Proposal: Game7 Tech Grants - Product Priorities [Request for Feedback]

Proposals
#1

Introduction

Historically, the gaming industry was built behind walled gardens to capture and extract the most value from participants within. In line with the Game7 proposal, I believe Game7 aims to deploy resources to a diverse set of open-source & collaborative initiatives with the potential to reshape the future of gaming.

Game7 can serve as a conduit to spur collaboration for the entire web3 gaming space. I believe the Grants program is in a momentous position to support this mission with a focus on open-source technologies that may lack a clear path to profitability but are necessary building blocks for a thriving gaming ecosystem.

What areas should Game7 support?

Game7 recently completed an extensive research initiative by interviewing over 100 developers building web3 games, platforms, and tools across almost every ecosystem to identify the key industry pain points. Therefore, my initial suggestion would be to take these findings along with additional input from our community (that’s you) to drive the focus areas for the first iteration of the grants program mandate.

I am seeking community feedback on additional areas to be included in our 12-month grant mandate. This post is to serve as the initial framework, and once we believe the mandate is in good shape and covers all the necessary sections, I will propose publishing it on the Game7 website for further transparency.

A few words about myself:

My name is George, and I was appointed by the BitDAO community to serve as a Grants Committee coordinator for Game7. In the past, I have led various product initiatives at R3, a leading enterprise blockchain company and BlockPegnio, an early Blockchain Gaming Studio founded in 2019. In previous years, I have worked as a Strategy Consultant for PwC and also had the chance to advise multiple teams in the web3 gaming space.

Below, I outline a few areas stemming from the report to kick off an open conversation with the community.

Please note that I will keep modifying this thread and acknowledge individual input submitted in this post.

Game Development Tooling

Tooling to integrate assets and advanced gameplay mechanics securely to any web3 game

Areas of interest

  • Game Engine Integration
    • Game engine-specific SDKs (Unity, Unreal, PlayCanvas, Godot, etc.)
    • Web3 Native Game Engines
  • LiveOps & real-time multiplayer networking
  • Off-chain data management
  • Economic Design Tooling
  • Cross-chain oracles

Smart contract & Standards

Standards that enable the design of trustless on-chain gaming experiences

Areas of interest

  • Gaming-oriented Smart Contracts
    • Asset Manipulation (e.g. crafting/breeding/enchanting)
    • GameFi operations (e.g. staking, lending)
  • Open Metaverse Standards
    • Gaming-oriented asset standards
    • 3D Asset Interoperability standards

Core Infrastructure

Core blockchain infrastructure re-imagined for web3 gaming

Areas of interest

  • Wallets & cross-chain Identity
  • Chain deployment infrastructure (e.g. App-chains, rollups)
  • Web3 Game distribution platforms
  • Node management & data indexing
  • Decentralized storage
  • Asset marketplaces
  • Bridges & State channels

Community Tooling

Tooling powering the next generation of web3 communities

Areas of interest

  • Web3 reputation and XP protocols
  • Gaming Guild/DAOs Management Tooling
  • Social Media Web3 integrations for gaming communities
  • Community and smart-contract analytics (ranking, leaderboards, statistical rarity,…)

With the help of the Grants committee, I hope the community can arrive at a completed mandate within the next 14-21 days so we can begin allocating funds to open-source initiatives that will shape the industry we strive to create.

  1. Please leave your feedback by replying to this thread.
  2. Share this thread with your network, who can contribute meaningfully to our mandate. Everyone is welcome!
  3. I’d appreciate it if you could include your discord handles with your replies so we can assign you a Grants collaborator role in discord :slight_smile:

If you want to discuss this thread over discord, please reach out to me at @gsi#5555

13 Likes
#2

Great to see that a Game7 forum is live! And also cool to see that the grants are coming one step closer to being a reality. The coming year(s) of Game7 grants could very well kickstart the next phase of the GameFi evolution.

My discord handle is @Zeb#4772

Seems like this is the start of a public RFP list somewhat. From reading the report and having had discussions on it in the past I think the following items are still missing on it if I am not mistaken.
Might be that some of the things I am about to list are covered in the list under different titles. Also, I tried putting them within the four categories given, but there is quite some overlap.

Game Dev Tooling

  • Static Analyzer. Plugged into IDE for Solidity and other languages.
  • In-game tx signing. Game devs and players alike want to sign transactions natively in-game without using a browser. Existing UX for desktop and mobile games needs improvement.
  • Open-source state-management tool. Can also be a guideline that game devs collectively help maintain. Significantly saves time for new game devs entering the space.

Smart contract & Standards

  • Smart Contract delegation framework. SC delegation framework that allows game devs to set access control for users to modify the sc with different levels of restrictions.

