Topic: Can Blockchain Gaming Drive Cryptocurrency Adoption? (Read 687 times)

Gambling, and crypto gambling in particular, is a niche market

Put differently, it's not likely we wake up tomorrow and cryptocurrencies get accepted everywhere because of gambling. As said in the article, gambling was vitally important for Bitcoin's initial boost, but currently, its potential is pretty much depleted and exhausted. It doesn't mean that gambling is irrelevant, but it is just there already unlike blockchain gaming which is still on its way to the peak (hopefully)

that is one major benefit of blockchain gaming. the transaction IDs are recorded forever in the network. and also, the possible earnings that you can get when converted your earned coins to your fiat. before, gamers are just happy to collect coins which they can only use within the game, upgrade skills/costumes/accessories. you are even willing to buy those items to build your character. but now, the chance of earning coins that can be converted to your fiat is one major motivation to deploy your skills and spend long hours playing those games.

this site below provides long list of blockchain games with their corresponding network used (eth, enjin, tron, eos, btc, steem, wax, decentraland, phantasma, xaya, loom, etc) -
https://egamers.io/blockchain-games-list/

and this recent article discusses the top most anticipated blockchain games this year -
https://www.blockchaingamer.biz/features/3283/most-anticipated-blockchain-games/
Age of Rust
Blankos Block Party
Crypto Space Commander
CryptoWars
Gods Unchained
Hash Rush
Neon District
The Sandbox

with the existing long list of these blockchain games, i believe this area will drive crypto adoption among gamers. and gamers have no problem adopting this development as they are used to more complex transactions within their games. remember gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar one! so if crypto can penetrate this industry, this will be a good boost in adoption

What other games in real life with coins and so forth provides is the thing that dapps missing out and that is the problem. In real games you could do what everyone else can do, be max level or have the greatest attributes, or whatever else that doesn't change the game play at all, but do you know what gets sold?

Either being able to do all of that very quickly without having to grind, so for free it takes 50 hours but if you pay 50 bucks you get it right away, or you get skins and costumes for a price as well, doesn't change a lick in the type of playing but the look will be different with a new skin.

So, if games in blockchain world stop making the games played with money and make it played with zero money but have some incentives for microtransactions, they could be good.

I believe blockchain gaming has future, because its not the typical games that we used to play before. Blockchain games are quiet unique, because everything you purchased in the game is yours forever or you can trade it to other players thanks to NFT technology.

Right now I’m enjoying playing the play to earn Axie Infinity, I love the gameplay and also enables me to earn decent amount of money by just playing. Not shilling the game but tbh its one of the coolest and profitable one IMO.

I think game based micro transactions are the logical market to tap for those interested in mass adoption. The creators of fortnite are known for purchasing thousands of acres of land for the purpose of furthering wildlife conservation. Rather than pitching bitcoin mass adoption to Warren Buffett, a large shareholder of Wells Fargo, Chase, JP Morgan and other banking institutions. It could be more effective to pitch bitcoin mass adoption to the existing owners and developers of existing microtransaction based games with large fanbases who are known to occasionally back humanitarian causes.

Blockchain gaming is an interesting niche market. The main difficulty with blockchain gaming could be the gaming industry being performance oriented. While blockchain, being an encryption based security algorithm, is the inverse opposite of performance. Which isn't to say there isn't future potential for blockchain gaming. There certainly are applications and niche markets where blockchain gaming could take off in the future. Gaming being a highly manpower and time intensive industry however, it could require multi-million dollar budgets and years for blockchain gaming to be able to compete with standard AAA titles.

Hey Barbara,

> You are wrong because to use an application one does not have to learn the language or the technology being used behind it.

Your comment is dead-on -- and the platforms are coming (Saito ftw -- https://saito.io/arcade). Exactly what you are talking about.

One issue is that most of the attention in "blockchain gaming" is on NFT tokens and ponzi games like "King of EOS". Those are basically all scams which pass themselves off as "fun" because it's a marketing angle. Maybe there is a small chance you won't lose your money, let's see! They target specific crypto communities as a marketing technique.

