Blockchain games have long struggled with how to relate to the blockchain itself. Many developers opt to make blockchain games that use the blockchain as little as possible. The features of blockchain tend to be constraints in these games, and the chain itself is more of a gimmick than an enhancement to play. With some of these games, the general quality of the final product might itself be somewhat suspect.

The problem with many of these games, outside of the cases where the idea of “blockchain” was being used as a marketing concept rather than a useful tool, is that blockchain technology is designed to do certain things very well- things that aren’t always needed in gaming. If you want to send a token to somebody else, enjoy high levels of security while doing it, and have an indelible record of doing so- blockchain is exactly what you need. However, it can be difficult to grasp how that will improve a game of checkers.

The answer to this problem lies in how a blockchain game is conceived — not as an existing game placed on the chain, but as a game that emerges from the chain itself, one where all the aspects of blockchain are features, not inhibitors. That is the motivation behind DEAR, the first fully on-chain game incubated by ARPA.

DEAR: A Fully On-Chain Game Designed for Blockchain

DEAR is a fully on-chain game. Unlike other blockchain games, it was built from the ground up around the question of how to use blockchain’s architecture in a way that made the most sense from a design and gameplay standpoint. Aspects of blockchain that make it suited for transactions but not games were reimagined.

For example, blockchain transactions are not free. This is well-known and widely accepted by blockchain users. However, it can make designing a game that requires its players to make many transactions difficult. DEAR decided to go the other way — transactions are given the gravity they deserve. Each transaction you make has a definite impact on the game, which you must seriously consider before deciding to do.

Each aspect of blockchain that could be seen as a limitation or a constraint in another game is reimagined as a key component of gameplay for DEAR. Wallet interactions are reimagined as points of engagement. The importance of sending tokens in-game reflects the focus of blockchain on transactions. The transparency of the transaction history blockchain ensures that it is worked into the game’s strategy. Ever-increasing numbers of blocks determine how time flows in the game- no updates to the chain mean nothing happens.

These and other tech and gameplay integrations combine into a unique gaming experience — one that only makes sense with a blockchain. Multiple features would cease to make sense if you tried to emulate the game elsewhere. DEAR is fundamentally integrated with the blockchain.

Blockchain as a Medium

DEAR is intricately tied to the chain. To give a very brief look at the gameplay itself, DEAR centers around connecting with other people and a virtual creature to share tokens labeled “LOVE” or “HATE.” As with emotions and other blockchains, each action changes the world in a meaningful way. Players can decide to feed or abuse the digital deer as they see fit, but other players can join in, do the opposite, or observe.

Of equal importance is that each action contributes to the next block, which moves time forward as it is recorded. Like any blockchain, this ledger of actions, transactions, and engagements with the DEAR and other players is permanent and visible to all. Given the collaborative nature of the game, the fact that every action is visible to all and immutably recorded is itself part of the playing experience.

How players will choose to play when the medium is part of their strategy is yet to be determined.

The importance of blockchain as a medium for gaming, rather than just as a storage point for inventory, the foundation of autonomous worlds, or a minor factor in an otherwise non-blockchain-based game, must be restated. DEAR is not only a fully on-chain game; it is a game where the nature of the blockchain is the first and last consideration in both design and gameplay. Each transaction is a vital point in the story.

This is undeniably a major step forward for blockchain gaming, both technically and conceptually.The idea of a blockchain game that works with the medium rather than against it is a new one, indicative of how far blockchain gaming has yet to go and the importance of DEAR as a springboard.

This is to say nothing of the community that will form as a result of the game. Players will continuously interact with each other and the digital DEAR that they will either help or harm. The collaborative nature of this act, combined with the tendency for blockchain to generate comminutes striving towards similar goals, will create a community sharing emotional tokens, engaging with one another, and responding to the actions of others.

DEAR is ARPA’s first step into the world of Fully On-Chain games. Given our dedication to a community-centered, decentralized blockchain ecosystem, it is a natural step. A game of this kind that shows the full scope of what blockchain can do in gaming is the sort of innovation we praise and have already demonstrated elsewhere.

DEAR is a game that not only stores data on the chain but also incorporates all aspects of blockchain into gameplay and player interactions. It is but the first of a new kind of blockchain game that will continue to integrate the concept of gaming with the strengths of blockchain rather than trying to avoid them.

So come on! Give it a play here: https://www.dear.game/.

About DEAR

DEAR is a smart-contract-based creature living on-chain. It challenges players to nurture, influence, and ultimately shape the life of a digital entity through interactions by transactions. DEAR’s mechanisms are naturally grown out of the blockchain, exploring not only the composability and extensibility of smart contracts, but also the relationship between people through the medium of blockchain.

About ARPA

ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.

Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.

For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at contact@arpanetwork.io.

