Guide: How to Choose Blockchain for Metaverse?

Metaverse industry is worth around $6 billion and has nearly 13k coins. With hundreds of blockchains out there, picking one is the most fundamental decision in the project’s roadmap and vision. In this article: What are the most popular blockchains among top metaverse projects and how to choose blockchain for your metaverse?

First, let’s review the top blockchains used by the biggest metaverse projects. 

Metaverse projects and their blockchain 

All top 20 biggest metaverses use Ethereum as a Layer-1 protocol, 7 projects additionally use BNB Smart Chain. As for L2 protocol, Polygon is used by 6 projects, Energi by 5, and Harmony by 4. Therefore, Ethereum, BNB and Polygon are the most popular blockchains for the biggest metaverse products. However, it does not end there. The aforementioned blockchains are most suitable for the biggest brands with at least $30 million in mcap. These are the best blockchains for already established projects. The best next blockchain for scale or the best blockchain for the first launch may be different.

Best Blockchain for the First Launch

For hundreds of smaller metaverse projects, other protocols may be more suitable. These include Klaytn, Solana, and Hedera.

Klaytn Blockchain for Metaverse 

Let’s review the Klaytn ecosystem, an EVM Layer 1 blockchain. Klaytn positions itself as a one-stop blockchain for metaverse. For what it’s worth, Klaytn can be the best Next Blockchain for metaverse, and here’s why. 

Klaytn was created with metaverse builders in mind. Klaytn’s Lightpaper recognizes the immense role of the metaverse for society, “Metaverse is poised to redefine society, by providing creators and players with a clean slate to define new standards and let their creativity flourish in our dynamic digital future.”

Klaytn is designed to be practical and reliable, focusing on technology, business, and transformative change. The second iteration of Klaytn now offers a full, rather than an individual, package of toolsets and supporting ecosystems to make building for the metaverse easier than ever.

Klaytn Integrated Offer for Metaverse Builders

Metaverse Projects on Klaytn

Today, Klaytn is home to at least 288 Web3 projects, including 32 GameFi projects and 33 NFT projects. Klaytn also is a blockchain of choice for DEXes/DeFi,  entertainment enterprises, governance councils, tools/infrastructure, wallets, oracles/bridges, dApps, and CEXes/payments.

Klaytn Growth Trend

Klaytn rose to prominence in the first half of 2021. Throughout the past year, Klaytn has been consolidating growth. It’s most popular in Asia, including South Korea, China, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The ecosystem is also gradually expanding to Europe and North America.

Klaytn Security Approach

Klaytn is a decentralized network where no single malicious node can break the data integrity. The KIR fund also offers attractive cybersecurity packages by trusted auditors like Hacken.

Klaytn Gas Price and Tx Finality

Unlike other blockchains, Klaytn only charges gas to prevent spam, not to earn profits, as well as to remove unnecessary fee auctioning. The gas price is set to 250 ston for all transactions in Klaytn and can only change with the Governance Council decision. There are three additional reasons for a fixed gas price.

• Great performance. Klaytn can deal with 4000+ TPS.
• 1-second block interval for block generation. Users don’t have to wait more than a few seconds, even after the missed block.
• Governance Council Members do not respond much to fees as it only takes an insignificant share of block rewards

In Klaytn 2.0, transactions will be immediate and irreversible. Developers should expect higher TPS at the same 1-second deterministic finality.

Klaytn Documentation

Klaytn’s depth of technical documentation is remarkable. Documentation is comprehensive and up-to-date. They have a separate website for developers. Klaytn Developer Hub serves as the complete manual for building on the Klaytn ecosystem.

Klaytn Ethereum Compatibility

Klaytn is a fork of Ethereum, but it’s not 100% compatible yet. They have lots in common, namely transaction encoding. Major differences are in Fixed Gas Price, Consensus, SDK, and Typed Nodes. We provide a more detailed breakdown of Klaytn vs Ethereum below.