Know for a fact that almost all of the games that are getting real usage don't have NFTs or require in-app payments. Best guess is that 90 percent of the gameplay on Saito is from games that use the wallet keys to encrypt and sign messages and integrate that stuff into underlying gameplay (mental poker -- shuffling a deck or rolling a dice using encryption so things are provably fair). Payments can plug into the games, but the real advantage is replacing companies like Steam and the Apple Store that control the distribution of software and allowing people to run/own their own games instead of getting monetized by middlemen.

You are wrong because to use an application one does not have to learn the language or the technology being used behind it. For example I am using whatsapp on my mobile but I know nothing about how it works and what code is used behind it. You do not have to relate cryptocurrency with blockchain gaming either because the basic aim of blockchain technology is to provide a fair and verifiable environment.

I believe if some games can be developed such that we can play them and the in-app purchases are being made compulsory to go through cryptocurrencies then we can surely see a huge growth in crypto prices and overall adoption too.

I like the idea but I wonder if we have developers who are able to do it and if able then are they really interested in doing it.

Might be the next to rise after the hype of Defi. But I hope that Kittiefight, a gamified mortal kombat for cryptokitties will perform well on the matket after the launch. I love gaming but more on clash of clans (COC) type of games.

I do not agree with you, I wasn't a person who gambled with fiat, yet when I got into crypto, I saw all the gambling places that I could take advantage of with my crypto, plus since there is not really that many things to do in crypto world I realized that casinos are one of the rare places I could spend my money, the other option was sell my coins, so I decided to give it a try and that is how I got hooked on it.

Now I do not gamble as much as I used to, right now I gamble only a bit but at the end of the day I did gambled a ton with crypto without ever gambling with fiat. Obviously, I did tested to gamble with fiat, sportsbooks are great and I tested it but when it was fiat the method was too complicated, even though simple it took long time so I did it 2 times or maybe 3 times and stopped.

Bitcoin will be like a advantage earning from the website.Because,if the get payment or price in dollars.It's easy to sell instant,but not more then a dollar he had recieved. In bitcoin,it will be different case.They can hold their bitcoin and sell at good time and earn more and more from it.Many gambling and gaming sites had included of bitcoin will be a welcome news.

Also, to live streaming on existing platforms, they can earn extra income without incurring any crypto taxes.
Gamers can get unique items from the NFTs.
And they can bring high value to gamers.
The blockchain game is real potential, and the future can compete with traditional gaming platforms from companies we already know.

And the fact that gamers are used to gaming currency, so it is not hard for them to adopt the usage of cryptocurrency. And since crypto can be exchanged to fiat money, this will be another good feature that I think will be an attraction to these gamers. They can actually earn real money aside from enjoying their games. So absolutely yes, blockchain gaming can steer people or gamers to crypto adoption.

I think yes, there were games where the winners were rewarded with bitcoin in 2011-2012. There are a lot of newer games out now, and people get cryptocurrencies otherwise, games that use NFTs.
Cryptocurrencies will make electronic money transactions between gamers easier than card or banking services. Because of the convenience of cryptocurrencies, it will reach players more easily

I do not think we should put blockchain coding into games, it will not drive crypto adoption because most gamers at the very least have a knowledge about cryptocurrency. Gambling works perfectly fine, it will be of great benefit if we use it to create esports betting sites that supports cryptocurrency. Most tournament esports only have cosmetics as a way to bet in the game.

Yes, can't argue that it helped in the early-ish days (though one could argue, if more transactions means more adoption per se). But nowadays gambling isn't helping a lot with adoption I think. Yes, lots of people are gambling with crypto nowadays, but this scene is kind of a closed circle, i.e. someone who was gambling with fiat in the past is now maybe gambling more with crypto. But outside of this circle it doesn't help with adoption, because people always lose all their crypto while gambling, so it's one way traffic to the operators, who get this "money". The operators probably sell parts of those profits for fiat and who buys it again ? The gamblers

You just don't get new people into crypto because it's now possible to gamble with it. If someone starts gambling now, he does it because of very personal reasons and not because he thinks: "Oh cool, I can gamble with crypto now, which is a great benefit for me." And tbh - at least for betting - the crypto casinos don't offer anything special; most of the time they are worse all in all than the big traditional fiat bookies. With gaming things are or will be different.