Learn about ARPA’s recent official news：

Twitter: @arpaofficial

Medium: https://medium.com/@arpa

Discord: https://dsc.gg/arpa-network

Telegram (English): https://t.me/arpa_community

Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/Arpa_Turkey

Telegram (Korean): https://t.me/ARPA_Korea

Telegram (Việt Nam): https://t.me/ARPAVietnam

Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/arpa_community_ru

Telegram (Indonesian): https://t.me/Arpa_Indonesia

Telegram(Sri Lanka): https://t.me/arpa_srilanka

Telegram(Africa): https://t.me/arpaafrica

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/arpachain/

ARPA Network Launches EigenLayer AVS: Enhancing Network Security, Availability and Scalability with Esteemed Operator Partners

We’re excited to announce that ARPA Network launches an EigenLayer-secured AVS! This milestone is a pivotal step in our multi-chain expansion, laying a more secure foundation for our commitment to fostering an inclusive, dynamic, and equitable Web3 environment. Alongside this integration, we’ve onboarded numerous esteemed operator partners to advance ARPA Network’s security, availability, and scalability.

What is EigenLayer and AVS?

EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that pioneers restaking, a new concept in crypto-economic security. At its essence, EigenLayer comprises a suite of smart contracts enabling users to restake their natively staked ETH or liquid staking tokens (LST), and bootstrap new proof-of-stake (PoS) networks and services. In return, restakers can earn additional staking rewards, which are currently recorded in the form of points.

EigenLayer’s architecture includes four key components: actively validated services (AVS), restakers, operators, and AVS consumers. As one of the AVSs, the ARPA BLS Threshold Signature Scheme (BLS-TSS) Network is a decentralized network composed of multiple dynamic groups of nodes that securely generate BLS threshold signatures. Randcast, our first product leveraging the ARPA Network, provides secure and reliable random number generation on multiple blockchains. Other AVSs include data availability layers, shared sequencers, oracle networks, bridges, coprocessors, applied cryptography systems, and more.

How Does EigenLayer’s Mechanism Function?

In simple terms, AVS consumers, typically dApps, request computation tasks from AVSs, which in turn seek a range of services from operators. Operators receive restaked ETH or LST delegations from restakers, operate specialized node software, and execute tasks for AVSs. This approach facilitates Ethereum’s “shared security” among a broader spectrum of developers in a more streamlined manner.

Why Did We Opt to Embrace EigenLayer?

Enhanced Security. ARPA Network features robust security through the architecture of dynamic node groups that reduce reliance on centralized authorities. With the integration of EigenLayer, ARPA Network fortifies its security infrastructure by leveraging Ethereum’s shared security. It aligns with EigenLayer’s notion of Dual Staking, which utilizes staking of two tokens — ARPA native staking and ETH restaking — to guarantee the security of ARPA Network. This enhancement cultivates a more reliable environment for ARPA Randcast users.

Advanced Availability. The addition of more nodes increases the number of available groups, which improves the network’s fault tolerance. This ensures a higher probability of task execution, enabling users to achieve superior service quality.

Improved Scalability. EigenLayer optimizes security resource allocation, allowing operators to secure multiple protocols efficiently simultaneously. By collaborating with additional operator partners within the EigenLayer ecosystem alongside ARPA’s existing staking mechanism, ARPA Network advances its scalability, stability, and sustainability. This strategic alignment empowers Randcast users with enhanced service scope.

What Can EigenLayer, ARPA Network and Randcast Enable Together?

We all acknowledge that randomness is ubiquitous and essential in autonomous worlds. From the infrastructure to decentralized applications, fairness ensured by randomness is the basis of all rules. Therefore, with the foundation being enhanced by EigenLayer, ARPA Network and Randcast are better positioned to serve the builders across many fields, including but not limited to the following:

Games. Randcast enhances the gaming experience by guaranteeing fairness and randomness in random elements of games, such as character attributes, item properties, matchmaking, map generation, event outcomes, divination, and sometimes winner drawing.

NFTs. Randomly assigned rarity tiers in NFT series are crucial. Users need assurance that the results are generated by tamper-proof randomness.

Blockchain Consensus. Builders can integrate Randcast into the consensus layer, adding a modular random beacon for the blockchains they develop.

Marketing & Community Campaigns. Leveraging Randcast, builders can create marketing tools to randomly select community giveaway winners, customizing weighting metrics such as engagement and token staking.

DAO Governance. Randcast can certify a fair random sample voting process, ensuring that the opinions of a larger Web3 community are adequately represented.

Who Are We Collaborating With?

We launch the ARPA Network AVS on EigenLayer with strong support from numerous top-tier operator partners. Collectively, these esteemed operators have been delegated over 2 million ETH (approximately $7 billion) in restaking from about 80,000 stakers. Together, we are confident in boosting the security, availability, and scalability of the ARPA ecosystem, providing enhanced services to Randcast users, and empowering more Web3 builders.

Looking Ahead

Our journey of exploration and expansion across multiple ecosystems will continue. Our dedication to empowering Web3 builders with robust and secure infrastructure, along with standardized and modularized randomness functionalities, will only strengthen. Stay tuned for further updates!

About ARPA

ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.

Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.

For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at contact@arpanetwork.io.

