Stratis blockchain and Unity integration

Hello everybody,

I want to tell you something about Stratis. Stratis is a flexible and powerful Blockchain Development Platform designed for the needs of real-world financial services businesses and other organisations that want to access the benefits of Blockchain technologies without the overheads inherent in running their own network infrastructure. Stratis offers a turnkey solution that enables developers and businesses to develop, test and deploy blockchain-based applications quickly and easily, and without the costs and security concerns that would otherwise arise from an in-house implementation.

The Stratis blockchain is a clone of the Bitcoin blockchain(the safest blockchain there is). One of the biggest differences is that Bitcoin is in C++ and Stratis in C#. We are working on an integration of Stratis with Unity. We want to add value to UNITY and provide additional functionality and features. We are trying to bridge the gap between Unity and the most innovative and talked about technology today (the Blockchain). So that we can add value to each other.

Stratis is developing the tools required for C# to start developing blockchain applications without the steep learning curve in place today. The Stratis UNITY SDK will be open source and licensed under MIT.

We are looking for a C# Unity developer who can help us with the integration of Stratis with Unity. We would like to know your thoughts about the above.



Here is some additional information:

www.stratisplatform.com
https://www.reddit.com/r/stratispla..._stratis_questions_and_answers_about_stratis/
https://github.com/stratisproject/StratisBitcoinFullNode

You can also join us on slack: https://stratisinvite.herokuapp.com/

 

There is also a hackaton for all the C# developers, look at: http://stratisplatform.com/2016/12/16/stratis-hackathon-is-officially-open-stratis-weekly-9/

 

Any questions please let me know.

 

uuh... no idea much abouts blockchainys

but okay, so... can the values represent ANY numerical variable???
like .. could i use it to represent a player's health (to put it stupid simple)

buut... every "transaction" .. or numerical change?? costs $USD ??
nice scam! LOL

or its just some fake computer monopoly money??
.. all info i can find about dapps are just some kinda monopoly money scam thing ??
.. seems like a waste of time, for everyone lol...

..is any of this true? its stupid hard to find real answers about this stuff, its all abstracted and made to sound ultra technical.. sounds like a scam.. not stratis in particular...

or .. its just "complex" ?

.. i mean seriously now.. all of these that i try to look into are straight up (what id call) scams
and all the "professional looking sites" are like some kind of 2016's geocities nonsense LOL
http://dapps.ethercasts.com/

LOL nice!! someone honest

 

Block chains are normally associated with crypto currencies. Which are imaginary, but so is all of the money in your bank account.

Crypto currencies are an attempt to create money which is not tied to a particular government. This is useful if you want to do a lot of transactions without government knowledge. However they tend to be highly volatile, as there is no underlying market that naturally give the money value.

Block chains are a relatively clever way of securely handling transactions in a crypto currency. Once a transaction appears on the block chain, it's pretty much impossible to tamper with. Thus crypto currencies have some useful security features.

As to why one would want a block chain in Unity, I have no idea. The only practical use I can see would be setting up an in game economy between multiple players.

 

thats all it is though??
JUST cryptocurrency??

it would be great if it could represent ANY variable!!

i mean... the numbers the blockchains system "crunch"
is JUST for monopoly money transactions??

is that ALL its capable of?? seems like a horrible waste of the technology.....
wouldnt it be capable of ANY number?? .. maybe with some kind of tweak to its system??


i can think of an AMAZING application for it...
little hesitant to share the idea.. seems multibillion...
but its maybe pretty obvious to those thatd care anyway...

iam REALLY interested in it... but .. EVERYTHING i can find is simply lameass monopoly money BS

 

Any sort of transactional system could work with a block chain. It doesn't really make sense outside of a transactional system.

Sure you could use it to represent health. But why would you have a need to securely record every change to health ever?

You do realise the whole financial system is built on Monopoly money these days? The cash in your hand is just a price of metal/paper or plastic, with no intrinsic value. The numbers in you bank account are are just a few bits in a computer with absolutely zero intrinsic value..

Crypto currencies are no less real then USD. The only real difference is crypto currencies aren't tied to a specific economy.

