4 ms·

> But what does it doooooo??? The blockchain is just a platform. You have to build projects on top of the platform. Asking what does it do doesn't make any sen

> But what does it doooooo??? The blockchain is just a platform. You have to build projects on top of the platform. Asking what does it do doesn't make any sense. It's like asking what does a piece of paper do. The real question to ask is not what does it do but whether the trade offs of using decentralised tokenised platform for building real world apps is useful or scalable. The answers to which are still being discovered.

mdoms 5y ago
What has been built on Blockchain? Specifically I'm looking for examples of things that solve a problem that couldn't be solved without Blockchain, or at least were unsolved before.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Portable assets is one. You can buy and NFT on one market, use it within a game, display it in your virtual home, then sell it on a different market. Blockchain allows individuals to actually own digital assets. (Whether those digital assets are valued correctly is a totally separate discussion - personally I think there are many that are grossly overvalued...) World of warcraft items, amazon video or ebook purchases, etc. - you don't actually own those things: you are locked in and subject to the whims of the platform. If the platform wants to kill your account or remove your items, they can.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, if some centrally-run MMO were to use NFTs that they issue for its items (or, I guess probably maybe they shouldn’t be non-fungible really, because one “hammer of smiting” should probably be equivalent to any other “hammer of smiting”, no point keeping track of them as separate entities when you can just keep track of who owns how many of each. But that is beside the point), Well, the game devs still control how these items actually behave in-game. If they want to take away someone’s mystic scepter of lightning, they can just make the game cease to acknowledge the existing “mystic scepter of lightning” token, and give everyone other than that person a new token for “mystic scepter of lightning” and have the game recognize this new token. So, sure, this person gets to keep their token, but it no longer has the in-game effect or appearance. So, what’s the point? If the salt loses its saltiness, it is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. Someone could make another game which does use the token, but, if this is an mmo, a large part of the value requires the other players. (As, otherwise, why bother making it an online game at all? Just make a local single player game, where the developers can’t change what is on the player’s computer (unless the player chooses to update) anyway, so unless this other game can get a substantial player base, why would this make the old token for the lightning scepter useful again? So, for [this strategy of using tokens for items in the game with the goal of making people really possess the items, not at the mercy of the people running the game] to make sense, the entire game would have to be decentralized, or something like that. (The Cryptokitties thing was kind of like that iirc, in that the page to render them and whatnot was just released as a self-contained thing over IPFS, and while the developers could, of course, release a modified version of it later if they wanted, the original version would still be available and working as long as people wanted to continue using it. Also iirc other people made alternative clients for it which rendered the cats in different ways? So, that kind of fits the idea of “some other game including the scepter token” I guess?) But if an mmo game is to have like, continuing updates, for new content and such, that doesn’t really seem compatible with the “you really own the items in a meaningful way”. I suppose it could be set up such that players who didn’t want to update could continue to play an old version, with some degree of compatibility between earlier and later versions? But you can’t trade a Lugia from pokemon Silver to pokemon Blue (though you can trade a Paras from Silver to Blue).
