Witek Radomski is the CTO and co-founder of Enjin, a blockchain platform for digital assets and NFTs that offers tools and infrastructure for secure and efficient asset management. ^[1][2]

Enjin

Radomski and Maxim Blagov co-founded Enjin in March 2009. In an interview with Xangle at the Synopsis Summit, Radomski discussed Enjin, its history, and its development. He started with a brief introduction on Enjin: ^[3]

“I've been into blockchain since about 2012, and Enjin is a company that started in the games industry. Back in 2018 or so, we created a platform for people to build social networks around games, which evolved into games integrating our payment system and using online shops to offer perks. We then transitioned to using blockchain and were one of the first companies to experiment with non-fungible tokens back in 2017. Now, we're providing a complete system of tools for end users, game developers, and companies to harness the power of NFTs and integrate them into their products, making this technology accessible for everyone.”

He also explained the history of Enjin, including creating the ERC-1155 token standard: ^[3]

“We were one of the first to launch NFTs. We wanted to create tokens, but back then, it was mostly ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, which were just fungible currencies. We aimed to build a platform for game developers, where players could pick up weapons, armor, and other items in games and make them tradable, adding collectible value and utility within the games. That's where it all started. We even created the ERC-1155 standard back then, which is now becoming one of the most popular standards for NFTs and might actually be the most popular standard right now.”

“When we started, it was really alien, and we were entering a tough industry—game development. You'd think it would be natural for game developers to use this, but players expect a super modern, awesome experience, and blockchain was evolving fast. It was a lot different back in 2017; the tools were much more primitive. Now, we're reaching a point where the average person can understand what an NFT is and use it, and I'm really excited to see that. Right now, the real experimenters—artists, musicians, and influencers—are jumping on board and spreading this idea to mass audiences. I think we'll see it move from there to companies adopting NFTs, and eventually, game developers will be able to harness this technology in large-scale games.”

When asked about working with the Minecraft plug-in designed to implement NFTs into the game, Radomski responded: ^[3]

“So, Enjin's roots were in Minecraft, and we originally managed thousands of Minecraft servers, monetizing by selling perks and items inside Minecraft. When we created Enjin, we decided to make a Minecraft plug-in so users could utilize NFTs in Minecraft. That plug-in is now available; it's open-source, and you can go to our GitHub, download it, and integrate it into your Minecraft server. We released a server where we started experimenting with some of these ideas, allowing people to join, play games, and earn NFTs and crypto. Recently, Microsoft Azure created a game called Space Mystery, where they integrated it into a Minecraft server, allowing players to earn Microsoft badges. It was fascinating to see Minecraft functioning as a decentralized system where people spawn their own servers. You can take our plug-in, modify it to suit your server—whether it's a Game of Thrones server or any unique server you create—and experiment with NFTs.”

Towards the end of the interview, he discussed Enjin's plan to integrate Unreal Engine, a 3D computer graphics game engine: ^[3]

“So the way we wanted to tackle Unreal—like, we've been evolving since 2017. We initially thought that game developers wanted this super fleshed-out interface in their game engine, so we made the Unity plug-in with all these features. Then we realized after working with game devs that they wanted a simple, pared-down interface. So what we did for Unreal, and what we're working on, is a C# SDK. We're going to have all the major programming languages covered, where they can plug it into their game and just access the blockchain to do core functions like transfers and mints. We're going to leave it at that because game developers can then develop their own inventory systems and unique gameplay elements, using that library in the background. That's how we're going to tackle engines like Unreal Engine.”

Interviews

Efinity

In December 2021, Boxmining interviewed Radomski about Efinity, Enjin's former parachain on Polkadot, before it was migrated and became Enjin's Matrixchain. The interview started with his thoughts on where the metaverse is going: ^[4]

“I think experimenting, like I said, they're gonna see how the community reacts. There's gonna be a lot of hate for some games that just treat it as another way of monetizing and charging players more, but you're gonna see some cool indie games come out that do something new in the space. You're going to see players start finding things they like in the games that are doing new things, and I can see in the next few years there are going to be a few games that hit it so well—like that hit some new experience where people are collaborating, like how Pokémon Go did it for AR, right? So, the same thing's gonna happen in the blockchain world. I feel it's on the cusp. What we're trying to do at Enjin is give game developers the tools and inspiration, and very soon this sort of framework and library they can work with. So if you want to build a collaborative player game, you know how to do it. You don't have to invent it in your head; you can actually get some examples and have an easy way of getting that onto blockchain.”