Learn about ARPA’s recent official news：

Twitter: @arpaofficial

Medium: https://medium.com/@arpa

Discord: https://dsc.gg/arpa-network

Telegram (English): https://t.me/arpa_community

Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/Arpa_Turkey

Telegram (Korean): https://t.me/ARPA_Korea

Telegram (Việt Nam): https://t.me/ARPAVietnam

Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/arpa_community_ru

Telegram (Indonesian): https://t.me/Arpa_Indonesia

Telegram(Sri Lanka): https://t.me/arpa_srilanka

Telegram(Africa): https://t.me/arpaafrica

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/arpachain/

ARPA Network Secures $6M Strategic Investment Led by Nomura’s Laser Digital and DeFiance Capital to Expand Product Offerings in Fully On-Chain Gaming and Cryptographic AI

Lead investors include Nomura’s Laser Digital and DeFiance Capital, with additional support from Animoca Ventures, Metrics Ventures, ArkStream Capital, and Trinito

Singapore — May 30th, 2024 — ARPA Network, a pioneer in decentralized secure computation, proudly announces a $6M strategic investment to support product expansion in fully on-chain gaming, Autonomous Worlds (AW), and cryptographic AI. Lead investors include Nomura’s Laser Digital and DeFiance Capital, with additional funding from Animoca Ventures, Metrics Ventures, ArkStream Capital, and Trinito. ARPA Network is previously backed by Binance Labs, Arrington Capital, and DWF Labs.

Founded in 2018, ARPA innovates cryptographic systems to enable more blockchain use cases. ARPA Threshold BLS Network, launched in mid-2023, serves as the infrastructure for verifiable Random Number Generators (RNGs), secure wallets, cross-chain bridges, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

“This infusion of capital from industry leaders marks a milestone for ARPA,” said Felix Xu, co-founder of ARPA Network. “We have exciting product launches in the next months, including DEAR, an elegantly designed mobile fully on-chain game, and integration of ARPA Randcast as Eigenlayer AVS. Together with leading AI institutions, we will publish research and conduct PoC on cryptographic AI for facial recognition using zero-knowledge machine learning (ZKML).”

As ARPA’s first foray into fully on-chain game, DEAR is a smart-contract-based creature living on-chain. It challenges players to nurture, influence, and ultimately shape the digital lifeform through interactions. The game’s mechanics, crafted directly from blockchain capabilities, explore the composability and extensibility of smart contracts as well as the intricate relationships between individuals in the community. DEAR launched on the Redstone Chain on May 15.

At the same time, researchers at ARPA are exploring the crossover of cryptography and AI to expand blockchain capabilities and lower the barrier to mass adoption. The team is building proof of concept for on-chain privacy-preserving biometric technologies that grant users smooth and secure access to the blockchain. ARPA also looks to co-author research in ZKML with other leading researchers.

Jez Mohideen, CEO of Laser Digital, commented, “ARPA’s initiatives in on-chain gaming and cryptographic AI are poised to transform the blockchain landscape, making these technologies more accessible and impactful across various industries. This investment underlines our dedication to enhancing the digital landscape and supporting technologies that offer significant market potential and align with our values of responsible innovation.”

Arthur Cheong, Founder & CIO of DeFiance Capital, added, “We are pleased to back ARPA Network in their industry-leading efforts in decentralized secure computation, which are crucial for the integrity and security of blockchain ecosystems. This technology is vital not only for fully on-chain games but also for enhancing the reliability and privacy of applications across the entire blockchain space.”

Part of this investment will be used to expand the customer base for ARPA Randcast — a verifiable random number generator that offers unprecedented security and efficiency for diverse applications, including gaming, lotteries, NFT minting, and key generation. Serving more than 15 dapp customers, Randcast is live on Ethereum, Redstone, Optimism, Base, Loot Chain, and Taiko, and will integrate as an Eigenlayer AVS. Fully on-chain game developers can also easily integrate Randcast using the popular MUD Framework.

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said: “ARPA Network’s focus on enhancing blockchain functionality through innovative cryptographic technologies makes it a compelling addition to the portfolio of Animoca Ventures. We are particularly enthusiastic about DEAR, which exemplifies the transformative potential of fully on-chain gaming to offer high levels of engagement and fairness, aligning seamlessly with our vision of fostering a more accessible and ownership-driven gaming ecosystem.”

About Laser Digital

Laser Digital is a crypto business redefining the frontier of digital finance. Backed by Nomura, Laser Digital delivers scalable, robust opportunities across trading, solutions, asset management, and ventures. The team works at higher risk management standards, compliance, and commercial viability, all driven by a belief in more responsible crypto innovation. With an open and dynamic culture, Laser Digital has the freedom to adapt to market needs, to move swiftly to capitalisation, and to share learnings with clients and partners –bringing greater confidence to the institutional market for the benefit of all.

For more information, please visit: https://www.laserdigital.com.

About DeFiance Capital

DeFiance Capital is a leading crypto investment firm with a global footprint founded by Arthur Cheong (Arthur0x) and focuses on liquid tokens with venture-scale upside. They invest in crypto with a thesis-driven and fundamental-focused strategy.

