What is ScytheSwap?

Before we go into detail about the product we're building, it's imperative the person reading this article understands what is happening in the blockchain gaming ecosystem.

With the rise of play-to-earn gaming, birthed through the cross pollination of defi, NFTs, and the immensely creative/intelligent developers collaborating with one another, an entirely new economy has emerged: one that makes gaming a viable source of income for everyone, not just celebrity streamers. Blockchain games like Axie Infinity have single handedly saved hundreds of thousands of Filipinos from poverty during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, where 40% of the country was unemployed. These players were not only able to make ends meet by earning income on the game, but in many cases, they were thriving, making 3-4x the country's minimum wage, having no reason to return to their "real" jobs. Some players have even sold their in-game assets to buy real world assets such as real estate and land, as their in-game assets have naturally appreciated in value dramatically as the game's players base, and thus, demand for the items relating to the game have grown exponentially. This is a paradigm shift in online gaming, a shift that will redefine how we think about and interact with virtual worlds forever. No longer are games about mindlessly grinding for rewards that exist only on a game company's server, putting thousands of hours into a programmatically designed time-sink, where if the game servers go offline, so do your items; the gamers are becoming owners of the virtual worlds of which they participate in, and the items earned in games transcend that singular game's world entirely, as they can be transferred to another blockchain game at-will, and used wherever, whenever. In this new globally connected digital world, every game item is an ownable token, even the land, for instance, upon which your virtual avatar walks on will be owned by individual players/entities. In game assets now have a permanent place in the metaverse, as they exist on a blockchain and not a server. Any new game can implement old game items from blockchain games before them, meaning that if a game dies, the in-game items live on forever, compatible with other virtual worlds within the metaverse. If this sounds eerily similar to Ready Player One, then you're on the right track - this is exactly like that fictional story, except it's very real, and happening right now.

The metaverse and the play-to-earn revolution blurs the line between digital and reality and will usher in an entire new era of blockchain super-users. One of the most exciting aspects of all of this is how many of the people playing these blockchain games didn't know what a wallet or ‘Ethereum’ was a few months ago. Play-to-earn is the killer app of crypto, and with it, millions of new gamers will need an easy way to buy/sell/trade their newly attained in-game assets. Currently, there are massive OTC (Over the Counter) trading markets inside of Discord and Telegram servers where individuals are being scammed, as it's a trust based system. This is where ScytheSwap comes in: ScytheSwap isn't solving a new problem, in fact, we're doing quite the opposite, just doing it better and different! ScytheSwap is a decentralized application that focuses on the social aspect of gaming and the crypto community. We're inspired by our childhood experiences trading items in MMOs such as Runescape and World of Warcraft, where the trade screen was a connection between you and another player, where everything worked in real time, from offering up new items to trade, to chatting with the other player during your trade. We believe we can bring this experience to the web-browser and give people from around the world a place to congregate to chat, trade, and make friends. A social trading app for all adventurers from the metaverse, if you will. The heart of every great MMO is its community, and similarly, the most valuable aspect of the cryptosphere is its vibrant community which we believe is greatly underutilized by the current popular applications. Sure, right now there are plenty of ways to trade your assets by using apps such as OpenSea and the Axie Infinity Market Place, which eliminate the element of trust, but we believe these platforms have significant shortcomings. For one, they’re boring. The standard app for trading your NFTs and tokens are white and blue colored web app yawn-fests, technically challenging to the fledgling blockchain user, and lacking any kind of gamification or social aspect. ScytheSwap will create not just an application that enables peer-to-peer swaps of in-game blockchain assets, we will create a trading experience never before seen in blockchain - one that gamifies this experience to bring the traditional MMO trading feel to a web-app, and one that brings traders together, connecting users on a social level, similar to that seen in multi-player games. Where the metaverse blurs the line between gaming and reality, ScytheSwap will blur the line between fintech and social media. An appropriate analogy might be that ScytheSwap is the multiplayer MMO version of crypto trading, whereas the current legacy applications are single player, and users are disconnected from one another, never knowing who’s on the other side of the trade.

Version 1 of ScytheSwap will be a simple p2p dapp utilizing Vasa’s CAS (Cross Asset Swap) contract for swapping any Ethereum token standard asset (ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC1155) between each other. The first iteration of the application will feature a simple trade window that gets updated in real time as both parties in the trade click on items from their inventory (wallet), signifying they are willing to trade that given item with the person on the other end of the trade. Once an item is clicked on inside the wallet, the icon representing that particular asset appears inside the trade window for both peers to see. For a swap to occur, both parties must hit "Accept" and the assets inside of the trade window will be swapped in a single transaction. Conversely, if any one party disagrees on the items to be swapped, they may hit "Decline" and the session will close. The first iteration will also include a RTC (Real Time Chat) component, so that the two parties may communicate during the trade, which is not only a crucial component to the functionality of ScytheSwap, it’s a core attribute of our design philosophy which centers around the gamification of crypto, and merging the social fabric of the internet to a decentralized application with web3. There are no order books, so two individuals must verbally explain or offer up items on the screen according to what items they want to trade for another, and come to an agreement in a social context as opposed to using something like a lifeless AMM or order book system.

We're incredibly excited to be partnered with Dev Protocol who are funding our development and to be building with our vastly talented team of developers and project leaders.

For those who want to be a part of our community: https://discord.com/invite/V2382Xbb4k https://twitter.com/ScytheSwap

If you are interested in contributing or want to learn more please email us at scytheswap@protonmail.com