Topic: Blocks of Crypto -- a Minecraft-Crypto Concept - page 4. (Read 868 times)

Spent the night up with some friends yesterday brainstorming how the economy could work. Updated OP with a lot more detail about playcash, tokens, etc.

Added some ideas to my OP.

I think players are generally quite saavy when it comes to pricing. In-game economy is usually very simple. If we implement a floating/dynamic value in the server-shop, it will reward attentive players who also manually vary their personal shop prices.

Let me very quickly explain the common setup for Minecraft economies.

• Server runs a shop. It buys and sells usually at hugely uneconomic prices, i.e. it sells diamonds at $500 per diamond but only buys them at $50 per diamond.
• Players can setup their own physical shops. These are either in protected areas like a rentable "stall" in a safe, server-managed shop complex OR out in the wild but on protected plots of land (this would be the case on our server, most likely) OR out in the wild and unprotected.

As for ours:

• In the economy I'm thinking about, the only way to directly earn Bitcoin will be to convert a special item into a premium currency balance in-game. Call it... blooptokens... whatever. One emerald = 1 blooptoken. Let's say.... 100,000 blooptokens = mBTC. Something like that.
• Non-premium in-game currency is measured in virtual dollars. The virtual dollar to blooptoken rate varies and is controlled by the server. In that sense, blooptokens are like a centralized token.
• Blooptokens can be spent directly with the server to withdraw BTC to an address.
• Blooptokens can be sent directly to other users without first converting to virtual $.

Went off on a little tangent there, but just had to get the idea out.


Not possible in Minecraft. Items all look different and named items are italicized. Very obvious what's what, so this is not a concern. There aren't different rarity diamonds, for example, just diamonds, emeralds, gold ingots, etc. They're all skinned differently and can be told apart quickly. Maybe naming an item would fool someone logging on for the first time, but any reasonably experienced (~a few hours?) Minecraft player would be able to pick up such an obvious scam immediately. It has the same chance of happening as someone falling for a Nigerian prince scam.


Having run my fair share of Minecraft servers in the past (including a network I still host but is pretty much deserted due to lack of advertisement), I'm aware of how to counter this. Simply put, there are plugins like this (https://dev.bukkit.org/projects/orebfuscator) that obfuscate nonvisble blocks, changing them into random blocks / other valuable blocks. Blocks are "revealed" or unobfuscated when exposed to air. This makes x-ray cheats redundant as suddenly every block is valuable until discovered legitimately.

The link is to a plugin that's outdated. There are newer alternatives, many of them. Not a problem to code, either, though I'm sure there are open-source options out there that the community has heavily refined or optimized. Would definitely be installing one of those, as well as an anti-cheat plugin to ensure fair play on the server as far as cheat/hack clients go. I use Spartan (https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/spartan-anti-cheat-advanced-cheat-detection-hack-blocker-1-7-2-1-17.25638/, link requires login on SpigotMC) on the network I run and it works well.

Possibly. But then how will the server get its balance in the altcoin? Unless you're suggesting we hold a hot wallet stocked with the altcoin of choice... which is risky if the altcoin dips. What's the transaction fee like for ETH? That's one of the most stable altcoins I know. Will check it out.


No doubt about it. I'm sure we can find a way to moderate in-game transactions, however, to prevent or dissuade/discourage scams in-game. What kinds of deceptive tactics are you thinking of?

I'm not sure. A long time ago, Minecraft players were pretty evenly spread between many small servers. Nowadays, the majority of the online population spends its time on large networks like Hypixel.

Personally, things that motivate me to stay on a particular Minecraft server are friends and community. I think I will focus heavily on the economic aspect of the server, perhaps even code something to make the server shop price items at a floating value based on demand and an artificially determined supply (i.e. admin can trigger a "shortage" or "surplus" of a certain item, driving the price up or down).


I checked it out. It's an interesting concept... perhaps it could be something we run regularly on the server. Like a jackpot-type thing, where the first person to find the random chest is rewarded with the pot to date, and only players who contributed a set amount to the pot can play.


I realize this. And of course, the problem would be accentuated by the fact that payouts to players would be very small to begin with. Could an alternative be to payout using an altcoin? Or, possibly, set the minimum threshold for payouts high enough that the fee would become less of a problem. That way, only players with sufficient balance would be able to withdraw their earnings. It might be possible this threshold is set unreasonably high for a single player to achieve, thus requiring a team effort or guild structure.

Towny structure: residents belong to towns, towns belong to nations. At each level, it's possible to set a daily tax. Perhaps this could be a way a single player might hit the threshold for withdrawals: by being a town or nation owner.


I'm sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean it might be a problem if players join out of financial motivation rather than having fun?


As mentioned in my original post:


In-game advertising is technically against the EULA.

Attracting players shouldn't be the main concern, instead, you should focus more on how you're going to keep them on the server in question and that depends on how simple the whole process is going to be for them.

I'm not a Minecraft player but I've heard about a somewhat similar server before ^{["link" - make sure to check the other links within that article as well]} and I think Minecraft players would probably enjoy having another option in regards to such a server.

Update 12/08/21: This graphic should explain things better:

 

Update 07/08/21: Join the Discord server!

Update 05/08/21: A lot has been made, including a good portion of the backend / wallet management. Started working on in-game GUI today. https://imgur.com/a/w1gDo10

Wow. Much hype. Many fancy title.

I've played Minecraft since 1.3 days and have always dreamed of this iea.

Actually a fledgling project and more of an idea than concrete code right now, but here's what I'm thinking:

The main idea is to run a Minecraft server where the economy is pegged to cryptocurrency.