About ARPA

ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.

Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.

For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at contact@arpanetwork.io.

Learn about ARPA’s recent official news：

Twitter: @arpaofficial

Medium: https://medium.com/@arpa

Discord: https://dsc.gg/arpa-network

Telegram (English): https://t.me/arpa_community

Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/Arpa_Turkey

Telegram (Korean): https://t.me/ARPA_Korea

Telegram (Việt Nam): https://t.me/ARPAVietnam

Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/arpa_community_ru

Telegram (Indonesian): https://t.me/Arpa_Indonesia

Telegram(Sri Lanka): https://t.me/arpa_srilanka

Telegram(Africa): https://t.me/arpaafrica

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/arpachain/

Cryptography has long been the preserve of mathematicians and computer scientists. However, recent advancements, particularly in zero-knowledge technologies, are now turning cryptographic system designs from complex mathematical constructions into more accessible and straightforward programming tasks. This transformative process, known as programmable cryptography, effectively bridges the gap between protocol designs and their practical implementations, and it will have profound implications for our security and privacy, both on-chain and online.

The Challenges of Bringing Cryptographic Theory to Practice

At its essence, cryptography is simply the process of sending private messages between entities. The act itself introduces several requirements — that both sender and recipient can understand the messages, but that any third-party interceptor may not. Importantly, it also needs to ensure that the message cannot be tampered with before delivery. For instance, digital signatures provide authentication and integrity for communication on insecure channels.

Advanced cryptographic systems now cover the need to protect all kinds of online data and messages during storage, transmission, and computation, including banking, auctions, e-commerce, and blockchain, to name just a few. These systems include zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP,) multi-party computation (MPC,) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE,) among others. Each of these systems, rooted in mathematics, addresses specific scenarios and needs.

MPC protects input data privacy in scenarios where multiple parties perform collaborative computations. One use case for MPC is institutional custody, used by firms such as Fireblocks, enabling segregation of responsibility between individuals overseeing a wallet. ZKPs efficiently enable verifiable computation and data privacy in single-party contexts and are currently used in blockchain privacy and scaling.

The introduction of advanced cryptographic systems brings a lot of exciting possibilities to the digital world, but it also comes with significant challenges. People can only access dedicated cryptographic protocols designed for specific applications for a long time, such as private intersections, private auctions and voting, and physical identity verification. Making these systems work in the real world isn’t straightforward. Cryptographers must carefully plan everything, like security assumptions, primitive choices, and performance optimization. This limits the wide-scale application of cryptosystems. The ability to efficiently implement a cryptographic protocol in a generalized scenario plays a crucial role in bringing cryptography from theory to the real world.

The Role of Programmable Cryptography

To address the widespread adoption issues faced by cryptosystems, some designs have incorporated circuit-based functional descriptions. Theoretically, if a cryptosystem’s basic modules are capable of emulating a Turing machine, it can be used for general-purpose computational problems. This approach, where cryptosystems are utilized through circuit descriptions, is known as programmable cryptography. However, theoretical feasibility is far from sufficient for real-world applications. Once the complexity of such a cryptosystem grows too quickly with the size of the computational problem, its practical application becomes unrealistic. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, cryptographers are continuously refining these algorithms. This includes designing new frameworks, optimizing underlying primitives, and refactoring engineering implementations.

Researchers working at 0xPARC and Privacy and Scaling Explorations are carrying out pioneering work that enables zkSNARKs, the zero-knowledge proof construction now widely deployed in blockchain infrastructure such as ZCash and zkEVM, to be programmable cryptography.

They have showcased a proof of concept for identity claims using programmable ZKPs. This innovative approach allows for the verification of an individual’s eligibility for services through their email or social media, without disclosing the actual content of those communications, therefore keeping personal information confidential.

In another groundbreaking application, programmable cryptography facilitates the confidential calculation of credit scores from a user’s interactions with Web 2.0 services, like social media, without exposing specific activities. This enables a privacy-centric assessment of creditworthiness, revolutionizing the evaluation of financial trustworthiness in today’s digital world.

The benefits of programmable cryptography are on multiple levels. Firstly, it makes the practical applications of cryptography far more flexible and adaptable. Programmability also opens up applied cryptography from being a niche discipline accessible to only a few academics to a global pool of developers, fostering experimentation and innovation.

Not a Silver Bullet, But a Turning Point

A key limitation of programmable cryptography in its current state is that its research has been predominantly focused on zkSNARKs. However, it’s worth noting that many cryptographic technologies are still in a relatively early stage of development, with significant breakthroughs in use cases only occurring over the last two decades. ZK technology has been a particular area of investment and focus due to the interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies during that same period. With a similar level of interest and innovation, it’s possible that practical breakthroughs in the fields of MPC or HE could result in the emergence of programmable elements.

As more and more of our lives exist online, the ability to protect and authenticate our data and communications becomes ever more critical. Programmable cryptography offers the opportunity to break down barriers and usher in a new era of modern encryption that’s more accessible and ripe for future development.

About ARPA

ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.

Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.

