
Minecraft Server with a Bitcoin-denominated monetary system - martindale
http://bitquest.co/
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flashman
How do you handle cheating?

If you're hosting all the wallets, what's to stop you (or someone who gains
control of the server) taking off with all the money?

Don't get me wrong, this is very cool and using real money might solve a whole
lot of Minecraft's social/"tragedy of the commons" problems, but I'm
interested what other issues it brings up.

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phaser
This concept should be considered experimental (and we should emphasize more
this) ànd you're right, there's nothing stopping me to take off with all the
money.

Or a hacker.

We suggest to players to keep the minimum stored in their game wallets and
cash out frequently as a precaution.

We are experimenting with Wallets that need to be signed by both the Client
and the Server to make operations and when the time comes I'll be happy to
share my findings.

~~~
zimbatm
The only way to make it secure is for users to bring their own wallet. On
first connection they would input their wallet ID so monster look can be paid
out.

When a user wants to buy something he needs to make it outside of minecraft,
or use a custom minecraft extension that handles the wallet client-side.

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bowmessage
This is really cool. Sounds like you can earn bitcoin just by playing, without
an initial investment? How are these monster drops funded?

I'm also curious to see if the latency of the blockchain has any affect on
gameplay.

~~~
phaser
Hi, BitQuest developer here.

In a nutshell, every item bought from villagers goes to a "loot" wallet where
sort of randomly faucets out back to players who kill monsters.

This post explains it a little bit more:

[http://bitquest.co/2016/05/19/bitquest-2.html](http://bitquest.co/2016/05/19/bitquest-2.html)

~~~
bowmessage
Nice! How do you feel about gambling? Plans to do anything similar to
BitVegas[1]?

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitVegas](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitVegas)

~~~
phaser
I've never gambled IRL or online and I won't feel comfortable to write
gambling code as opposed to skill based games, which is what i've been playing
my whole life.

I'll be happy to help, by making the bitquest repository easy to understand so
people who want to make it can use our code.

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zeta0134
Isn't this against the EULA for Minecraft? I thought selling in-game items for
real world money was prohibited.

~~~
phaser
I can't answer your question but i want to clarify that All Bitcoin spent in
items go back to the players in form of 'loot money' and not used for
monetisation. I hope that makes the difference,

I will try to get legal help for intepreting the EULA and hopefully if we
break it we can modify the server so it meets requirements. (Charging for
access? Sell only cosmetic items?)

~~~
zamalek
As I recall Notch specifically used the word "monetization" in his
announcement blog post. This is the intent of the EULA, so if there's a
problem I assume it would be adjusted.

~~~
SquareWheel
Cosmetics are allowed, as well as charging for overall access to the server.
But "secondary currencies" or buying in-game advantages for real money are
disallowed.

You may be thinking about the original terms for mods, which was a more
general "don't monetize it".

~~~
zamalek
> mods, which was a more general "don't monetize it".

You're right, I was mistaken.

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DennisP
Ethereum could work even better for this. You can implement some of the logic
in smart contracts, store arbitrary data on the blockchain, and the block time
is 15 seconds. It's also easy to use multisig schemes to keep the money more
secure.

~~~
Shorel
I concur.

This is fantastic use case for a smart contract.

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tomc1985
A while back I launched Bitcoin Armory for the first time only to discover it
had to download the entire blockchain(!) before it could seemingly do
anything. Does a game like this bloat the blockchain, and if it does, do
people care?

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phaser
I am very looking forward to SegWit and the Lightning Network and if it makes
sense (probably will) to make a sidechain for BitQuest servers we'll try to
implement that. In the meantime, we only process a limited amount of
transactions per user per second so we don't spam the Blockchain

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martindale
Eric Martindale here with Blockstream! Let us know if you need any help
setting up a sidechain for this. It makes a lot of sense for your use-case.

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kordless
Minecraft's database, and the elements worth value inside of it, are not based
on a blockchain. This makes the entire server's economy as secure as the
underlying code around exchanging items of value, mob kills, etc. Proposing
they use a sidechain solves no problems for their use-case, as far as I can
tell.

Given sidechains are already fairly complicated to understand[1], I'm not sure
I get why suggesting their use without showing the use-case here makes a lot
of sense for building Blockstream's business model. I guess that's the
difference between promoting a company and contributing in a conversation.

[1]
[https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf](https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf)

~~~
martindale
Take, for example, the Asset Issuance Element [1]. Not only could the currency
become a tradable asset, but individual items and mobs in shops could be
tracked as digital assets as well. There is much opportunity for expansion
with a sidechain implementation here.

[1]: [https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/asset-
issuance/](https://www.elementsproject.org/elements/asset-issuance/)

~~~
kordless
Well, I'm intrigued. Thanks for the information.

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stephengillie
I call my server currency "Gil" and "Gilcoin" would have been the crypto
currency. Server is named Gilcraft, and it uses iConomy for its economy
plugin. I had the idea at least a year ago, but never got around to
implementing the crypto part.

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odonnellryan
I was thinking about this recently: it'd be really cool to play even a text-
based game that had crypto-currency backed econ.

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wingerlang
Why?

I mean it seems like everyone just wants to slap 'crypto currencies' and
'blockchains' onto everything nowadays.

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mpnordland
Maybe it encourages immersion if there's real, or at least pseudo real money
involved

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jdmichal
There are other ways. I'm a big fan of Eve Online's PLEX system. PLEX is an
in-game item purchasable with real money which can be cashed in for one month
of play time. It does a great job of linking the in-game economy with real
money.

Basically, PLEX is Eve Online's equivalent of a gold-backed currency. There's
something _real_ behind the play money, even if it cannot be extracted once
committed.

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mhluongo
Congrats guys! Stoked to see BitQuest evolving.

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Joof
As a game player and hobbyist game designer: please don't do this. It's pretty
much guaranteed to become exploitive by design.