 

It is just "any number", because that's all "currency" is. The only special thing about currency is the way people agree to interpret it. It's a number that a group of people have agreed to use to represent the value of goods and services. No more, no less.

If you want to use the numbers in a blockchain to represent something else then the technology isn't going to stop you, at least in principle (I know nothing of actual implementation). As @BoredMormon says, it's used with numbers used for currency because that's where it's useful, rather than for functionality reasons.

 

Wikipedia plainly states what it is in the first two sentences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_(database)

 

oooh yeah of course...

hmm so the system only works with transactions?? .. hmm
i was thinking of it as a system to permanently, and verifiably hold a value ??

hmm so the numbers CAN be ANYTHING right... but theres like.. you gotta pay people to run computers that "mine" ??? or something.... i mean sure computing power isnt free..

what if you had a device... computer, that serves X function, but ALSO lends, say half its power to the transactions.. number crunching?

 

You're seventeen years too late to this idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home

 

hmm i want to secure information, but NEVER transact it...

 

Then block chains probably aren't for you.

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

The best use case for Unity probably would be: The possibility of integrating Stratis for in-game transactions, so that you can, for example, buy/sell virtual goods or operate a marketplace.

However the blockchain in general has way more use cases then only a financial instrument. Here are some specific areas the blockchain can help:

• Health records
• Identity/personal records
• Credit files
• Provenance
• Time stamping/Notarization
• Asset/property registration
• Education records

If you are interested we are still looking for a C# Unity developer who can help with the integration between Stratis and Unity. Also we have announced a Hackaton with a $ 5,000 grand price, maybe something you guys would be interested in?

http://stratisplatform.com/2016/11/...n-its-the-first-stratis-blockchain-hackathon/
http://stratisplatform.com/2016/12/16/stratis-hackathon-is-officially-open-stratis-weekly-9/

 

None of this is stuff you should touch with Unity. Unity aps tend to be very insecure, the code is just hanging out there in a exposed dll for anyone to browse.

If you were going to touch any of that stuff, you'd probably want to do it via a server, where you actually have some control of things.

 

Correct these use cases aren't for Unity. Just tried to explain which use cases are possible on a blockchain. You can do this on the main blockchain of Stratis for example or set up a private blockchain that is linked to the main blockchain. You can make the private chain to your own specific needs and will have control of things.

The use case for Unity is the one I described: The possibility of integrating Stratis for in-game transactions, so that you can, for example, buy/sell virtual goods or operate a marketplace.

 

This is also probably a bad idea. Most of the time you want to use outside services to provide the actual financial transactions for IAPs.

The only real case I see for a block chain is in some super realistic MMO economy. And there are precious few of those in existence.

 

It could also be used to support an economy between games, even between games with different game companies. It can be used for provably fair in game gambling, and to provide rewards that can be cashed out into cryptocurrency.

It can also be used to record things immutably to help prevent item cloning and some other forms of cheating.

 

hmm thats kinda sorta what id be after..

 

When Stratis is integrated with Unity, this is something that could be made possible then .

 

Nice. Much more succinct then what I said.

The vast majority of Unity projects will fall out in the first or second question.

 

We will see what the future brings us. You guys probably will be shocked of the possibilites of the Blockchain. 2017 is the year to find out. I will keep you guys update with our Unity integration. We already got some great applications from Unity members to help us with the integration. Keep them coming.

 

Isn't explaining those possibilities kind of your job?

 

Well it's a new tech, it's full of potential, but it need innovative format to spread and standardize. And these innovation (aka outside of cryptocurrencies) still need to happen. Not told here, latency problem, critical mass of users (you can take over the network if you represent 50% of the processing power), "mining" support etc ... Though I don't have a mastery of the concept, those are thing I picked up from reading analysis and other article. But expect the use case to be "async" with latency.

 

It is . That's why I presented some use cases earlier for the Unity community:

The possibility of integrating Stratis for in-game transactions, so that you can, for example, buy/sell virtual goods or operate a marketplace.

It could also be used to support an economy between games, even between games with different game companies. It can be used for provably fair in game gambling, and to provide rewards that can be cashed out into cryptocurrency.

It can also be used to record things immutably to help prevent item cloning and some other forms of cheating.

