The only cryptocurrencies included in this article are those of general purpose online games. Everything will focus on the characteristics, concepts and technical design of each cryptocurrency and understand the vision of each development team analyzing the feasibility and technical merits of each cryptocurrency in question.
GameCredits was one of the oldest online cryptocurrencies launched in 2014. Based on a hard fork of the Bitcoin code, GameCredits provides a basic API with the ability to create and obtain billing within online games. Provides an SDK for the Unity engine, which allows games to generate their billing API.
The main feature of this cryptocurrency is creating invoices (similar to a Coinbase payment gateway)
Unfortunately, users must leave the game and access a web browser to make the payment.
The currency also suffers a significant risk of centralization, since you can only access its billing API using the GameCredits website and it is closed source.
That is the only and important point of failure and all the games that use the platform can find their payment system offline if the website is pirated or without an Internet connection.
Enjincoin is an intriguing project of an experienced web company that claims to be in business for nine years and hosts a modern social network of players with millions of users. Enjin has combined some of the best ideas with several coins to make a "Ethereum gaming world".
Its objective is to allow the ownership without trust of the elements of the game in the chain of blocks of Ethereum. Enjin is doing this by allowing game developers to convert the ENJ tokens into game assets and then granting all players the ability to settle their items back to the ENJ base cryptocurrency at any time.
It has the most ambitious roadmap of all the cryptocurrencies of online games reviewed, with the aim of developing an intelligent purse for in-game purchases, an intelligent trust contract for exchanges of articles, a complement for Minecraft and support for coins in its social network. The architecture of the Enjincoin platform seems to be using a decentralized system and a robust design.
The centralized functionality points remain on each game server to process your notifications.
The technical document describes the future Unity, UDK, C # and Java SDKs that provide a wide range of compatibility with online games.
They are also developing out-of-chain notifications to circumvent the speed limitations of blockchains transactions.
In addition to the SDK games, Enjin coin is also creating web add-ons for the main forums and a PHP SDK so that developers can create tools and websites that link to online games. The Android and iOS SDKs can also result in some interesting applications.
The token has partnered with Bancor to provide an exchange in the block chain and a market adjustment of any element of the game that has less liquidity. Its use of the Bancor system is very novel and appropriate.
Dmarket wants to create a market for online gaming assets using its tokens as a means of exchange. The Dmarket token will act as a payment method and as a possible representation of the elements of the game that appear in your market.
Each game developer would integrate the Dmarket API into their game, which will allow them to attach their game elements to the Dmarket tokens using a reference identification / hash for each type of item.
There are some problems with the design of Dmarket, which lead to questioning the reasoning behind them adopting the blockchain in the first place. The blockchain is a decentralized trust and Dmarket has too much centralization for its comfort.
Dmarket wants developers and users of online games to register on their centralized website (which runs on PHP, SQL, Node). This gives the company the power to control and supervise the trade, which again is totally contrary to the spirit of the cryptocurrency that is decentralization.
Giving any company this advantage leads to possible abuse of power, threats from gaming companies or authorities using legal measures to close the exchange and the omnipresent fact that Dmarket can use its position to manipulate the market or sell advertising space or priority positioning to the companies that pay them.
Game developers may also prohibit users from making transactions with their products. This destroys all purpose of decentralized assets!
An important problem that you can notice with its concept is that the main objective of Dmarket is the trade of elements of the game, but its token of the chain of blocks is not solving any problem that could not be done in its website of the commerce centralized
It provides a transaction book, but it is simply an elegant version of your existing commercial website, filled with buzzwords and an alternative payment method for your tokens as property.
The platform also hopes to use the 'Ethereum Oracles', which are another well-documented risk of centralization and security. The author hopes that trusting an oracle on the Dmarket intelligent contract platform does not end up compromising the security of his token. Any centralized functionality increases the potential attack
superficial by the bad actors.
MobileGo Is a branch of GameCredits, and this project wants to bypass the restrictions and high commissions charged by dominant mobile app stores by allowing Android users to install a custom app store with a selection of associated games.
Payments for online games in the app store are made with the MobileGo token of Ethereum, and players can install their purchased games through the respective app store.
MobileGo uses a centralized platform to verify the APK hash loaded from the game developer against copies of the official Google Play store and then download the Google Play version directly.
The game developer can step aside with the official commissions of the Google app store, while allowing a proven selection of online games and providing more revenue for game developers.
MobileGo attempts to splice some value-added features for token owners, such as coupons and VIP tournaments. They also arise with the idea of
an article market, but there has been no development or details in the technical document.
Herocoin seeks to address the world of decentralized sports betting. The platform aims to eliminate the advantage of the "house" and revolves around the three types of users that can benefit from the betting platform: token owners, players and game creators.
Token owners receive a stream of passive income from all online gaming groups. Players receive their portion of the tournament group if they win. The platform rewards game creators for facilitating and managing each game.
The implementation of the contest seems to be a solid concept, except for the fact that it is completely managed on your HeroSphere website. The author expects Herocoin to make an effort to provide fully decentralized access to this platform.
The UniKrn betting platform is creating an Ethereum ERC20 token: UniKoin Gold, to be used alongside its existing old UniKoin Silver. Depending on the jurisdiction laws, each token has been defined with the legally approved functionality.
UniKoin Silver is your centralized digital currency and UniKoin Gold is your token in Ethereum.
The technical document does not provide many details about the technical plans, but it is clear that UniKoin Gold is fundamentally a casino chip payment platform and a decentralized betting platform to circumvent legal regulations in several states and countries.
FirstBlood is a decentralized sports betting tournament platform that uses a jury to decide the outcome of the match. They advertise Sybil Attack protection, but with the mere act of requiring 2FA through a centralized part of the FirstBlood website, it means that FirstBlood is vulnerable to the same risks mentioned for some of the cryptocurrencies previously mentioned in this article.
If the centralized service that authenticates each member of the jury has regulatory problems or hacking, the platform may fall apart. If the FirstBlood platform decides to deny user authentication for any reason, it bypasses the insecure nature of the rest of its platform.
Despite these criticisms, it will be very interesting to see that the FirstBlood consensus jury system is developed and used for the eSports tournaments. The first compatible game is Dota 2, with League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive planned for the future.
Skincoin developed its token to circumvent the rules and regulations of platforms such as Steam related to the trade of skins. It seems that the Skincoin exchange servers will be centralized, adding some risk and fragility to the main entry point to their ecosystem.
