A familiar-looking voxel world is quietly pushing Web3 gaming into uncharted territory. Chunked, a Minecraft-style sandbox developed by MSquared on the Somnia testnet, isn’t just a clone. It’s the first fully onchain version of the genre—where every block mined, item crafted, or avatar moved is a transaction recorded on a high-performance blockchain.
It’s also one of the most technically ambitious experiments yet from MSquared, a division of metaverse builder Improbable. And it’s the best real-world demonstration so far of what’s actually possible with Somnia, a layer-1 chain purpose-built for onchain virtual worlds.
“We didn’t have to make a game server,” said MSquared CEO Rob Whitehead. “There’s no game server. It’s just a blockchain.”
What Makes Chunked Different
Chunked is built entirely on-chain. Unlike most crypto games that rely on off-chain logic and just use NFTs for assets, every game mechanic in Chunked—movement, mining, crafting, inventory—is processed and stored directly on the Somnia network.
In most games, what happens inside the world is invisible to outsiders and locked behind servers. In Chunked, every player action is public, permanent, and composable. Every mined block becomes an ERC-1155 token that lives in the player’s wallet. Anyone can see it, build apps on top of it, or even create their own game around it.
Whitehead called it a “tech demo,” but it’s more than a proof of concept. It’s a fully functioning multiplayer sandbox with real onchain persistence—something that’s only been theorized in the crypto world until now.
Built in Three Weeks—No Backend Needed
MSquared says the entire game was developed in just under three weeks. That’s partly thanks to Somnia’s EVM compatibility and the team’s experience with multiplayer infrastructure—but the real unlock was removing the backend altogether.
“There’s literally nothing that’s not on-chain,” said Whitehead.
That design decision also gives the game unusual resilience. If MSquared shut it down tomorrow, the game would still exist—fully preserved on-chain and accessible for any developer or group of players to fork and continue building.
The modular game contracts will be open-sourced, and every piece of game logic is exposed through smart contracts. That’s a stark contrast to conventional games, where servers vanish and game worlds go dark the moment support ends.
Performance at Scale: Why Somnia Matters
Chunked’s real-time, block-by-block gameplay is only possible because of Somnia’s throughput. The chain is reportedly capable of more than one million transactions per second—a necessity for any persistent online world where every in-game action is recorded live.
It’s part of a larger movement around “autonomous worlds,” a concept championed by projects like Dark Forest and now extended in Chunked. These are games that don’t just live on-chain—they can evolve there, outside the control of a single developer.
MSquared’s Monty Moran explained how important choosing the right infrastructure was:
“You can’t do this on loads of other blockchains because they just don’t have the same EVM capability.”
That capability isn’t just about speed. It also enables economic systems and marketplaces to be designed and launched by the community—not just the developers.
“You can trade, you can build applications, you can extend the game yourself from the source code,” Whitehead said. “If someone wants to build a Dapp to trade rare ores, they can do that without waiting on us.”
What Comes Next
Chunked is currently live on the Somnia testnet and includes an active quest with point rewards as part of Somnia’s broader ecosystem campaign—one that many believe will lead to a future airdrop.
The game world is limited in scope for now, but Whitehead and his team are treating this as the foundation for more experiments. As users engage, new features—like land ownership, deeper crafting, and player-built systems—could emerge organically.
MSquared also isn’t stopping with Chunked. Other onchain prototypes are in the pipeline, each pushing different aspects of what’s possible on Somnia. The most successful could evolve into full commercial projects once the network hits mainnet later this year.
For now, Chunked stands as proof that fully onchain, real-time multiplayer gaming isn’t just possible—it’s playable. And it was built in weeks.
Want to start playing Chunked or complete the current quest before it ends? Check out our step-by-step guide to farming points on Chunked, live now on Somnia’s testnet.
