Q: How dependent is Hoard on the development of the OMG network?

Cyryl: After thorough evaluation of different scalability projects we chose OmiseGO’s Plasma MVP. We are working together to expand it with some game-specific features so it’s rather choice of cooperation/partnership than dependency.

Radek: Moreover we work on plasma implementation together with OmiseGO plasma team now. We believe that together we can implement plasma solution which will support all the features required by Hoard platform. On the other hand OmiseGO has a good and stable partner in Hoard which already generates biggest traffic on Ari testnet by deploying only one game. We also provide valuable feedback and new ideas on Plasma design.

Q: Is it possible to integrate with existing games & if so, how difficult would that be? Or do games need to be built from the ground up with Hoard in mind. Really any game with a real economy would benefit. Hoard would have been great for the blunder that was the Diablo 3 Real world money auction house.

Cyryl: Integration with existing games is our main target here. Hoard is working on the toolset (HoardSDK) to allow integration in easy and intuitive way. But the tech is not everything. One has to be mindful not to break gameplay or hinder game economy by allowing players to trade items between each other. So all integrations have to be done in tight cooperation with game designers.

Chris: It is definitely possible to integrate with existing games. As an example, we are retrofitting blockchain into multiple existing titles now, including our recently announced integration, My Memory of Us. My Memory of Us was originally released last October on Xbox One, Playstation 4, the Nintendo Switch, and Steam. We’ll be deploying True Ownership to the Steam version of the game first, but there’s no reason why MMoU or any other game on these console platforms couldn’t integrate with Hoard if the developers decided to leverage our SDK. Of course, we’re working to make it as easy as possible to do this so that more studios will make this decision.

Game economies benefit with True Ownership from Hoard.

Q: What is the TPS demand(what TPS you would use up) expected on the OMG Network for the game integration you are doing with My Memory of Us?

Cyryl: For MMoU the TPS demand is very low and even Ethereum network is sufficient (although expensive). On average we assume around 1 transaction per 5min per player. This means that we can support more than 1 million players playing 24h a day on OmiseGO network.

Q: What are the features that the OMG Network needs to have(TPS, finality, UX, etc. ) for you to be able to integrate with a AAA game or any high user volume game?

Radek: It depends on the type of game Hoard is integrated with and if all game items are represented on blockchain.

First of all we need support for tokens types required by game logic. i.e. NFT, ERC1155 and many custom types. Very often game logic requires implementing new or modify existing token standard to make it suitable to the logic. So the best solution for us is to be able to customize transaction (modify it to support special items/tokens logic requirements) format in plasma chain and plasma contract.

Regarding TPS from our internal calculation actual theoretical transaction throughput should be enough to run one big AAA MMO or a couple of smaller games. Currently theoretically plasma can handle about 65k tx per 15 seconds. Assuming that every user will do 1 tx per minute we can we run a game with 260k players on plasma chain. But not all AAA games require high TPS.

An example: a player kills a monster and acquires some items that dropped off it. If all items are to be recorded on chain the TPS requirement might be very high (100K players picking 10 items each 30sec = 33K TPS). But developer might decide that only epic/special/unique/rare items are to be recorded as only those items have value. In such case TPS requirement drops significantly (100K players pick 1 item each 60sec = 1.6K TPS). We at Hoard help with the design taking into account throughput and available implementation optimizations(ERC-1155 or ERC-721x).

Another example is a fast-paced fight game like MortalKombat or StreetFighter — they both are high volume AAA games but they certainly do not require a high TPS as players modify their state only at the end of fight (such is the design).

We plan to cooperate with OMG Network as close as possible and work with them on support for all these features required by Hoard. If one plasma chain in not enough to handle all Hoard related transactions we will be improving it or running additional chains where part of traffic can be moved to. Assuming that we run a game with high TPS demand we can move such a game to dedicated plasma chain or chains if the game logic and architecture allows this. Game designer can split the game world and run dedicated plasma chain to every one of these worlds.