These things can be achieved when Stratis has integrated with Unity, offcourse there are way more use-cases. And developers in #C can accomplish this. I don't understand what I need to explain further. I am happy to offcourse, so if you have another question please let me know!

 

I don't remember the details but I've read about takeover scenarios that only require about 10% ... something about the 10% yielding enough leverage to get you 50% control, and then your scenario applies.

As I understand it, "mining" only matters if you're messing with it for cryptocurrency purposes rather than simple transactional integrity.

The theory goes back to the 90s, they aren't all that new, they just have extremely narrow usefulness (for 20 years my day job has been architecture in the financial industry and I've never heard of anyone using it there, for all the mentions this Stratis guy throws around; sounds a bit like wishful-thinking to me).

 

Actually it isn't that new. But for the majority of people it is really new, and probably 2017 will be the year when blockchain gets to a huge crowd of developers. Stratis alone will reach out to some of the biggest #C communities world wide.

You are correct in the 50% of the processing power, so you probably are talking about PoW (proof of work) this is the way that bitcoin blockchain works. People mine with their equipment. Stratis works on the PoS (proof of stake) method, where total coins are the factor that wheigh in. It's almost impossible to get more then 50%, cause nobody would allow it.

But I agree it are new grounds that will be explored, so excited times ahead ! And we are trying to give the possibility to all #C Unity developers to be a part of it.

 

Right. Economies. My biggest reason for why this asset holds no real value for me is because I would never foolishly have the code vital for running the economy present in the client software. Unity's assembles, where the scripts are stored for your code, can be effortlessly decompiled (or disassembled in the case of IL2CPP).

Having it for server-side code wouldn't be very practical either as any game that needs an economy is unlikely to use Unity as a base for the server architecture and someone capable of building the server will be capable of building their own blockchain implementation. Or simply not needing it because it's not on the client's computer.

 

You've reached out to us. We are a significant C# community. And the response has been a resounding meh. I just really can't see a use for a block chain in any Unity game.

Like @Ryiah points out, any thing that needs the security of a financial transaction doesn't make sense in client code.

 

Blockchain is oft mentioned in the EA forums at the banks I consult at, generally in the context of distributed ledgers. It did get multiple articles in CIO magazine this year and its getting some traction at the POC level, e.g. http://www.smh.com.au/business/bank...ign-blockchain-protocols-20151014-gk8wn3.html

And according to the Financial Times "Blockchain has become the financial markets’ biggest buzzword" (https://www.ft.com/content/e0a32840-4f68-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc)

- - -

This is not the kind of thing that is going to be widely applicable, particularly on a forum that is mainly made up of small indies and hobbyists, but blockchain is getting some traction in the gaming space (gambling and competitive gaming are probably the biggest areas to watch).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerai...ng-worlds-first-moba-gaming-ico/#e894de0578f5
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerai...te-broader-digital-currency-use/#647b005e4b91

I don't think this is going to revolutionize gaming anytime soon, but I don't think its worth outright dismissal.

 

well i have a great idea, but it seems microsoft patented a system for that idea, same day that i thought of the idea...
i guess ill take that as a sign that its not meant for me to implement??? loool?

 

The key thing with the economy is that is transparent.

Imagine for example trading card games (or just trading in game items in general). Instead of each having their own internal trading system you define a blockchain based protocol. This means players can trade directly with each other across games. I can trade my MTG cards for your LoL costumes, or some tokens for some unknown indie game.

Most importantly all of this is possible without the various companies having to know about or trust each other (nor an implicitly trusted middleman).

 

See that is a far more effective example than simply being told that I "will be shocked of the possibilites of the Blockchain".

My biggest complaint with most of the posts by the OP is that their approach to advertising their product comes across in a very snake oil salesman sort of way. They're the sort of statements you would present to management or marketing. Some person who isn't capable of understanding the technical side of things and it just doesn't do them any favors here.

 

Can't disagree, I cringed when I read "the most innovative and talked about technology today"

 

Okay that's an intriguing possibility.

I still don't think it will work or catch on, but you've now caught my attention with a valid in gaming use case.

 

Hah yeah, that kind of thing hard to get off the ground; its only valuable when you have a number of games on board, yet the only reason for any major game to get on board is that its an already established standard.

