Background

Background regarding this space, DEESPACE unique tech, etc (clean up)

Why Blockchain?

What does blockchain and crypto bring to gaming? Player asset ownership. From the first time equipment and players were sold for currencies outside of an in-game market, game makers have been trying to stop it. Players would list items on venues such as eBay and game companies would get the listings removed. A player never truly owns anything within the game. Sure you may buy, sell and trade to other players within the game, but there is no way to "cash out", it's more like leasing the assets for the duration of your gaming career within a given game.

Players may spend hundreds or even thousands of hours playing a game such as World of Warcraft, upgrading characters, collecting equipment or "loot" and building a war chest of game currency such as gold or silver. However if a player decides to retire from the game, what happens to their assets? Give them away to friends? Thousands of hours of time invested with nothing to show for it outside of the game. What else do you spend large amounts of time building up assets or learning skills and have nothing to show for it when complete? Most all hobbies, outside of gaming, result in tangible assets or skills that one can profit from for the time invested. If you take up quilting you can sell a quilt, learn woodworking and sell cabinets or decorations.

Enter the blockchain and NFTs. Blockchain provides an asset ownership system in which the player truly owns their assets in the form of NFTs or cryptocurrency tokens. They can remove them from the game, buy, sell or transfer ownership to other players or even non-players for game token cryptocurrency and trade that cryptocurrency token for any other cryptocurrency or fiat via an Exchange. It provides a fair, transparent and secure mechanism to allow players to have something to show for their time investment in a game by listing characters, equipment or resources for sale on NFT marketplaces for other players to then use to play. You invested your time, it's only fair you should profit for your time investment.

In addition to asset ownership, it also provides the ability for game assets to span across multiple games even from different gaming companies enabling a true Metaverse experience. Traditional game assets are tied to the game, you cannot use your game character or equipment in another game. Blockchain removes this limitation by transferring asset tied to a public, decentralized storage location (the blockchain) allowing any other game to utilize the assets from another game. For example a DEEPSPACE ship NFT is not tied to DEEPSPACE alone. It is a publicly available but privately owned asset. Any game created by any game studio could create a game and allow DEEPSPACE ship NFT assets to be used within their game.

Why BNB Chain Ecosystem?

BNB Chain was started by Binance, a world leader in Crypto exchanges. BNB Chain offers a simple entry into the BNB ecosystem by purchasing BNB on the Binance exchange and transferring it seamlessly and cheaply to a BNB capable de-centralized wallet such as Metamask or TrustWallet. BNB Chain is a fork (clone) or the Ethereum blockchain. While there are other blockchains for Dapp building, such as Solana or Polygon, tokens such as ETH or BNB are much more accessible to a large number of players.

So why not Ethereum?

To facilitate the transfer of tokens or NFTs, a blockchain based economy needs to run on blockchain transactions. Blockchain transactions cost gas. BNB Chain gas prices are a fraction of the cost of Ethereum network transactions. At the time of DEEPSPACE project inception, gas costs on the Ethereum network could range anywhere from $20 to $150, for a single transaction! This would mean to buy an NFT asset from another player for $100, you could pay another $100 in fees! Comparatively, BNB gas fees are as low as a few cents to a few dollars. Which would you rather pay?

The combined benefits of ease of entry via Binance exchange combined with the low gas fees made Binances' BNB Chain a clear winner to operate the DEEPSPACE economy.

In addition to this, Binance is investing a lot into the growth of its platform in the gaming space. From blog posts, to job ads for gaming managers and grant programs, Binance is going the distance to grow NFT gaming into a mainstream market and they want their platform to be at the center of it.

Multi-Chain

While a chain like Ethereum is generally more expensive transactionally we do understand that there is a large market out there on other chains, and players who may not be interested or able to take the dive into the BNB Chain. We recognize the desire for a multi-chain ecosystem and are currently investigating options to find the best approach to making this happen.

GameFi, Metaverse and NFTs?

GameFi

DPS token and the DEEPSPACE project economic model were built around the GameFi model from the early days of the project. The goal is to incentivize players, whom can be individuals in the game, and individuals outside the game. The concept of GameFi has been expanded by the DEEPSPACE team to make anyone a player without actually having to be a gamer.

GameFi is a combination of two words: gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi). The concepts of GameFi have introduced the world to new use cases for cryptocurrencies by building a tokenized economic model that generates cashflow and proivdes monetary earnings to involved players (Capital.com, 2022).

Metaverse

Metaverse is a way of taking a physical presence and bringing it into a digital reality. Metaverse platforms take many different forms today. The DEEPSPACE team has plans to integrate and use the metaverse concepts within the project, and also within other projects, with key partnerships, to further enhance the value of NFTs as they traverse space. This area is still being defined and will continually be updated as the project progresses.

A metaverse is an open space, converging of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. It's persistent and provides enhanced immersive experiences. (Gartner, 2022)

Non-Fungible Token (NFT)?

The DEEPSPACE team uses Non-Fungible Tokens, as a digital asset that a player can hold and owns, which represents ships, resources, and other in-game items. Once acquired, the player owns these resources and can trade them or use them in the game.

Non-Fungible tokens (NFTs) are assets on a blockchain with unique identifications and metadata that distinguish them from each other (Investopedia, 2022).

Smart / Upgradeable NFTs

The DEEPSPACE team has created proprietary, upgradeable Smart NFTs as part of the project to further expand the concept of blockchain use cases. Generally, once an NFT is published it is static and cannot be changed. The DEEPSPACE team has implemented NFT logic allowing NFTs to change over time as you level up your ships, improving their stats.

Ships have stats that can be upgraded by performing blockchain transactions using game resources to enhance their stats at the gamer's discretion.

Unity Game Engine

Utilizing the Unity Game Engine, was a natural choice as it is the top platform in the industry for mobile games and cloud scalable games.

Unity is easier to use for smaller teams and powers some of the world's most lucrative mobile games, including Pokémon Go and Activision’s recent Call of Duty: Mobile (Bradshaw, Tim; Kruppa, Miles, 2021).

Security Focused and Cloud First Strategy

The team has built each proprietary technology from the ground up with a security-focused, cloud-first mindset. These types of mindsets further improve user confidence and ensure scalability and accessibility as the service grows across the world. In addition, the team's focus on the cloud has inherently kept the infrastructure costs down, ensuring more resources can be spent on marketing, development, and other key focuses of the project.

Hybrid Approach to Blockchain

Decentralization is an important aspect of the blockchain, however, having a truly decentralized solution means giving up too much control of the project and game performance. The DEEPSPACE team has planned and architected many strategies to involve as much de-centralization as possible with the project, and only use centralized tactics where necessary to ensure the success of the project.