Why we are building our game on multiple blockchains

Why we are building our game on multiple blockchains

If you are not familiar with blockchain communities you may not know the tribalism that reigns among the different technologies supporters. There are many different blockchain technologies offering a variety of advantages and disadvantages. If you read about arguments from specific blockchains It is very similar to the Apple vs PC debate. People either love or hate Apple. People tend to chose to buy or not an Apple computer, based on emotions toward the company and not necessarily a rational decision. When it comes to blockchain you will find endless debates on which technology is the winning one. Despite there are solid arguments the conversation goes quickly to an emotional level.

A public blockchain is not only a technology but it’s a politic and social system. There are sets of rules written into open-source code. These rules define how wealth (coin) is distributed among people in charge of maintaining the network and who is able to change these rules (voters). The coin distribution is often linked to mining, meaning people who provide computing power to secure the system.

Using and holding coins, for example, Bitcoin (BTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH) implies agreeing or at least playing with network rules. I found that for example people using BCH to make payments are actually doing it because they truly embrace the Bitcoin Cash vision. As result communities are created around the currency creating an internal market.

Bitcoin cash was born (forked) on 15 November 2018 because of governance dissension inside the Bitcoin community. There was [and still] is a divergent vision on how the bitcoin blockchain should be improved in order to scale the number of transactions per second. Bitcoin Cash promoters wanted to push an update on Bitcoin but the majority of the community disagreed with proposed changes. As a result, two bitcoin chains existed, each one claiming to be the “real” Bitcoin.

Bitcoin cash is doing a “hard fork” or “effectively a software upgrade,” Kelly said on “Fast Money.” “When you do a software upgrade, everybody usually agrees. But in this particular case, everybody is not agreeing.” Bryan Kelly

Another good example illustrating blockchain as a governance system is the creation of Ethereum Classic. Long story short a hacker managed to steal around 12.7M Ether (worth around $150M at the time) sitting on the DAO, a vulnerable contract code on Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum Foundation, in charge of this blockchain development, decided to revert the transaction defrauding hundreds of DAO stakeholders.

By doing so the foundation betrayed the vision of blockchain’s immutability for what they considered as the greater good. Most of the community embraced the decision but some people disagreed with the decision and continued with the unmodified chain. This formed the Ethereum Classic blockchain, full of supporters who value immutability as a core promise.

In fact, public blockchains are even more than technology or software with fans and trolls, advantages and disadvantages. Unlike for example iOS vs Android, Google Cloud vs Amazon or even databases vs blockchains, different blockchains are about how technology implements governance systems to regulate communities’ economic interactions.

I will compare here the public blockchain ecosystem as nation-state or countries. Just like countries, blockchain communities have their governing rules, their currency, their devoted companies, their internal markets, their enemies, and their coup d’état.

A sidechain or a Layer 2 usually is a smaller blockchain designed to have lighter security and governance rules, where currency and tokens are pegged to “mainchain.” These systems are designed to allow cheaper and faster transactions than the mainchain. For a user, it’s basically delegating trust and governance to another technology/community but still under the mainchain. Examples are the lightning network for Bitcoin (BTC) or Matic for Ethereum.

Continuing with the country comparison a sidechain could be considered as a state inside a country. The state has its own community/population and own rules but very dependant on countrywide decisions. For example, not everybody in the US is governed by California but everybody governed by California is governed by the US. Similarly, not everybody on Ethereum is a Matic user but every Matic user is dependent on Ethereum.

Assuming the metaphor of a public blockchain as a nation-state, deploying software on multiple blockchains can be similar to establishing a business on an international level rather than focusing on a national market.
A company going international has to accommodate multiple regulations, cultures and market customs.

Usually, it’s easier for a company to focus on its domestic market but growing internationally yield more potential.

As of my company EverdreamSoft we are Switzerland based company. I was born in Geneva. Historically Swiss companies tend to focus on international more often than the local market as the country is small with 3 different linguistic regions with unique cultures.

Similarly, we started to build our game Spells of Genesis on Counterparty blockchain. Counterparty is a token layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Back in 2014 when we started Ethereum was not yet released. Today I consider Counterparty as our domestic market (just like Switzerland), a market where we are very strong but a small market. We are not moving away from Counterparty we are just expanding to a new “country”: Ethereum blockchain and tomorrow we will add more (EOS, Waves, Tron…)!

We believe blockchain will bring a new era of human activities’ governance. Before the age of the internet, our activities were very tied to the ground where we are located. With internet people’s interactions are done on a global scale; online collaborations can be made by actors from distant jurisdictions.
We believe people over the world will opt-in to one or several “blockchain states” to govern their online activities. In Japan, for example, some people are Buddhist, some other Shintoist and some people follow the precepts of Shintoism and Buddhism at the same time.

There will be not only one winning technology or governance system but as many as the diversity of community governance beliefs. Just like in the physical world: no vision, religion or politic system is unilateral. As time goes on there will be more blockchains, sidechains, forks, wars, and wonders.

Published at Thu, 19 Sep 2019 08:30:31 +0000

Bitcoin Pic Of The Moment
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By trendingtopics on 2019-03-13 22:14:23