For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at contact@arpanetwork.io.

Learn about ARPA’s recent official news：

Twitter: @arpaofficial

Medium: https://medium.com/@arpa

Discord: https://dsc.gg/arpa-network

Telegram (English): https://t.me/arpa_community

Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/Arpa_Turkey

Telegram (Korean): https://t.me/ARPA_Korea

Telegram (Việt Nam): https://t.me/ARPAVietnam

Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/arpa_community_ru

Telegram (Indonesian): https://t.me/Arpa_Indonesia

Telegram(Sri Lanka): https://t.me/arpa_srilanka

Telegram(Africa): https://t.me/arpaafrica

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/arpachain/

DEAR — Project Introduction

DEAR is:

An Approach to Fair Launch by Proof of Participation

A Simulation of Digital Life with an Absolute Passing of Time

An On-chain Social Experiment of Collaborative Competition

A Blockchain Interactive Installation Art of On-chain Behavior

A Trial of Composability and Extensibility of Smart Contract Standards

An Attempt of FOCG for Conscious Crypto Users

Originality Pledge: We handcrafted, with heart, every word of this article, just like DEAR; every graphic, every frame of animation, every second of the background music, every sound effect, every part of the gameplay mechanism, and every line of code, WITHOUT the help from generative AI models.

Co-authored by DEAR and @MK_0x5F3759DF from ARPA Network

A Shift in Perspective:

DEAR is our first attempt to build an FOCG, inheriting the vision of MUD. Before the idea of DEAR was born, we had been developing several other concepts of an FOCG. Still, almost all of them followed one single path: Finding and adapting a suitable type of existing traditional gameplay mechanism on the Blockchain. Due to the Blockchain’s constraints, merely trying to adopt existing gameplay mechanisms while adding Blockchain-native features like assets or tokens hardly makes the games more appealing and fun than their traditional counterparts. Walking on this path, we were stuck with a bunch of board games, turn-based strategy games, loot-based games, and card game ideas, none of which seemed to be particularly and undistinguishably more fun on-chain vs. off-chain. We also often fell into the trap of beginning to think about how to improve or eliminate these constraints so that the adoption of existing traditional gameplay mechanisms can work better on the Blockchain. And that is no longer about building an FOCG but improving the infrastructure.

After a trip to DEVCON in Istanbul and several fascinating idea exchanges with the trailblazers of FOCG and Autonomous World, we have realized that firstly, also per Gubsheep and Lattice’s vision and motivation to build Dark Forest and MUD, “game” in FOCG is not just in the sense of entertainment like in the traditional gaming industry, but a less risky, more open and creative approach of designing and developing decentralized applications and mechanisms in general that also helps to test and push the technical boundary of the Blockchain infrastructure. Secondly, we could see the Blockchain’s constraints as unique features, which could be treated as amplifiers and valuable tools when building an FOCG.

This shift in perspective led us to reconsider how we can leverage the constraints of Blockchain to experiment with a different approach to designing and developing an FOCG. We have listed some of the significant constraints of Blockchain and begun thinking about how we could latch our creativity onto them and use them as storytelling and gameplay devices rather than viewing them as limitations we need to work around.

After analyzing the constraints from this perspective, we examined some of the most frequent types of user interactions with the Blockchain and some of the most frequently deployed types of smart contracts in a different light. Through that light, an idea started to emerge.

The Things We “Made Up”:

The ERC-20 standard was created nine years ago, and the term “token” was quite the apparent word of choice for such a simple yet powerful form of smart contract application. What’s interesting about the standard is that it only defines the interface, which dictates the general behavior of such applications. However, the implementation could be anything as long as it conforms to the interface. That means there is room for creativity in the implementation, and as long as the interface defined in the standard is implemented, every wallet, every dex, and every DApps that is compatible with ERC-20 will also recognize our heavily modded ERC-20 token implementation through the composability. Naturally, anything that could interact with the ERC-20 token can interact with our modded ERC-20 token and, therefore, becomes an instrument that facilitates our gameplay mechanisms.

We then dwelled on the word “token” itself. In what context is the word used besides the familiar and obvious meaning of financial assets? “Token of Love” immediately came to mind. After digging into the etymology, we have found:

token (n.)

Old English tacen “ sign, symbol, evidence, portent ”

(Philosophy) A particular thing to which a concept applies

Something serving as an expression of something else

This definition of “token” is more ancient than “token as a coin.” What if, in our game, we give the original meaning back to the word “token” and use ERC-20 to represent emotions?

“Token as Token,” if you will.

A series of questions and problems came up:

What if we use a modded ERC-20 token to represent emotions in the game?

But emotion is not transferred but transmitted. You can spread emotions to others, but you still feel the emotion yourself. It is not like money. What do you do with that?

What if this ERC-20 token is double-spending? Then, the emotion can be transmitted!

An infectious ERC-20 token that can spread like a virus? Just like emotions?

But then the number will quickly spin out of control like nuclear fission to cause an overflow. How do you deal with that?

People hardly spread their emotions to others at 100% efficiency. Can we control the efficiency of the spread?

