Gaming technology startup Improbable has announced its plans to develop its own layer-1 blockchain called Somnia. According to the company, Somnia will be capable of processing over 400,000 transactions per second. Improbable founder and CEO Herman Narula claimed in a statement that Somnia has solved the scalability problem that has long hindered blockchain technology. He also mentioned that the company utilized its knowledge from gaming and distributed systems to develop Somnia, which is targeting mass consumer applications such as gaming, social platforms, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
Somnia, which is expected to launch in devnet in the coming weeks, will be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The blockchain will utilize ICEdb, a breakthrough technology that Improbable claims enables ultra-fast read/write times. Additionally, advanced compression algorithms will be employed to transfer data between 10-20 times more efficiently than other blockchains.
In initial testing with 100 validators, Somnia has claimed to process hundreds of thousands of EVM transactions per second on non-sharded data. This is accomplished through innovative compression strategies and a custom data ingestion layer, which minimize the bandwidth required for transaction data.
Improbable will contribute to the key technical components of the Somnia blockchain, while the project was initiated by the Virtual Society Foundation, an independent organization established by Improbable with initial funding from metaverse ecosystem MSquared, launched by Improbable in April 2023.
According to Virtual Society Foundation founder Paul Thomas, Somnia’s unprecedented blockchain capabilities are paving the way for real-time, mass-consumer applications.
Given Improbable’s focus on the metaverse, it is not surprising that Somnia’s mission statement emphasizes that particular application. The blockchain aims to create “A network of rich experiences, useful valuable virtual objects and sufficiently decentralized to allow people to build real companies without dependence on one big gaming business.”
While the initial focus of the blockchain will be on gaming, the metaverse, and social experiences, its creators stated that it will ultimately have a broader range of use cases. They mentioned, “We are not even 100% certain of what can be built with the technology we are creating.”
Improbable, a Softbank-backed gaming startup, is well-known in the crypto community for its association with the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Yuga Labs, providing the technology for the NFT collection’s Otherside metaverse project.
After raising $502 million in a Series B funding round in 2017, the company achieved unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion. In the wake of the metaverse boom, it raised an additional $262 million and reached a valuation of $3.4 billion by the end of 2022.
In 2023, Improbable posted its first year of profit after experiencing losses in the previous three financial years. This was achieved through a round of cost-cutting measures that included significant job cuts.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.