The choice of Solana as the technological foundation of The Corporate Wars is no coincidence: its architectural design solves key challenges for building a persistent, distributed, and temporally asymmetric universe.
Below, we outline the reasons, advantages, and challenges of this integration.
Proof-of-History and Merkle Trees
Solana implements a proof-of-history (PoH) system, where each block and transaction is anchored to a verifiable temporal sequence. This enables the construction of versioned states differentiated over time, where each game update contains a hash_root acting as a unique timestamp.
Merkle trees allow these states to be compressed and validated efficiently, serving as a historical ledger of changes that can be audited and referenced at any point in the past.
This is the backbone of the outdated information model.
Stateless programs and derived keys
Unlike other ecosystems, Solana operates with stateless programs and storage based on derived keys.
This enables modeling of complex structures through implicit naming schemes: a main key, associated with a derived foreign key, defines data relationships without the need for SQL or tables.
Essentially, it's an active structural map where relationships are encoded in the key design itself, reducing dependence on traditional relational models.
noNFTs and multilayer governance
Solana doesn’t follow an "ERC-style standard", but rather a model of reusable programs that opens up a still-uncharted technical territory.
Instead of adopting models like Metaplex’s pNFTs, The Corporate Wars implements its own system of contracts and ownership between parties.
Here, the so-called "noNFTs" are governance records within PDAs assigned to specific Allegiances, functioning similarly to Associated Token Accounts (ATA), but designed to handle:
complete, mutable, and auditable collections,
transferable and exchangeable between actors,
capable of representing dynamic in-game assets,
while minimizing rent deposits.
This approach surpasses the limitations of existing NFT standards in Solana, avoiding reliance on schemes that emulate ERC-XXX .
Instead, it leverages Solana’s flexibility as a reusable-program ecosystem to model relationships, governance, and dynamic structures within a persistent universe.
What’s the problem with pNFTs and “normal” NFTs on Solana?
pNFTs (and traditional NFTs) are not developed directly by Solana Labs nor are they part of the official SPL: they are an initiative by Metaplex, an independent foundation that controls the NFT system on Solana.
Although Solana is a fundamentally different environment, Metaplex tries to replicate the Ethereum experience: it has forced a model incompatible with Solana’s philosophy of lightweight and executable accounts, attempting to emulate ERC-721.
The visual/commercial ecosystem (NFT-as-asset) has been prioritized instead of designing a truly native and efficient non-fungible token standard for the Solana network. In fact, Token-2022 offers superior mechanisms, but it is not fully integrated with pNFTs.
As of 2025, integration is partial — but it remains neither efficient nor canonical for Solana.
Metaplex has adapted pNFTs to Token-2022 from the outside in, whereas a truly efficient solution for games or simulations would require:
using
spl-token-2022directly,designing logic around extensions like
TransferHook,MintCloseAuthority, etc.,avoiding external layers like
mpl-token-metadata.
What do we store on-chain?
The blockchain holds only dehydrated and ultra-compressed data; the backend keeps sessions alive, interpreting, hydrating, and caching in real-time.
Meanwhile, programs deployed on the Solana network natively handle queries, management, and administration, facilitating access for both client and backend.
The macro, structural, infrequently mutable, and global-scope data lives on-chain;
The micro, player-specific, dynamic, seed-derivable and fast-to-interpret data lives off-chain.
Problems It Solves
Solana addresses challenges that would overwhelm many large-scale no-SQL architectures:
High-grade security: thanks to the signature model and programmatic accounts, every operation is cryptographically verified.
Temporal ledger: all transactions are recorded with historical precision, allowing full traceability and valid state versions over time.
Single source of truth: even if each player perceives a different state (due to latency), all share a common, immutable foundation. This ensures coherence and strategic fairness.
Distributed governance modeling: using multisignature (
multisig), authorized signer accounts, and validations throughaccounts, it’s possible to implement everything from simple permissions to complex decision-making systems.Radically lower cost: Compared to cloud services, storing and replicating data on Solana is significantly cheaper in the long run:
A cloud database with equivalent replication, availability, and performance costs €300–500/month in infrastructure alone.
If you need an execution layer (triggers, validation, business logic), costs increase — or you're limited to systems like MySQL, NoSQL, or Tables, with no active logic.
At scale (e.g. simulating 100,000 worlds), storage and compute costs become critical: you pay per megabyte, per CPU, per IOPS.
In Solana, although the initial rent isn't trivial, you pay once — there are no ongoing monthly costs.
For a game with a 10-year lifecycle, cloud costs would range from €62,000 to €144,000, not including operational complexity or technical ceilings.
Solana enables the construction of complex, persistent, and verifiable storage structures — without relying on external infrastructure or proprietary models.
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