Zhu Jiang: The blockchain game is not as simple as carassing a cat

Driven by the sly cat game, the blockchain game is on fire. By the 3.0 stage, a new generation of public chain technology will emerge, private chains and alliance chains will play an important role, and cross-chain technology will also solve the problem of value exchange between private and public chains.

Driven by the sly cat game, the blockchain game is on fire. However, in Zhu Jiang's view, this is only the 1.0 stage of the blockchain game, hanging on the public chain, simple, partial leisure, mainly the people of the currency circle are playing. By the 2.0 stage, more game makers and gamers have begun to enter. In the 3.0 stage, a new generation of public chain technology will emerge, private chain and alliance chain will play an important role, cross-chain technology will also solve the problem of value exchange between the private chain and the public chain. At this time, the advantages of the cloud platform came into being.

Zhu Jiang not only analyzed the industry from the perspective of the development of blockchain games, but also gave many cases, summed up the three-piece and four characteristics of the blockchain game. The following is a detailed sharing of Zhu Jiang, I hope to help you.

Today, by talking about the topic “The blockchain is not as simple as a cat”, I want to talk about this game to bring us some thoughts.

Taking the Ethereum Encryption Cat as an example, we saw that the blockchain game was played on the Ethereum in the public chain. The handling fee (GAS, ETF transaction transfer fee) was relatively high, which led to discouraged game makers, especially large game makers. Because they may prefer to control GAS costs.

(A simple explanation of what is the GAS fee, which is equivalent to the processing fee charged by the bank. That is to say, the transfer from A to B requires a certain fee in the middle.)

We can also see that under the overall trend of the cat, there are two technical terms, the homogeneity Token ERC20 and the non-homogeneous Token ERC721 standard, of which ERC721 is known in this game of the ether cat. It is a good marketing campaign to promote technology popularization.

In November last year, the transaction volume of 撸猫 has exceeded tens of millions. Many people downloaded the etheric wallet to buy cats. Do they earn money? No, as I expected, because the nature of the game itself is not very strong, we always think that it is a coin-dominated game. With the development of technology, the wave constantly updates iterations, making money is not easy. Therefore, for game manufacturers, how to do blockchain games is very important.

The game dominated by the currency will eventually fail. This does not seem to make sense. Here, I will share in detail why there are such results and deep thinking about the game blockchain.

I understand the blockchain game

The so-called blockchain game, or blockchain native game, is designed based on the blockchain technology itself, instead of saying that the game is first used, and then the related assets of the game are hardened. Because the blockchain has some technical limitations to consider, including its performance, the transaction costs it generates during the asset transfer process, including the choice of public and private chains, leads us to consider when designing a blockchain game. What suits what doesn't fit.

Nowadays, many game makers have begun to engage in the "game + blockchain" attempt since the sizzling winds, especially some of the larger game makers have strong technical resources, and commercial resources can be used for them. some studies.

But most small and medium game manufacturers do not have these resources, so how to do it?

Building your own blockchain R&D team is very costly, and there are so many different technologies on the market. When you don't know which one to choose, it will be very difficult to start a new business.

So do blockchain games, in fact, you must first understand what the blockchain technology itself is? Then see how to join the blockchain game.

Three-piece suit and four features

As a currency person and game maker, I share some tips. If you want to attract users of the currency to play games, there must be several elements. Below is the "three-piece": blockchain platform, exchanges and wallets.

The blockchain platform means that there must be a chain. If you don’t have a chain, you can find a public chain on the public network, such as Ethereum;

To have an exchange, you can make your virtual props or virtual assets circulate on the exchange, circulate to generate value and have a value target, which is easy to cash out;

In addition, the wallet is a must, the wallet can be in the form of an APP, which can be in the form of a web page, and can separate the chain from the virtual assets.

In addition to the three-piece set, there are four major characteristics to be met.

The first is the proof of scarcity. For example, the number of issuances is 21 million, and the issuance period is 84 years. The release rules are tight and tight, which can attract more people to join in, and then produce the effect of snowballing. The price of the exchange can be used as a target to attract users.

The second is security, the exchange's identity verification, including proprietary wallets, and now the proprietary wallet is also beginning to move toward the hard wallet.

The third is open source. If the game company is already doing its own chain, if you want to attract users of the currency circle, you should open up your own chain and open up the algorithm in the chain.

The fourth is the community, which is somewhat similar to our developer community, including the chain of continuous development iterations. For the community of the currency circle, it usually plays a very important propaganda role. In order to stimulate the community to grow and attract more people to join the community, in fact, many people no longer explore what the blockchain is. How about, as long as the community is active enough, and more and more people will join in the continuous exposure and project promotion in the major media.

I probably joined a coin circle community in 2014. After going through such a long time, I will find that it will not develop badly because of its lack of technology, but because it insists on the initial heart and whether it is in accordance with the block. The spirit of the chain can be done very well in the community. With the support of the community's traffic, its technology will be more and more perfect, and the market acceptance will be higher and higher, so this is the first chicken or the first There is a problem with eggs.

However, at the current blockchain market, the timing of such a stage has passed. Nowadays, the project must see that there are real things to participate in, so this is also a process for everyone to gradually raise awareness of the blockchain trend and promote good. The project continues to enter the substantive phase.

Later, let's take a look at how game makers dominate the market for blockchain games. Everyone knows the public chain technology Ethereum, it can join this chain without any permission. I checked it on the website on the evening of March 27, 2018. The Ethereum now has 16391 nodes, this number Growth is very fast, with China accounting for more than 2,000 nodes, ranking second.