Well, things may have changed since then, but:

I love your article even though it is long and I think there is great potential in the blockchain gaming industry and the desired crypto adoption.
If any of you are curious to read the reviews of some games in the Android store, especially those that offer to earn money by playing these apps, you may realize that there is a great niche there. Users have realized why playing and earning simple points and not winning real money. So blockchain-based game developers are taking advantage of this demand.

Super interesting topic, which interests me a lot, since I am involved a bit in a blockchain gaming project.

I don't think gaming can drive crypto adoption, but it is a realm where blockchain technology makes a lot of sense and thus it will play a good role in cryptoversum in the future. I saw some people comparing gaming with gambling and pointing out how gambling drives crypto adoption a bit - but I am not sold on this. Crypto gambling is still kind of a nerdy niche, although you get a different impression by looking around in the gambling section here in this forum and given how rich all these crypto casinos have gotten in a short period of time. But crypto has no real use case in terms of gambling imo, other than the fact that it's maybe pretty convenient to play more or less anonymous and have fast deposits/withdrawals. But most people lose with gambling (100% who play casino games, 95% who do sportsbetting or play Poker), so I don't really see the benefit.

Now for gaming this is different, because here you have this huge advantage of really owning your assets with blockchain technology implemented (if you take good care of your private keys ) and this is a big step forward in comparison to what we have now, where you are always a slave of the game developers playing nice, not shutting the game down or giving rare items to themselves or friends and thereby diluting your assets. It's still not perfect and there has just been an exit scam as well, but it's a step in the right direction to bring gaming and blockchain together. It's still a long way to go, but there are projects, who bring games completely decentralized on the blockchain and this will get huge then. Slowly but surely.

This content is really good and you should put it on medium or other blog platforms where gamers can see this because it's a great idea and concept that they might learn in the future. Gaming is really has a future with cryptocurrency and they really have good synergy like gambling.

We just need more time on developing the technology and maybe game engines in the future are now being integrated into the blockchain or maybe microtransactions. I know blockchain has great potential and all of us are hoping for it to become a modern technology that will improve society.

There was a lot of projects under process too which are based on the blockchain technology and while I am not sure about the authenticity of this article and being a non-tech guy I have not much knowledge but you might want to check out this article - https://www.blockchaingamer.biz/features/3283/most-anticipated-blockchain-games/

I have been playing games like PubG mobile and others and here is how I refill my game with BTC

- I buy razer gold card from Bitrefill
- I visit Midasbuy which provide in game items and UC (pubg mobile game currency) and there I order my items
- I pay via razer gold cards which I purchased by bitcoins from bitrefill.

Talking about the gaming giants like EA, Ubisoft, I would not say things are as silvery as we think it to be. These companies run on the demand for new games and new hardware that pops up from Video card makers and also powerful CPUs, in short is a saturated market similar to the smartphone market.

Now going in with crypto as a new entrant, someone would never be able to compete with them unless they create their own market. But this was not new and was tried by many projects who eventually had to sidetrack and move away from the mainstream competition. I once took part in a bounty for the Appcoins (APPC) project. They are still running but they are for developing apps/games and their payment systems only. I dont expect them to go boom at all.

There were also some scams like any other niche, back in 2017. However I think it is a long way to go before we see real game development and a competition with these companies.

Being the Devil's Advocate, based on experience what they will do to counter is that they will start accepting crypto themselves if they see crypto-projects becoming popular and again draw the market out towards them.