He then explained Enjin's position as a platform for the metaverse industry: ^[4]

“So we made a bunch of tools. We had an awesome wallet. We made a platform that is now moving to an open-source platform so game devs can just put it on their own server, put it on their own Amazon hosting, or on their own local infrastructure, plug it into their game, and immediately start minting things using it in their games. We're building this whole tool set piece by piece, and now there's a blockchain layer, Efinity. So, we see this as now we're providing the tools, the knowledge, and sort of the inspiration and vision for what we want gaming to turn into. Now, we see the path—we have about a hundred adopters, and we see the path to thousands next year...There are some businesses trying to do stuff like gamifying with NFTs. We had Microsoft a couple of years ago, and they're continuing to work with us on giving people rewards for doing cool things in the Microsoft Azure community. We're working with even parties like—if I'm allowed to say—like the United Nations now to figure out how to use this tool to make the world a better place.”

When asked about the difference between Efinity and Enjin, Radomski responded: ^[4]

“Well, Efinity is a parachain on Polkadot, and it's part of this internet of blockchains that Gavin Woods has been masterminding over the last five years after he left Ethereum and started working on this new brainchild. Efinity's purpose is to remove the difficult friction points you have with Ethereum and older blockchains. The experience we want people to have when they play a game is just to install it on their mobile phone or start playing on their console. Efinity is a blockchain, but it's custom-built for NFTs, whereas with Ethereum, you can build anything with all kinds of smart contracts, but it's not super efficient.”

“What we're doing is building this purpose-built NFT platform so that if you want to build a game and have hundreds of millions or billions of NFTs, you can do that in seconds on Efinity. You can have all the tools available to make those, and we efficiently store that data—it's super cheap, orders of magnitude cheaper than you can do on Ethereum. The difference here is that Ethereum and Efinity are their own blockchains, separate ecosystems, but the difference is that Ethereum is general-purpose, so when anyone's doing something with NFTs, even minting, we know that this is now past the consumer.”

Toward the end of the interview, Radomski explained what Efinity was developed to solve: ^[4]

“The biggest challenges include the need to install a wallet like MetaMask and set up a seed phrase, which deters about 95% of users from trying to play a game. Another challenge is dealing with crypto and paying transaction fees. We're trying to solve that on Efinity by allowing game developers to let users make a certain number of transactions for free, factoring it into their monetization strategy. We're also providing tools for game developers to implement features like multi-sig transactions, such as guilds owning wallets. A major issue we're addressing is the lack of pricing for NFTs. While marketplaces showcase high-dollar sales, we're working on a price evaluation mechanism on the chain to help estimate the value of items worth $20 or $50, incentivizing people to put an estimate on every item.”

Blockchain Gaming

In this interview, Radomski discussed the early days of his interest in cryptocurrencies and how it led to the development of Enjin Coin, a cryptocurrency designed to integrate with gaming platforms. He explained Enjin's platform, which supports virtual item creation and management, particularly for Minecraft. He outlined how Enjin Coin could allow players to own, trade, and transfer in-game items across different servers. Radomski also addressed technical challenges, such as security, transaction costs, and the need for ease of use, as well as Enjin's plans to support popular game engines like Unity and Unreal. ^[5]

Panels

Blockchain Gamer Connects

In his speech at Blockchain Gamer Connects 2018, Radomski discussed Enjin's evolution from a company focused on gaming communities to developing Enjin Coin on the Ethereum blockchain for true digital asset ownership in games. He explained how Enjin's platform enables game developers to create and manage tokens representing in-game items, integrating with popular game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine. Radomski highlighted Enjin's upcoming scaling solution, Efinity, designed to address blockchain’s speed and cost issues. He also introduced the new game "War of Crypto" and outlined the development of a secure, user-friendly cryptocurrency wallet for gamers. ^[6]