Core Infra

  • Enable showcasing game-specific NFT metadata and graphics.
  • Mobile Wallet Authenticator, similar to WalletConnect but built for games. Encrypted key is stored in the secure enclave of a mobile phone, storing keys for a new or existing wallet. Scan a QR code to start an in- game session. Web2 gamers are already experienced with Steam Authentication.
    Pre-approve in-game transaction signing based on a capped amount to improve UX.
  • On-chain watchers similar to EPNS or XMTP but built for games.
  • Systems for ongoing monitoring and vulnerability testing for web3 assets.
  • Integrated testing systems of Web3 Assets; IDE and CI/CD integrated statis contract analyses.
  • Trustless NFT lending. Allows player A to utilize player B’s assets without the risk of theft.

Community Tooling

  • A Chain Comparison Dashboard catered to Web3 game devs.

All together Game7 will have a great list of RFPs to be worked on!

8 Likes
#3

Current list is pretty extensive, and while while part of scope includes tools web2 devs can use, there is a need for more comprehensive open source tools which web2 devs can use to convert existing or created new web3 games.

I feel like adding bellow areas of interested would help web2 game devs to join Web3:

Game Dev Tooling

  • Direct Database Web2<>Web3 access Import/Expert plugin to EVM, Solana, WAX, and other popular blockchains. The tool should allow for mapping of assets in database to assets on blockchain.

  • Scalable Data Audit Trail for tokens and NFTs with audit trial stored on underline blockchain working as public source of the decentralized verifiable truth. It would allows for notarization of transfer of off-chain tokens & NFTs to the chain using Direct Database Web2<>Web3 access Import/Expert plugin mentioned in previous point.

  • Identity Authentication Management for hybrid, multi-blockchain games

  • Authentication Pipeline with end-to-end security for assets transfer between game server and edge node(s).

7 Likes
#4

Thanks so much for publishing this, I’m so happy to see the progress around the grants topic.

I know both tooling and infrastructure are the most important areas to support developers, but is there any room in this particular case for creating learning materials and/or supporting organizing events like meetups, game jams, and competitions? Or is it only product driven?

Just in case, my Discord username is end3r#3212.

Ps. I’d add Phaser to the list of engines - I know Rich Davey, the author of the tool, is active in the web3 space.

6 Likes
#5

Hey, I am Puncar (puncar#6764) from BanklessConsulting a professional services layer of BanklessDAO.

We have been working a lot with projects and DAOs to set up their governance and incentive (tokenomics) structure to be long-term sustainable and help achieve their goals.

While doing those projects, we started a cooperation with Machination.io to design and test our tokenomics designs. And that cooperation also expanded to web3 gaming economies.

I see that one of the targets of your grants is economic design tools, and I think economic design in web3 gaming is one of the key aspects. And that’s why I would suggest adding economic design methodologies and best practices to it.

At the moment there are many types of economic designs being tested, and some of them are more successful and some of them less, but what is important is to get these results, and share them with the community so that we can learn from each other and make the game economies better and sustainable faster.

We have been thinking about the same for a while, and it’s great to see that you want to support open-source gaming and sharing of information; as a core team member of GitcoinDAO I am a big supporter of open-source myself and would love to help Game7 on their journey.

6 Likes
#6

Thanks, @gsi. This is a wonderful and pretty comprehensive list of areas to support! I also see lots of great additions from the responses so far.

One difficult piece is deciding where focus. We can’t do everything at once. (1) How will the committee prioritize focus areas? I think it’s worth deeply considering this before allocating funds (a la “begin with the end in mind”). I think it’s also important to publicize the reasoning, so that current and potential community members feel Game7 is transparent and accountable.

The first question leads to two other critical questions: (2) What criteria are considered when choosing grantees? (3) After grants are given, how will progress be monitored and success measured? Maybe this is discussed in another thread already, but again I believe clarity and transparency about such things as early as possible will be critical to the Grant Committee’s and Game7’s success.

Despite my nitpicking about process :grin:, I’d also like to build to the extent that I can be helpful (esp. on Community Tooling and Smart Contracts!). My Discord is dtedesco#9361. This is already a great start and I’m looking forward to contributing!

2 Likes
#8

Just getting in to the conversation here. I with a gaming company called Mint State Labs and we’ve been creating a lot of the foundation for the Web3 space. Looking at all of your “Areas of Interest”, we’ve actually created, implemented these in to various projects, or are currently nearing completion around them. I’d love to hear more around the feedback that was provided by the 100 game developers and what their immediate needs are. If there’s a way to talk to Game7’s board around this directly and how we can assist with supporting devs, we’re more than happy to do so.

1 Like
#9

@gsi Hey George,
Unfortunately, I can’t find any information about the application form for grant submissions anywhere. Do I need a presentation with the idea or MVP?
Could you please let me know where I can find all the requirements and conditions?