In terms of UX — Hoard is making all the necessary work in tools and SDK in user friendly manner so the technical issues are well hidden from the player.

Transaction will fly through the network as quickly and smoothly as Jun on his skateboard

Q: How are you as a Case Study for others within your direct field and beyond when it comes to migrating to the OMG network? Can you please outline hurdles / difficulties / benefits and anything you deem to be relevant (both positive and negative) with moving over to OMG.

Cyryl: When you understand that Plasma works on similar principles as Bitcoin chain (UTXO principle) it is a first step. Second thing is that it has no smart contract logic so either the operator has to be reinforced with custom logic (for example multisig) or the logic has to be expressed in terms of UTXO transfer. This sometimes looks like impossible but really requires just a change in the way you think about the problem. One example would be how we added NFT support to the Plasma by simply interpreting amount as ID of an NFT instance. In similar way we are now adding state changes for NFTs. Also all changes needs a careful consideration regarding exit function from plasma and verification process so that we don’t introduce a way for malicious users to steal ones tokens or don’t block some tokens from being moved away of Plasma network.

Q: Can a game like WoW (particularly blizzards upcoming Classic WoW) that does NOT have any integrations with blockchain or crypto in the future develop some kind of backward compatibility with Hoard or NFT features so that we can have ownership of our items. Assuming of course in fantasyland that Blizzard wants to (or will be forced to) embrace this kind of thing.

Cyryl: Sure. Why not. This is the matter of minting required tokens and then transferring them to appropriate players. These tokens could be linked to their state/description using IPFS or any other database (even internal Blizzard db) and this link could be stored inside NFT tokens. This in turn requires some mapping between existing players and their accounts/wallets. So the process is straightforward and there are several ways to do that. Also we as Hoard are happy to help with designing such a process for a particular game. An excellent use case we would like to implement within a game.

Q: Do you see only new assets and collectables being on Blockchain or would it be possible to put older things like TF2 hats on block? Do you need like Steam approval to add things from their games or can you it without?

Chris: It is possible to put older things, like Team Fortress 2 hats, on-chain. Although, it would be trickier than just minting new assets, and the studio — Valve, in this case — would have to make the decision to cooperate with adding True Ownership. To give you an idea, one way Valve could implement True Ownership to an older title, like TF2, would be by pushing a patch that would give every player an Ethereum wallet. They could then deploy a plasma chain initialized with each player’s assets pre-deposited into their Ethereum address.

Q: In your humble opinion, how close is omisego beta to a production ready network? Are there any critical bugs that have not been resolved?

Radek: They made very important step recently which moved them much closer to production ready solution. It was Ari testnet deployment IMO. Now they are very close to run new plasma childchain with MoreVP plasma version which fixed problem with block withholding by malicious operator. We are quite confident that they will deliver production ready solution of MoreVP working on Ethereum mainnet soon.

We have been working with plasma since first OmiseGO private plasma testnet deployment (October 2018) and now with public Ari testnet deployment. We haven’t found any critical bugs so far. It looks that plasma implementation by OmiseGO is really solid and the team make a really good job here.

Q: Hello to everyone at the Hoard Team! @CBobRobison you mention in your interview in the April Newsletter that you are most excited for the fiat on-ramp feature of the OMG Network. Can you share any insight on that mechanism and how it interacts with Hoard?

Chris: So my understanding is this would require an opt-in from a payment processor. If a payment processor builds a wallet which settles on the OMG Network, then all Truly Owned digital assets would exist on the same payment rails. If a player wanted to spend their in-game loot on a cup of coffee, then their user experience might look something like: they open their mobile phone at the register, see the current market rate for their digital loot, select “pay with loot,” confirm payment, and then their coffee is paid for. On the back end, that loot would actually be liquidated on the DEX and a fiat credit or stable coin would be deposited via the payment processor into the cafe’s wallet.