Funny how things evolve. one day you're playing a nice game of Hearthstone with your friends, the next day Blizzard decides to enforce a totalitarian regime and go full 1984 on you. Enjoying the perks which come with freedom of speech and such, this doesn't sit quite well with you. But what can you do?
Apparently you were not the only one with a troubled mind, because all it took was a single tweet for this to happen.
Needless to say it's been an amazing week. so many new faces, new people to talk to and, more importantly, new people to play against. man those starter decks hurt by the way :)
There is one thing we need to discuss though.
Gods Unchained runs on the Ethereum Blockchain, a concept which seems to be largely new to most of you. this is fine, but there are a few things you really, REALLY should know before you irreversibly ruin your collection. After all, Gods Unchained may be a game, Cryptocurrency is NOT.
What's Ethereum and what does it have to do with Gods Unchained?
Ethereum is a decentralised platform running on blockchain technology. developers use it to create decentralised applications (DAPP's in short). the aim is to create a safer, freer and more transparent Internet than the one we have right now, with Ethereum as its backbone. developers can also write Smart Contracts, just like the one we interact with when we buy packs of cards.
A common question has been "why do we need ethereum/blockchain for this? in hearthstone I had all my cards stored on my account without a problem!" that's where the True Ownership aspect comes into play. in games like HS you don't actually own your cards. you can't trade or share your cards and all it takes is one dispute to get locked out of your account. the fact that you paid money for your cards is irrelevant here, technically you are licensed to use them but you will never own them. Herein lies one of the main benefits of a TCG on blockchain: what's yours is yours, once you own it no one can take it away from you (theft aside - more on that later). So lets say you do something which pisses off the devs, they may ban you from official tournaments or whatever but your cards are yours to keep, forever. they can't revoke your access to your inventory and you are free to trade/gift/sell your cards, trinkets, tokens and whatnot at will. all your items are stored safely in your wallet, the same wallet other people use to store millions of dollars. trust me, if its safe enough for that, its safe enough for your cards.
Alright that sounds awesome, what's the catch?
To quote Spoderman,
for sake of analogy, lets say you have a dollar in your hand. that dollar buys you candy, if you ever make it to the candy shop. unfortunately for you, you decide it might be a great idea to fold that dollar into a paper airplane and throw it off your balcony. someone finds the dollar and runs away. it is now no longer your dollar and you cry.
This sort of goes for your crypto wallet as well. you are the only person in the world who decides who has access over your wallet. this is ensured through the use of your private key. this private key must be stored safely AT ALL COST since whoever holds the private key has access to your wallet and can do with it whatever they want. so RULE NUMBER 1: NEVER SHARE YOUR PRIVATE KEY WITH ANYONE!!!!!111
OK so here's another analogy.
you have your dollar in your hand, manage to make it all the way to a store and give the clerk at the counter your money. however instead of a store, you went to some random dude and instead of saying you want candy, you just gave it to him and walked away. then you go back home, sit on your couch and cry.
In crypto terms, this is more or less what happens when you send your ETH or tokens to the wrong address. the only way to recover sent items is for the receiver to send it back to you. problem, you need to know who the receiver is and they need to be nice. so yeah. don't mess that part up. Luckily, these days its a lot harder to send your tokens to the wrong address since most platforms and interfaces now use the wonderful concept of "copy to clipboard" or, even better, direct checkout. but yeah, whenever you need to manually input an address: check, double check, triple check and then check some more.
Alright I think I got it. So how do I get one of those wallet things?
What follows is a very step by step guide on how to make your wallet. There are many wallets but in my opinion the most user friendly and easy to use wallet is Metamask so this guide is for that. pay close attention.
- go to https://metamask.io
- click "get chrome extension" (or whichever browser you are using). install the extension.
- click "lets get started" at the metamask window that pops up, follow the instructions. if this is your first wallet, just create a new wallet.
- at some point you will be presented with your secret backup phrase. SUPER IMPORTANT ULTRA CRUCIAL MAXIMAL ALERT Store this phrase in the safest place you can find, preferably offline!!! this phrase recovers your wallet access so everyone with this phrase can control your wallet. kinda like giving the keys to your house to a random person. just don't give it away!
- once you've confirmed your phrase in the next window, you'll have your own ethereum wallet. congratulations!
Quick note: some people have asked why they can't just use an exchange wallet and be done with it. the simple answer is "because they aren't made for that". the deeper answer is that if you don't hold the private key, it's not your wallet. now lets say you send a card to your exchange wallet. since there's no command to send tokens from that wallet, you will have to contact exchange support and hope they'll be nice and send your stuff around. what's worse, if an exchange goes down, your stuff is gone. so just do the right thing and make your own wallet.
Awesome! I have a wallet, now what?
now you load it up with space bucks of course! lets get some ETH in your wallet. this step isn't mandatory, but remember: every transaction has a small fee attached, called gas. kind of like post stamps. Ethereum is a decentralised network, which means the people processing transactions are just ordinary folks like you and me. processing transactions costs electricity, so the transaction fees are our way of saying "thank you" to our friendly neighbourhood miner.
Long story short: if you want sell cards, raffle tickets or anything else, you'll need to have a bit of ETH in your wallet.
There are a few ways to get ethereum, research which one works best for you. probably the most well known point of entry is Coinbase, however there are more ways to Rome. just find what works for you.hell, you can even ask someone if they can help with gas. people might be nice.
So that's it?
Yep! well, of course you can go a lot deeper with all this. but from here on out you are officially a hodler like the rest of us. you now have a very safe wallet with full control over what goes out and you've SAVED YOUR RECOVERY SEED IN A SAFE PLACE (seriously). now you're free to enjoy the game, receive raffle tickets and buy packs at the store and make me very rich with your referral money cough oh here's a beta key.
Anyway, Hope this guide has been helpful! if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask :) you'll find me in the Gods Unchained Discord under Snuffy.
Game on!