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      Yeah, I personally think using NFTs for gameplay-altering items seems like a bad path that will lead to frustrated holders of useless things, because either meta will shift and they'll have to disable some items or they have to manage permanent power inflation (challenging to do well and will devalue the items anyways). A lot of "Free to play" games get most of their money from cosmetic enhancements. I think cross-game cosmetic enhancements could increase demand. Ex. Team fortress 2 hats would be more valuable if you could also wear them in world of warcraft. Seems tricky to figure out how to incentivize other developers to implement this support for items they don't get revenue from, but I bet someone will figure it out in the next few years.
      - drdeca 5y ago
        I suppose what I said would be less of an issue for cosmetic items, good point. As for “how to get other games to recognize the tokens for the cosmetic items”, I suppose one reason could be via the use of copyright: grant a license to other games to use the assets for the items, conditional on the requirement that they only allow it for people who have the token in question. If they are high quality assets, and in a format where they can be easily incorporated, then that could make it worthwhile to implement them. Of course, the game using the assets from the other game would prefer to be allowed to use the assets for anything they want, but, seeing as it is essentially for free, if it fits with the art style and setting/mood of the borrowing game, that could make it worth it, maybe. If the group granting the license wanted to provide additional encouragement to do this, they could also issue some number of the tokens to be distributed by the other game. This could maybe work as a cross-promotional thing. People from the first game which don’t have the token could be motivated to try the other game because they can use(wear) the item in the game they already play, and people who are playing the second game could be made aware of the first game by the introduction of the item. (Of course, many parts of this could be done without any sort of token by just having the game servers contact each-other on occasion, but tokens could allow the sharing between many games more easily maybe. Also allows making it really be the same item on both games such that if one sells it in one, it is also gone in the other, without needing the servers for the different games to constantly contact one-another over that kind of thing.) I do think something that could be interesting would be to use a permission-ed authenticated append-only database (essentially like a proof-of-authority blockchain, except not necessarily a blockchain, could be closer to an ordinary database), which could allow the kinds of cross-chain trades we see in actual blockchains, which could facilitate trades of items between different games, without requiring the players trust that the other player will uphold their end of the trade on the other game, just trust that the game servers don’t cheat, as the game servers would have basically no reason to do that. I think these would be able to scale much more easily, while still being potentially compatible with actual blockchains.
  - Jasper_ 5y ago
    > You can buy and NFT on one market, use it within a game, display it in your virtual home Where can I do that? I don't have a virtual home, how can I get one?
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      Disclaimer: I haven't done any of this myself and don't think any of these are rational investments. Most NFT marketplaces have a 'portfolio' page that displays all of the NFTs you own. Then there are second-life style digital worlds (where you can buy virtual real estate) that some people have created NFT galleries within. Seems like Cryptovoxels and Decentraland are the two leaders in this space. There are also a handful of MMO-type games where tradable items have been turned into NFTs, so they can be traded and possessed externally to the game. Maybe some allow cross-game usage too? I'm not sure, haven't been following these that closely - there a bunch and I am too skeptical to dive into any of them.