I am not sure about gaming but the gambling sector in crypto is one thing that has been a big pillar for the use of cryptocurrencies and even I got to know about bitcoins by gambling itself and I agree if somehow developers can make games based on the blockchain technology and aided by bitcoins like the in-game items can be purchased by bitcoins then we might see a real surge.

Apart from games I think if there was a possible way to buying in-game items for all games like League of Legends, dota2, pubg and all other games then a lot of people would have known and used bitcoins because of that. There are some streamers who ask people to donate them via bitcoins and it feels good but then we need some gaming developers to come together.

The global gaming industry has a fairly large society, but today it does not actively use cryptocurrencies. If the gaming industry switches to cryptocurrencies, completely abandoning fiat funds, then in my opinion, every user will only welcome this process. At least the main advantage that users will get is anonymity and efficiency.

The game world today is very easy to develop and it is possible for many companies to adopt and develop games using Blockchain.
Whether it matches what you say or not, I found a game as well as a crypto project that is already running and listing on top exchanges. Have you ever heard of JobTribes from DEAP Playmining?
It has adopted crypto and the coins are tradable and can be used for transactions in the game.

And furthermore, there will be many games that apply it. Especially in the world of gaming, technological developments are very easily absorbed and adopted. And its distribution is very easy. As we know, almost everybody loves gaming.

Currently yes but I doubt the potential of blockchain will be limited to PoW. I am very positive that soon a newer algorithm will come into picture which could be used to secure blockchain as well as solve problem of scalability.

We already have algorithms like DPOS which are being used by networks like EOS and claim to process millions of transactions per second with no fees. Although, DPOS showed some signs of centralized system, it has open doors for others to come up with a similar system but comparatively more decentralised.

Based on the contents of the article above!! currently, the number of gamers around the world is fantastic, if all game developers adopt cryptocurrency then it can be sure that it will lead to mass adoption..

I hope this will pave the way for other gaming developers to follow this around the world;
source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/atari-r-partners-ultra-add-132500624.html

This was seriously a really very long thread to read on and others mind find it as well to be like that. May you at least shorten or make it simple into which ideas or informations you were trying to share with is for the simpler the better for it does not vary how short or long as long as the thought is in there.  Going back to the topic, I guess there could really a big impact blockchain gaming can do to achieve cryptocurrency adaption since a lot of gamers are sprouting into this generation which means as long as there are many gamers to play blockchain games like the usual and typical games, it can certainly lead to adaption for one of the influencers category are not just content/video creator but also gaming creator which is totally a good way to pack knowledge about crypto and at the same time provide gaming experience all together within blockchain games.

Valve, Ubisoft and those other developers are so big, without someone to lead this plan with the knowledge of the games and the gamers all at once will be hard. I am certain that blockchain has its place in the gaming industry but I guess the plan should be working with one of these developers. Blockchain technology might attract other people but it will not be enough.

Lots of people are playing blockchain game too, this is the new set of games now. The digital space is being creative with blockchain game and this is going to help in the exposure of the kids into blockchain and knowledge in cryptocurrency.

Yes you can, it was only popular because you could try to make money with breeding kitties. Very few people cared about it as a game, which means that this model wasn't sustainable and it was just a speculative bubble.


It won't really disrupt centralized gambling until full scalability is achieved. You can place hundreds of bets per second (and some people use it with official bots), without paying any fees in centralized gambling. And thanks to the provably fair system, exit scam is the only risk, which is pretty rare in crypto gambling.

Absolutely yes! Blockchain games are on the rise, and it's just needs massive adoption in the world of video and online gaming. It's all about creating awareness and educating them about the advantages of blockchain gaming and why should they take this seriously.

I'm a hardcore gamer since I was a kid. Been playing video games during my spare time until today. I'm so enlightened about the potentials of blockchain gaming (especially those who are already making a living in playing them).

Can it? Of course it can, it has that potential, we are talking about millions even billions of dollars plus most of the time when people get into something they hardly get out and since this is a financial game sort of thing, they keep spending money on it constantly as well. However remember that we are much bigger than any one sector, we are money by logic, bitcoin is a money just like dollar or euro or any other fiat, we are a currency but our difference is we are a digital crypto version of that old type.

