AI & Machine Learning

Web3 Development

NFT & Metaverse

Blockchain Development

Blockchain Solutions

Products

Get in Touch
arrow-left Back to ‘Today at Nextrope Blog’

Is StarDust the future of blockchain gaming? Analysis of the project

Maciej Zieliński

14 Sep 2022
Is StarDust the future of blockchain gaming? Analysis of the project
Table of Contents

Nowadays, every game developer should be able to succeed financially by selling their products. Stardust's mission is to increase the revenue of authors of such productions. Blockchain has created a paradigm shift in the monetization of video games, transforming games from closed-circuit microtransaction revenue to an open-world meta-economy monetized through the community. The Stardust project makes blockchain technology easily accessible to any developer. This is because it is a platform for authors to create blockchain-based games easily. Like PlayFab (a complete platform for live games with managed game services, real-time analytics and LiveOps), Stardust allows developers to easily create and manage NFTs in their games without needing blockchain code. Notably, the platform is available to everyone, from independent developers to AAA (games with the highest budgeting and promotion). Creating fast, secure, and scalable blockchain-based games is time-consuming and expensive for developers. What does this project offer, and why is it worth knowing? We write about it below!

What problems does Stardust solve? 

The most significant advantages cited by developers when building virtual worlds with the help of Stardust are that:

  • Provides developers with a solution without writing code to create and manage NFTs,
  • Stardust optimizes transactions, making blockchain-based games as fast as non-blockchain games.

What does Stardust provide? 

The Stardust project provides players with wallets powered by Fireblocks. It is a platform for storing, transferring, and settling digital assets. It helps guarantee the best gaming experience. Players are supposed to be able to buy NFTs with a credit card or cryptocurrency easily. The Stardust payment widget allows many different options when purchasing NFTs. The Stardust Dashboard makes it easy for any developer to create game snippets without writing code.

StarDust

As part of navigating Stardust, game developers can:

  • Create NFTs for their productions,
  • Observe players and their inventory,
  • Configure their store,
  • Do without creating wallets, buying cryptocurrencies, or smart contracts.

Stardust API

The Stardust API decouples blockchain from game developers, and creating assets is as simple as a few lines of code. In addition, Stardust provides: 

  • No transaction signing. 
  • No private key management. 
  • Response time of 100ms. 
  • The processing engine takes standardized JSON data and converts it into signed blockchain transactions that are processed instantly. 

This is all to provide game developers with the instant response time they need and then send and settle transactions on the blockchain. With this model and serverless architecture, millions of in-game actions can be processed simultaneously, providing big games with the speed and scalability needed to run games at total capacity. The processing engine is also completely independent of the blockchain, making it possible to process many of them simultaneously. With the Stardust API, game developers can provide trust wallets for users to log in based on username/password or social media.

Stardust payments

There are many solutions in this area - Crypto, Wyre, Ramp, etc. However, game developers need a fully integrated product that allows them to sell their NFTs directly to Fiat rather than the indirect path of Fiat -> Crypto -> NFT. With Stardust's payment widget, with just a few lines of code, developers can start accepting credit cards from Circle, Coinbase Commerce, and other currencies.

Why isn't Stardust building a blockchain? 

Stardust is focused on enabling game developers to create games faster and more efficiently using NFT. Unlike authors who focus on blockchain technology - with Stardust, they can focus 100% of their resources on producing virtual entertainment. This has made Stardust an interesting option for adding value to major development studios, both native web2 and web3. Blockchains are like operating systems - each has unique advantages, disadvantages, and costs. Starting with the scalability dilemma and native web3 user interfaces, developers must consider many new factors during the implementation process. Some productions may require faster transaction speeds, while others may require greater security and flexibility regarding data stored on the blockchain. By maintaining a blockchain-independent approach, Stardust can provide game developers with the option to choose the blockchain that best suits their gaming needs. Fantastic blockchain and scaling solutions are available today - fast, flexible, cheap and secure. Stardust's product is aimed specifically at developers. 

What are Stardust's goals? 