… … You get the gist of it.

Eventually, we designed a pair of “Controlled Double-Spending ERC-20 Tokens”, not representing assets or money but two fundamental emotions: Love and hatred. People can directly “transfer” them into others’ wallets to spread their love or hate. Due to the “infectious” nature of these two tokens, we intuitively turned them into an invitation mechanism for growth hacking: only the wallets with either one of these two tokens are qualified to interact with the game. You can only “connect” with others when you share some emotions. You can only “connect” with yourself when you understand your emotions.

“Token Transfer to Invite,” if you will.

But what’s the point of doing this? Going back to the constraints of Blockchain that we have listed: “the cumbersome wallet interaction,” “everything is a transaction,” “every transaction costs money,” and “transaction is slow.” We took a step back to think about how we can turn them to our advantage to amplify the gameplay experience instead of poorly adapting existing game ideas to cope with these constraints, trying to improve transaction speed or lower gas cost, or embedding a burner wallet to workaround the user-wallet interaction.

The train of thought goes as follows: The crypto wallet interaction and paid/slow transactions deeply root into how cryptography and Blockchain technology work. You sacrifice simple, free, and fast interaction to achieve security, decentralization, trustlessness, and complete freedom for transacting digital assets. It is a tradeoff by design. As a matter of fact, every single attempt we have seen so far to “improve” upon the above has to “go backward” to either compromise on the level of security or to abandon some degree of decentralization and trustlessness, similar to the “impossible triangle of Blockchain.” Therefore, until the researchers and developers make breakthroughs on the cryptographic primitives that the Blockchain is built upon or reiterate the cryptographic protocol design, any attempt to “improve” these fundamental features will always be just trade-offs or compromises.

Once, searching for technical advice as the beneficiary and fellow practitioner of cryptography and Blockchain, we came across a subreddit community (r/crypto) that has long outdated the entire young and thriving Blockchain industry. The community description goes as follows:

Cryptography is the art of creating mathematical assurances for who can do what with data, including but not limited to encryption of messages such that only the key-holder can read it. Cryptography lives at an intersection of math and computer science. This is a technical subreddit covering the theory and practice of modern and *strong* cryptography.

But that was not the most interesting part. The locked pinned to the top thread from six years ago is. (You can take a look at it yourself: r/crypto)

And there is only one sentence and one link to a website in this thread:

Crypto is not cryptocurrency.

https://www.cryptoisnotcryptocurrency.com/

And following the link to the website, there is still only one single statement:

IT REFERS TO CRYPTOGRAPHY

And, of course, aside from the emoji, which already says a lot, they will take every opportunity to mock your ignorance. If you click on that link in the website again, “Let me Google that for you: Cryptography (you idiot!)” is thrown at your face.

But just why are they doing this??? Cryptocurrency is one of the most famous cryptographic inventions that put cryptography at the center of the stage. Shouldn’t they feel happy to be associated with and proud of it? After all, they are the cryptographers and the OG cypherpunks who collectively draft and advocate almost EVERYTHING that shapes the ideology behind Blockchain and cryptocurrency long before either came into existence. Now they are invented, adopted, and even hyped, should they be happy???

Identity is our answer. The reason these hardcore cypherpunks eagerly want to separate themselves from cryptocurrency is that they do not want to be mistakenly identified as cryptocurrency holders, though their work directly or indirectly resulted in the inception of Blockchain, because they envision a much better world based on cryptography, the Blockchain, and cryptocurrency are just two minor manifestations of that ideology.

So, what is the identity of crypto builders, users, and enthusiasts?

First, create a seed phrase, memorize or safely store it yourself, and know that math guarantees no one can touch what you own. Meanwhile, sacrifice the ease of use in exchange for peace of mind. Trust no one who claims can store your seed phrase safely for you. That is not enduring the cumbersome wallet interaction but a conscious choice for security.

Second, sign every transaction on the Blockchain, pay for the gas fee, and know that you can safely clear any transaction to any account on the planet within the Internet Nation with no geopolitical border. And you always “pay” more with something else when using a “free” service. That is not the case when you pay the fees using Blockchain. The gas fee is calculated for precisely what you are requesting, nothing more, nothing less. That is not an expensive service but a conscious choice for a more transparent and interconnected financial system.

Third, wait for the confirmation of every transaction you have signed, knowing that it is permanently and unchangeably written onto the Blockchain with no room for ambiguity. That is not slow but a conscious choice for trustlessness.

Fourth, write a smart contract that interacts with others and write bots or scripts to interact with the Blockchain. That is not user-unfriendly but a conscious choice for composability and interoperability.

Disclaimer: We are not trying to advocate against a better user experience or a path to achieve mass adoption. We only want to discuss the identity of conscious crypto builders, users, and enthusiasts to attempt to capture that sense of belonging and coolness in the context of FOCG, and not to void of it or workaround it because we believe it is this identity that will make a FOCG distinguishably fun.