So, bitcoin could be the whole gaming world and there would never be a single game that has fiat micro-transactions, all could be done in bitcoin and we still need more. We know it can never be like that, but we all know that even if we go super high in gaming adoption, we still need more for global one.

It was a nice read! Well-written article. However, the main reason for the success of CryptoKitties was the monetary value associated with the in-game assets. It was similar to buying a new altcoin which gained huge pump recently. Remove blockchain assets from the game and you get an average Android-like game played by 8 years old kids. This sums up pretty everything. Blockchain can only be used in gaming industry in two ways - either for creating or storing in-game assets on blockchain using Smart Contracts or for in-game P2P trades between players.

I really can't see what Blockchain could add in multiplayer games that major video game developers like Blizzard, Valve and Ubisoft produce. Blockchain is all about storing immutable data in decentralized databases while multiplayer gaming is all about fast transmission of data between different peers. Blockchain is slow database while multiplayer gaming is all about speed.

However, I really believe blockchain still has very big role to play in gambling industry. We are going to see new blockchain based superior gambling dApps in coming years which will disrupt crypto gambling completely by removing trust factor.

This is a general rule applicable to any area. In most cases, you can't know in advance whether some product or service will be a wild success or a monumental failure. And you won't know until you actually offer it to the public


That's the most important thing after blockchain is technically capable of supporting such games. It already is, to a certain extent, as you can't throw out the window the popularity of CryptoKitties, however short lived it had been. But it is probably not the kind of game that the majority of gamers are looking for. With that I agree

Gamers never asked for the features that blockchain provides - immutability, "truly owning your assets", even p2p trading is highly controversial - Diablo 3 originally came with real-money market, which was shut down after a year due to a negative feedback from the community. To me it looks like blockchain companies are very desperately trying to find use for their revolutionary technology and failing miserably. All what gamers want is for games to be fun, update content frequently, be priced fairly, run smooth and have less bugs. Blockchain isn't helping with anything of that.

Although its not impossible to integrate game engines and blockchain tech altogether, the technical difficulty is very high because MMORPG's is a real time event based system that it cannot wait several confirmations for a transaction / event to be successful.

I only see it is more likely that these game developers would most probably adopt cryptocurrencies as in-game currencies, subscription payment, etc... Imho.

Well, I'm in fact more of a gambler type

But I can relate to the fact that blockchain games, especially the ones involving some kind of team action (think Counter-Strike here) are terribly slow. I've been trying to gamble on-chain (just dipping my toes into gaming on-chain), and it was also excruciatingly slow. I'm an algorithmic guy and obviously look for things like autobet. But it is not really possible with on-chain gambling unless you are happy with making a couple bets a minute. In this way, autobet in blockchain casinos can be used as a yardstick for measuring the currently available potential in on-chain gaming at large

I haven't played cryptokitties but from the looks of it, i know that it is a random game of chance where you cannot really feel like a real PC gamer. There are a lot of other games. On Enjin, there is Forgotten Artifacts which is a dungeon crawler where you can actually use items dropped in other games as items inside this game. You can earn in-game items and see them as actual NFTs in your wallet. In that way, there are quite a lot of concepts that blockchain gaming has come up with.

After Enjin, I kind of lost interest in the gaming paradigm as there weren't many good or novel things on offer but just more of the same community rush to grab the best loot drops in the beginning. I would explore some of these other platforms mentioned in that article to see how far it has gone. Do share your own experience with blockchain games deisik. Its a topic i am interested in and would like a tip or two if you have found something exciting.

