BlockTalks x Flow Blockchain (On NFTs and Blockchain Gaming) AMA Transcript!
We recently hosted an AMA with Flow Blockchain (On NFTs and Blockchain Gaming), on September 11th at 2.00 PM UTC. Many of you might have participated or many of not. But we make sure no one missed out from the knowledge shared by Annie Huang, Ecosystem Growth Manager, APAC at Flow Blockchain. So here we are up with the AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be a saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
Introduction Questions Asked By Team BlockTalks!
Q1. Hi Annie, could you introduce a little bit about yourself and some of the high-light update of Flow recently?
Ans — Hello everyone, this is Annie from Flow Blockchain, and I am currently leading the community / market growth across the APAC regions. and I will update some big momentum of Flow to you:D
Thanks to developers all over the world building on Flow, it has become home to countless communities across Art, Music, Gaming, Tech, Sports and more.
The rise of NBA Top Shot marked the beginning of a huge surge of mainstream interest in NFTs and across crypto — and Flow ecosystem partners have captured that lightning in a bottle. With over 🔥 1.8M wallet accounts 🔥 on Flow mainnet, the momentum is stronger than ever.
We’re seeing true communities come to life, filled with legendary brands and characters, fresh ideas and exciting platforms that are finding their home on blockchain powered by Flow. We are also seeing leading consumer brands like Visa officially recognizing the role Flow plays. “Flow is another blockchain that is gaining traction for NFTs,” Visa wrote in their first-ever NFT whitepaper. “It has notable mainstream brands building platforms, like NBA Top Shot. Flow has been built to increase throughput and reduce the challenges of high gas costs through an energy-efficient blockchain transaction validation approach.”
Q2. GameFi trend is super hot, and Flow is a new blockchain built for the next generation of apps, games, and the digital assets that power them. What do you think about Gamefi, Metaverse and NFT Trends?
Ans — I’ve seen the NFT trends booming up and people are crazy about collecting the true digital ownerships, and then it was Axie’s season, it brought the “play to earn” model to the market and suddenly everyone is crazy about GameFi.
So what’s next?
What if we combine the new paradigm of digital ownership and scarcity & mixing traditional AAA technology?
We would like to introduce Flow Blockchain’s new momentum. Chainmonsters — A customizable player avatar enables other games and projects to be implemented and establishes the metaverse inside the huge open world.
Chainmonsters is a massive multiplayer monster tamer RPG that utilizes Flow blockchain technology to enforce scarcity and encourages the player driven economy through resource-based gameplay elements.
Players venture with thousands of other players together in real time through a beautiful stylized 3D world, completing quests, catching monsters, competing in battles and crafting rare resources — which can then be minted as NFTs on-chain.
There are keeping on coming exciting news in the community, stay tuned:D
Q3. Most of the GameFi Projects are built on BSC, Chainmonsters is the first GameFi built on Flow, what are the advantages for a gamefi project to build on Flow Blockchain?
Ans — I highly suggest you read this article written by Chainmonsters’ team: https://bsidegames.com/chainmonsters/2020/09/5-reasons-why-we-build-on-flow-blockchain/ As an early adopter on Flow Blockchain, they see the “main-stream” power of Flow on the Day 1
1️⃣Consumer-centric design offered by Flow allows you to:
When a user launches a game on Flow Blockchain, they just start playing. They have an anonymous account created in the background and once they decide to continue playing and take full responsibility over their earned digital assets, they can claim their account. That is easily accomplished, without over engineering, thanks to the multi-sig support Flow offers by default. This approach is the way to go for onboarding traditional users and players and does not sacrifice decentralization or security.
2️⃣ “Super cheap and predictable network fees”of Flow Blockchain
One of the biggest difficulties when launching a blockchain app or game — and especially if you as the developer are paying fees on behalf of your users — is predicting how much it will cost you to keep the application running.
On Ethereum for example, this is extremely hard. To perform a transaction and successfully execute a smart contract, Ethereum users have to pay gas. It’s a special fee that depends on the complexity of the contract and how busy the network is. Gas fees are paid in ETH, Ethereum’s own cryptocurrency, and the average price some days goes over $20.
With Flow however, things are different and the reason lies right in the design of the blockchain architecture. There are two fees applied to transactions: one is for creating an account, which starts at 0.001 FLOW (about $0.03), and the other is a transaction fee that starts at 0.000001 FLOW. Creating an account is cheap. Transferring a NFT is even cheaper than that!