Know-how and knowing-why are knowledge, similar to knowing the world settings and rulesets of DND, the skills and heroes of Dota2, and the optimization techniques in Factorio. Every community thinks they are cool because they share a deep context, speak a common and particular language derived from that context, and know things that people outside of the community don’t.

In DEAR, we are trying to emphasize the knowledge of being a crypto user, adding a layer of story on top of the familiar actions a crypto user takes all too often:

“Connect the wallet” is to connect with DEAR, a digital creature, and other players.

“Approve to spend” means to pause and think carefully about your following action before you decide.

“Transfer tokens” is to influence by selectively spreading your double spending love and hatred to others.

“Transfer amount” is inscribing a message to DEAR and others into the transaction.

Clicking the “connect,” “approve,” “send,” “reject,” and “confirm” buttons in your wallet calls for impulse because there is money, risk, and expectation involved. That is a very intimate and emotional moment. This moment is arguably more intense, impactful, and “real” than any other “free” actions on centralized social media or traditional games. DEAR attempts to fuse a conscious crypto user’s knowledge, identity, and emotional impulses into a story/narrative to create an experience.

Merely adding colors to the everyday actions on Blockchain is far from enough to make a “game.” In a broad sense, everything about Blockchain and cryptocurrency is a “game:” the game theory behind PoW and PoS, the tokenomics and incentive/penalty mechanisms, and the “buy” or “sell,” “long” or “short” battles between the whales and the holders. The essence is that a game is not fun without conflict; a conflict feels thin and trivial without partnership and betrayal; a partnership or betrayal tastes bland without reflection. This sounds foolish, but we have eventually decided that the game’s core is a twisted version of one of the simplest and most distilled forms of collaborative competition: Tug of War. There will be two factions: Love and Hatred; inspired by r/place, players will form and organize their factions and strategize “attacks” and “coups” to compete and collaborate to find the meaning of “winning.”

With our modded version of the ERC20 token mechanism, to participate in the game and influence the outcome, the players in each faction can directly interact with DEAR through UI or smart contract and other players through the most common action of “token transfer.”

“Token Transfer to Play,” if you will.

Now, beyond the nature of being a FOCG, DEAR is also a simulation of digital life, inspired by Conway’s Game of Life, Digital Pet Tamagotchi, and a 2009 email thread discussion of Bitcoin being a distributed secure timestamp server from Satoshi Nakamoto.

One core concept behind these inspirations is “time.”

The universe combines fundamental rigid laws of physics and a variety of more specific but less rigid subsets of rules (cellular structure and DNA) that spawn life.

The constraints of Blockchain and how it works are the fundamental rigid “laws of physics”; smart contract codes are like the subsets of rules to make cellular structures and DNA alike, and the way smart contract code functions has to obey the “laws of physics” of Blockchain.

The smart contract state changes mark the arrow of time of Blockchain, just like the ever-increasing entropy denotes the arrow of time of the universe. The state change “ticks” the smart contract program’s “time.”

The ever-increasing block creates an absolute time dimension in the digital world. Only with a time dimension can we simulate “life” and “death.” It is the first time on the Internet, and in the digital world, with the help of math and cryptography, that we managed to keep an irreversible and non-stoppable decentralized “time.”

Ironically, what we hold dear is often impossible to grasp eternally and quickly fades away. We designed DEAR on top of the time dimension to have a lifespan and a limited time frame of participation so that the interactions between you and DEAR can feel memorable and precious.

“Blockheight as Entropy.” if you will.

Within this ever-increasing entropy of Blockchain, there is another topic we would like to discuss in DEAR: the amount of data Blockchain has been incurring in one single direction. There are countless obsolete or dead smart contracts, scam tokens, and unintended transactions among that data. For lack of a better analogy, this part of the data piles up into a digital landfill. Within it, the scam token contracts and their data are still active and harmful. For example, those fake USDT transfers with similar address suffixes in your wallet history aim to confuse you into sending real valuable assets to their addresses.

In the gameplay of DEAR, we attempt to “recycle” these harmful scam tokens by turning them into “toxins,” which you can use to “abuse” DEAR, not only to raise awareness of the problem but also to embed the narrative more deeply into how Blockchain works.

“Cryptocurrency Toxic Waste,” if you will.

DEAR is also influenced by the trending concepts behind inscriptions, soul-bound tokens, NFTs, and POAP. We carefully designed and incorporated such concepts to be blended into the narrative of DEAR and attempted to eventually treat the participation of the game as a “ticket” to a fair launch experiment.

“Proof of Participation for Fair Launch,” if you will.

Retrospective:

In the end, looking at the current state of Blockchain, the central theme still revolves around assets, value, pricing, liquidity, trading, transacting, and ultimately money. Therefore, for an FOCG to be fun, at the core, the concept of “game” should be more in the context of “game theory,” where people fairly compete and collaborate in the “war of money” rather than merely in the context of “gaming as entertainment.”