So far NFTs (of CryptoKitties' fame) seem to be the best that blockchain gaming can come up with

I agree that it is a sort of chicken-and-egg problem. However, I'm more optimistic, and the reason for my optimism is simple. Blockchain gaming is basically a side effect to blockchain use for cryptocurrencies. In other words, no matter how chicken-and-egg the problem of the game developers versus the community is, the tech will continue to evolve for other purposes, more original ones (read, financial ones). And once it is good enough for the tasks outlined in the article, this problem should go away on its own

I am kind of interested in seeing how exactly the blockchain gaming paradigm plays out. The only time I ever tried EOS was to play a game called EOS Knights on their platform. It is a horribly designed game that had thousands of users at its peak and it sold in-game items for a lot of money. I guess it is still going on but i have left it a long while back. Like everything else with EOS, this game too was a money grab for the devs. Every transaction in the game was an action on the EOS blockchain and it was slow as hell. Lastly, the game itself didn't have much to do.

My other experience with blockchain gaming is with a few games developed on the Enjin platform. The gaming devs that Enjin attracted have some promising games like the PVP game 9Lives Arena. The Six dragons that the article talks about is also probably an RPG on the same platform. The platform is Ethereum based and suffers from slow transactions and high gas fees.

The biggest problem with these games being adopted is that they are not attracting real gamers or even serious game developers. This is because most people are just interested in making a killing by hoarding all the NFTs and hoping to sell them for a fortune in some hypothetical future when blockchain gaming would become the norm and their NFTs would be treated as antiques. Its a classic case of counting your chickens before they hatch. Both the developers as well as the community suffers from this.

But seriously, why would anyone want to read a boring article and then come to complain about that? To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense

And while we are at it, does gambling (e.g. dice) count as gaming in the context of cryptocurrency adoption?

Both above me are right.
It's somehow boring to read that kind of long text, especially in this forum.
Most users will just answer what is asked in the title.

I haven't tried the example named above which is cryptokitties but I heard a lot about it when it was hyped.
I am a gamer even before, wasting a lot of money with MMORPG's that needs top-up cards just to log in every month.
Yes, gaming could be the answer, a part of it.

I know that you are aware that long posts that are often seems to be like a collegiate context were always not fully read by other users right? And you also knew that it was from an article, sharing the important points with your personal thoughts and ideas are much better than just copy pasting it. Enough said, it is really a good point that gaming industry and its vast popularity to the current situation and innovating technology would really drives the popularity of crypto and blockchain as well. But still, many are already adopted blockchain technologies and even tried to use it in games but failed to gain popularity.

The article is quite big , I believe you should more or so share the most important points that you believe are interesting so that it would be actually Read by the people.

Gamers are the kind of people are are always willing to try new things and thus it's good when it comes to the adoption of cryptocurrencies , My first transaction in terms of Bitcoins was to a person who needed them for cryptocurrencies.

Therefore I do believe gaming Industry would help , not only the cryptocurrencies but also the industry itself since the people who are involved in cryptocurrencies would be willing to try new things this way. It's more like a two way street.

Both the gaming Industry and the cryptocurrencies would be benefited this way and people would have more to choose from.

For your reading pleasure, I'm sharing my article about crypto gaming, originally published on Stealthex.io. And it mentions Bitcointalk.org!

Warning! A longread below!*
*But short version is available too

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Can Blockchain Gaming Drive Cryptocurrency Adoption? (Short version)

For the blockchain gaming to drive cryptocurrency adoption, we essentially need the combination of two things. The first condition is that the blockchain tech must be capable of running games similar to the multiplayer hits from studios like Blizzard, Valve, Ubisoft, and their caliber. And the second condition is that we actually need such games (after the first condition has been met)

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Can Blockchain Gaming Drive Cryptocurrency Adoption? (Long version*)
*You've been warned

The gaming industry, with its approximately 2.5 billion gamers worldwide, is a lucrative target and an immense field of application for blockchain itself, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that could no doubt give a mighty push toward taking and making the technology mainstream. Honestly, this is not quite a news as the efforts to establish cryptocurrencies in the entertainment sector have gone a long way, with varying degrees of success.