And for the other advantages please take a look of the chainmonsters’ team’s article, and for the details of Flow’s performance, I also recommend you to read this article:
Q4. What are the important principles put in place in your ecosystem that gamers need to adhere to? What is the audience of gamers that Chainmonsters attracts and targets? People who know about blockchain, new players who don’t know about this market or both?
Ans — From the ecosystem perspective, we are open to all kinds of game building on Flow. And we focus on the mainstream users from day 1. And I think Axie’s booming is just the start and there are so many potentials game design we could onboard on Flow Blockchain.
And actually in 1 year, we already onboarded different kinds of games on Flow, including:
If you love gaming or just hanging out on Twitch streams, you can check out dapps like Dark Country, Enemy Metal, MotoGP Ignition and Chainmonsters for something fun to do in your downtime, or collect moments and support Twitch streamers with Eternal.
If it’s sports you’re looking for, look no further. NBA Top Shot, Fantastec Swap (soccer), nWayPlay (Olympics), and the upcoming UFC platform are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come.
There’s unique experiences like Vault by CNN and Versus, where you can find scarce and carefully curated NFTs that will stand out in your collection. Then, the magic all comes together on open marketplaces like VIV3 and MyNFT today, with Rarible and OpenSea launching their own support for Flow in the future.
For more details, please check:
Q5. Currently on the market there are many games that have been released on different ecosystems. Does Chainmonster have any features to attract the community to play and earn money on this game? And is the supply volume inflated when staking, farming or is there a way to combat inflation where the price of Tonken could increase sharply in the future.
Ans — Chainmonsters is a free to play game, having the lowest possible barrier of entry. Every Season has free NFTs to unlock over time, enabling everyone to participate in the player-driven economy if they invest their time. The game economy is not based on a single token or item but instead utilizes multiple gameplay systems that are all interconnected and require various resources.
Getting onboarded into the game is literally downloading the game and pressing play on iOS, Android and Steam. Players have accounts created in the background silently, not disturbing any flow. They can then connect an external wallet when they are ready to dive into the blockchain world.
The game and wallet are connected to Flow blockchain at all times. Signing a trade or consuming a resource is all triggered directly in-game.
The non-custodial in-game marketplace enables anyone to easily trade and sell NFTs without leaving the immersive game experience.
Utilizing AAA game server scaling technology the game can handle millions of simultaneous players.
Chainmonsters Alpha 6 officially launched 2 weeks ago, selling out of all 10K alpha passes before going live! The community excitement around B-Side Games’ monster taming game continues to drive serious engagement, with over 35K registered users. And they will keep the momentum and embrace mass adoption.
Even bigger news for Chainmonsters fans, though, is the announcement of the official Genesis drop in September 14th
Three tiers of bundles will be available, featuring exclusive wearable NFTs for your in-game character, as well as the legendary bundle which features one of the rarest Chainmons in the game, the Amber Chainmon. Only 1000 Amber Chainmons will ever exist, with 800 being sold with the Genesis drop, and the additional 200 being released over the lifetime of the game.
And with Chainmonsters in its final alpha phase, that means the open Beta is just around the corner. Not only will you get to use your Genesis drop unlockables, but for users who just want to check the game out, it will be completely free to play!
Please stay tuned here:
Questions Asked on Twitter For Flow Blockchain Team!
Q1. I’m not a player, but the graphic style of NFT games greatly impresses me. Could you possibly list a few great games that are about to be released on your platform? Is it simple to make my own game with Flow Blockchain? Is there a fee required to use the Flow platform?
Ans — If you love gaming or just hanging out on Twitch streams, you can check out dapps like Dark Country , Enemy Metal , MotoGP Ignition and Chainmonsters for something fun to do in your downtime, or collect moments and support Twitch streamers with Eternal. If it’s sports you’re looking for, look no further. NBA Top Shot, Fantastec Swap (soccer), nWayPlay (Olympics), and the upcoming UFC platform are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come.
There’s unique experiences like Vault by CNN and Versus, where you can find scarce and carefully curated NFTs that will stand out in your collection. Then, the magic all comes together on open marketplaces like VIV3 and MyNFT today, with Rarible and OpenSea launching their own support for Flow in the future.
You could also take a look of the category of “game” here: https://www.flowverse.co/
On flow, since we are POS, so the net work fee is stable, and we have system that the dapp’s vendor actually can covered the fee for users, so sometimes when you are using dapps on Flow, the fee will be 0.
And in general cases, there are two fees applied to transactions: one is for creating an account, which starts at 0.001 FLOW (about $0.03), and the other is a transaction fee that starts at 0.000001 FLOW. Creating an account is cheap. Transferring a NFT is even cheaper than that!