 

Hmm, interesting. Global asset transfer is my bread and butter and that's the first I've heard of this. I'll have to do some digging. Wouldn't be surprised if the draconian over-regulation we have here makes it nearly impossible to consider anything that gets central banks out of the loop. (And now we wander dangerously close to non-game topics and mod-wrath...)

This reminds me of the ill-conceived discussion several months back about somehow letting players "portal" from one game into a completely different game. When you start really thinking about the API that would be required to pull this off (one game running, the other not, unknown arbitrary asset transfer, etc), it rapidly turns into a minor nightmare (and the piece of the puzzle solved by blockchain becomes relatively minor -- though I agree it's a possible fit for that problem if somebody felt the need to tackle that API for some reason).

 

Why not just use standard approach where transactions are performed on a server, and that server has final say in all matters? Meaning - what assets client owns, how much money client has, etc.

The way I see it blockchain is supposed to be used in distributed systems without a central server, and in case of games it means that as soon as such system is created someone will simply mine themselves large amount of "money".

 

Such systems require the exchange(server) to be owned. The owner wields all the power, they may refuse certain types of exchanges or require a vetting system. Maybe some other company will want to have some of that power leading to fragmentation. Maybe the exchange goes out of business which means the whole ecosystem is dead.

The blockchain approach is an alternative which decentralises the control. If you do the work (mining) you can join. Then its up to the players to trade as they desire (if you want to trade your Hearthstone collection for EvoSuperMegaXXX costumes thats your business).

EDIT: I would add that exchanges owned by entities obviously work, an alternative may or may not be better depending on implementation, personal beliefs, and I'm sure many other factors.

 

Such a system doesn't require that in-game items be mineable. A distributed ledger only proves that some transaction happened (i.e. I can trade my card XYZ as its provable that Blizzard transferred it to my account). The mining is the cost of doing business using the system.

- - -

And one more edit before I get back to work ... there are still (many) open issues in such systems, I'm talking here about how it should theoretically work.

What works in a distributed financial ledger (still not by any means solved) makes a lot less sense in a gaming environment. For example in a no-mining system the incentive to be part of the ledger is a key part of the security, but this may be a lot less important to a gamer than to a financial institution. Even though a fraud may be detected the threat of removal from ledger is not enough to prevent the fraud (and the threat of prosecution may not exist at all).

This kind of runs to @MV10 's point about the complexity of implementing such a system.

 

The ownership issue was the the original reason for block chains and crypto currencies in the first place. The idea was to separate money from being owned by a government/bank.

While it sounds cool in a general freedom/liberty/anarchist sense, the actual implementation has been fairly impractical. One thing owners provide to a transaction system is a measure of stability. I know that my AUD will be accepted in exchange for USD. And the USD will be accepted by merchants the world over. That provides confidence and stability. The promise is that the various governments and banks will always ensure money can be exchanged for services of value.

On the other hand there is nothing backing up something like a bit coin. No one gaurentees it has value. This means many merchants don't accept it. And it's value fluctuates wildely. The only place bitcoins have proved useful is in transactions where having government oversight is undesirable. Drugs, human trafficking and the like.

It would have been cool to see crypto currencies succeed. But they haven't. And until the stability and confidence problems are solved, they won't take off.

I'm pretty sure that an inter game swap system would work out the same. It would be subject to both the inherent instability of a non owned system, plus the hyper inflation that in game economies are so often hammered by.

I like the idea. I just don't think it can work.

 

That's the point. You own the product, you control the transactions. So if your game has some sort of a marketplace, naturally you'd want transactions under your control.

I kinda just can't think of any game-related application of decentralized blockchain technology. Which is why I asked previous question.

 

Sorry I was answering the context of the posts above where we were talking about trading items between games. Maybe not a killer app, but I think it would be pretty nifty.

How about a vendor agnostic DRM system which still lets you trade the games (because you can verify that the ownership has been transferred).

A way to verify that the ad network telling you you generated 1,000 installs is not just cutting 20% off the top to boost their quarterly sales figures (sure I trust google, apple, etc, but a lot of the smaller ad companies promise a lot more per install).

None of these are enabled purely by blockchain, but blockchain can play a key role.