What they were, how it fared, and where things are going now – these questions deserve their own inquiry. So let’s take a look at how gaming facilitates cryptocurrency adoption, in what ways, and whether exposing the blockchain tech to a user base of a third of the world’s population would help oil the wheels of this sportster in a major way and ultimately cause a tectonic shift in the gaming industry itself.

A Little Bit of History

As Bitcoin kicked off in late 2008, with its first transaction hitting, or effectively starting, the blockchain in early January of 2009, it had taken well over two years till the cryptocurrency got involved in online gambling. It was the now-defunct mobile poker platform, Switchpoker, a developer of an online poker room that started to accept Bitcoin as a deposit and payment option. You can still find a topic on Bitcointalk.org about this news dated back to November 23, 2011.

In April 2012, Erik Voorhees, an American entrepreneur and early Bitcoin adopter, founded Satoshi Dice, arguably the oldest online cryptocasino on the block, which is still pretty much alive today, although Voorhees sold it in a year. What makes it truly intriguing is the fact that during its early years the casino was generating half of all the transactions on the Bitcoin network. In short, online gambling was critically important in Bitcoin’s infancy years as it helped promote cryptocurrency awareness that led to future growth and expansion into other areas.

Some folks are certainly going to argue that gambling is not the same thing as gaming. The commonly accepted view is that gaming is based on skill while gambling on chance. We won’t debate over this point. However, as every poker player knows, the outcome of a poker game depends not only on luck, but also on skill and expertise. Put simply, there are large gray areas and overlaps. All things considered, our exposition would be missing a big chunk of significant history without giving due credit to gambling and how it helped Bitcoin adoption.

Now that online gambling is off our chest, we can safely turn to gaming as it is understood in the industry, and look at how it helped the blockchain space. One of the first uses of Bitcoin in a major game that we are aware of started in 2014 with the launch of BitQuest, a Minecraft server that used Bitcoin for in-game transactions. Within the gaming environment you could buy valuable in-game stuff from other users with the so-called bits, small fractions of a Bitcoin, and earn them by completing in-game tasks or challenges like killing local monsters.

BitQuest closed the server in summer of 2019, and its brand name now belongs to a different entity not involved with gaming, but it still produced an impact. In essence, this effort successfully demonstrated how a cryptocurrency, in this case Bitcoin, can be used in lieu of a native in-game currency that players can earn, buy and spend as well as withdraw. This has serious implications for two main reasons. First, Bitcoin, unlike any other purely in-game currency, has uses outside the game and its ecosystem, and, second, its supply cannot be manipulated by the game developers, which makes the game by far more fair and square.

Needless to say, the example that BitQuest had set encouraged other market participants to look into Bitcoin as an alternative option for in-game currencies. Another popular Minecraft server, PlayMC, also introduced Bitcoin into its world in 2015, but ceased the operation just two years later. There were a few other servers experimenting with altcoins, more specifically, Dogecoin, but most of them disappeared from the scene shortly thereafter, failing to attract enough die-hard Minecraft fans.

What Has Changed?

With the arrival of smart contract-enabled blockchains such as Ethereum, EOS and TRON, the phrase “blockchain gaming” has taken on a more literal meaning as these blockchains allow games to be designed and played entirely on-chain in much the same manner trades are made on a decentralized exchange. While TRON stands for “The Real-time Operating system Nucleus”, there is an obvious reference to a once popular arcade game based on a titular 1982 science fiction film that ultimately garnered a cult following.

CryptoKitties is likely the most popular game ever released in the Ethereum ecosystem and probably in the whole crypto space so far. Its test version was made available on October 19, 2017, and it was an instant success. By the end of 2017 over 200,000 people signed up for the game, spending over $20 million in Ether. We won’t delve into its “gameplay” as it is beyond the scope of this article, and most certainly you are well familiar with it anyway. But what we absolutely should write about is the effect it made and the repercussions it produced.

