Sci-Fi Blockchain Game Could Help Create The Metaverse

A Sci-Fi blockchain game is said to help create an unknown metaverse, how true is it, and how it can happen?

Dark Forest demonstrates how advanced cryptography may be employed in a game, as well as how blockchains could be used to host decentralized digital worlds.

When you start exploring Dark Forest, you rapidly learn how much you don’t know.

The universe is immense, and most of it is obscured by darkness. Should you accept it, your objective is to venture into the unknown, escape being annihilated by competing players who may be hiding in the shadows, and establish an empire out of the planets you discover and can claim as your own.

However, while the video game appears to look and play similarly to other online strategy games, the reality is much different.

This is due to the fact that it does not rely on the servers that power renowned online strategy games like Eve Online and World of Warcraft. Dark Forest, on the other hand, is entirely based on a blockchain, which implies that no one has any control over how it plays out.

Its early popularity reflects more than just a pleasant technique of developing games that work in an unusual way. It also demonstrates that blockchains may be used for far more fascinating and intricate applications than simply shifting digital money around, as some blockchain supporters have claimed since the technology’s inception.

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In reality, the game’s most ardent supporters feel that what makes it so cool is something more profound—something that foreshadows the future of our shared digital domains. This includes the idea of a metaverse that isn’t owned by Meta or another large tech corporation, but rather runs decentralized among its users.

How it was constructed

Dark Forest started as a concept in the imagination of the pseudonymous Gubsheep (keeping a pseudonym is typical among crypto people), who defines it as a “massively multiplayer strategy game that takes place in an infinite, randomly created universe.”

The game was inspired in part by Cixin Liu’s sci-fi novel The Dark Forest. Gubsheep claims he was so intrigued by the book that he read it in a bookstore cafe in one sitting. One particularly interesting issue for him is the quandary our society would confront if it discovered another civilization in the universe. We wouldn’t know whether it constituted an existential threat, adds Gubsheep, but one school of thought holds that we should presume it does and avoid interaction.

Gubsheep happened to read The Dark Forest just a few days after attending a symposium about a new class of cryptographic methods known as zero-knowledge proofs. It is feasible to confirm the truth of a statement using modern cryptography without exposing anything else about it. Consider establishing your citizenship without exposing any other information in your passport.

As he walked back to his apartment from the bookstore, new ideas generated by The Dark Forest began to merge with those ignited by what he had just learned.

The concept of zero-knowledge proofs dates back to the 1980s, but the first practical applications have only recently arisen in blockchain systems. The most popular example is Zcash, a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency that uses zk-SNARKs—the same type Dark Forest uses—to disguise transaction data, allowing users to transact anonymously, almost as if they were using digital cash.

Gubsheep imagined a “cryptographic Dark Forest” in which opposing players would be like civilizations “tiptoeing” in a cosmos full of possibly hostile counterparts—hidden from view thanks to zero-knowledge proofs. He came home and remained up all night drawing out the concept. Soon after, he persuaded two pals to assist him in building it.

Dark Forest’s authors eventually realized that using a blockchain would be necessary to make it operate. They sought to design the game such that everyone could verify that “the mathematical protocol underlying the game is being followed correctly,” according to Gubsheep. He admits that it would have been technically conceivable to implement the game in a regular server so that its complete history, including every zero-knowledge proof, would have been viewable—” but at that point, you’re basically starting to build a blockchain.”

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They realized it was a “fantasy” idea. Blockchains are sluggish and expensive to utilize, making them unsuitable for a game that requires tracking of many interrelated systems and a large number of player moves. Despite the initial excitement surrounding a wide range of non-finance applications for blockchains, the prevalent impression currently is that blockchains are only useful for simpler, finance-related applications.

Conceptual proof

Gubsheep and his friends accomplished their goal of creating a fun, sci-fi-inspired game employing cutting-edge cryptography. What they developed, on the other hand, has hinted at fresh possibilities that they did not completely expect.

Dark Forest is the most sophisticated blockchain game to date, and the first to incorporate “incomplete information,” as game theorists refer to it. When a new player initially enters in Dark Forest, the majority of the cosmos remains hidden, including possibly aggressive opponents. Only when the player explores the secret sections do they become visible. Every time a player moves, they send proof of the move to the blockchain, without revealing their coordinates in the cosmos.

More than 10,000 people have played since February 2020. Some of them, such as software developer Nalin Bhardwaj, have been motivated by the game’s technical foundations to stay and work on the Dark Forest universe—and to create new Dark Forest-based games. They envisage Dark Forest as the first step toward rich digital realities, or metaverses, powered by decentralized networks rather than corporate servers.

According to Bhardwaj, Dark Forest is not simply the most challenging blockchain game: “I do not believe there is a more complex application on the blockchain.” The game’s authors created a technical infrastructure that broadens the possibilities of how we might utilize blockchains to communicate online by building it to run on a blockchain, he claims.

Dark Forest, according to Bhardwaj and other believers, offers proof of numerous new notions at once. For starters, it highlights how powerful cryptography may be applied to enhance online environments. Dark Forest has motivated developers and computer scientists to create new games and applications that use zero-knowledge proofs.

Gubsheep and others have even established a research and development firm called 0xPARC (a homage to PARC, the renowned R&D corporation founded by Xerox 40 years ago) to support this work. Bhardwaj recently worked as an intern at 0xPARC.

0xPARC’s scope is not restricted to gaming. One application in which the group is interested in digital identity. Consider the passport example. Zero-knowledge proofs could allow you to prove anything about yourself without revealing anything else. You may demonstrate that you are over a particular age without revealing your true age, or that you have more than a specific amount of money in your bank account without disclosing the exact amount. According to Gubsheep, it may also be able to employ zero-knowledge cryptography to prove that you ran a machine-learning algorithm on a sensitive data set while keeping the data private.

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Is there a new vision for the metaverse?

At 0xPARC, zero-knowledge is not the main goal. While the game’s use of encryption is actually new, an even more compelling proof of concept in the game is its “autonomous” gaming world—an online environment that no one controls and that cannot be taken down.

Dark Forest has previously occurred in transitory occasions known as rounds, which last between one and two weeks. According to computer scientist and 0xPARC cofounder Justin Gilbert, a Dark Forest world might be launched so that no one would be able to halt it since it lives exclusively in blockchain smart contracts—computer programs that the blockchain stores and executes. “Think of it like a Minecraft server, except it can’t be shut down,” he says.

When a smart contract is deployed, it functions similarly to a digital-space robot that can run indefinitely. Unless the developer includes a mechanism that may be used to terminate the program, it will continue to operate as long as the network exists. In this situation, the virtual environment, according to Gilbert, would be “more like a digital planet” than a game.

What takes place on a digital planet? Whatever the norms of the world—it’s “digital physics,” he claims. Dark Forest’s digital physics has been utilized by players to create in-game marketplaces, programs that automate game functions, and even bots that can play the game themselves. It’s also free to copy, alter, and expand on.

Gilbert’s team at 0xPARC is dedicated to developing tools that facilitate not just the creation of autonomous worlds by game creators, but also the interaction and creation of those worlds’ residents.

According to Gubsheep, this is the inevitable progression of the internet. “The digital world is hosting an increasing number of our most meaningful interactions,” he argues. However, he believes that people will be less likely to embrace a version of “the metaverse” managed by a corporation or other centralized body.

He contends that they will want “a credibly neutral substrate for people to express themselves in relatively unfettered ways and to self-organize and self-govern.” “That strikes me as a much more powerful picture of the metaverse, and one to which I hope 0xPARC’s experiments can contribute.”

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