November update — Devcon IV, Plasma Dog, Node Tokyo.
November began in Prague 🇨🇿 where our entire team met up for Devcon IV. This was our first Devcon as ‘Hoard’ and we were excited.
Another big reason for our excitement was that we had a surprise waiting to be announced during the conference. It was a little retro 2D-platformer game called Plasma Dog, which we developed in collaboration with our friends at OmiseGO.
We were ready, as well, with hoards of swag to give away. 😎
Plasma Dog competition at Devcon 🎮 💪
We announced the Plasma Dog competition where we gave people a 3-hour window in which to play the game and the top 3 scorers would get prize packs consisting of OmiseGO and Hoard merch.
It wasn’t long before we could hear the sweet sounds of chiptune resonating softly from people’s laptops and mobile phones. We even caught people playing during the talks, which we were slightly #sorrynotsorry about… 😈
Only minutes into the competition, we had furious competitors, trying to get to first place on that leaderboard, but finally, we got our winners!
What was really exciting though was seeing the excitement on the faces of Hoard’s and OmiseGO’s developers when the game launched and people started playing. It was a testament to the robustness of the OmiseGO network and the Plasma implementation that they had built to handle the amount of transactions that the game generated.
Additionally, as most of Hoard’s engineering team are from game development backgrounds, seeing people play and enjoy the game was exhilarating for them. This laser-sharp focus on the gamer should also give you a glimpse into the reason why we’re all building Hoard — to ensure that game worlds are fair and equitable for their users.
Hoard co-founder, Wendell Davis, in conversation with Stewart Brand…
Devcon4 attendees also got the privilege of listening to the legend that is Stewart Brand, famous for his early activism of decentralized and libertarian technologies and founder of the Whole Earth catalog and one of the oldest online communities still active, The WELL (founded in 1985!).
He spoke with OmiseGO’s Althea Allen and our Wendell Davis in what many attendees described as “the most inspiring talk” at this year’s Devcon. They covered a whole range of topics, however, the real treasure was being able to learn from Stewart’s philosophy (“Unmake victims, start with yourself, and then go from there”) and see the perspective of our community from someone who has been involved in some of the most important Internet and technological developments of the past (“Don’t solve a problem just because you can imagine it. You’ll design freedom out of the system”).
Make sure you follow the Ethereum Foundation’s YouTube channel where the video will be posted soon.
Node Tokyo 🇯🇵 💫
Then, our CEO, Slawomir (‘Malf’) and our Plasma engineer, Radek, went to speak at the blockchain conference Node Tokyo.
Malf talked about how blockchain can be used in computer games in order to benefit both game developers and gamers. You can read more about these points in our blog posts: Use cases for blockchain in games: For game developers and Use cases for blockchain in games: For gamers.
He also used Plasma Dog as an example of how a blockchain game doesn’t need to be user-unfriendly, especially for people who have never used a decentralized application before. For most blockchain games, before a user can even begin to play the game, some of the activities they’ll need to undertake include purchasing crypto from an exchange, going through KYC and AML vetting on those platforms, learning to transfer funds and using MetaMask. With Plasma Dog, you simply follow a link and begin playing in the browser. The game automatically generates a key for you on your device and you don’t even need to create an account.
We think that starting to play a blockchain game for the first time should be as easy as that. How else are we going to get millions of new users to crypto via games?
As gamers become more and more invested in a game and accumulate game assets that are valuable that they want to protect, however, we realize that this level of security is not sustainable…
Which brings us to our next point…
Our solution for private key storage 🗝
This is a big issue that we’ve been thinking about for ages. It goes to our point above, which is: How do we get new users of blockchain if it’s just so damned difficult to get started?
We spent the last couple of months researching this and have come up with a solution that we’re going to test. Our lead dev, Cyryl, has written up a blogpost with more details on this which we’ll publish next week. Stay tuned.
Congrats! 🎉 You made it to the end of our update, so now you get to play Plasma Dog. Go to plasmadog.hoard.exchange and see if you can’t beat the current position-holders in our Hall of Fame! 🏆💪
🎶 Can’t get that sweet 8-bit Plasma Dog tune out of your head? Check out Jakub ‘AceMan’ Szeląg’s profile on Soundcloud and his YouTube channel for more!
Want to find out how we’re transforming the world of gaming?
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