Blockchain technology encompasses so much more than just cryptocurrencies these days. And while these currencies are by far blockchain’s most famous use case, the potential for blockchain far, far exceeds a straightforward transfer of value.
The gaming industry, for example, has always been fairly controversial due to a range of issues. Many players feel particularly worried about the protection of their data, fraudulent activities, high fees, and most of all, unfair and hidden odds.
In these cases, P2P doesn’t just mean peer-to-peer; it means player-to-player. As with the other P2P industries that blockchain is disrupting, such as FinTech, there are already plenty of ways in which blockchain technology is being applied to resolve these issues and many more of the challenges faced by the gaming industry. Here are just a few.
Reducing fraud
The gaming industry suffers a lot from online fraud. One of the main advantages of blockchain technology is that it enables highly secure data encryption. What’s more, all of it is entirely accessible and transparent to the player. In other words, blockchain is a for game changer for venues such as online casinos, lotteries, and virtually anything which relies on random number generation.
On top of this, hackers will have particularly hard time, if it is even possible, to destroy a decentralized blockchain network, making sure gamer data stays safe. This is an inherent feature of distributed ledger technology whereby nodes in the ledger maintain the distributed databases in a shared manner, and each node has the complete information in the entire database.
Making In-Game Purchases a Lot Easier
In-game purchases are particularly popular and are currently one of the main ways for game developers to monetize their growing user base, keeping them in business and keeping players playing.
Allowing players to purchase in-game assets using a dedicated cryptocurrency eliminates the intermediaries and delays. In other words, players will be able to purchase their in-game items instantly, and at a reduced cost.
Unique Interoperable Player Profiles
If the game is developed on the blockchain, its players will be able to take their unique public address from one game to another. This means that they will be able to transact with their cryptocurrencies across different games from the same public address.
This creates incredible flexibility and cross-platform interoperability which far exceeds the capabilities and constraints of existing centralized solutions.
Total Asset Ownership
In the majority of the existing gaming solutions, the players don’t really own their in-game purchases. A distinct benefit of blockchain games is that they allow players to truly hold ownership of their assets by using smart contracts in order to govern in-game transactions.
These smart contracts are executed automatically upon fulfilling the pre-set conditions and, as with any other smart contract, the results cannot be reversed.
In other words, when you launch a blockchain-powered game, all of the in-game assets that the users have bought through smart contracts are immediately transferred to their public address. Another distinct benefit here is that these smart contracts allow for full transparency and every player can easily take a look at the implied rules.
AERUM: A Blockchain Fit for the Challenge
One of the biggest challenges faced by blockchain gaming is speed. The majority of the existing networks are just too slow for serious gaming. Take a real world example: in a real-time multiplayer game, even a very simple action can easily trigger a cascade of state changes. But because existing blockchains are too slow, even this simple action can take a serious toll on the frame-rate because every single state change has to be verified on the blockchain.
Here’s where AERUM comes in.
AERUM’s network is blazing fast. Compared to the competition, AERUM provides incredibly high-performance with a quick 2 second block time and real-time transaction execution in less than 5 seconds.
The network also delivers virtually unlimited, on-demand scalability being able to handle 500 to 100,000+ transactions-per-second. It is 100% compatible with the industry forerunner Ethereum, while, at the same time offering 25x better throughput. AERUM also features end-to-end integration with Ethereum, guaranteeing easy and secure transfers thanks to cross-chain atomic swaps.
You can read more about the AERUM network on its official website or stay tuned on the project’s Facebook or Twitter page. You can also join the live discussion at the official Telegram group!