Blockade Games – the development team behind popular role-playing game Neon District – has announced that it is exploring the possibility of integrating Lightning payments and Ethereum smart contracts into future titles.
The news was announced in a Medium blog post by Ben Heidorn, co-founder and CTO at Blockade Games.
Heidorn sheds light on how Blockade Games has been experimenting with various payment methods for purchasing in-game items and interacting with smart contracts.
“We believe that Ethereum will be integral to the future of non-fungible assets and blockchain gaming,” he writes.
“However, we also believe that Bitcoin is the future of money, and many of our players will prefer to hold most, if not all, of their funds in Bitcoin.”
Based on this, Blockade Games will be attempting to serve its players on the Bitcoin network while also utilising the infrastructure available on Ethereum and other blockchain networks.
Through the integration of Lightning Network payments, Blockade Games will be able to accept instant payments in Bitcoin while instantaneously setting off a series of events on any other chain – such as minting a new Neon District asset to a buyer’s Ethereum wallet.
A first look at Neon District gameplay, a Final Fantasy inspired cyberpunk RPG. Subscribe for updates at https://t.co/922ZznXmZ7. #madewithunity #unity3d #gamedev #indiedev pic.twitter.com/shv0ntdM9u
— Neon District (@neondistrictRPG) February 21, 2019
For this to work, there must first be a payment channel that exists between the merchant (in this case Blockade Games) and the buyer.
A channel is created when a user connects to Blockade Games’ Lightning node.
Once this has happened, the purchaser can initiate payments for as long as the channel is open. The player can choose the item they want to buy and select purchase with Bitcoin Lightning.
Blockade Games will then generate a QR code or simply an invoice protocol for the Lightning Network.
Once the buyer has scanned the QR code with a Lightning-compatible wallet, Blockade Games’ node will use the payment data to mark the invoice as paid. The payment can then be processed.
The node could then call an Ethereum smart contract or send the information to another processing system.
Rather than calling a smart contract on the Ethereum mainnet – which can often have a lot of traffic and high gas prices – it will mint items directly to the player’s in-game wallet.
Its game contracts are deployed simultaneously on the Ethereum mainnet as well as its second-layer sidechain known as the ‘game chain’.
The player can then use the item inside of the game and can also make instant and free transfers to other players.
The ‘transfer gateway’ can be used to migrate assets to Ethereum or another network to hold them on any supported chain.
This means that Neon District items can be used in other games that support them or can be sold on marketplaces such as OpenSea.
Interested in reading more Neon District-related news? Discover more about Neon District selling a non-fungible token for 141 Ether, worth roughly $22,500 at the time.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.