These days, intelligent "mind games" like Chess and Go are being played against humans and artificial intelligence on centralized systems. However, MindSports is trying to change that by creating a decentralized Ethereum-based blockchain for hosting and operating these games!
How Decentralized Games will Work
The MindSports blockchain will operate on its own decentralized token/cryptocurrency called MIND. This token will monetize game play and make games much more interesting.
Additionally, MindSports will have its own methods to facilitate trust between players.
Players are suspicious of potential game manipulation such as stalling time,
disconnecting, and cheating from opponents.
—White Paper
MindSports will have an integrated system of dealing with disputes to allow users to voice their concerns and suspicions. This makes sure that suspected users aren't stalling or using bots in games.
This will definitely improve the integrity of gaming on the platform and allow for players to actually trust results with real cryptocurrency.
Rewarding with Cryptocurrency
The concept of rewarding actions with cryptocurrency is a very exciting one. In fact, this article itself is being voted on to decide my rewards for taking the time to research and write it!
Similarly, MindSports will allow MIND tokens to reward different actions such as:
- hosting decentralized games
- playing fairly
- governing and settling dispute
This will allow for fair play and will incentive usage of the blockchain.
Various Games Supported
Many services online allow for gameplay for only one type of game. However, MindSports can allow for theoretically any "mind game" and currently already supports Chess, Go, Backgammon, Bridge, and more:
The team plans to allow you to support/vote for the next MindSports-supported game through the MindSports Registry.
Backed by Code
The MindSports blockchain and platform will be secured by the blockchain, specifically utilizing Ethereum's smart contract structure. Additionally, IPFS will be used for file storage, which is a common way to store files over a distributed network.
The team will use an API called Whisper for peer-to-peer live communication, and will use their own MindSports Registry to decide and govern the roadmap for new games and tools.
Joining MindSports
MindSports is set to have a pre-sale for their MIND token on November 17th, 2017 at 14:00 UTC. The presale will run for about a month, with the starting price being 1500 MIND = 1 ETH. If you'd like to join their whitelist, visit their website! Additionally, you can join their contest on Steemit right now here!
There are many ways that the MindSports platform and the MIND token will be able to change how intelligent games like Chess are played, and I'm excited to see what we can come up with!
note: This is a submission for the Steem contest, mindsports2017