Q2. How accessible is Flow Blockchain to gamers that are curious about cryptocurrencies but don’t have any experience with them? What techniques are you planning to entice these kind of users? Are you planning on educating them while they’re playing?
Ans — I would highly suggest you go to Chainmonster’s beta version to play a while (it will be launched on Oct 1st) — the experience actually it’s just like the normal mobile/desktop game.
When a user launches a game on Flow Blockchain, they just start playing. They have an anonymous account created in the background and once they decide to continue playing and take full responsibility over their earned digital assets, they can claim their account. That is easily accomplished, without over engineering, thanks to the multi-sig support Flow offers by default. This approach is the way to go for onboarding traditional users and players and does not sacrifice decentralization or security.
For more details, could take a look here: https://bsidegames.com/chainmonsters/2021/09/chainmonsters-alpha-minting-and-development-updates/
Q3. I did some research on your website about games and NFTs but did not find much information about them. So, can you give details of the games and NFTs platforms that work on the Flow network? How do you encourage developers to create blockchain games on this smart grid?
Ans — A blockchain designed for the new paradigm of digital ownership and scarcity
Blockchains represent a new kind of software domain, with autonomous software running on decentralized systems providing open access to all. Given that previous domains have given rise to new programming paradigms, it’s worth asking: What is new in the blockchain domain that might demand a new programming paradigm?
In Solidity and WASM, “scarce resources” are just data structures! With only one tool in their toolbelt, the onus of securing scarcity falls solely on the smart contract engineers… at no small cost. Linear Types are a more restrictive form of data structure that are used in languages like Rust to improve memory efficiency and prevent certain kinds of programming errors.
On Flow, resources are linear types with controlled creation and runtime support. Resources are a perfect match for managing scarce assets; they have carefully controlled creation, they are uncopyable and unforgeable, and their destruction must be explicit and deliberate. When resources are combined with capability-based security to limit unauthorized access to scarce assets, a new paradigm is born. We call this new paradigm Resource-Oriented Programming, and it’s a natural fit for blockchains. Cadence, is the native resource-oriented programming language to develop smart contracts on Flow.
Q4. Markets of NFTs are gradually emerging and becoming a strong trend at the moment. How does Flow feel to be in this space? And what will help Flow compete with other NFT marketplaces to lead this trend?
Ans — can’t pretend to give an exact timeline but I see blockchain NFT gaming in 5 phases:
(1 Crypto collectibles and crypto art which are both alive and healthy on Ethereum, with ‘underground’ industries of digital artists who create and sell their art to a healthy market of crypto art patrons.
(2 Collectible games such as CryptoKitties which I predict we’ll continue to see many more of on Flow because the cost is so much lower, while the ease of use and ease of development are so much higher.
(3 Full games with collection loops, I count NBA Top Shot into these because we have a full mobile game coming out in Q4. The NBA collectibles are the fuel that runs through the machine, analogically to existing gaming markets.
(4 Smart contract-driven games are projects in which the game itself is an open platform that anyone co-create. When we port CryptoKitties to Flow, you’ll see developers being able to build on every aspect of the new game. Again, this provides huge benefits to the customers: in case of a regular app, you download it, buy items inside of it, but the assets disappear when the app goes away. In smart contract-driven games, the entire funnel is reversed. You buy an asset that you can form an emotional connection with because developers will build use cases for it, making user acquisition easier and broadening customers’ range of choices.
(5 A fully open, fully on-chain virtual metaverse is the last category and something we haven’t seen yet. Instead of a single app or a single interface, I think of it as the entire state of the blockchain available for any developer to build on, any individual to access, and where the assets can interact with each other and smart contracts can be built on top of each other. Because this is all software, I don’t think it’ll take 10 or even 5 years to get there, but I’ve always been optimistic.
And you could take look of our CEO Roham’s interview to know more about our vision: https://www.onflow.org/post/an-interview-with-roham-gharegozlou
Q5. Each NFT is represented by a resource with an integer ID. Can you explain what these terms mean and how they can guarantee full security of ownership of the NFT’s? Is it possible that users’ NFTs could be in danger?
Ans — If you are familiar with smart contracts in the traditional sense, then you are likely aware that on e.g. Ethereum the contracts hold all NFTs in them and the user just sends and receives references to those. On Flow it is actually the other way around: The user actually holds all of their assets directly in their account and the contract is handling references only.
This not only improves security since the user has full control of their actual assets all the time but it also does not push responsibility to a potentially flawed or malicious contract.
