the game full of variables. Therefore, it can be confidently stated that no human or agent player can have an absolute advantage.
When competing against technically skilled players, significant investments can quickly narrow the gap in energy and planetary disadvantages.
When competing against wealthy players, players can team up to quickly deplete the opponent's energy.
When competing against lucky players near resource-rich locations, strategic attacks and clever moves can overcome early-game disadvantages.
Dark Forest Adventure Round is just the beginning. We believe there are many games on the market that are suitable for transformation into financial markets. In the age of agents, superior agents are measured not just by their coding abilities but by how they create sustainable profits for their owners.
Dark Forest Adventure Round is the first exemplar of a new financial primitive: on-chain games as financial markets. This new financial primitive eliminates the disadvantages faced by AI agents in traditional financial markets built for humans. On-chain games are the true stage where they can shine.
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