The Futile Saga: Blockchain

From Riches To Rags, Tech's Biggest Flop.

President John F Kennedy in May 1961 promised to land man on the moon and return them safely to earth, within a decade. This was accomplished in 1969. If given almost double the time, what could the whole world accomplish ?

Blockchain. Most of you probably first heard of the protocol when someone told you about Bitcoin and for many that was probably the last time you ever heard or even came close to interacting with the technology.

For others, it is a technology that was promised and still promises to disrupt the internet as we know it. Prolific angel investor and serial self help author Gary Vaynerchuck even proclaimed it was so innovative and disruptive he likened it to when humans first discovered fire. Yes the hype and buzz behind the abilities of blockchain where grossly over-exaggerated and claims like that didn't help. 

A short history of nothing happening.

Almost 15 years since Blockchain was thrust into the world, there have been zero innovations or disruptions that have blockchain to thank. There have been countless attempts and vague predictions but nothing has appeared. There are many reasons for this but to put it simply, it creates new problems for every solution the advocates try. Often the current working systems and infrastructure are already doing a much better job, blockchain was a trend and buzzword that is hanging around like a bad smell that wafts near an abused public toilet.

The crypto connection

Blockchain is synonymous with crypto currencies and is probably the main reason we still hear about the technology today. As for how crypto is performing. Let's just say the biggest fraud in history was all thanks to crypto, a curly haired man named Sam Bankman-Fried and millions of other fraudulant schemes, propped up by crypto. It's safe to say it's not trusted by many but lauded by lowlifes, looking to scam the desperate.

You can still find those who swear by crypto, either because they got in early and made big bucks off the greater fools who pumped the price, those that rely on the pseudo-anonymity of crypto to help fund crime or they where those greater fools and are holding out hope, due to the spent cost fallacy.

When all else fails, pivot.

Naturally for an industry who has yet to find utility, or even trust, pivoting is a must and the next target for Blockchain is gaming. The reason why is oh so typical of almost every blockchain project, money. 

Blockchain games / Web3 gaming never fail to mention that the video game industry has a $250 Billion global market size, so for those who only see things in profit terms, which unsuprisingly is the natural state of Blockchain advocates, the attraction is like flies to shit. This instant and natural symbiosis can be observed throughout the entire blockchain eco-system.

I have written in the past about how NFT's and gaming presented early signs of struggles. Ubisoft who went headfirst into the NFT fad, leveraging some of thier biggest game franchises, failed hard and failed fast. NFT's where also preached to have the ability to open up a host of all new options for game design and longevity. One of those claims was unlocking the ability to use digital game items or skins between different Web3 games but as I also reported, that claim was proven to be false, even when those two games where clones and developed by the exact same company. Animoca.

Formula 1, they came, they saw and they raced away

Animoca, who are one of the biggest NFT game developers, could not transfer or even reuse NFT's from their F1 racing game to their generic racing game. They never explained why but I'm sure it was licensing issues. Players of the F1 flavored game, Delta time, could no longer use their NFT's, all they could do was check Opensea and look at the picture representing the NFT and check who was the last to pay for it. The receipt essentially.

(Ironic how the true ownership argument web3 loves to advocate, falls apart so quickly) 

F1 adopted blockchain gaming early, relative to the rest of the gaming industry but they also left the web3 ecosystem faster than those flies to shit. 

F1 is heavily involved in gaming still, through their yearly racing title, which is available on all major platforms and even in the casual market, with several mobile games to boot. None of these are using Blockchain in any capacity, meaning one of the earliest adopters of web3 gaming left and shows no signs of ever returning. They must have good reasons why too, as Formula 1 are undertaking a campaign to attract new fans, using all sorts of marketing and new media as the vehicle. One must ask, if Blockchain is supposed to be bigger than the Beatles and capable of all sorts of marvels which will lead to enormous paradigms shifts, leaves one asking "why did one of the most technologically advanced sports, who are activley seeking new ways to engage fans, abandon that which is akin to the discovery of fire by man " ?

Play to earn, a dystopic reality

Blockchain / web3 gaming (which we'll refer to as web3 from here out) has plenty of half assed games which you can play now, none of them fun. Axie Infinitiy was one of the most popular web3 games in recent memory. With the world in lockdown and everyone bored and restless. Axie promised fun and money, a term known as Play-to-earn or P2E. It was a turn based fighting game which was clearly inspired by Pokemon. Both character designs to the gameplay loop, copied from the popular Nintendo games. The unique draw for the player was you could earn crypto just by playing. This ultimately lead to what can only be described as modern slavery, something we'll discuss in a later post. Add to that a hack which saw $615million worth of the native Axie crypto stolen, known as Smooth Love Potion or SLP ($SLP) the Axie and P2E dream was snuffed out overnight. The ponzi like nature of the games economics could no longer support itself, with so much of their liquidity gone. Just like that the potential to game and profit had dissappeared.

