First-generation game developer that ‘provided tech to Microsoft’, breaks blockchain limits
[Interveiw] Sang-Yoon Lee, CEO of Bloom Technology, “’Kingdom Under Fire on Locus Chain’ to be released this summer.”
There was a student who had more fun in developing games when he was a sophomore in high school while his friends enjoyed playing games. His computer game “Legendry Knight(대마성)” sold 4,000 units at Yongsan Electronics Market in 1988. When he became a college student, he even established ‘Phantagram’, a game developer company. In the past 34 years, 14 games have been developed. The most representative work is the “Kingdom Under Fire” series, which is considered a masterpiece game for strategic simulation in Korea. Among them, “Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders,” which was released as a console game for Microsoft’s Xbox in 2004, topped weekly sales worldwide, and received worldwide acclaim to the extent that it swept more than 100 awards. This is the story of Sang-yoon Lee, CEO(50·photo) of Bloom Technology, who marked a milestone in the history of domestic games.
CEO Sang-yoon Lee, who is also the first-generation game developer in Korea, has taken on a new challenge with blockchain. He opened his eyes to blockchain technology back in 2013 when he was developing “Kingdom Under Fire 2” as an executive and producer, after being acquired by the game company Blueside. At that time, Blueside went viral for its world’s best-performing game engine in terms of speed, and received a request for a blockchain-related business from China. It was to develop a bitcoin mining machine. “They said it’s important to be fast in speed, and asked me to develop a machine appropriate for large scale mining. It was that moment I faced the structure of Bitcoin(Blockchain) for the first time, and I thought the system of digitally authenticating and trading credit was novel.”
Mr. Lee, however, refused the request to develop a bitcoin mining machine. He judged that it is a system large scale users can’t use because as the number of users increases, the server is bound to slow down. “The idea of Bitcoin was good, but if there are more nodes (participant computers) or more transactions, the system will inevitably slow down, so many people will not be able to use it at the same time. Eventually, we decided to focus on developing existing games,” he explained.
Then, he developed a technology that allows multiple people to access simultaneously in the game and got a new blockchain idea. It was an inspiration of a next-generation blockchain that can be processed in real time even if many people use it simultaneouly. He became independent from Blueside in 2017 when he started developing blockchain technology with the CTO. Phantagram, a game development company launched in 1994, has pivioted, and has transformed into a blockchain developer. The company also changed its corporate name to Bloom Technology.
Troubleshooting Bitcoin’s speed degradation…2 Blockchain technology patent registration completed
Bloom Technology was reborn as a company that develops the next-generation blockchain ‘Locus Chain’ with a change of corporate name in October 2017. There are three main competitive advantages of the Locus Chain. It is a technology that manages TPS(transactions per second), scalability, and small sized ledgers. In terms of technology, competitors cited are Layer 1 blockchain mainnets such as Solana, Near, and Avalanche. “Locus Chain is a public blockchain that simultaneously pursues scalability that does not slow down even in decentralization and large-scale use,” CEO Lee said. “We fundamentally solved the problem of delaying transaction processing of existing blockchain, which had slowed down as users increased.”
The key technology that solved the latentcy in transaction processing is AWTC (Account-Wise Transaction Chain), a non-linear ledger structure. On top of that, it has solved the dilemma between decentralization and scalability by introducing a verifiable pruning technology that keeps the size of the blocks extremely small, and a dynamic sharding technology that randomly breaks the network into pieces. In particular, its strength is that it can operate nodes at ultra-low cost as it can operate without difficulty even on devices with low computing specifications such as mobile devices. Recently, Yuri Stav, a blockchain security expert, has joined as an advisor fascinated by the technological superiority of Locus Chain and received attention from the industry.
Among Bloom Technology’s blockchain technology, △ verifiable pruning of ledger, △BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) definitive consensus DAG (direction acyclic graph)-AWTC system were registered as patents last year. In addition, six other blockchain technologies will be patented. CEO Lee said, “If you develop games, you will develop a lot of new technologies. As we make a lot of new attempts, we have supplied game engine technology as a first and second partner of Microsoft since 2004, and our technological skills are superior that we have been suggested a M&A as well.
Application to Locus Chain, Game · Medical Care · Big Data · Smart City, etc
Bloom Technology is applying Locus Chain to the game industry, medical platform, big data business, and smart city. First of all, we are focusing on developing online strategic games to operate in blockchain by utilizing the expertise that we have accumulated whilst developing games for more than 30 years.
Bloom Technology, which succeeded in replacing the actual game server with Locus Chain, plans to release the online game “Kingdom Underfire on Locus Chain” this summer after receiving IP (Intellectual Property) rights from Blueside. Starting with this game, it plans to expand the participation of external developers so that Locus Chain technology can be used in other games.
CEO Lee said, “Locus Chain is finding and fixing bugs while acting as a game server,” and added, “We plan to provide financial and healthcare services one after another after the bugs disappear through sufficient testing in the game.” “If all certificates such as securities, insurance, and bonds are digitized and moved to the blockchain, a credit society can be formed by significantly reducing the risk of hacking or fraud,” he said. “I want to contribute to moving toward a developed digital credit society.”
Originaly published at https://www.mt.co.kr/ (June 27, 2022)
Go to See the Original Article: https://news.mt.co.kr/mtview.php?no=2022061417245449598&type=1
*Written in Korean