In order for Project Stardust to best serve game developers, certain external theses had to be adopted. Stardust's goal is to make it as easy as possible to capture, manage and trade NFTs so that developers can focus on what they do best - making great games. Amazing blockchains and above-average teams are working on some of the world's most challenging issues. Stardust, as you can see, does not intend to compete with them but mainly to cooperate and work together to make their work easier through flexible and intuitive tools.

Dark Taverns - the first Stardust game 

Dark Taverns is a free-to-play open-world MMORPG set in a fantasy environment. Players can explore the deep forest and discover mysterious creatures and items, form guilds with friends needed to fight new threats, or explore the world alone. Gamers embark on an unforgettable journey in a new virtual world they can now explore like never before. Backed by a growing 39-person development team of former Ubisoft and NCSoft employees with extensive experience in AAA games, the developer has set itself a challenging task. With the increased emphasis on player ownership, people began to look for answers to what players want to own. In the case of Dark Taverns, the game's titular tavern is the focal point of the world. Players enter the world, meet, rest, and regenerate. The team began to think about how they could create more usability for players. With the development of Web3, the concept of a virtual property went from an idea to reality. Dark Taverns is exploring what this means not only for players but also for that outside of it. There are 10,000 taverns in this virtual world, all of which are available for purchase by interested parties. Players who own a Tavern can customize its appearance, rent rooms, and hold meetings and events. The boss determines changes in tavern settings. They can have public areas that anyone can enter or be pretty private. The latter can be not only a ticket to an event but also an invitation for people outside that game area to log in and enter a private room. A tavern is a virtual space that is not only a central point of entertainment but also a place for various virtual experiences. Owners can plan concerts, comedian appearances, or gatherings for both in-game and out-of-game guests.

First good game with full Web3 functionality

With the popularity of Web3, the Dark Taverns team immediately began exploring the possibilities of the technology. Today, the team can program all the elements of Web3 on its own. Co-founder, architect, and game developer Tony Hobda said: "We knew how to do it, but finding the best way to program Web3 made it a lot less effort. Dark Taverns wants to let players experience the benefits of blockchain-based gameplay without making it mandatory or the game's focus. Players can acquire or buy items they have the right to resell in the ecosystem or mint an item and sell it on the market. Stardust is a new Web3 platform focused on the Metaverse, specifically creating solutions that integrate blockchain services, such as NFT, with video games. Its latest collaboration is "Tilting Point," an independent developer's production for mobile devices. "Tilting Point," which previously created gameplay with a free-to-play model with transactions inside, is now moving to a play-to-pay model in which players can win NFTs by entering into a virtual world competition.

Stardust WEB 2 and WEB 3 

Web2 refers to the version of the Internet that most of us are familiar with today. The Internet is dominated by companies that provide services in exchange for personal information. In the context of Ethereum, Web3 refers to decentralized applications running on the blockchain. These allow anyone to participate without making money from their data.

The benefits of WEB 3 are as follows:

  • Everyone on the network has permission to use the service - in other words, no licenses are required,
  • No one can take away a user's right to participate in web3,
  • ETH tokens as forms of payment - an additional benefit is the flexibility of this solution, which allows for expansion and programming of further functionality.

WEB 3 disadvantages: 

Web3 now has some limitations. First, scalability - transactions in web3 are slower because they are decentralized. State changes, such as payments, must be processed by "miners" and distributed across the network. 

Second, UX -interaction with web3 applications may require additional steps, software, and education. This can present some obstacles. And third, cost - most successful applications place tiny pieces of code in the blockchain because it is expensive.

The future of blockchain-based gaming

The gaming sector itself is growing faster than the film industry. So it's no surprise that NFT and blockchain are being used to improve the industry. As of today, there are more than 1,450 games that have been developed on blockchain technology. The success of significant titles, e.g., Axie Infinity, shows that the cryptocurrency and gaming industries complement each other well. Unfortunately, larger gaming studios are holding back on investing in and producing such titles due to cryptocurrency laws and regulations. Let's hope that the situation will change to a more liberal one in time. 

Tagi

Most viewed

Never miss a story

Stay updated about Nextrope news as it happens.

You are subscribed

Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Kajetan Olas

22 Nov 2024
Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Authors of the contents are not affiliated to the reviewed project in any way and none of the information presented should be taken as financial advice.

