5 ms·

How do you handle cheating? If you're hosting all the wallets, what's to stop you (or someone who gains control of the server) taking off with all the money?

How do you handle cheating? If you're hosting all the wallets, what's to stop you (or someone who gains control of the server) taking off with all the money? Don't get me wrong, this is very cool and using real money might solve a whole lot of Minecraft's social/"tragedy of the commons" problems, but I'm interested what other issues it brings up.

bduerst 10y ago
Or prevent skimming? The owner could programmatically create and distribute the pooled bitcoins to fake player account wallets, and it would look like business as usual.
- zimbatm 10y ago
  Over a population of 32 with transaction consisting of 1/1000000 of bitcoins ? It wouldn't even pay off the servers.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Is bitquest capping at 32 players? Because the max population size for a minecraft server is over 2 billion. 10,000 faked kills for 100 fake players is ~$442.
    - krisroadruck 10y ago
      I'm gonna guess you've never ran a server. A single survival server (like this is) rather than a big linked network of minigames with bungee cord, even on the best hardware available & an optimized minecraft server (spigot, paperspigot) starts to seriously struggle well before the 250 players online mark. You can squeeze out a little bit more by nerfing some core game mechanics (limiting render distance, redstone, entity spawning and tick speed) but that's it. Keep in mind that the game is mostly CPU bound and has little in the way of multi-core threading. The bottleneck then is single core CPU performance (a good amount of ram and a fast SSD help a bit but only so much). While you can of course have 1000s of players so long as only 250-300 of them are ever online at the same time no pure survival server is going to be doing anything like 2 billion players.
      - bduerst 10y ago
        I have, just only with friends. I mention 2 billion in context to the server config setting that you can set, because I'm not sure why they said 32.
        ygjb-dupe 10y ago
        jebuz... I hope that you test stuff before putting it into prod after tweaking settings based on permissible values :D
        bduerst 10y ago
        Is this a joke? Because I guess I'm not seeing the humor.
phaser 10y ago
This concept should be considered experimental (and we should emphasize more this) ànd you're right, there's nothing stopping me to take off with all the money. Or a hacker. We suggest to players to keep the minimum stored in their game wallets and cash out frequently as a precaution. We are experimenting with Wallets that need to be signed by both the Client and the Server to make operations and when the time comes I'll be happy to share my findings.
- zimbatm 10y ago
  The only way to make it secure is for users to bring their own wallet. On first connection they would input their wallet ID so monster look can be paid out. When a user wants to buy something he needs to make it outside of minecraft, or use a custom minecraft extension that handles the wallet client-side.
- brudgers 10y ago
  Perhaps it might be appropriate to state this in the hero image of the landing page.
- awt 10y ago
  Are you in the WoT? Also are you aware of Eulora?
- Shorel 10y ago
  A theft-proof way can be to avoid the anonymizing features of Bitcoin, that's it, by having the return address (for change in a transaction) being the same as the origin address. That way you can simply monitor the blockchain for every player's single Bitcoin address, without having any private key. Any transaction from those accounts should be explicitly initiated by the player, and for that you show QR codes in the game.
Kiro 10y ago
> Minecraft's social/"tragedy of the commons" problems I've only player single-player. What are these problems?
- flashman 10y ago
  It's along the lines of how do you manage scarce resources and space in the centre of the map. Who do you allow to build there? It can be free-for-all (and certain servers like 2b2t.net have an anarchist charm) or it can be restricted to donors, or some other system.
kordless 10y ago
Disclaimer, I know the Bitquest guys. > Don't get me wrong I've found people occasionally say things like that right before they make a comment full of dissonance, such as "this is cool, but I'm concerned about X". When we try to simulate a new thing so completely we find all the flaws in it, we paralyze ourselves by creating dissonance that is unresolvable. With Bitcoin this happens frequently because money, or stored trust, is a common source of dissonance (i.e. who wants to lose money? Answer, nobody.) Even thought it has historically had some rough beta testing periods, Bitquest has shown itself to be an extremely interesting concept to explore. It is a game and it's Open Source, so I would expect discussions to focus on the positive aspects of Bitcoin, not the negative ones. Recognizing dissonance in the conversations being had around a given technology and keeping the discussion going is where the cool stuff happens. P.S. I take credit for the land ownership idea. :) I still think it needs a timer on it though.

