From mytime to Expload

How We Scrapped our ICO and Pivoted to a Game Platform on Blockchain

Hi, there! It’s been a while since mytime posted any news. Over the past months, our team has racked up a book’s worth of stories: we made several pivots, refused to hold an ICO, worked out the final concept and plunged ourselves into the product activities.

Our Early Journey — How We Planned an ICO

Phase 1. Mining in Computer Games

Back in summer 2017, we hatched a plan to run our own ICO. The idea was to transform the time a person spends playing computer games into a cryptocurrency mining process.

Had we launched our ICO then, I bet we’d have made our scoop. However, already then our team realized that this awesome idea was unlikely to come to life. Even the simplest AI can simulate a player, unless we have a chip implanted into each player’s brain to make sure that people aren’t replaced by bots. I’m sure you get my meaning.

So, the original idea apparently needed a tweak.

Phase 2. Evaluating Time

Our new concept was no longer focused on games, but to let the companies themselves track how much time people spend on their services and determine on their own how much they are ready to pay for this time.

We decided to create a protocol-based blockchain to bind human time and money. That is, a tool to evaluate time. The idea was a utopia, however, good enough for an ICO. Why then running an ICO if not for utopias?

But our aspiration to deliver a viable product kept us moving ahead and new ideas popped up. And it wasn’t long before we made another pivot.

Phase 3. Big Data and User Behavior

In its third incarnation, mytime was centered around big data. To put it simply: companies integrate their products with our service, thereby getting an opportunity to garner user behavior data and a further opportunity to sell this data in an automated way. As for users, they get cryptocurrency for the time spent consuming the product. Hang out in a chatroom, read online articles, order a taxi ride — and small rewards will drip into your account.

The nature of collected data, as we reckoned, would enable businesses to predict user behavior within their products.

We moved far in this incarnation, having delivered a functioning blockchain based on Tendermint. We implemented special transactions to buy and sell data, and immersed ourselves in data ontology and unification.

At the same time, it was clear that launching a platform like that would be a tough nut to crack.

Canceled ICO and a Pivot to Blockchain Games

After several months of being immersed in the world of blockchain, we came to realize that the technology is still extremely raw. It’s far from penetrating all aspects of our daily lives. Therefore, to foster business on the spot, we needed to find a ready market for the technology.

By then, our technical team had gained the wealth of relevant knowledge and absorbed the blockchain philosophy. We chose to cancel the ICO and come back to the industry where we boast the biggest experience and expertise — computer games.

Computer games make a perfect match with blockchain. They have long coexisted hand-in-hand with digital assets — in almost any game, a person owns some internal currency, which is very similar to crypto.

However, internal currency together with other assets obtained in a game is constrained within the game universe. When leaving a game, a player loses everything. The in-game stuff earned in blood and sweat turns into useless garbage.

The use of blockchain to store in-game currencies and digital assets is a way to tackle this issue. Everything that players obtain, win or earn in games, becomes their inalienable property. They can use their earned in-game currency in other games, exchange it for cool items or real-world money to purchase whatever they wish.

As for developers, blockchain can propel their economic relations with players to a whole new level. In-game items and currency are relevant in the real world and hence grow in value.

And, at the end of our thorny journey to delivering a game product, we made another difficult decision — to change our brand name from mytime to Expload.

Expload Platform: For Players and Developers

Our aim is to encourage the development and popularization of blockchain-based games. We seek to engage the developers who are enthusiastic to create myriads of fabulous games, and gamers who will enjoy playing such games.

The Expload platform comprises three basic components: blockchain, SDK and user application.

1. Our blockchain is based on Tendermint (tendermint.com). In order to execute smart contracts, we have created our own virtual machine, specifically for games.
2. SDK — a toolkit for the rapid game integration with the blockchain. We have developed the architecture for seamless integration with any programming environment. Our API is friendly with the majority of existing game engines: Unity, Unreal Engine, Defold, etc.
   Aside from API, SDK offers a vast base library of game smart contracts and enables one to translate smart contracts written in Solidity, C# and other languages into the bytecode of our virtual machine.
3. User application — a game store, a marketplace to swap in-game items and a space for community socializing. Be sure it has a crypto wallet as well. Basically, it’s a crypto analogue of Steam.

Expload’s philosophy rests on three pillars that, we believe, make it stand out among its peers:

Cryptogames should go beyond mere speculation and gambling.

We are passionate about integrating the classic gameplay with the crypto economy in a seamless and natural way. Just imagine CRPG having crypto instead of the in-game currency. Or MMOG with guilds metamorphosing into micro businesses, where officers get their salaries, newcomers farm crypto for the guild’s needs and strong leaders pave the way to everyone’s prosperity and welfare.

The platform should accept any currency from users, fiat in the first turn.

A payment card acquiring solution is a must since it’s critical to promote the platform among casual players. Many want to simply play without digging deep into blockchain and cryptos.

Expload is not only technological, but also a legal and financial solution for game developers.

In addition to establishing the technological base for our platform, we are developing legal schemes that help developers build up a legitimate business in digital assets.

Game Developers and Proof-of-Authority

If you’ve ever been involved in making an infrastructure service for game developers that stockpiles user data on servers, you must have come across a problem — developers are reluctant to share their customer data.

The common question asked by a developer when approached with a proposal to integrate your service is “Why am I supposed to share my users with you? They are my most valuable asset.”

With our platform, developers don’t have to pass their user data to third parties. They operate the blockchain’s nodes alongside with other developers. Since they handle the nodes themselves, all the data remains on their own servers. At the same time, they can share data with each other — and reap the benefits. You share your users and get access to the common database maintained by the network members. Win-win.

At the first stage, our blockchain will use the Proof-of-Authority mechanism. Nodes will be granted to authorised game developers only, to prevent external data leakage. It will allow us to fine-tune the platform at the start and maintain control over it.

Already in August, we are going to launch closed beta testing, and in the fall our platform is scheduled to go live. We can’t wait to welcome game developers and players to our platform, with arms wide open → expload.com

P.S. Why Expload?

According to the feedback from the first game studios integrating with our platform, the name mytime is hardly associated with games. Actually, it came as no surprise to us.

As a result, the name Expload was coined. Exp denotes experience in computer games. Load has two meanings: 1. game loading and 2. a pile of experience when combined with exp.