Vitalik Buterin is one of the most recognizable names in the crypto space, thanks to its role as the creator of Ethereum, Bitcoin’s second most popular cryptocurrency. The Russian-Canadian prodigy created more than just a cryptocurrency — he came up with a decentralized platform that would enable developers to create decentralized applications and harness the power of smart contracts.
But all Ethereum can do is a result, and the real question here is: How did Buterik come up with the idea to create Ethereum? It turns out that it has something to do with him playing World of Warcraft.
Vitalik’s World of Warcraft Experience
Like many others his age, Vitalik is an avid gamer, especially when it comes to the world’s most popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. He was a successful warlock in the game and excelled in the virtual world, but then something happened that changed the history of blockchain and cryptocurrencies: the Siphon Life spell was weakened, taking away Buterin’s power in the game .
Young Buterin was heartbroken. After all the hard work he’s put into the character’s development, he doesn’t believe anyone can have so much power over his character. Vitalik doesn’t like the way centralized servers work at all.
Centralized vs. Decentralized Servers
A centralized server is basically any server today that does not include blockchain or other distributed technologies. This means that everything that happens on the server is in the hands of a few people. In the case of World of Warcraft, these people are developers and server moderators. To put it another way, if you have 1000 gold coins in the game, the mod needs to enter a few lines of code into the console to make them disappear – or turn them into 10,000 gold coins. This also applies to weapons in the game. Imagine owning the best sword in the game, only to wake up one morning only to find it disappeared from your pocket. Really unfair.
Turn gold, weapons, spells and all in-game items into cryptocurrencies and NFTs
The only difference between gold coins and bitcoins in the game is that no one can erase your bitcoins because it is based on decentralized technology and uses a distributed ledger. Now, we won’t go into the details of why BTC has value, you can read elsewhere, but the important thing is that people agree that BTC has value and cannot be manipulated, and that’s enough. Therefore, no one can access the underlying code of BTC to turn your 10 BTC into 10,000 BTC. If the blockchain is applied to Warcraft gold, it will gain real value. What’s more, no one can change or influence your in-game digital wealth.
But, for example, what about your sword? What if its power in the game is nerfed and not as strong as it used to be? If you were to itemize the weapons in the game, it would be impossible to apply the same technology to them.
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Tokens, and unique swords are truly irreplaceable in games, which is why the popular techniques we apply to digital art can be used to give real value to in-game items.
In fact, a company called digital weapons A related project is already underway to turn all firearm brands into NFTs and make them unique among first-person shooters. Of course, their scope doesn’t include medieval weapons (at least not for now), but if you’re a fan of games like CS:GO, you can use weapons as non-fungible tokens. Digital Arms is already working hard to achieve its goals and has recently partnered with metal grounda blockchain-based first-person shooter game, paving the way for the first NFT gun game with IP authorization.
It’s only a matter of time before this concept applies to other games and in-game items, spells, etc.
Metaverse is a fairer alternative to Warcraft
The Metaverse is described as a digital realm where people can meet, play games, hang out, and even do business. The real question here is: is World of Warcraft a metaverse? Technically, it is, but it’s missing one fundamental component – the blockchain. That said, the metaverse concept revolves around everything that is tokenized, including in-game currency and all items.
Therefore, no one in the metaverse can affect your ownership in any way. That’s why Metaverse is one of the biggest buzzwords today – it makes digital ownership a reality. Of course, it’s still a very new concept, but we’ll see more in the future as the crypto and NFT craze is bigger than ever.
If the creators of World of Warcraft start embracing the technology, we might even hope to see Battrick’s warlocks rule Azeroth again. But probably not. This guy can be very busy.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only.It is not intended or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice
