Behind the scenes: How BUFF’s loyalty rewards for gamers achieve reliability
It’s every serious gamer’s dream to earn a living playing for hours every day and it’s in every game publisher’s interest to keep gamers playing as long and as often as possible. A few lucky YouTubers have managed to make this a reality for themselves, but most have quickly found themselves taking on the role of entrepreneur rather than gamer, spending more time with marketing and video editing than actually playing.
Unfortunately, there is still no solution — no quick-fix to achieve the gamer’s dream. But there is a way to get added value (beyond that of entertainment, of course) for your time spent in-game, and it comes in the form of a cryptocurrency loyalty system called BUFF.
Similar to how many airlines offer rewards and frequent-flyer miles to passengers, BUFF’s system rewards you with tokens the more you play and the more you achieve in-game. Those tokens can then be traded between players, redeemed for all kinds of virtual, in-game products in any BUFF-supported game (regardless of which game you played to earn the tokens), or even exchanged for other currency types. For game publishers, the advantages of the BUFF system come in the form of extended play times, a new market of interested gamers previously unwilling to make in-game purchases, increased brand exposure and more.
But what’s going on in the background? How does token allocation work on the technical level and most importantly, how is BUFF protected from manipulation?
Firstly, BUFF is based on blockchain technology, known for its unprecedented level of security from cyber threats and its functional reliability. The benefits of blockchain permeate BUFF far beyond their staple cryptocurrency, since token allocation and verification also rely on the decentralized model.
The nodes that support BUFF’s blockchains are divided up into three tiers, with tier three playing the role of full nodes, awarding BUFF coins and writing the necessary blocks. So, what do tiers one and two do? Well, any and every gamer running the BUFF app is at least a tier one node, allowing the system to track their in-game progress and record data, screenshots and videos of gaming sessions. BUFF gamers move between nodes based on their activity within the BUFF community. So, as gamers play and become more active they earn their node status and are also rewarded for it. This means that the most loyal BUFF members will advance in the node tiers and progress to be tier two and tier three members.
Tier two nodes pick up this gaming data for checks and verifications. Tier two nodes can also be used as proxies to provide additional computing power to the BUFF Analytics Service. For all this, tier two nodes get a reward of bonus BUFF coins. Tier three nodes are the be-all and end-all, acting as elected witnesses in BUFF’s DPOS system.
This tier system allows for a quick, but complex web of security and validation of transactions and coin allocation. If in-game data passes the algorithmic check, BUFF coins are allocated to the gamer without a fuss. Players can also be banned (and can then dispute the ban) in case game data clearly defies the limits of reality, including impossible numbers of clicks and actions taken per minute. For the cases that fall somewhere in the middle, a secondary assessment is performed, involving nodes of tier two and three.
During this process, tier three nodes get additional data to be further analyzed by AI-based computer vision algorithms that have been provisioned to them. Based on the results of this analysis, the elected witnesses (tier three nodes) take a vote on whether to ban the player or award him the appropriate amount of coins.
Seeing the necessity for reliability, BUFF is standing behind a great product with a great, well-thought-out apparatus of background activity. Now gamers and publishers alike can benefit from a loyalty system with the reliability they deserve.