mdoms 5y ago

What has been built on Blockchain? Specifically I'm looking for examples of things that solve a problem that couldn't be solved without Blockchain, or at least were unsolved before.

cwkoss 5y ago
Portable assets is one. You can buy and NFT on one market, use it within a game, display it in your virtual home, then sell it on a different market. Blockchain allows individuals to actually own digital assets. (Whether those digital assets are valued correctly is a totally separate discussion - personally I think there are many that are grossly overvalued...) World of warcraft items, amazon video or ebook purchases, etc. - you don't actually own those things: you are locked in and subject to the whims of the platform. If the platform wants to kill your account or remove your items, they can.
- drdeca 5y ago
  On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, if some centrally-run MMO were to use NFTs that they issue for its items (or, I guess probably maybe they shouldn’t be non-fungible really, because one “hammer of smiting” should probably be equivalent to any other “hammer of smiting”, no point keeping track of them as separate entities when you can just keep track of who owns how many of each. But that is beside the point), Well, the game devs still control how these items actually behave in-game. If they want to take away someone’s mystic scepter of lightning, they can just make the game cease to acknowledge the existing “mystic scepter of lightning” token, and give everyone other than that person a new token for “mystic scepter of lightning” and have the game recognize this new token. So, sure, this person gets to keep their token, but it no longer has the in-game effect or appearance. So, what’s the point? If the salt loses its saltiness, it is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. Someone could make another game which does use the token, but, if this is an mmo, a large part of the value requires the other players. (As, otherwise, why bother making it an online game at all? Just make a local single player game, where the developers can’t change what is on the player’s computer (unless the player chooses to update) anyway, so unless this other game can get a substantial player base, why would this make the old token for the lightning scepter useful again? So, for [this strategy of using tokens for items in the game with the goal of making people really possess the items, not at the mercy of the people running the game] to make sense, the entire game would have to be decentralized, or something like that. (The Cryptokitties thing was kind of like that iirc, in that the page to render them and whatnot was just released as a self-contained thing over IPFS, and while the developers could, of course, release a modified version of it later if they wanted, the original version would still be available and working as long as people wanted to continue using it. Also iirc other people made alternative clients for it which rendered the cats in different ways? So, that kind of fits the idea of “some other game including the scepter token” I guess?) But if an mmo game is to have like, continuing updates, for new content and such, that doesn’t really seem compatible with the “you really own the items in a meaningful way”. I suppose it could be set up such that players who didn’t want to update could continue to play an old version, with some degree of compatibility between earlier and later versions? But you can’t trade a Lugia from pokemon Silver to pokemon Blue (though you can trade a Paras from Silver to Blue).
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    Yeah, I personally think using NFTs for gameplay-altering items seems like a bad path that will lead to frustrated holders of useless things, because either meta will shift and they'll have to disable some items or they have to manage permanent power inflation (challenging to do well and will devalue the items anyways). A lot of "Free to play" games get most of their money from cosmetic enhancements. I think cross-game cosmetic enhancements could increase demand. Ex. Team fortress 2 hats would be more valuable if you could also wear them in world of warcraft. Seems tricky to figure out how to incentivize other developers to implement this support for items they don't get revenue from, but I bet someone will figure it out in the next few years.
    - drdeca 5y ago
      I suppose what I said would be less of an issue for cosmetic items, good point. As for “how to get other games to recognize the tokens for the cosmetic items”, I suppose one reason could be via the use of copyright: grant a license to other games to use the assets for the items, conditional on the requirement that they only allow it for people who have the token in question. If they are high quality assets, and in a format where they can be easily incorporated, then that could make it worthwhile to implement them. Of course, the game using the assets from the other game would prefer to be allowed to use the assets for anything they want, but, seeing as it is essentially for free, if it fits with the art style and setting/mood of the borrowing game, that could make it worth it, maybe. If the group granting the license wanted to provide additional encouragement to do this, they could also issue some number of the tokens to be distributed by the other game. This could maybe work as a cross-promotional thing. People from the first game which don’t have the token could be motivated to try the other game because they can use(wear) the item in the game they already play, and people who are playing the second game could be made aware of the first game by the introduction of the item. (Of course, many parts of this could be done without any sort of token by just having the game servers contact each-other on occasion, but tokens could allow the sharing between many games more easily maybe. Also allows making it really be the same item on both games such that if one sells it in one, it is also gone in the other, without needing the servers for the different games to constantly contact one-another over that kind of thing.) I do think something that could be interesting would be to use a permission-ed authenticated append-only database (essentially like a proof-of-authority blockchain, except not necessarily a blockchain, could be closer to an ordinary database), which could allow the kinds of cross-chain trades we see in actual blockchains, which could facilitate trades of items between different games, without requiring the players trust that the other player will uphold their end of the trade on the other game, just trust that the game servers don’t cheat, as the game servers would have basically no reason to do that. I think these would be able to scale much more easily, while still being potentially compatible with actual blockchains.
- Jasper_ 5y ago
  > You can buy and NFT on one market, use it within a game, display it in your virtual home Where can I do that? I don't have a virtual home, how can I get one?
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    Disclaimer: I haven't done any of this myself and don't think any of these are rational investments. Most NFT marketplaces have a 'portfolio' page that displays all of the NFTs you own. Then there are second-life style digital worlds (where you can buy virtual real estate) that some people have created NFT galleries within. Seems like Cryptovoxels and Decentraland are the two leaders in this space. There are also a handful of MMO-type games where tradable items have been turned into NFTs, so they can be traded and possessed externally to the game. Maybe some allow cross-game usage too? I'm not sure, haven't been following these that closely - there a bunch and I am too skeptical to dive into any of them.