The game once known as MLB Champions Crypto gets a facelift by reducing its dependency on Ethereum, its underlying blockchain as it is targeting mass market in new game reboot.

MLB Champions introduced a slew of new features while cutting the game’s non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in-app minting process. The update introduces a variety of gameplay options but also adds further steps to create unique digital items that can be traded outside the game itself. Namely, the new version of the game is moving the “minting” system to the MLB Champions website from the mobile app, according to the startup.

The company behind the game, Lucid Sight’s CEO Randy Saaf, said the team would in the near future launch an in-app marketplace with its own token. It will not accept ether (ETH) on app marketplaces because of censorship concerns.

Saaf said MLB Champions is one of Google Play’s few blockchain-based games due to a near-shadowban of decentralized apps (dapps).

“Crypto gaming is struggling right now,” Saaf said in a phone interview. “This is pretty new technology.”

Instead, the app moves almost entirely to a custom-built “digital scarcity engine” to create limits on artificial ownership in the game.

The team has built a database on MongoDB that fits the focus of Lucid Sight as a gaming business, Saaf said. In other games such as its space title, Crypto Space Commander, Lucid Sight also has limited-ownership items for buy.

“The whole point of Scarcity Engine is to cover up the complexity of blockchain. If it looks like it isn’t blockchain, they have done a good job,” Lucid Sight investor Jonathan Sweig said.

Digital Scarcity as a Concept for the Startup

That is not to say that digital scarcity hasn’t held up well for the startup as a concept.

Instead, the incorporation of Ethereum as the base layer of the game proved too complex for new users to embark, Saaf said. Fellow NFT startup Dapper Labs recently expressed similar feelings with Ethereum, and instead decided to move to a custom blockchain.

The old version of MLB Champions, for example, required users to download the app, go through an exchange to buy ether (ETH) and move ETH into the game via MetaMask. The average user, Saaf said, just wants to open his phone and play ball.

Lucid Sight does not expect to scal solutions to the slow transaction speeds of Ethereum either, he said. Additionally, other crypto platforms offer faster transactions but still face questions from tech giants like Google or Apple regarding censorship.

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