In this article we analyze tokenomics of Aethir - a project providing on-demand cloud compute resources for the AI, Gaming, and virtualized compute sectors.
Aethir aims to aggregate enterprise-grade GPUs from multiple providers into a DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network). Its competitive edge comes from utlizing the GPUs for very specific use-cases, such as low-latency rendering for online games.
Due to decentralized nature of its infrastructure Aethir can meet the demands of online-gaming in any region. This is especially important for some gamer-abundant regions in Asia with underdeveloped cloud infrastructure that causes high latency ("lags").
We will analyze Aethir's tokenomics, give our opinion on what was done well, and provide specific recommendations on how to improve it.

Evaluation Summary

Aethir Tokenomics Structure

The total supply of ATH tokens is capped at 42 billion ATH. This fixed cap provides a predictable supply environment, and the complete emissions schedule is listed here. As of November 2024 there are approximately 5.2 Billion ATH in circulation. In a year from now (November 2025), the circulating supply will almost triple, and will amount to approximately 15 Billion ATH. By November 2028, today's circulating supply will be diluted by around 86%.

From an investor standpoint the rational decision would be to stake their tokens and hope for rewards that will balance the inflation. Currently the estimated APR for 3-year staking is 195% and for 4-year staking APR is 261%. The rewards are paid out weekly. Furthermore, stakers can expect to get additional rewards from partnered AI projects.

Staking Incentives

Rewards are calculated based on the staking duration and staked amount. These factors are equally important and they linearly influence weekly rewards. This means that someone who stakes 100 ATH for 2 weeks will have the same weekly rewards as someone who stakes 200 ATH for 1 week. This mechanism greatly emphasizes long-term holding. That's because holding a token makes sense only if you go for long-term staking. E.g. a whale staking $200k with 1 week lockup. will have the same weekly rewards as person staking $1k with 4 year lockup. Furthermore the ATH staking rewards are fixed and divided among stakers. Therefore Increase of user base is likely to come with decrease in rewards.
We believe the main weak-point of Aethirs staking is the lack of equivalency between rewards paid out to the users and value generated for the protocol as a result of staking.

Token Distribution

The token distribution of $ATH is well designed and comes with long vesting time-frames. 18-month cliff and 36-moths subsequent linear vesting is applied to team's allocation. This is higher than industry standard and is a sign of long-term commitment.

  • Checkers and Compute Providers: 50%
  • Ecosystem: 15%
  • Team: 12.5%
  • Investors: 11.5%
  • Airdrop: 6%
  • Advisors: 5%

Aethir's airdrop is divided into 3 phases to ensure that only loyal users get rewarded. This mechanism is very-well thought and we rate it highly. It fosters high community engagement within the first months of the project and sets the ground for potentially giving more-control to the DAO.

Governance and Community-Led Development

Aethir’s governance model promotes community-led decision-making in a very practical way. Instead of rushing with creation of a DAO for PR and marketing purposes Aethir is trying to make it the right way. They support projects building on their infrastructure and regularly share updates with their community in the most professional manner.

We believe Aethir would benefit from implementing reputation boosted voting. An example of such system is described here. The core assumption is to abandon the simplistic: 1 token = 1 vote and go towards: Votes = tokens * reputation_based_multiplication_factor.

In the attached example, reputation_based_multiplication_factor rises exponentially with the number of standard deviations above norm, with regard to user's rating. For compute compute providers at Aethir, user's rating could be replaced by provider's uptime.

Perspectives for the future

While it's important to analyze aspects such as supply-side tokenomics, or governance, we must keep in mind that 95% of project's success depends on demand-side. In this regard the outlook for Aethir may be very bright. The project declares $36M annual reccuring revenue. Revenue like this is very rare in the web3 space. Many projects are not able to generate any revenue after succesfull ICO event, due to lack fo product-market-fit.

If you're looking to create a robust tokenomics model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure your project’s resilience in the long term.

Tagi

Quadratic Voting in Web3

Kajetan Olas

04 Dec 2024
Quadratic Voting in Web3

Decentralized systems are reshaping how we interact, conduct transactions, and govern online communities. As Web3 continues to advance, the necessity for effective and fair voting mechanisms becomes apparent. Traditional voting systems, such as the one-token-one-vote model, often fall short in capturing the intensity of individual preferences, which can result in centralization. Quadratic Voting (QV) addresses this challenge by enabling individuals to express not only their choices but also the strength of their preferences.

