The rise of online gaming has brought incredible opportunities for player engagement, but it has also highlighted significant challenges around fairness and integrity. Cheating—whether through exploits, bots, or manipulated systems—undermines trust and can drive players away, damaging entire communities.
Beyond cheating, server-side game mechanics, such as in-game rewards (loot chests that give a semi-random reward), raise concerns about fairness and transparency. Players need to trust that these rewards are distributed fairly and that the game’s systems cannot be manipulated, either by other players or the server itself. This is especially important for in-game items that have real-world value, such as weapon skins in Counter-Strike or character skins in Fortnite. Addressing these issues is critical for maintaining player confidence and long-term engagement in modern games.
Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) offer an innovative solution to this problem. ZKPs enable the verification of game data—like whether a player followed the rules—without revealing sensitive information. For example, in a peer-to-peer battle, ZKPs can prove that a player’s move was legitimate without exposing their strategy. This ensures that no one cheats during gameplay while maintaining player privacy. Importantly, ZKPs also prevent servers from manipulating game outcomes, ensuring that game data remains transparent and verifiable for players as well.
ZkNoid–a ZK-powered gaming platform
ZkNoid is a decentralized gaming platform built on the Mina Protocol blockchain that leverages zero-knowledge circuits (representations of ZKP computations) and recursive proofs to create a uniquely scalable, secure and fair environment for games–the first of its kind to use ZKPs in this way.
ZkNoid uses ZK circuits to prove the correctness of gameplay processes without exposing sensitive information. Every action taken by a player is verified through recursive ZKPs.
The use of ZKPs to verify in-game actions significantly reduces the possibility of cheating while maintaining the privacy of the player’s data. This can be especially useful in cases of games where players do not want to reveal their strategy.
How ZkNoid Works
Zero-Knowledge Circuits Record In-Game Actions
ZkNoid utilizes zero-knowledge circuits to validate gameplay actions. Proofs are generated for the player’s actions. These proofs ensure compliance with game rules without revealing the underlying strategy or data.
Secure and Fast Verification Through Recursive Proofs
As players engage with the game, recursive use of proofs accumulates the player’s in-game actions, creating a small verifiable proof. This allows proving the user’s gameplay continuously while generating an accumulated proof for fast and secure verification. Note that the speed and frequency at which this happens is constrained by the speed of ZKP computation as well as the blockchain’s protocol. As a result, certain actions—such as real-time player vs. player interactions—cannot yet be processed this way. However, server-side logic can still be verified to ensure trustworthiness and fairness.
Seamless On-Chain Verification through Protokit
Protokit is a development framework for building zkApps. It essentially allows devs to use a local blockchain that proves its transactions to Mina. With Protokit, developers can create games that are fully on-chain and verifiable instead of having to depend on backend verification. Sessions are used to sign on-chain transactions without confirmations in the player’s wallet, bringing seamless blockchain integration into gaming.
Gasless and Customizable Transactions
The business model of contemporary games, especially free-to-play games, involves small financial transactions and players want to avoid paying fees for them. ZkNoid integrates seamlessly with Protokit to enable fast, gasless transactions (alternatively, developers can set a custom fee). This ensures that players can engage in multiplayer games that use background transactions without worrying about the transaction costs.
Developing ZKP game mechanics on ZkNoid
ZkNoid is primarily a platform for developers who can use their SDK to implement ZKPs into their existing games or create their own ZK-powered games from scratch. The modular framework allows for easy deployment while maintaining high levels of security and scalability. Developers can focus on creativity and game design rather than grappling with the complexities of infrastructure and compliance.
Andrey Simaranov of ZkNoid explains: “As the benefits of integrating ZKPs in games becomes ever more clear, players will take notice. They will start to choose provable games, fair games, games that they can trust. Developers will also realize that there is a demand for ZK elements in their games. That’s when ZK Gaming will become mainstream. Right now, we’re already seeing the beginning of this process!”.
The integration of ZK technologies into games is envisioned as a gradual process, applied in small parts rather than to the entire game. A game does not need to be fully ZK-powered; instead, specific mechanics or components can utilize ZKPs. For example, in a peer-to-peer battle, the opponent’s character’s abilities can remain private and only be revealed when used during combat.
Challenges
Proof of time
Incorporating accurate time references into proofs remains difficult with current technology, which limits the application of ZKPs for time-sensitive actions in games. Currently, Mina produces a block approximately every 3 minutes, which limits user interaction.
To solve this problem, ZkNoid uses the Protokit SDK as a scaling solution for real-time transactions. Protokit is an appchain solution that executes transactions on the speed compared to the backend and proves them after execution. However, time references inside accumulated ZK proofs are still not possible
Alternatively, an L1 approach that can be useful in some cases is for users to store the game state locally and then send a final transaction to finalize the game state. However, this method presents challenges, as access to the block timestamp for in-game moves is no longer available. The ZkNoid SDK features a timeout mechanism through which players can prove that their opponent hasn’t sent any transactions, but the task can be more difficult to prove playing time bounds in games such as Arkanoid where the game process proof is recursively accumulated during gameplay.
ZKP computations
ZKPs could reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent to the game server. Instead of sending individual actions, multiple user actions could be combined into a single proof and sent as a compact, verifiable packet. This could significantly streamline the data exchange process and reduce bandwidth requirements.
However, ZKPs are computationally intensive. To meaningfully improve latency in real-time games, the computation of proofs would need to occur at much faster speeds than is currently possible. Though we are seeing rapid improvements in ZKP hardware (chips) and software-level optimizations, there is still more work to be done.
Future Plans
- Mainnet Launch of the L1 Lottery Game
ZkNoid has just released its flagship L1 Lottery game, a 24-hour luck-based game where players purchase tickets, choose six numbers, and store them in their wallets. At the end of each round, a random six-digit number will determine winners, with rewards increasing based on how many numbers match. The purpose is to demonstrate how ZKPs can make such gameplay mechanics fair and transparent, ensuring that players understand their win probabilities.
- Growing the Gaming Community
ZkNoid is collaborating with several third-party developers to expand its collection of ZK-powered games. The team actively assists developers and is onboarding talented teams to build zkApps on the Mina Protocol and ZkNoid. ZkNoid is also co-hosting and on-ramping developers at hackathons such as ETHOnline, ETH Singapore, ETH Bangkok.
- Launching ZKNOID Token
ZkNoid will finalize and launch its native token, ZKNOID, on Mina Protocol. Their initial distribution is expected to include an interactive farming game and an airdrop to reward community supporters.
*Participants are advised to conduct thorough research and exercise caution when engaging in related events.
ZkNoid is also working on the following updates:
- In-Game Chat: Real-time communication between opponents.
- Customizable Profiles: NFT avatars, titles, achievements, and ranks for player personalization.
- Cloud Proving: Enabling smooth gameplay on low-power devices.
Learn More
If you’re a developer, explore the ZkNoid SDK and start integrating ZKPs into your games by visiting the SDK documentation. For those interested in playing a ZK-powered game, check out the current selection on the ZkNoid platform.
About Mina Protocol
Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, powered by participants. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs to design an entire blockchain that is about 22kb, the size of a couple of tweets. It is the first layer-1 to enable efficient implementation and easy programmability of zero knowledge smart contracts (zkApps). With its unique privacy features and ability to connect to any website, Mina is building a private gateway between the real world and crypto—and the secure, democratic future we all deserve.
