It's amazing how the best laid plans of mice and men can so easily be disturbed, but as some of the greatest songwriters of our time have put it "inspiration comes when it wants to." So, while my roadmap says I'm not supposed to start working on the development of my NFT collectible game until May 2021, the groundwork has been laid and we're now at the point of choosing a blockchain and getting to the coding. So, how do I choose the right blockchain for my project? Here are the criteria I'm going to be looking for.
Easy, open communication. Sadly, a lot of companies are already failing this one. Either their websites are outdated; their own Roadmaps haven't been updated in a couple years; or the links for things like Developer Information, Core Philosophy, and dApps produced on their system go dead, or link to their wallet app instead. Ecosystems will also lose favor if the only way to contact them is through Discord, Telegram, or WhatsApp. If you're concerned about secure communications by email, drop your Public PGP key, don't make me use an app that's connected to Facebook (WhatsApp) or has been repeatedly breached by the FBI (Telegram).
Easily accessible documentation for developers. I touched on this briefly in the point above, but if you have a link on your website that says it leads to developer tools, it darn well better lead to developer tools. If it leads to your wallet app, or to your exchange, or prompts me to buy either Eth or your Token, you lose. Otherwise, I'm really just looking for simple information - what languages can I use, which IDEs do I have available, etc.
A vibrant ecosystem. Every blockchain has promise, but promise isn't enough to get the job done. Sadly, some incredibly promising looking ecosystems have shot themselves in the foot either through geographic limitations (a gaming blockchain that can only be used if you live in Europe, for example), exhausting amounts of hoops to jump through just to get tokens on their exchanges (Hive, I'm looking at you here), or tying themselves too closely to Ethereum with exorbitant gas prices that they pass on to the user.
Robust Smart Contract support for Ethereum. If I had my druthers, I'd stay as far from Ethereum as digitally possible, but I don't have that choice. My players need to be able to connect to the Ethereum Mainnet, because that's where most of the money is right now. But I'm going to have to have a Smart Contract system that allows me to bundle miniscule transactions and have the system (my game) pay the gas cost, or my player base is going to dry up faster than R-Planet.
NFT support on a NON-Ethereum backed exchange. NFTs don't just start out valuable just because someone says they are. There has to be a userbase, that userbase has to be able to participate in an equitable, enjoyable fashion, and time has to be budgeted for the entire system to lose money in order to attract more customers. We can't do this if it costs $3112 in gas to mint one NFT worth $0.20. We have to have a non-Ethereum based exchange system.
With all of these points in mind, and having spent the last week or so diving as deeply into the blockchain ecosystem world as I could, WAX is really starting to look like the blockchain I'll be focusing on engaging with the most in the coming weeks. Even though I've had a few false starts with them, I can honestly chalk those up to my not having paid close enough attention. They have a robust off-Eth market for NFTs with several marketplaces to search and support for a large collection of wallet apps. They have a Smart Contract solution in place, and are expanding on that by offering the provision of Ethereum Bridges. Their staking and voting system doesn't require Ethereum integration and gas costs (though, obviously, the Eth Bridge does). And their dApps can be written in C or C++, so I don't have to learn a new programming language.
I expect to have a serious proposal, complete with mockup, submitted by the end of March 2021.