 

I still think the first successful implementation in game will be a kind of minecraft or more precisely a Dota of block chain, ie a game that inherently rely on community building outside of central influence. Most use case here are about situation where you want to retain central power around the dev, the dev is basically the government he want to centralize to himself because, he want to retain power. Once block chain is established through a key phenomena (like minecraft, it was instrumental in consolidating many indie business model), people will surf on the buzz to consolidate business scale implemenation, to sound cool to investor and distinguish themselves for the dinosaur king that dominate the market with tried and true method. That mean in some way, this offering is a bit too ahead of its time, we need to go through an exploration stage that isn't necessarily business oriented. The cycle just repeat itself.

 

Just to be clear. I am not a team member from Stratis but a community member that is trying to get the word out there. I have the basic knowledge of blockchain technology etc. But I am not a developer in any kind of way. I am not trying to sell anything, I am just trying to show you guys the opportunities and what Stratis is working on. I will try to get an developer from Stratis or an other active community member that is a developer as well to come over here and discuss the specific questions and details with you guys. Again just trying to help out everybody.

Stratis is developing the tools required for C# to start developing blockchain applications without the steep learning curve in place today. The Stratis UNITY SDK will be open source and licensed under MIT.

 

Hello, I'm a developer and also a supporter of Stratis.

I'm going to clear up a few misconceptions about blockchains. Basically what is new about blockchains is that they are a solution to the double spend problem. You've probably heard of bitcoin. It's kind of like paypal, but decentralized. Previously, if you wanted to exchange money electronically, you had the double spend problem. If cash is just digital data, than why not just copy it and spend it twice? Well previously the only way to solve that problem was with a central authority, that you had to check with before exchanging money. "Hey Paypal, what is my balance? Ok, send $10 of that to my friend." But with bitcoin they figured out a way to use cryptography and a special system of decentralized "mining" to perform the same function.

Another thing that is interesting about blockchains, is that they can be immutable. As in, you can't go back and change the history of what transactions occurred and when.

Ok, so some people saw these properties and got really excited about blockchains, because it is something new that you couldn't do in a decentralized way before. Previously you had to have trust of a central server. And now over the past couple of years lots of people are trying to figure what the trustless decentralization of a database is good for. And it turns out that it opens up some new possibilities, and there is profit to be made in being the first one to make software that does a new thing.

So let's talk specifically about how a blockchain could be useful for a game.

(1) You could use the fact that cryptocurrencies on the blockchain, like bitcoin, are outside the traditional banking system. That means you don't have to pay a cut of the money to paypal, apple, or google, for transactions that happen through this channel. There are usually transaction fees, depending on the cryptocurrency, but they tend to be in the pennies, and definitely not percentage based. That means if you are selling access to a game using cryptocurrency, or selling microtransaction "jewels", or selling in game cosmetic items, no one gets a cut of that. And it is borderless, so you can do these transactions from India, the USA, or China... And no government can seize your bank account. Paypal can't freeze your account due to a chargeback.

(2) You could use the blockchain property of decentralization to enable economies to grow. For example, you could make it so that in game items are on the block chain. So in an MMO, maybe swords, staffs, equipment, etc is all on the blockchain, represented as tokens. The tokens exist typically exist under a players account, but they are able to transfer them using the blockchain.

The benefit of this is that now software can be made that lets users trade tokens with one another outside of the game, in a website auction house. Like some people have made for steam items. I can trade ownership of a special sword for ownership of 100 gold coins (which can be bought from the game creators with real money). How is that different than making your own auction house in game? Well in this case, the software only has to be written once. A blockchain auction house can be created for a game by the game company (or cloned from existing code), or it could be created across multiple games, by a 3rd party (not the players or the game company). Suddenly there is the possibility to connect your game's economy of items with a new economic system. And potentially, it might save you from having to code a whole auction house system - you simply let people transfer in game items out to their blockchain accounts, and the economy grows from there.

