Which blockchain is best for the gaming community?
When Gamer Ammo set out to build the gamerchain, we knew we would have to decide which blockchain would best suit the needs of the gamers using it. Our intent was to find a blockchain whose ideology mirrors the gaming industry’s. There is a vigorous discussion regarding which blockchain is “best” overall. There may not be one. We believe things are relative and that the merits of one chain may be deficits in other applications. We have found one chain which fits the ideals and requirements of the individual gamer and the gaming community. Gamer Ammo is using Ethereum Classic to implement the gamerchain.
Ethereum enjoys wider adoption than Ethereum Classic. However, we take issue with a controversial move that the developers made in 2016 to fork their blockchain and “roll back time” in response to a major event.
2016 saw one of the biggest attacks on blockchain technology. It was an attack on Ethereum that changed the course of the 2nd largest chain. The DAO, which was on track to hold the largest initial coin offering ever, had fatal errors in its code. The attack was catastrophic. Investors lost pretty much everything they had put into the DAO. Within 12 hours, however, some prominent developers behind Ethereum turned back time on their system with a hard fork. A second instance of the Ethereum blockchain predating the attack came into existence. Every transaction, including those unrelated to investments in the DAO, got nullified and appeared to have never happened. The community itself split according to their sentiment about the decision to implement a hard fork. Those who believed the measure to be the right course of action moved to the new Ethereum chain and those who believed it was not remained on what came to be called Ethereum Classic, which is one of the most widely adopted blockchains in use today.
To make things more clear, it helps to apply an analogy we, as gamers, can relate to. Ethereum is a video game that has many players — like World of Warcraft, for example. The hack took place at the account level in World of Warcraft to a famous player, someone like Leroy Jenkins. Leroy (here, the DAO) earned a bunch of gold and was about to top the charts for most gold ever owned by one player. However, he had loose hands with his crummy password. Someone logged into his account and stole everything. Following this, Blizzard, the developers of WoW, reverted the system to an earlier point in time to make it like the hack never happened.
Several things happen when the clock gets rolled back. All the loot found, all the weapons obtained, every level achieved, and every transaction made after the chosen point in time before the hack gets reversed. This includes any real-money transactions made inside the game. Every dollar transacted, and every hour spent inside the game, gone.
In this example, Blizzard would show that Leroy Jenkins, a single user, is more important than the rest of the gaming community. Gamer Ammo does not subscribe to that notion. It is unacceptable for a company or system not to place value on its community.
It should be obvious that the blame for the attack rests on Leroy’s shoulders. Just because he’s the most famous WoW player does not compel Blizzard to look after him and his assets. Were Leroy to petition Blizzard to roll back time to restore the loot and money he lost, they would reject him outright. It’s not Blizzard’s fault, the game’s fault, or even anybody’s responsibility to take care of him.
It does Blizzard no good to reverse an attack for the purpose of pleasing Leroy. The WoW environment has set rules and regulations that Blizzard’s engineers coded. Those apply universally and are agnostic to someone’s choice to keep a poorly secured account. The game has laws, like physics. They are found in the code. As those in the blockchain space who believe the fork shouldn’t have happened put it, “code is law.”
We are looking to create new ways of communicating and to offer real-money value to the entire gaming industry. We are building for ourselves, our friends, and the community. The gamerchain has to be built out of one which holds ideals like those in our gaming environments.
For us, Ethereum Classic stood alone among the host of options. Many in the blockchain space who claim to build for gamers have implemented on top of Ethereum. This choice that proves they’re not in this for the gamer — they’re in it simply for the blockchain and the profitability of the marketplace. A product is worthless without some base-level respect for its community of users.
It’s this respect for and acknowledgment of the primacy of the user which sets us apart and proves the merits of our project. We’re not building with the goal of monetizing the gamer. We’re building so the gamer can use our platform and earn money while doing so. Thus, our ideology of “Use & Earn” came to be. We want people to use our platform and not feel like they’re “just another user” off of whom a company is trying to make money. In fact, we intend to pay our users just for using the platform.
Gamer Ammo owes it to our users to build our product in a way that puts them and their assets first. For this reason, we are proudly using Ethereum Classic for development. As members of the second wave of blockchain, we focus on one particular user group. Additonally, we are using our platform to declare that gaming is a profession. This idea will see more elaboration in our white paper, which will be live on our website soon.
You can keep up to date on what we’re doing and be part of the discussion by joining our Discord server. We look forward to what the future will hold and to building a platform that puts the gamer first.
