How Constantinople hard fork will affect War Riders and other NFTs. Alpha updates, security notes and more.

Hello Warriors,

As you probably know, the Constantinople “Network Upgrade” is scheduled to take place at block #7280000, which will bring multiple efficiency improvements to the Ethereum network, as well as the delay of the so-called “difficulty bomb.” In addition, the decrease of Ethereum’s block reward will also occur, which will reduce the inflation of ETH on the Ethereum blockchain. The upgrade is set to occur in less than 24 hours, and you can watch the countdown here.

What should you do to protect yourself from potential unwanted consequences (such as losing your BZN or cars)?

The short answer? Nothing. For the majority of Ethereum users, the network update should go pretty much unnoticeable, and regular users will not see any drastic changes. The longer answer would be to avoid storing your ETH at the exchanges, if possible, and do not perform any major transactions or transfer of cars or BZN during the fork time. We’ve heard that some exchanges will even be locking the transactions and transfers on the Ethereum network during the upgrade.

Where should I store my cars/BZN during the fork?

We recommend that you keep all your vehicles/BZN in the officially supported wallets, such as MetaMask, Trust, Coinnase Wallet, or Bitski. We strongly advise against experimenting with new wallets and, in particular, entering your seed phrase elsewhere. We’ve been hearing some crazy news about the wallets allegedly neglecting major security protocols and exposing users’ private keys, such as this Coinomi Wallet bug. Remember that you, alone, are in control of your assets, and if you don’t do stupid things your digital items will be safe.

Hard fork details and what it means for War Riders:

The Constantinople update will be a hard fork. This means that, on 2/28/19, we will switch to an entirely new chain, and the old chain will be abandoned. All your vehicles and BZN will automatically be migrated to a new chain, and there is no action required on your end. We are all excited about this update, and we hope that it will positively affect the network and our game. This exciting new change is a major step towards a more efficient and ecological proof-of-stake consensus system.

In general, we expect slightly cheaper transaction costs and faster speeds from this new update. In addition to that, the Constantinople upgrade will make it easier for startups like War Riders to implement scaling solutions based upon state channels and “off-chain” transactions. You can read more about the upgrade here.

Customization fix delivered on time.

Recently, we have successfully released a first version of vehicle customization, and it was a huge success. Overall, we received positive feedback from our users, and we were happy to see newly customized rides with personal branding attached. It wasn’t without hiccups, though. Several users reported unresponsive application on some macOS devices and green-flushed Lambos appearing out of nowhere. We quickly delivered the fix, and the latest version is now running smoothly across all devices. If you haven’t yet downloaded the fix, please do so by following this link.

Downloading new versions is painful and time consuming.

We hear you. This is why the next update will come packed with a state-of-the-art game launcher with automatic incremental updates, so that you will never again have to manually download anything. Moreover, the launcher won’t have to download a whole game every time there is an update pushed. A tiny bit of patching will be required, which will be delivered with a blazing fast speed, and you will be back in the game immediately. You’re welcome. We will also be open-sourcing this launcher for anyone to use freely within the community.

Updates on the alpha. Test drives released next week!

We are still actively working on the alpha release of the game, and our end of February target will have to be slightly postponed. Per the community decision, the premium vehicle sale will stay open at least until the release of alpha so that we can keep onboarding new players. Delays are typical within this highly innovative, groundbreaking tech industry, and it is often difficult to estimate accurate delivery timeframes, especially with the amount of hidden problems we have been facing lately. For example, the Constantinople update was finalized last August, and, only now, seven months later, it is finally hitting the main net. We will soon provide another update on when we expect the official arrival of alpha, which is likely going to happen within a month or two. We understand that the delays are frustrating, but we are doing everything in our power to deliver a high-quality alpha ASAP. We definitely don’t want to sacrifice the security of our game, which sometimes comes at the expense of delays.

We are excited to announce that the test drives are scheduled to be released next week, at which point you will be able to individually take your vehicles for a spin in the Wasteland, fire your test weapons and check out the graphics quality for yourself. Make sure these vehicles are customized and ready to go!

Do you have enough vehicles to test drive next week?

If not, you can always stack up here or on our official bundle page.

NFT NYC was a huge success!

War Riders presented at the NFT conference in New York City last week and received extremely positive feedback. Audiences loved the drive of our game, and we’ve made tons of connections. Our ads were playing on the huge screens in Times Square, and we were proud of the achievements we’ve made. Some videos from the conference are already available on the Ian Utile’s YouTube channel, but more should be coming soon, and we will post them in our discord and telegram as soon as they go live.

Stay safe during the fork, and may the BZN be with you!