Table of Contents

In QV, voters are allocated a budget of credits that they can spend to cast votes on various issues. The cost of casting multiple votes on a single issue increases quadratically, meaning that each additional vote costs more than the last. This system allows for a more precise expression of preferences, as individuals can invest more heavily in issues they care deeply about while conserving credits on matters of lesser importance.

Understanding Quadratic Voting

Quadratic Voting (QV) is a voting system designed to capture not only the choices of individuals but also the strength of their preferences. In most DAO voting mechanisms, each person typically has one vote per token, which limits the ability to express how strongly they feel about a particular matter. Furthermore, QV limits the power of whales and founding team who typically have large token allocations. These problems are adressed by making the cost of each additional vote increase quadratically.

In QV, each voter is given a budget of credits or tokens that they can spend to cast votes on various issues. The key principle is that the cost to cast n votes on a single issue is proportional to the square of n. This quadratic cost function ensures that while voters can express stronger preferences, doing so requires a disproportionately higher expenditure of their voting credits. This mechanism discourages voters from concentrating all their influence on a single issue unless they feel very strongly about it. In the context of DAOs, it means that large holders will have a hard-time pushing through with a proposal if they'll try to do it on their own.

Practical Example

Consider a voter who has been allocated 25 voting credits to spend on several proposals. The voter has varying degrees of interest in three proposals: Proposal A, Proposal B, and Proposal C.

  • Proposal A: High interest.
  • Proposal B: Moderate interest.
  • Proposal C: Low interest.

The voter might allocate their credits as follows:

Proposal A:

  • Votes cast: 3
  • Cost: 9 delegated tokens

Proposal B:

  • Votes cast: 2
  • Cost: 4 delegated tokens

Proposal C:

  • Votes cast: 1
  • Cost: 1 delegated token

Total delegated tokens: 14
Remaining tokens: 11

With the remaining tokens, the voter can choose to allocate additional votes to the proposals based on their preferences or save for future proposals. If they feel particularly strong about Proposal A, they might decide to cast one more vote:

Additional vote on Proposal A:

  • New total votes: 4
  • New cost: 16 delegated tokens
  • Additional cost: 16−9 = 7 delegated tokens

Updated total delegated tokens: 14+7 = 21

Updated remaining tokens: 25−21 = 425 - 21 = 4

This additional vote on Proposal A costs 7 credits, significantly more than the previous vote, illustrating how the quadratic cost discourages excessive influence on a single issue without strong conviction.

Benefits of Implementing Quadratic Voting

Key Characteristics of the Quadratic Cost Function

  • Marginal Cost Increases Linearly: The marginal cost of each additional vote increases linearly. The cost difference between casting n and n−1 votes is 2n−1.
  • Total Cost Increases Quadratically: The total cost to cast multiple votes rises steeply, discouraging voters from concentrating too many votes on a single issue without significant reason.
  • Promotes Egalitarian Voting: Small voters are encouraged to participate, because relatively they have a much higher impact.

Advantages Over Traditional Voting Systems

Quadratic Voting offers several benefits compared to traditional one-person-one-vote systems:

  • Captures Preference Intensity: By allowing voters to express how strongly they feel about an issue, QV leads to outcomes that better reflect the collective welfare.
  • Reduces Majority Domination: The quadratic cost makes it costly for majority groups to overpower minority interests on every issue.
  • Encourages Honest Voting: Voters are incentivized to allocate votes in proportion to their true preferences, reducing manipulation.

By understanding the foundation of Quadratic Voting, stakeholders in Web3 communities can appreciate how this system supports more representative governance.

Conclusion

Quadratic voting is a novel voting system that may be used within DAOs to foster decentralization. The key idea is to make the cost of voting on a certain issue increase quadratically. The leading player that makes use of this mechanism is Optimism. If you're pondering about the design of your DAO, we highly recommend taking a look at their research on quadratic funding.

If you're looking to create a robust governance model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure that your DAO will stand out as a beacon of innovation and resilience in the long term.

Tagi