We’re on the air. That’s the SP8DE crew speaking. We got to Earth orbit the normal way through an ordinary ship to the Cardano station. We got the good news from them. They said that the first smart-contracts “KEVM” testnet was launched several days ago. It gave us the confidence to tackle the challenges that remain. We’re on the right track and are excited to announce the first results of developing our MVP.
It all started with a conference in Macau – we have changed our vision in what would constitute commercial success for SP8DE itself, and what would maximize the value of the SPX token. In a few words, we have been confronted with the brutal reality.
Online gambling industry pilots do not care about the disruptive potential of distributed ledger technologies: notwithstanding the ideological appeal, any tech is evaluated by them from a very quantitative cost-benefit perspective. Can the blockchain be a solution? At the moment blockchain gambling tech suffers from significant flaws; they are:
- Expensive (storing data on ETH blockchain is several million times more expensive than using cloud solutions, e.g., AWS cloud)
- Raw (not suitable for immediate deployment)
- Inefficient (the cost of decentralization is transaction throughput)
- Insecure (smart contract security standards are not well-established; truly experienced and capable developers are scarce)
- Lacking scalability (the actual weakness of most blockchain projects)
Competing with major players is tricky for any startup. An established user base, recognized and well-positioned brand, and multi-million-dollar monthly marketing expenses are infeasible for the majority of young firms populating the crypto space. Add to this the obvious benefits in terms of user experience that centralized (thus efficient) solutions offer over the decentralized alternatives and the resulting picture appears quite grim. On top of that, a major argument against full decentralization is the absence of any actually working blockchain scaling solution.
However, SP8DE has received its fair share of attention from many companies providing necessary services – some specialize in providing the infrastructure; others are busy building the brand name and sharpening marketing efforts. This is exactly what the online gambling industry represents today.
Designing the protocol, we went out with this strong idea: it should be the decentralized algorithm producing unbiased randomness with excellent cryptographic security while being easy to integrate. And, you know what? We did it! Let’s introduce the SP8DE protocol workflow:
- A Casino application adds some code to the frontend and backend parts of their application. It allows working with the SP8DE algorithm.
- A user opens the Casino app. They choose a game type (for example, the dice).
- After choosing the game type, the private/public key pairs and random numbers (x,y) will be generated on the client side, the server side and the SP8DE algorithm generates a random number (z) which is signed by its private key. The main point is that the casino doesn’t have access to the client private key.
- The SP8DE gets x,y which is signed with the private keys.
- Then, the SP8DE protocol creates the “game” object with parameters (the game type, signed random numbers, etc.), and sends it to the casino, which in turn sent this object to the client.
- A set of required random variates will be created using the pRNG algorithm (it will be based on the x,y,z). This operation can be verified by both, the casino and the player.
- The information about the random numbers will be added to the blockchain. The information is then (a) verified by the casino, and (b) the outcome of the game is determined accordingly. All the information can then be verified by all parties.
If we took into account all details correctly (and we took!) the protocol will have the following advantages:
- The Sp8de protocol is considerably faster as compared to any blockchain design. The idea is quite simple. The generation of randomness does not need the blockchain. At the same time, it does not compromise fairness and transparency.
- The protocol design allows required conditions of generating random numbers.
- Easy integration. The casino doesn’t need to interact with the blockchain and take the time and incur the cost to the new dapp.
- All the payment infrastructure remains with the casino: no need to adapt the payment channel protocols. Also, there is no security risk taken by the casino: SP8DE cannot ‘steal’ any clients funds.
- SP8DE doesn’t need to know a game’s rules. It works for different games.
- Transparency for all the participants facilitated by the absence of any economic incentive to attempt to manipulate the outcome of the generation process.
We are in proximity to the next stop in our intra-galaxy journey, the SP8DE planet is awaiting. According to our data, the time of arrival will be as planned: so far, our roadmap progress estimations have proven to be precise or on some occasions conservative.
A small demo, an alpha MVP, a super-concise implementation of the required functionality will wait for us in the near future. We will file the ship’s log here: forum.sp8de.com
We are already here!
Images courtesy of SP8DE