xDai network is built on a belief in the strength of the collective to overcome obstacles, enact change, and envision the blockchain future. The base protocol prioritizes stability, security and speed, and applications and developers use these features to define and evolve the ecosystem.
This week we were reminded of this collective intelligence during the latest DarkForest(DF) round. Round 4 was a lightning round, concentrating gameplay into 4 days of interstellar mayhem. 1600 players joined the fun and 749 players received a ranking score.
DF is designed to push blockchain boundaries and test the limits, not only from a technical perspective (scaling gas-intensive operations and zk gameplay) but also from a player strategy and game-design point of view. How will new blockchain games evolve based on unique crypto-mechanics?
We saw a hint of future possibilities from the dfdao, an autonomous organization "created in May 2021 based on the belief that players could achieve higher scores in Dark Forest if they played together.” Read the full article
This round, dfdao deployed a smart contract called Astral Colossus, a df player subtype bound by certain contract-enforced rules. Players within the dao could gift planets and artifacts to Astral Colossus to increase the overall score. The dfdao team played as a collective, exploring the game collaboratively and using their shared knowledge to battle worthy opponents (players & teams utilizing advanced scripting, bots and other unique strategies) and achieve a higher score.
In the end, over 28 hours, 52 players contributed 76,528,735 points to the Astral Colossus, and the team reached 38th place on the leaderboard. The community plans to put their winning planet into a treasury that will be governed by a community token in the future.
This example, along with many other organically-grown DF strategies like community-created plugins and scripts, are a taste of what’s to come when smart people and smart contracts work together to forge something entirely new.
On xDai, DF round 4 resulted in an ATH for daily transactions and we saw more than 375k requests per second to the default RPC at times. POKT network helped to ease some of this DF traffic, and the xDai team continued to explore ways to scale up quickly and address rapid escalations in traffic and transactions.
POSDAO Update
POSDAO staking is another example of a collective, gamified experience for participants, where delegators vie for a high APY as they protect the xDai chain. Different strategies include spreading STAKE between candidates, moving STAKE to preferred candidates, or chasing candidates with lower probability of selection but much higher rewards if selected.
This week 2 low-stakes candidates were selected to the validator set, however no delegators were onboard when they joined. The possibility of a high APY next round, along with some community maneuvering by 0zma to collect more delegators by sharing xDai incentives, is drawing in delegators and increasing the odds these validators will join the set again next round. All potential new delegators are pending until the next epoch begins.
Project Updates
APY.Vision provides valuable insight into LP positions, and this week they announced an xDai integration. If you are heavy into DeFi, it’s easy to lose track of pools and where assets are allocated. Dashboards like this one provide another important tracking tool for xDai DeFi Users.
POKT Network helped with DF scaling, and their latest offering is full archive node support for xDai users. Archive nodes are valuable for querying all data from the genesis block, giving developers additional flexibility and data access.
Minerva wallet has been diligently developing one of the most feature rich wallets in the space. They have now officially launched out of beta along with support for many DApps on xDai. Download the Android wallet.
Clr.fund is back for Round 8 of public goods funding with a matching pool of 16,000+ wxDai. 200 contributors have already signed on! Learn more
We’re consistently amazed by the community building on xDai, often behind the scenes. Just this week we were introduced to an app that has been in use for some time but we hadn’t seen it in action.
Glufco lets users in Venezuela convert Bolivars to xDai and use a stable currency for purchases, p2p transfers, and any other types of payments. P2P payments is one of xDai’s original use cases, and we’re so happy to see a real-world application thriving and empowering users on a daily basis. 🙏 Thanks to all of you, xDai continues to support communities and facilitate innovation throughout the world.
See you on-chain,
The xDai Team