Interesting places, you can see that there are some Chinese names here, you can easily join the node plan, you can also write anything on the node name, such as expressing love for someone, very flexible, looks and Not as rigorous as we imagined, this is the most important feature of the public chain, non-permission.

How is the blockchain used?

We know that an open source organization in the private chain is called the Linux Foundation. This organization has hatched many projects. Currently they are incubating a project called Hyperledger, which is absolutely leading and representative in the alliance chain and private chain. Sexual projects, everyone can focus on it later.

It has several features:

The first feature is that it uses the PBFT (Practical Byzantine) algorithm. The consensus in a network is based on the following formula (N>=3F+1), where N is the number of Byzantine nodes participating in the voting, and F represents the betrayal. The number, that is to say, under the PBFT consensus, a four-node network, as long as more than 75% of the nodes are recognized, then the transaction is true;

Another feature, it is different from the Ethereum, it is licensed, you need to be recognized by the organization to join, you have to form an alliance with the entire node to form a commercial network entity, in order to participate in the consensus right.

Let's take a look at the members of Hyperledger. This number is not the latest. Many companies have joined in. When we started technical evangelism in 2016, this number is still less than 90. This year, we have broken through 160, and many companies are domestic companies. Some of them are transferred from the currency circle to the chain.

Let me look at the chain technology, in the analysis of the mainstream technology of the blockchain, for your reference. I will probably talk about it.

First, there are two parts, one is the Hyperledger fabric, which is a cross-industry attribute from the industry characteristics, including Ethereum and no specific industry attributes, but Ripple and Corda, both of which are used in financial asset transactions, especially Corda. It was originally designed to establish alliances between banks, which can reduce the cost of exchange of funds between alliance members and improve efficiency, so this is more representative of the financial industry.

Looking at Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, although cross-industry, but many early financial companies or supply chain finance are the first to use these areas, there are now hundreds of blockchain games like 撸猫 on Ethereum.

I hope to give some reference to the game industry from the blockchain of other industries.

For example, Wal-Mart uses Wal-Mart to promote food safety. Wal-Mart publicly stated at the World Food Safety Forum that blockchain technology needs to be recognized by the government as a new technical standard that has helped Wal-Mart achieve its stage in food safety. Sexual outcomes, these are all responses to the speculation of the currency circle. Some reports say that blockchain technology is the source of all evils and is a pyramid scheme. I don’t think these are clear about the basic concepts.

Wal-Mart makes food traceability, establishes alliances, Nestlé, United Lihua and other companies have joined to make unsafe foods away from the public. The logic behind it is not to say that blockchain technology is used for anti-counterfeiting, but through blockchain technology. Greatly increase the cost of fraud, the cost has increased, and it is naturally unprofitable. This is a very meaningful attempt in the field of food safety. Now Maotai and Wuliangye have begun to put a label on the bottle. The basic idea of dimension source is based on this, and because this is the earliest food safety case based on blockchain technology, Wal-Mart and Tsinghua University Food Safety Research Institute have been praised by the industry.

Look at another industry case. This is Maersk, the world's largest container carrier. It uses blockchain technology to save 27B$. The container shipping process is very complicated. Maersk's cooperation with IBM to do such a project can greatly save complex processes. The problem of inefficiency and high cost has turned the paper-based process into informationization for hundreds of years. This is too simple for us to engage in IT, but in fact, through the blockchain, Maersk is already The process assumes the role of a credit endorsement. Many of the contracting links in the middle need to find a third-party insurance company, and need to find a bank to do the bill guarantee, but if there is blockchain technology, Maersk can do these things, so this Why is the blockchain bringing a new business growth to Maersk, so I want to give our game makers some inspiration through this case. Blockchain games are likely to slowly expand into other business areas, how to give us Traditional game companies bring some new opportunities and are worth thinking about.

Blockchain games 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

Finally, combined with the development trend of the past industry, the development path of the blockchain game is divided into three stages. Zhang Zong, who is in front of the Blueport interaction, has also made a lot of detailed introductions. I will probably summarize that the blockchain game 1.0 is simple. Casual games, hanging on the public chain, its technical characteristics are based on the public chain, less than 100TPS performance, built a simple game product, the cat is a typical representative.

At the stage of blockchain 2.0, due to the hurricane of the cat, the game industry was scraped and the game makers were awakened. Therefore, a slightly powerful game manufacturer must make a chain, modify the source code, and control the GAS fee, resulting in the district. The blockchain 2.0 phase was formed, at which stage blockchain vendors have begun to trade in props. There are also some game companies that are starting to combine their own game engine and blockchain. This stage is actually a stage of struggling. Anyway, I have the funds, and I have enough resources to do it myself. However, there are not many R&D in the underlying chain. The R&D of the chain that is currently being done is mainly based on the open source project. Therefore, at this stage, many companies that build their own chains are mainly dominated by the game circle.

When I arrived at Blockchain Game 3.0, I made a bold prediction here. From the technical characteristics, TPS can meet the standard requirements of a financial trading system as long as it reaches a stable level of several thousand or a few thousand. I think it is fun. Blockchain games are enough. In the process leading to 3.0, a new generation of public chain technology will be produced. Private chains and alliance chains will play an important role in many enterprises, and then cross-chain technologies will be in private chains. The problem of value exchange between the public chains is solved, and the advantages of the cloud platform will be generated here.

Because the cloud platform itself is vast, the distributed environment greatly enhances the credibility of the consensus, and the cloud platform does not participate in the economic system design of the chain itself, and is only responsible for the technical platform provision and operation and maintenance guarantee, so this time its computing power advantage Will show up.