It’s necessary to note that Klaytn 2.0 will provide full Ethereum compatibility, “EVM-based DApps will be able to onboard without any modifications.”

Klaytn Governance

According to Klaytn’s Lightpaper, “Metaverse should not be owned and operated by a central authority. It has to be a world where people are granted genuine ownership and the freedom to express their ideas without inhibition.” All iterations of Klaytn have maintained this principle. In Klaytn 1.0, Governance Council makes decisions related to Technology, Economy, Governing Rule. In Klaytn 2.0, there will be an entire DAO to deliver even more decentralization and stability.

Klaytn Fund and Investment Programs

Klaytn has a well-developed and open governance structure with Klaytn Improvement Reserve. KIR is the best tool for making strategic decisions that benefit the Klaytn community because it allocates funds.

​​Klaytn also has a KGF (Klaytn Growth Fund) Investment Program, which invests in early-stage projects with the potential to have a positive impact on Klaytn. Both KIR and KGF offer an opportunity for metaverse builders to secure funding for their winning ideas.

Klaytn vs Ethereum for Metaverse

Klaytn and Ethereum are two separate, independent blockchain networks, but they have lots in common. After all, Klaytn forked Ethereum source code. Klaytn and Ethereum do things similarly when it comes to encoding transactions to the elliptic curve (SECP256k1) when signing. Klaytn and Ethereum handle Fixed Gas Price, Consensus, SDK, and Typed Nodes differently.

Fixed Gas Price causes transaction incompatibility between Klaytn and Ethereum. Klaytn charges a flat rate with no option to set their own gas prices. While Ethereum users choose the gas price for their transactions, Klaytn charges a flat rate and does not allow users to indicate their own gas prices.

Consensus. Unlike Ethereum, Klaytn runs a variant of the PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) algorithm for consensus with a VRF for picking random.

Running PBFT has the pros of a faster, more efficient consensus, but at the cost of needing the network to be synchronized. Syncing the network is difficult. General BFT mechanisms require at least two-thirds of all nodes for an agreement, leading to network overhead. Klaytn uses a workaround: requiring only a random subset of nodes to participate in consensus, instead of all nodes. Klaytn picks ‘random’ using Verifiable Random Function (VRF). For every block generation, Klaytn picks a random number using VRF and identifies a small but sufficient group of nodes to run BFT. As a result, Klaytn handles more than 4,000 TPS per 50 GC nodes.

SDK. Both Ethereum and Klaytn have SDK suites for helping developers. Ethereum’s main SDK is web3.js. Klaytn has its own SDK suite: caver-js 5 and caver-java 1. Klaytn transactions are not 100% compatible with Ethereum transactions. Klaytn builders are recommended to use Klaytn SDKs.

Node Types. While Ethereum only has one node type, Klaytn has three main node types, including Consensus Node (CN), Proxy Node (PN), and Endpoint Node (EN). CN runs consensus and can only be run by GC Members. PN protects CNs from attacks. EN provides endpoints for the Klaytn network handling RPC API requests and processing data sent to and from Service Chains. 

Up next …  Klaytn vs Polygon, Klaytn vs Solana, Klaytn vs Hedera.

Security and Auditing for Metaverse

Project managers and metaverse builders should seriously consider Klaytn as their first blockchain because it’s designed specifically for the metaverse. With Klaytn 2.0, this ecosystem will also become quite attractive for projects looking for scaling their operations.

On our side, we can talk about the utmost security of metaverse projects built on Klaytn. Klaytn is Hacken’s trusted partner. Their KIR fund has allocated a considerable budget for cybersecurity services. New and existing metaverse projects can benefit from cybersecurity services provided by professional external experts like Hacken with unprecedented discounts. In our case, eligible clients only cover 50% of audit costs, and the KIR fund covers the rest. It’s all possible because Klaytn’s Government Council Members take cybersecurity seriously and voted for Hacken’s proposal. As a result, all metaverse projects coming to Klaytn will have much better support than other blockchains in auditing their metaverse project.