• Users should be able to earn minute amounts of cryptocurrency, somehow
• Users should be able to trade this currency in-game both player2player and player2server, for in-game perks or items
• Users should be able to both deposit and withdraw cryptocurrency

This is what I'm thinking:

• A premium currency is created in-game, whether it be virtual (a number) or "physical" (stored in blocks/items)
• An example of such an item might be emeralds -- whose spawn would then be disabled in wild + villager trade disabled, so the only way to get emeralds would be from the server / some process / trade
• Emeralds could be worth, say, 0.01 mBTC

Edit 23/06/21

• In-game cash will be called "Playcash"
• Premium currency will be called "tokens"

With this in mind....

General economy

• Each token is pegged to a fixed amount of Bitcoin
• Given the server's limited supply of Bitcoin, the supply of tokens (total amount of tokens that can be in circulation) is also capped.
• The playcash/token exchange rate is variable. As the server bank runs out of tokens, the exchange rate goes up, thus increasing the playcash value of tokens users hold as well.
• The server bank does not buy tokens back for playcash. Users can sell tokens to other users, though.
• The server will always allow deposits and withdrawals of crypto, i.e. withdrawals and purchasing of tokens.

Quest system

• Quests are available to EVERY player
• They grant playcash and in-game item rewards
• Premium quests are unlockable with a season pass, purchasable with tokens
• Premium quests give better rewards or otherwise unattainable items (read: Miner's Cores, later on)

Towny

• Raiding is permissible and very possible in the open world, as no land is protected
• Towns allow for protection of land (importance explained later)
• Founding a town costs tokens (server "earns" money back)
• Town owners/leadership can charge members a set tax rate on their playcash balance daily
• Towns have a daily playcash upkeep cost
• Higher membership = more protected land
• Tax rate limited by competition (who wants to join a town with higher tax rate? tax rate set by players needs to be competitive with other towns)

In addition to towns, there are nations:

• While towns have players as members, nations have towns as members.
• Founding them costs tokens.
• Nations provide a HUGE boost to the amount of land claimable by member towns.
• Nations can tax TOWNS on a daily basis.
• Nations have a daily playcash upkeep cost, like towns.

Why is claiming land important?

Playcash -> token conversion mechanic

The conversion is NOT instant and the rate varies:

• In order to convert their playcash to tokens, users need to plant a special plant called a token plant.
• Practically, this will probably be a vanilla flower/plant we will disable from spawning naturally in the wild.
• Plants take x hours to grow. The faster they're set to grow, the worse the exchange rate (exponential % penalty)
• If another player breaks the token plant before it reaches maturity, they gain tokens instead of the plant owner, prorated for the amount of time the plant had been growing. The remainder of the ungrown tokens are discarded (portion given back to server, portion given to miners). It's therefore necessary to protect the growing token plants.

Miners

• Miners join the network by building massive, expensive, multiblock structures (think, like, a 9x9x9 cube of a valuable block) with a special block called a Miner's Core in the center
• Miner's Cores are purchasable ONLY from the server / given out as rewards
• Whenever tokens are spent/discarded/burnt due to fees, a portion of the burnt tokens = immediately distributed to the miner network.
• Each's miner shares the reward equally.
• Allows miner owners to earn tokens passively, but defending the miner multiblock structure is necessary.
• Miner's Cores can be broken and stolen

Technical stuff

• Minecraft server, set up for some gamemode... Towny?
• Custom Minecraft plugin to keep track of users' balances
• Custom server to manage the wallet

I use a dedicated server for all my projects, so development will be free. Actual production server would have to be different, of course, but I'm willing to tank that cost indefinitely. It's not that bad.

More importantly, one major challenge is finding an income source to fund the money that the server will be giving away. I considered in-game marketing the players, but that goes against the Mojang EULA.

I'm thinking:

• A partnership with a gambling site that has an API? Possibly allow users to bet on the site while in-game or (with the help of the Minecraft plugin) make bets more fun. Income would then be collected either directly in a fixed payment from the site or a % commission.
• It might be possible, however impractical, to create a way for users to mine BTC to their in-game balance... but unsustainable and inconvenient, to say the least
• Donations or sponsorships? Possibly selling cosmetic perks / perks that won't affect a player's ability to make/earn BTC in-game

Another challenge is advertising, as there's no real point in going through all this effort to create something that people aren't going to play on or use. I think that simply saying you can earn money while playing it will attract a large playerbase, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Lastly, there's the issue of security and trust. Who's to say I won't just walk away without paying anybody? Or barring that, who's to say the system won't be hacked into somehow and the coins stolen?

To-do list

• Make this forum post to gague interest / gather thoughts
• Buy domain: blocksofcrypto.io
• Wallet-handling server
• Minecraft plugin to handle balances
• Other Minecraft server setup (really fast)
• Beta testing
• Release
• Achieve ultimate victory??

Just a big mess of thoughts. Would love to hear your takes on it.

Edit

Some ideas:

• Quest system w something like a battle pass / seasonal pass. Users can complete quests and earn rewards, but these rewards are greatly amplified with the purchase of a seasonal pass that unlocks additional rewards. We make it feasible to make an ROI on this investment, but design it so that playtime and active contribution would be necessary. Can require that this user interacts with other users to breakeven on his investment in buying the season pass. Would encourage community building and also spice up the vanilla game.
• Run the server as modded server. I currently run a modded server with a custom modpack just for friends and DEFINITELY enjoy it more than vanilla Minecraft. Barrier to entry: potential users would have to download the modpack. Not a complicated affair, we can use public launchers/platforms like CurseForge (https://www.curseforge.com/) or the Technic Platform (https://www.technicpack.net/) to distribute the modpack, but it does add some hassle to the process of joining.