(3) you could use the blockchain property of immutability to help prevent item duplication and establish a transaction history. What I mean by this, is that if you are tracking in game items on a blockchain (say for the reasons described in #2) it prevents someone from hacking their client code and making 2 "sword of ultimate power" and selling it on the auction house. Because you can't transfer tokens that you don't have, due to the way blockchains solve the double spend problem, it isn't possible to clone and transfer items in this way. On the blockchain, you also have a full history of when an item was created, and when it was transferred. And if only the game server can create tokens, then you have solved one hacking problem, at the financial level.

Finally just to clear up one misconception - although the blockchain code is open source, that does not mean it can be hacked. For example, the full bitcoin supply is worth 18 billion dollars. Even though it is open source, the cryptography on transactions means that only a person with the right password can move funds. If it was easy, people would steal bitcoin by exploiting bugs, and of course bitcoin would not be as valuable as it is.

Any hacks you hear about with relation to bitcoins are the equivalent of someone getting their password stolen - not a bug in the blockchain code.

And to bring it back to Stratis - Stratis is pioneering a way to make blockchains on demand, and developing a library of sample code. It won't be long before you'll be able to take advantage of some of the features above and quickly add it to your game. The Stratis team is looking for developers to help build some of these use cases described above, and is also looking for people to help brainstorm more ways that blockchains can be used with Unity.

Get in touch with the Stratis team if you are interested- it could potentially be lucrative in a few ways. (1) through payment for coding services (2) for getting experience with blockchain coding, which is increasingly in demand in the financial industry and (3) through adding a new economic system to the game you are working on.

 

Thanks for the write up. It still leaves me in the same place I was before. Utterly unconvinced there is any reason to integrate a block chain inside of Unity.

It might be vaguely useful outside of Unity as a server side application or the like. But even there I'm skeptical.

People frequently say 'well by doing this you can bypass the fees on the stores or banks or payment providers. Its a nice idea. But in practice it means you are also cutting out the distribution and trust these establishments have built up. Considering that 95% of my players don't trust bitcoin, it hardly seems worth the effort. PayPal being able to do a charge back is considered a good thing by 95% of my customers.

Unless of course you are trying to do something without the governments or stores knowing about it. If you are into any sort of clandestine activities, then cypto currencies make a lot of sense.

 

Yes, I agree @BoredMormon . To be clear the blockchain exists outside of Unity, and Stratis will be adding a set of methods to interact with blockchains. Not implement blockchains within Unity.

I also agree about your point about the benefit of the larger app stores and payment channels is trust and market share. If cryptocurrency gains more market acceptance, which seems to be the trend, some of this balance could change.

We are on the same page that avoiding the traditional banking system is an extreme case right now - but I can conceive of a variety of reasons why this might be desirable for some developers:

A game that wants to accept payments from people without credit cards, such as the 14-17 year old demographic.
A Venezualan developer wanting to get paid in currency that isn't so inflationary like their money, but unable to set up an American payment account to accept USD.
A game that wants to have some kind of in game gambling, but wants to avoid the legal implications of letting users bet USD.
A VR porn game that wants to accept payments anonymously, for men with shared bank accounts with their wives.
A developer seeking to remain anonymous, meaning they are unable to apply for a traditional account to accept payments

Do you have any comments about the desirability of making open economies for in game items - for out of game trading/buying/selling?

 

I think the original point made about chargebacks was not disputing that they're useful in some cases. But that sometimes PayPal can seize your account and lock you out while there is a dispute (e.g during a contentious claim when Buyer claims they never got access to their purchased item). And there's nothing you can do. Blockchain is trustless and decentralised, this could never happen.

Also your comment about your users not trusting bitcoin. While you know your users better than anyone, I'd argue again there is nothing to trust or untrust with blockchain. Bitcoin (like any other blockchain based tech) is immutable and trustless. So I'd be interested to know more about why folks think they cannot trust bitcoin.

Finally I think there has been a bias in the media coverage of how it reports on bitcoin and bitcoin based transactions. The fact is if you possessed EUR500 notes you're way more likely to be involved in clandestine activities than by the fact you own bitcoins or other crypto. That doesn't mean large deomoninations of fiat should be overlooked or not used. Bitcoin and crypto can be used as a store of value. Anything of value can be traded for goods, legitimate or not. But I think we're staying away from the point of the previous post. Talking about the fundamentals of blockchain tech, and the unique benefits and properties. Which could be be applied to gaming.