Doom will run on RIVES game console on Cartesi blockchain

Doom is going to run on the RIVES (RISC-V Verifiable Entertainment System), an onchain gaming console built on Cartesi, a modular blockchain protocol.

RIVES is designed to run games and apps entirely onchain, enabling every element—from gameplay to interactions—to be fully verifiable. This means it enables provable scores, interactions, and progressions in games like speedruns, all recorded on the blockchain.

And to showcase its capabilities, RIVES is launching the Doom Olympics, a seven-day competition starting on September 12, designed to push the boundaries of what’s possible in onchain gaming.

Unlike traditional Web2 platforms, RIVES enables fully verifiable gameplay through “tapes”—interaction logs that ensure transparency and trust, as detailed in the linked article and thread.

Event details

The Doom Olympics tournament offers a $15,000 prize pool for top performers across seven distinct challenges. Players will experience Doom as the game’s engine and Freedoom build run fully verifiably on RIVES — an onchain gaming console powered by Cartesi’s Rollup infrastructure, utilizing a deterministic RISC-V virtual machine.

The competition will feature seven unique contests—Lightning Run, Knuckle Crusher, Infallible Aim, Secret Master, Treasure Seeker, The Completionist, and Enemy Eradicator—each with its own scoring system and objectives. All gameplay is verifiable onchain through RIVES, ensuring transparency, fairness, and a new form of modding with strict rules enforcement.

How it works

Players will compete by running their gameplays locally in a browser within the Cartesi Virtual Machine.

Once gameplay is completed, it can be submitted to the RIVES rollup for verification, where the nodes run the same deterministic VM to confirm results. This process ensures that every move, score, and interaction is permanently recorded and fully verifiable. RIVES has six contributors, including cofounders Max Hatesuer and Carlo Fragni. RIVES has a grant from Cartesi but has not raised money yet.

The tournament is distinct in that it equally relies on the contributions of both players and builders. Players generate verified gameplay tapes, while builders design the game cartridges. This innovative blend of gaming and blockchain technology not only enhances community engagement but also has the potential to attract new audiences, including speedrunners and crypto enthusiasts.

In an email to GamesBeat, Hatesuer said, “Unlike many Web3 games, which only use the blockchain for assets, RIVES runs the entire game onchain. RIVES can thus verify gameplays without intermediaries. Every Doom gameplay submitted is rerun by nodes, validating the score. This allows amongst others for canonical, persistent leaderboards, decentralized contests and more. Additionally, putting game logic and state onchain allows for new forms of modding. The Doom Olympics are composed of several custom game modes and rules that are executed, verified, and enforced on RIVES.”

Asked if the company had a license from Bethesda, Hatesuer said, “RIVES uses the Freedoom build on top of the Doom engine. Both are open source.”

RIVES is an onchain fantasy console designed for the creation, distribution, and playing of arcade-style games and programs. What sets RIVES apart from other gaming systems is that it operates entirely onchain, meaning every game and program running on its emulator is fully verifiable, the company said.

RIVES enables creators, whether builders or players, to truly express themselves. At the heart of RIVES are cartridges (self-contained programs such as games) and tapes (verifiable records of gameplay, such as speedruns). These tapes can be replayed, and shared, turning gameplay into a meaningful, immutable part of the game itself.

RIVES is built on top of Cartesi Rollups, an app-specific Rollup infrastructure powered by a deterministic RISC-V VM. This allows game developers to use traditional programming languages while preserving the unique properties of the blockchain medium.

RIVES provides canonical leaderboards, decentralized contests. By running fully onchain, it ensures that game logic and state are permanent, verifiable, and can be built upon seamlessly, unlocking new possibilities in gaming and beyond.