It could be said that CryptoKitties was to the Ethereum blockchain what Satoshi Dice had been to Bitcoin in the early days of crypto. At the peak of its popularity the game reportedly accounted for 20-25% of all Ethereum’s traffic that clogged the entire Ethereum network, with transaction fees skyrocketing. No wonder lots of people got pissed off with this turn of events. However, despite all the rage and fury, CryptoKitties amply demonstrated what a success means in the blockchain gaming field, how it looks and feels in practice.

It is hard to estimate how much CryptoKitties contributed to cryptocurrency adoption. But given that a few hundred thousand people got involved in this game alone and many more with dozens of blockchain games that it has spawned, like Etherbots, Gods Unchained, The Six Dragons, etc, this indisputable triumph surely counts as a massive contribution by any metric or definition. Moreover, it also revealed the weaknesses of the contemporary blockchain solutions and what exactly should be done to overcome them.

Evolution never goes linearly. In fact, it generally doesn’t go in curves, circles, or zig zags, either. It always moves along very diverse routes, directions and entire dimensions like plants and animals, viruses and bacteria, and, well, dinosaurs and mammals. The evolution of gaming in crypto space is no different. CryptoKitties and other games share essentially the same tech under the hood – building games on some advanced general-purpose blockchain such as Ethereum. But it is not the only front that crypto gaming has been advancing on, nor is it the only way to introduce gaming to cryptocurrencies, and vice versa.

A more recent approach is based on designing either a standalone cryptocurrency or a token on a smart contract-enabled blockchain to be used across many games that support it as an in-game currency. As a result, gamers can enjoy true ownership of their in-game assets (the so-called non-fungible tokens, or NFTs), safe item trading outside the game, and cross-game compatibility. This path has been taken by such projects as Enjin, GAME Credits, Decentraland and others, with their respective cryptocurrencies fueling a range of games.

A somewhat different avenue is taken by Funfair and Lucid Sight, which are offering platforms that blockchain games can be built on. Thus, Lucid Sight’s Scarcity Engine is focused more on game creators than end users, that is to say, gamers, allowing developers to integrate blockchain into their games. It aims to obliterate the difference between blockchain-based games and traditional gaming platforms. Funfair, on the other hand, leans more toward creating custom-built blockchain casinos, with its FUN token as a casino “chip”. So much for no more gambling, huh.

Our account of events would be incomplete if we didn’t mention yet another attempt to make use of Minecraft for the purpose of introducing cryptocurrencies to the gaming public. This time, a new Minecraft mod called SatoshiQuest has emerged. To participate in it, the gamers pay $1 in Bitcoin and get one in-game life. The pooled coins make up the loot, and the challenge is to find a minimum of 400 key fragments into which the keys to the Bitcoin wallet containing the prize are divided. And who said that evolution doesn’t loop?

Challenges and Future Prospects

The knockout popularity of CryptoKitties has clearly shown the scale of cryptocurrency mass adoption that blockchain gaming can trigger. As the game developers themselves put it, their “goal is to drive mainstream adoption of blockchain technology”. They believe that “the technology has immense benefits for consumers, but for those benefits to be realized, it needs to be experienced to be understood”. Speaking more broadly, as more people start using cryptocurrencies for gaming, they may eventually become interested in using their coins for purposes other than playing one game or another.

With that said, it is now as clear that there are two main barriers on the way there. The first is the limitations of the blockchain tech itself that essentially limits blockchain gaming to NFTs, in-game currencies, streamlined payments, and similar stuff. This is mostly a technical challenge anyway, and we could realistically expect it to be solved sooner or later. The other issue is applicable to the gaming industry as a whole. People en masse would only play games that are truly engaging and immersive, technical issues aside.

So the bottom line is that we need the convergence of these two vectors to make blockchain a dominating force in the gaming industry. First, the blockchain tech should have the capacity for running multiplayer games that major video game developers like Blizzard, Valve and Ubisoft produce, no trade-offs here. Then, we actually need the games like Warcraft, Counter-Strike or Far Cry that can be played on blockchain, to make it matter. Only after we get there, the gaming industry will likely become a primary driver behind cryptocurrency adoption.