This earning incentive was a huge selling point for web3 gaming and while games are still trying to find an earning model that works, the payouts are measly, the player numbers are a joke and the whole thing is based on a ponzi. While many influencers and gamers in web3 will tell you P2E is dead, despite one of the biggest arguments being that you should be allowed to make money gaming.  Profiting from your game time is a major premise behind Web3. Following this to its logical conclusion leads me to believe if it truly is dead, then so is web3 gaming, yet these people persist. The only person they are trying to convince by saying that, is themselves. It's a dishonest and greedy landscape, where moral and ethical judgements are malleable for the right price.

Game then profit, my time is valuable too

Web3 gaming has pivoted to the ownership angle, with rhetoric like, put your game character on the blockchain and "own it forever" or get that Return on Investment (ROI) when you stop playing the game. The idea being you can now profit from your "sweat equity" by selling that character you've spent hundreds of hours leveling up by obtaining the best weapons and gear. Regardless of the questions this raises, those sold on web3 gaming will not let go of this tenent. Many rationalise it anyway they can.

In this authors opinion gaming is entertainment, an escape, it's not a job or an investment opportunity but for web3 gamers, they don't distinguish the difference. That is the most important thing to remember whenever you read or see anything that overwhelmingly supports the future of blockchain technology and its role with gaming.

Make broad, vague claims. Welcome to blockchain.

So what can Blockchain enable for gaming, that's a question apparently Saga have figured out. Saga have claims of discovering the solution to the scaling trilemma, which is an issue blockchain cannot escape, they also propose gasless transactions for the end user (as long as the developer doesn't monetize it to work otherwise), to equipping the game developers with a vast amount of flexibility when it comes to individual blockspace needs. Saga will tell you, this is where web3 gaming will build, something they refer to as unblocking oneself.

Currently Saga have 300 projects signed up but what sort of commitment any of these have is a guess at this point. Saga have only just completed their first network (hardware) stress test, which did uncover issues with transaction propagation and by some reports wildly inconsistent results when it came to block speed validation. Plus a woefully slow support desk which used Discord as its method of communication. Which gives off this visual of being quite amateur to be honest. 

While I do believe their claim of "decentralization" is pushing the truth somewhat, as their solution makes use of centralized resources. This then begs the question "why blockchain at all?" 

Saga has claimed they can support upto 1000 concurrent blockchains, all validated from thier mainnet. This was a far cry of the 100 in the latest test, the top end claim of a possible 2000 begins to sound like a reach, not forgetting how expensive running the infrastructure would be for Saga, based on how they are scaling horizontally. All this just to allow game developers to run chain agnostic blockchains, which essentially all point to receipts of digital game assets. A database can do the same thing for much less.

Founded in 2021, we clearly know what gamers want.

For a blockchain that has yet to prove it can deliver everything they say they can, seeing one of the founders and CEO of Saga, Rebecca Liao, throw shade at Ubisoft for not understanding gamers, came off a bit like a joke when I first read it. Ubisoft where being criticized for suggesting gamers will get used to not owning games. Obviously the ownership mantra is a big part of the web3 zeitgeist, so CEO and co-founder Rebecca Liao took it as a great opportunity to mention how Saga hold the diametric outlook to Ubisoft's attitudes to gaming ownership. With web3's track record consisting of it having no record, backing any of this. What Rebecca was suggesting is just an idea that has been exploited for profit ever since the NFT craze began, then subsequently died.

My guess, Saga are doing that too but using gaming as a smokescreen, not to cover up any fraudulant behaviour but to convince those sold or who are on the fence about blockchain that this is the way of the future. Saga may also genuinley believe in blockchain but if they took the time to understand all that is wrong about the technology, instead of trying to find solutions to the issues all blockchains suffer and using it to profit, by then selling that onto the blockspace faithful. Those at Saga would realize they are caught up in their own hype, buzz and bullshit. 

Blockchain has had its fifteen minuets of fame, it has also had a decade and a half to progress. It was useless then, it remains useless now. Blockchain is just a futile technology that needs to retire. Not just from gaming but as a protocol entirely.