IrenicTech

Gaming · Web3 · 2025

Golden Tides

An on-chain asset economy no player has to learn crypto to use.

The on-chain economy for a KRAFTON-backed pirate MOBA: an in-game store, tokenised skins, and an ERC20-backed currency, engineered so players who do not care about crypto never meet a wallet prompt.

Client
KRAFTON · Golden Tides
Role
Web3 economy, in-game store, on-chain skin pipeline
Built with
Blockchain, ERC20, ERC721, NFTs, Web3 Gaming, Steam
Start a project Play Golden Tides
Golden Tides gameplay: two crews in ship-to-ship combat, with the quest log, team health bars, gold counter, and minimap of the live match HUD
Shipped in 2025
The Hunt match mode in Golden Tides, one of the objectives a crew can be assigned during a match
The Hunt match mode in Golden Tides, one of the objectives a crew can be assigned during a match
The Heist match mode in Golden Tides, where a crew takes a contested objective off another team
The Heist match mode in Golden Tides, where a crew takes a contested objective off another team
The Delivery match mode in Golden Tides, a cargo run that has to survive contact with the other crew
The Delivery match mode in Golden Tides, a cargo run that has to survive contact with the other crew
Ship combat in Golden Tides, the real-time engagement the on-chain economy had to run underneath without costing the game its performance budget
Ship combat in Golden Tides, the real-time engagement the on-chain economy had to run underneath without costing the game its performance budget

KRAFTON

Publisher

$10M+

Build investment

ERC20 + ERC721

On-chain stack

An on-chain asset economy no player has to learn crypto to use.

The story

How it came together.

Outcome

Players buy and trade skins like they would in any AAA game. No wallet prompt, no gas estimate, no signing modal in the default flow. The publisher gets a real asset economy with marketplace fees, royalties, and player-driven liquidity. Shipped with $10M+ in publisher-side engineering and live-ops investment behind it: production-scale, not a proof of concept.

Problem

Golden Tides is a real-time multiplayer combat game with a live, retention-driven economy. The publisher wanted to bring the asset economy on-chain, with tokenised skins, ERC20-backed in-game currency, and a marketplace, without breaking the existing game loop or shipping a UX that asked players to learn crypto.

Approach

We engineered the on-chain layer as a substrate, not a feature. An ERC20 contract for the in-game token, an ERC721 skin standard with off-chain metadata caching, an in-game store that hides wallet plumbing behind a familiar storefront UI, and a custodial to non-custodial bridge so players who do not care about chain can still trade. Real-time multiplayer kept its existing performance budget; the chain ran in the background.

Play Golden Tides View on Steam

As an engagement

This was a Blockchain Development build.

If that shape matches what you are planning, these are the same engagements written up in full: what we deliver, how it is scoped, and what it costs to find out.

Start a conversation

Tell us what you’re building.

Share the essentials and we’ll reply within 4 hours with a real next step, not an auto-responder.

What happens next

  1. We reply within 4 hours, from a real person, not an auto-responder.
  2. A short scoping call to understand the goal, constraints, and timeline.
  3. A fixed-scope discovery sprint: a working prototype and a written estimate.
Email
info@irenictech.com
Office
Austin, TX, United States
Hours
Mon–Fri · Async + scheduled calls

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