BSV Stories – Episode 5: With blockchain power, it’s game on!

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In this episode of BSV Stories, we unravel the potential of blockchain-based gaming and how it can lead the way to the global adoption of Bitcoin. 

In this report, I spoke to several avid gamers in Manhattan, New York, of whom a majority of them admitted that they’ve never heard of blockchain games, but when presented with the idea of play-to-earn, something that blockchain games can offer, their reaction was nothing but promising for the blockchain industry. At present, there are hundreds of millions of online gamers globally. If these players were to join the blockchain gaming bandwagon, imagine what kind of impact this could have on Bitcoin? Moreover, an occurrence as such, could very well be blockchain’s gateway to the multimillion-dollar esports industry.

In order for this to happen, onboarding gamers to blockchain games is key. As is the case, fighting games are deemed to be the most popular type of game amongst professional players. Within the BSV ecosystem exists CryptoFights, an online fighting game where every move is stored on the BSV blockchain. The intricacy level of the game is only possible with Bitcoin SV technology and its ability to scale. This year, we saw CryptoFights record over 2 million transactions in a single day, more than Ethereum’s daily average and close to the daily transactions of all blockchains combined. It’s also good to note that the game is still in beta which means it has ways to go in the coming months and years. 

CEO Adam Kling explains that gamers can earn by playing CryptoFights. Unlike legacy games, he says CryptoFights allows players to have full control over the items they purchase within the game. “When you log in, you’re actually logging into a non-custodial Bitcoin wallet, so when you obtain that NFT, it’s yours and we cannot take it away, and that’s probably one of the biggest foundational differences between the legacy games and a blockchain game in crypto.” He also says players can monetize by trading their NFTs and by winning tournaments. 

Blockchain-based games likewise has its advantages when it comes to eSports tournaments. Tyler Farnsworth, CTO of Built by Gamers, an American esports organization, says blockchain technology can help track cheating amongst professional players as well as provide the ability to do instant pay outs for winning players. “Cheating in eSports is a challenge,” he says. “Anti-cheat software sits inside the walled garden of each individual game or the publisher themselves.” 

“Blockchain offers an opportunity to have things on a public ledger to showcase with provable veracity, whether something was done incorrectly or not, provably fair results that can be independently verified,” Farnsworth adds.

CryptoFights CTO David Case shares similar views with Tyler. As David explains, every move in CryptoFights is recorded as a transaction on the BSV blockchain therefore providing proof of gameplay or proof of work inside a game. He says, “If you’re playing Fortnite or something like that, you can’t go to the servers and find out what did everyone do, what did my opponent do and even if you could, there’s no cryptographic signatures. There’s nothing that actually lets you track back the history and really see this person who did this.”

Tyler sees other potential uses for blockchain technology when it comes to major esports tournaments. “The distribution of price winnings is a challenge in eSports tournaments,” he says. As he explains, the different payment models and currencies of players worldwide can be a nightmare. For his part, a single source currency with a universal wallet can enable payouts in an unbounded level. 

With the numerous benefits blockchain technology brings into gaming, it’s only a matter of time before its potential is highly recognized. And only Bitcoin SV, with its unbounded scaling and low fees, is capable of making this vision a reality.