Using DASH as a decentralized internal economy for games
Is crypto the future of game economies?
When game developers start working on a new game concept, one of the biggest problems that arise is how the economic system will work. What’s gonna be the in-game currency, how is it going to be earned, how to help the user feel the intrinsic value of it, and how the infrastructure will make it so its value remains at a usable level.
Most often than not, the purchasing of in-game currency is the main source of income for the parent company of the game you’re buying in, so it’s imperative for them to work towards incentives that will make you want to spend and boost the perceived value of it, and at the same time have a robust and serious structure you can build value from.
Using a decentralized application (dApp) could save devs a lot of time, money and help them make their users feel at ease with the underlying security of the payments infrastructure. This comes with many setbacks and challenges, so let’s start talking about how cryptocurrencies allow for more stable and healthier internal economies to thrive.
Disclaimer: from now on I will be using interchangeably the words coin and currency
Guidelines for Decentralized Virtual Banks
The basic idea of the marketplace is to allow independent game developers to register on the decentralized application to use crypto as the backing of the in-game coins (IGC) so users can:
- Cash in/Cash out IGC for crypto (raise the intrinsic value of the virtual asset)
- Transact between different games currencies
On top of this, the system will help bring to life new financial instruments based on different IGC pairs, like WoWGold/L2Adena, as well as assets pairs.
To ensure the health of the economic platform they would issue a number of IGC by paying via their crypto wallet. In this case, the only way of earning IGC is via the issuing of the new token on new crypto deposits or via a virtual inflation rate (diluting the crypto value amongst a greater quantity of IGC). To allow volatility and the possibility of money to fluctuate in value developers can include added ways of earning the virtual currency outside our dApp.
Buying in-game assets with Crypto
The number of different cryptocurrencies available in the market might be overwhelming. Each of them serves a purpose and we should not talk about which one of them will prevail but which of them will become the go-to for a specific use. For example; Bitcoin is widely considered the gold standard for value storage and USDT is the go-to stable coin protocol for fiat-backed stability assets.
For in-game assets, we would want a fast transaction (for the quick handover of coins/gold/etc), low fees (at least less than visa/Mastercard/other cc issuers, which is around 3–4%), and a stable network (to ensure consensus).
Choosing a Cryptocurrency: DASH
Initially set up in 2014, Dash first tackled the issues of confidentiality by bringing a mixing service to the table, but then expanded to other usability features to become what it is today. Dash found early adoption in darknet users due to the low fees and fast transactions but has since found greater success as digital cash. Dash has changed its name a few times, from xcoin to Darkcoin to finally settling on Dash, which is a portmanteau of Digital Cash.
The main reasons for choosing Dash include:
- Digital Identities: with the inclusion of a decentralized contact list users can have a global wallet they can use to store different game currencies that are not managed by a central authority. This is handled through DashPay, a dApp built upon Dash Platform (released in 2020 on the Dash testnet)
This means that each user is able to have an identity attached to multiple games, which will be more appealing to them. Another reason is that a username is always friendlier than handling multiple hashes for public addresses, and security is also tighter due to the decentralized encrypted nature of Dash Platform, so this is the perfect mix between identity (username) and security (Dash Platform) and mobility (Dash Pay).
- Transaction Nature: as we talked before [here](https://medium.com/dash-community/dash-instantsend-and-privatesend-214d2c9ab9e9), Dash technology allows a drop of tx time from up to 30 mins to seconds, which is a huge plus given the fact that Bitcoin’s main problem for mainstream adaptation is the fact that you have to wait a long time for it to be confirmed on top of a good amount of blocks.
Masternodes can easily accept transactions and broadcast those blocks to the main network for quick validation, and this technology is already being accepted by many of the most used wallets. This new kind of decision-making process is quite novel in the crypto space, and it encourages further development of the dash project alongside creating coins not for the miners but for the common good.
- Reliability: The two last points basically explain why we think Dash is the best network for a decentralized application aimed exclusively at gaming economies. Besides the usability advantages, the community itself stands out by working together on a straight line towards the project development. Masternodes are usually heavily invested authors (speaking about time, not only whales holding large chunks of the currency)
Conclusions
We talked about how a decentralized platform of virtual currencies can help online games, mainly heavily virtual capital intensive ones like MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) create an ecosystem where digital assets can be valued accordingly without a central authority nor shady schemes of artificial inflation that destroy the value of aforementioned assets at the expense of the users who paid their money for it. Dash is the perfect network for this because of its trustworthiness (shareholder-alike consensus) as well as its low transaction fees, times, and privacy (like the Dash mixing system, where your tx is sliced into chunks and only then mixed).
In the next chapter, we will be talking about building the peer-to-peer marketplace that could be used to buy and sell not only currencies but also assets like Counter-Strike Boxes, Warcraft Mounts, and more.