bduerst 10y ago

Or prevent skimming? The owner could programmatically create and distribute the pooled bitcoins to fake player account wallets, and it would look like business as usual.

zimbatm 10y ago
Over a population of 32 with transaction consisting of 1/1000000 of bitcoins ? It wouldn't even pay off the servers.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bduerst 10y ago
  Is bitquest capping at 32 players? Because the max population size for a minecraft server is over 2 billion. 10,000 faked kills for 100 fake players is ~$442.
  - krisroadruck 10y ago
    I'm gonna guess you've never ran a server. A single survival server (like this is) rather than a big linked network of minigames with bungee cord, even on the best hardware available & an optimized minecraft server (spigot, paperspigot) starts to seriously struggle well before the 250 players online mark. You can squeeze out a little bit more by nerfing some core game mechanics (limiting render distance, redstone, entity spawning and tick speed) but that's it. Keep in mind that the game is mostly CPU bound and has little in the way of multi-core threading. The bottleneck then is single core CPU performance (a good amount of ram and a fast SSD help a bit but only so much). While you can of course have 1000s of players so long as only 250-300 of them are ever online at the same time no pure survival server is going to be doing anything like 2 billion players.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      I have, just only with friends. I mention 2 billion in context to the server config setting that you can set, because I'm not sure why they said 32.
      - ygjb-dupe 10y ago
        jebuz... I hope that you test stuff before putting it into prod after tweaking settings based on permissible values :D
        bduerst 10y ago
        Is this a joke? Because I guess I'm not seeing the humor.

phaser 10y ago

This concept should be considered experimental (and we should emphasize more this) ànd you're right, there's nothing stopping me to take off with all the money. Or a hacker. We suggest to players to keep the minimum stored in their game wallets and cash out frequently as a precaution. We are experimenting with Wallets that need to be signed by both the Client and the Server to make operations and when the time comes I'll be happy to share my findings.

zimbatm 10y ago
The only way to make it secure is for users to bring their own wallet. On first connection they would input their wallet ID so monster look can be paid out. When a user wants to buy something he needs to make it outside of minecraft, or use a custom minecraft extension that handles the wallet client-side.
brudgers 10y ago
Perhaps it might be appropriate to state this in the hero image of the landing page.
awt 10y ago
Are you in the WoT? Also are you aware of Eulora?
Shorel 10y ago
A theft-proof way can be to avoid the anonymizing features of Bitcoin, that's it, by having the return address (for change in a transaction) being the same as the origin address. That way you can simply monitor the blockchain for every player's single Bitcoin address, without having any private key. Any transaction from those accounts should be explicitly initiated by the player, and for that you show QR codes in the game.

Kiro 10y ago

> Minecraft's social/"tragedy of the commons" problems I've only player single-player. What are these problems?

flashman 10y ago
It's along the lines of how do you manage scarce resources and space in the centre of the map. Who do you allow to build there? It can be free-for-all (and certain servers like 2b2t.net have an anarchist charm) or it can be restricted to donors, or some other system.

kordless 10y ago

Disclaimer, I know the Bitquest guys. > Don't get me wrong I've found people occasionally say things like that right before they make a comment full of dissonance, such as "this is cool, but I'm concerned about X". When we try to simulate a new thing so completely we find all the flaws in it, we paralyze ourselves by creating dissonance that is unresolvable. With Bitcoin this happens frequently because money, or stored trust, is a common source of dissonance (i.e. who wants to lose money? Answer, nobody.) Even thought it has historically had some rough beta testing periods, Bitquest has shown itself to be an extremely interesting concept to explore. It is a game and it's Open Source, so I would expect discussions to focus on the positive aspects of Bitcoin, not the negative ones. Recognizing dissonance in the conversations being had around a given technology and keeping the discussion going is where the cool stuff happens. P.S. I take credit for the land ownership idea. :) I still think it needs a timer on it though.