However, if an FOCG is only bluntly about “money” and “trading,” it essentially becomes a DEX or a DeFi App. It might appeal to traders but is less exciting or attractive to a broader audience or participants, especially when an average Joe feels disadvantaged and uncompetitive compared to a professional trader or institution with the upper hand. Therefore, a well-crafted story and world setting with a coherent gameplay mechanism are essential to make an FOCG feel more fair and fun for a bigger audience. In the digital world of consumerism, seeking money beyond basic needs is, without exception, a search for identity and emotional fulfillment within the social and cultural construct. Blockchain has allowed us to seamlessly integrate storytelling with an open yet structured financial transaction system. And DEAR is such an attempt.

Thank you for reading til the end! The above is everything behind the ideation and design of DEAR. We welcome any further discussion, debates, and development of these topics! If you have anything to say to us, please find us here: Discord Twitter

We have yet to talk about the story of DEAR, which is worth another article.

About DEAR:

DEAR is a smart-contract-based creature living on-chain. It challenges players to nurture, influence, and ultimately shape the life of a digital entity through interactions by transactions. DEAR’s mechanisms are naturally grown out of the blockchain, exploring not only the composability and extensibility of smart contracts, but also the relationship between people through the medium of blockchain.

Randcast Integrates Redstone: Accelerating Enhancement of On-Chain Gaming Experience and Autonomous Worlds Building

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Randcast on Redstone (testnet)! Redstone is an Optimistic Rollup layer-2 framework crafted by Lattice. Lattice’s expertise in on-chain gaming is currently guiding the Autonomous Worlds (AW) initiative and enriching the development landscape through the MUD framework, which powers diverse on-chain games from OPCraft to Sky Strife, CCP’s Project Awakening to Primodium.

This pivotal stride toward broadening ARPA’s horizons and reinforcing our capabilities bolsters our commitment to spearheading the exploration of Fully On-chain Game (FOCG) and AW.

Why Redstone?

We selected Redstone as the fourth chain to integrate Randcast, following the successful launch on Ethereum and integration with Optimism and Base. This decision is driven by several compelling factors.

EVM-compatible and OP Stack-based. Redstone operates as an Ethereum blockchain, drawing the majority of its security assurances from layer-1. Its foundational architecture, inspired by Optimism Rollup, facilitates a seamless integration process.

Innovative Alternative Data Availability (DA) Architecture. Redstone operates like a traditional optimistic rollup, except instead of posting the entire input state to L1, it posts a data commitment hash. The input state corresponding to the input commitment is stored off-chain by a Data Availability Provider. This is coupled with a permissionless DA challenge mechanism on the Ethereum L1, allowing for cost-effective alt-DA without relying on a permissioned DA council or on DA networks outside of Ethereum.

Strong compatibility with MUD. Lattice’s another distinguished creation, MUD, an open-source on-chain framework, is considered to be the engine of Autonomous Worlds. Having already supported several prominent FOCGs like Sky Strife, OPCraft, and Primodium, MUD is poised to facilitate the development of additional games. Redstone inherently benefits from being highly compatible with applications built on MUD.

Randcast and Redstone: Elevating On-Chain Gaming

The integration of Randcast with Redstone aligns perfectly with our dedication to delivering a seamless and enriched on-chain gaming experience. Together, we anticipate streamlining the developer experience for those crafting ambitious applications and worlds.

While Redstone aims to push the limits of what is possible to build on the EVM from the fundamental layer’s perspective, Randcast’s dev-friendly Smart Contract SDK allows for the effortless integration of randomness oracle into dApps. The SDK is designed to be flexible and extensible. The SDK is written in Solidity and can be used in any EVM-compatible blockchain. It aims to help request randomness as well as consume randomness in a secure and easy way.

Randcast users can leverage our Randcast CLI tool to manage their subscription and consumer contracts, read and filter historical requests and fulfillment results, and estimate the gas cost of the callback function, all in one place. This is our recommended method to interact with Randcast, but we also offer additional methods, such as direct contract interaction.

What’s Next?

This integration with Redstone is a significant stride in our ongoing journey to explore and expand across multiple ecosystems. As we delve into research for potential integration with other OP Stack chains, we are also actively working on incorporating Randcast into MUD. We aim to benefit developers using the engine with standardized and modularized randomness functionalities, empowering them to concentrate on the creative aspects of game development.

The successful launch on Redstone and the forthcoming integration with MUD are just further steps toward the promising future of FOCG and Autonomous Worlds. Our journey into uncharted territory persists, and we are confident in encountering more like-minded trailblazers. Stay tuned for more updates!

About ARPA

ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.

Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.

For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at contact@arpanetwork.io.

Learn about ARPA’s recent official news：

Twitter: @arpaofficial

Medium: https://medium.com/@arpa

Discord: https://dsc.gg/arpa-network

Telegram (English): https://t.me/arpa_community

Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/Arpa_Turkey

Telegram (Korean): https://t.me/ARPA_Korea

Telegram (Việt Nam): https://t.me/ARPAVietnam

Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/arpa_community_ru

Telegram (Indonesian): https://t.me/Arpa_Indonesia

Telegram(Sri Lanka): https://t.me/arpa_srilanka

Telegram(Africa): https://t.me/arpaafrica

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/arpachain/