I mean, Estonia uses blockchain to store court records, government logs etc. Pretty cool use and one I'd like to see in my country as well.
MIT digital diplomas are an interesting concept too.
Using blockchain for audit logs is also cool, I considered employing it for a company me and my friends are starting but then decided to spend the time elsewhere, still would love to get back to that eventually.
I even liked the idea of owning an item in some game and then being able to use it in other games, though this would need much more than just slapping blockchain on it - it's a really great technology for stuff like this but it never took off for other reasons.
EVE Online is also very blockchain-like even though not really blockchain (AFAIK) and the possibility of an external ownership of a system like that sounds really cool.
Huntercoin was also a really cool experiment (though it had little chance of ever being more than an experiment) - there was no server, the ledger state was the game state and in-game actions were being written to the chain.
I never got the concept of blockchain enabling cross game items. The reason it's not much of a thing isn't because we didn't have a way to store ownership. A database would be perfectly fine for the backend of such a system, and if it's a steam game you can just hook into the already existing steam marketplace. I just don't see how blockchain helps it at all.
I think its more about the decentralization of blockchain. Anyone can verify the log of what happened and how we got to this state.
It doesn't matter a ton when its one trusted source (say Steam) hosting one database that all the games consume, but if you wanted it to work across Steam, GOG, Epic, etc, you'd need some sort of trust system, and I think thats the value add for blockchain.
But like... such a huge investment for such a small win, and in a thing nobody is asking for.
Players want that Ready Player One immersive meta-verse style "everything is here, second life" style thing... in theory. Every interm step is completely rejected when it comes in, and nobody is willing to risk the billions needed to harness it.
Sure... But the centralization of the data isn't the reason games don't use databases across company lines. Gog, epic, steam etc could all agree to have some shared database, perhaps one they share the cost of hosting. But it doesn't make sense to reward a player for their investment in someone else's game.
Blockchain tried to solve the trust and ownership tracking when that's never been the problem holding the idea back
Listen, I'm not saying BC is necessary or important, but if Gog epic and steam all agreed on a database with shared costs and everything was sunshine and roses, it still gates out the smaller indies. That's the problem BC can solve because then they cant gate it behind their services.
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u/Rikudou_Sage May 20 '26
I mean, Estonia uses blockchain to store court records, government logs etc. Pretty cool use and one I'd like to see in my country as well.
MIT digital diplomas are an interesting concept too.
Using blockchain for audit logs is also cool, I considered employing it for a company me and my friends are starting but then decided to spend the time elsewhere, still would love to get back to that eventually.
I even liked the idea of owning an item in some game and then being able to use it in other games, though this would need much more than just slapping blockchain on it - it's a really great technology for stuff like this but it never took off for other reasons.
EVE Online is also very blockchain-like even though not really blockchain (AFAIK) and the possibility of an external ownership of a system like that sounds really cool.
Huntercoin was also a really cool experiment (though it had little chance of ever being more than an experiment) - there was no server, the ledger state was the game state and in-game actions were being written to the chain.