Solana Labs and Google Cloud have launched Gameshift – a Web3 API service which acts as Web2 to Web3 gateway for developers. The release of the new developer API happened during the “Gamer Village” side-stage events of the 2024 Solana Breakpoint conference.
According to a Google Cloud blog post, Gameshift offers a comprehensive set of Web3 capabilities to projects hosted in the cloud environment. The Gameshift service is now only offered via the Google Cloud Marketplace.
Google Cloud Selected Solana For Its High Transaction Speed
The primary target audience for this tool is developers of conventional games who wish to enhance their experiences using Web3 elements like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or other digital assets. It is said to handle a large portion of the labour-intensive work involved in securely integrating blockchain-based services across platforms.
Jack Buser, head of Games at Google Cloud, described the problem of combining the two worlds as one of gradually incorporating emerging technologies into existing industries:
“Game studios have recently been considering Web3 for new approaches to growth and development but are often discouraged by the seeming complexity of the technology and the Web3 community. Game studios are already overstretched and require applications such as GameShift to offer them easy technical and cultural on-ramps to Web3.”
Google Cloud said that it chose the Solana network for the project because of its special features. The cloud service provider says that Solana possesses transactional skills, 99.95% availability, and throughput. Recently, Google’s entrance into the crypto space has sparked several debates.
Additionally, there is a good amount of stablecoin volume traction and non-fungible token (NFT) volume on the Solana network. The “Ethereum Killer” has a sizable daily user base and fast transaction speeds.
A Record 5.5 Million Active Daily Addresses: How?
Solana had an incredible spike in network traffic on September 10th. Setting a record with 5.5 million active addresses per day. Such an impressive growth not only points to the growing popularity of Solana in the blockchain market but also positions the firm higher than the competition, including top Ethereum Layer-2 solutions.
The massive growth in the daily active addresses puts Solana amidst major blockchain networks of the world.
Solana could take slightly more than half of all the active addresses with 5.5 million of them. This achievement shows that its user base is actively growing. It is a sign that the network takes a considerable share in the market.
The fundamental reason has to do with the ability of Solana to transact faster and for lesser costs than Ethereum.
As a result, Solana has popularly been referred to as the Ethereum killer since it can compete with Ethereum in the dApp and smart contract spaces.
This narrative might be aligned with the current increased network load and performance metrics as Solana shines with the potential to outperform Ethereum and its Layer-2 counterparts. Furthermore, there is much debate about the influence of Layer 2 solutions on the Ethereum ecosystem.