And to learn more about the resource-oriented programming “Cadence” ‘s structure and know more about why it is more secure, please take a look of our documentation: https://docs.onflow.org/cadence/
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Flow Blockchain Team!!
Q1. Person from flow official says using legal tender like USD as payment is flow’s advantage over other blockchains.
Their goal is to get mass adoption outside just crypto space, so I can’t see clearly the utility of the flow token.
Ans — Yes because we would like to let people who are not familiar with crypto could be easier to understand the price and payment, so we provide “FUSD”
Easing the friction of user onboarding is also why minting Flow’s first US dollar-backed stablecoin, FUSD, was a critical milestone. Creating a 1:1scale USD-backed stablecoin will expand the potential target audience for dapps on Flow globally, while minimizing friction that still plagues the broader crypto ecosystem. Developers are empowered to accomplish this by leveraging simple and direct fiat onramp to FUSD offered by providers like MoonPay or Ramp. The same ease-of-use that led to mass user adoption of NBA Top Shot is now available to all developers on Flow, providing a sense of familiarity and trust for mainstream audiences.
Reducing user onboarding and payment friction is also why Flow is one of the first blockchains to be fully supported by ecommerce giant Shopify. We’ve seen this implementation with the Chicago Bulls Legacy Collection, which consistently sold out every day through an entire week of drops. Users simply interfaced with a familiar storefront from Shopify while purchasing NFTs on Flow.
And for flow itself, please take the utility here: https://www.onflow.org/flow-token-economics
In short, small amounts of FLOW token are also required for every activity on the network — from new user accounts to storage for assets and smart contracts. As the network matures, FLOW token holders will be able to use their FLOW in an evolving number of ways:
- Payment for computation and validation services (i.e., transaction fees)
- Medium of exchange
- Deposit for data storage
- Collateral for secondary tokens
- Participation in governance
Q2. When reading your documents, I always see the term “Composability” and says that Flow’s features really does shows composability towards its products and services. How does is the term “composability” fits perfectly for Flow’s characteristics as a blockchain and workspace?
Ans — low empowers developers to build thriving crypto- and crypto-enabled businesses. Applications on Flow can keep consumers in control of their own data; create new kinds of digital assets tradable on open markets accessible from anywhere in the world; and build open economies owned by the users that help make them valuable.
Smart contracts on Flow can be assembled like Lego blocks to power apps serving billions of people, from basketball fans to businesses with mission-critical requirements.
There are four pillars that make Flow unique among existing blockchains:
- Multi-role architecture: Flow’s design is unique, allowing the network to scale to serve billions of users without sharding or reducing decentralization of consensus.
- Resource-oriented programming: smart contracts on Flow are written in Cadence, an easier and safer programming language for crypto assets and apps.
- Developer ergonomics: from upgradeable smart contracts and built-in logging support to the Flow Emulator, this network is designed for results.
- Consumer onboarding: Flow was designed for mainstream consumers, with payment onramps catalyzing a safe and low-friction path from fiat to crypto.
Q3. Where can I buy your token right now and do you plan to list your token on centralized exchanges like Binance?
Ans — yes Binance supported Flow token https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/flow/
Q4. Can you list 1–3 killer features of Your Project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your project has that you feel most confident about?
Ans — There are few core benefits for Dapps developers building on Flow:
- You are building on a future proof, very scalable infrastructure that big brands like NBA, UFC, Warner Music Group, Animoca Brands all trust with their billions of fans
- You have secure smart contract language like Cadence, so solves a lot of pain in bugs and attack that they saw in Solidity (real money at stake)
- You will join from day one a rich ecosystem with users already, instead of bare blockchain with only developers
Q5. I could read that they will implement the specialized confidential knowledge tests (SPoCK) in the Flow network, but what benefits does this test really provide both for game developers and dApps and for gamers?
Ans — Because the Flow architecture depends on dedicated “Verifiers”, we run into the “Verifiers Dilemma”. We have our own take on how to address this problem in a lightweight way, called SPoCKs (Specialized Proofs of Confidential Knowledge) that is comparable in security TrueBit and Arbitrum, while being far more efficient. We gave an overview of this approach and how it compares to the others at Ready Layer One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0OPJhQoI48
SPoCKs, the new cryptographic technique developed by the Flow team, allows an unlimited number of provers to demonstrate to a third-party observer that each of them has access to the same confidential knowledge. These proofs are non-interactive and will not leak any information regarding confidential knowledge. The SPoCK of every prover is specialized to them, and it cannot be forged or copied by any other prover. Flow rethinks many design choices for improving usability for both developers and customers, including human-readable security and upgradable smart contracts.
