A recent study showed that decentralized virtual worlds could accommodate trillions of assets and provide millions of jobs. Post comes from crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm. But the real question remains: Why do games even need blockchain?

Paradigm said games that engage players over the long term allow them to create new content, primarily through mods and an open economy. Mods let third-party developers expand the vision of the original game, leading to iconic games like Defense of the Ancients and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Open economies, on the other hand, like Eve, allow players to create complex social and economic systems.

However, there are limitations. In Minecraft, for example, players cannot introduce new mods to existing servers without restarting, and this fragmentation hinders the game’s potential for growth. For open economies, there are also limited game primitives and regulatory constraints that prevent players from abandoning in-game assets or exchanging them for fiat…