Targeting the hot e-sports market, "First Blood" wants to get a piece of the pie through blockchain

According to statistics from newzoo, a global game market research organization, the global e-sports market size will reach 463 million US dollars in 2016. With the crazy growth of the global e-sports market, a survey found that 33% of gamers not only want to watch professional gamers' games, but also want to participate in them.

The FirstBlood team has established a decentralized e-sports platform that allows grassroots players to challenge opponents and win bounties anytime, anywhere. Just like the name of this exciting project, the FirstBlood team has integrated blockchain and smart contracts into the hot e-sports market, intending to solve the cheating problems and game disputes existing in traditional e-sports platforms.

Founder Joe (Zhou Chuhao) is both a digital currency enthusiast and a hardcore League of Legends player. In his opinion, traditional e-sports platforms cannot provide a trustworthy and automated bounty system, and they need to improve in terms of fund security and user experience. Blockchain and smart contracts can solve the problem: decentralized platforms use smart contracts to match games, select winners, collect deposits, and use the wisdom of the crowd to resolve cheating and game disputes. Players do not need to trust third-party institutions to supervise the results of games and funds.

By using the Ethereum blockchain and Oracles, players' funds are processed and settled by decentralized smart contracts. The system also introduces the concepts of a decentralized arbitration system (DAMN) and a jury (Jury Voting Pool), using witnesses as decentralized proxies to provide official game data for each transaction of the smart contract, allowing the jury (JVP) to arbitrate cheaters in this ecosystem.

The team members also have some experience in digital currency. Founders Zhou Chuhao and Marco previously co-founded the Bitcoin options platform Alt-Options, and Zack is the founder of Ethereum-based applications Etheropt and Etherdelta. Project advisory committee members include Joey Krug from the Ethereum-based prediction system Augur team, and Mikko Ohtamaa, the former CTO of the well-known Bitcoin OTC platform Local Bitcoins.

How to gain a foothold in the huge market with fierce competition, marketing is very important, Joe said,

"In the short term, we will focus on the community structure and platform building of a game. By leveraging the support of crowdfunding backers and early hardcore users, we will be able to dominate First Blood in this focused market in the short term. Then we will use the same operating method to cooperate with market development and hosting e-sports leagues to extend to other games. Later, we can invite famous professional players (we already have two professional gamers in our Slack) to open public challenges, charity matches and live broadcasts on our platform, and hold league tournaments in cooperation with e-sports meetups and clubs, leagues and even Internet cafes in various regions. Later, when the platform has a certain number of users, we can cooperate with game developers to develop new e-sports games, open their API structure to connect with our platform, and let their players play e-sports on their games."

Lao Mao, COO of Yunbi.com, which is about to launch the first blood crowdfunding, commented:

“Before projects like FirstBlood, there was an unequal relationship between game developers and players. E-sports players had no say except in competitions or selling their equipment on the black market. With projects like this, players will have a greater say in which games they like to play and what kind of game requirements they have, because game competition itself is a good economic model, and a sustainable economic model will have a significant impact on the industry and will fundamentally change the unequal relationship between game players and game developers.”

Check out what else Joe shared with us about First Blood in this interview:

8btc: What was the original intention of launching the First Blood project?

Joe: The original intention of First Blood is to give thousands of grassroots players like me a platform to showcase their gaming skills. This way, playing games can not only relax or have fun, but also earn bounties and rankings - just like professional players - which will give you a greater sense of achievement.

8btc: Do ordinary e-sports platforms have restrictions on grassroots players? What is the difference between decentralization and traditional e-sports platforms?

Joe: Ordinary e-sports platforms have many unskilled players, some run away with centralized deposits, and some rely entirely on players to report the results of the game, which often leads to disputes over prize money. These solutions do not provide particularly good guarantees for user experience and absolute security of funds. However, decentralized platforms use smart contracts to match games, select winners, collect deposits, and use the wisdom of the masses to resolve cheating and game disputes. Players can use virtualized currencies to participate in virtual game competitions and do not need to trust third-party institutions to supervise the results of the game and funds.

8btc: Please tell us about your personal experience. I guess you must be an Ethereum enthusiast as well as an e-sports enthusiast.

Joe: That's right! I graduated from Boston University with a double degree in finance and entrepreneurship. Although my previous background was related to finance and trading, I am a hardcore League of Legends player. I have been to the gold group (almost platinum) and have played Dota 1 and CS:GO. Before founding the First Blood project, my colleague Marco Cuesta and I founded a virtual product financial derivatives exchange. After transferring the exchange technology to another company, my colleague Anik and I created an app for League of Legends that allows players to play 1-on-1 and automatically obtain game data to determine the winner - Solome. This is the predecessor of First Blood. Later, the first founder Zack Coburn, a household name in Ethereum applications (he is the founder of Etheropt and Etherdelt Ethereum Exchange), discussed this idea and decided to establish First Blood! I have always been paying attention to Ethereum and have invested in everything from Augur to DAO. The thing I regret most is that I did not participate in the early crowdfunding of Ethereum.

8btc: Several members of the team seem to be very experienced in the field of digital currency. What are their respective responsibilities in the FirstBlood project?

Joe: I am responsible for the team's long-term planning, operations and front-end code writing. Marco Cuesta is responsible for marketing and BD. Zack Coburn is responsible for back-end code writing and the architecture of smart contracts. Anik Dang is responsible for the connection and architecture between the front and back ends. Our legal officer, Dan Temkin, is a registered attorney in New York and Massachusetts and is responsible for all legal matters.

8btc: Please introduce the decentralized arbitration system (DAMN) and the jury (Jury Voting Pool).

Joe: Simply put, the decentralized arbitration system and jury are very similar to the jury and arbitration system in real life. For example, in the United States, citizens are randomly selected to participate in the jury to judge the dispute between the plaintiff and the defendant. Then our JVP is to build this randomness on the smart contract and blockchain. The jury uses the fair, just, and public game data provided by witness nodes and the players' own proof to resolve disputes between players. In order to reward the jury for their good behavior and contribution to the platform, they will receive a portion of the fees collected by the smart contract. This fee dividend is a floating ratio determined by the relative speed of the current events that the platform needs to process. For example, if it is night time and many people play e-sports games, the jury with few players will have a higher share.

8btc: What is the current progress of system development?

Joe: Last month, our team internally tested the first self-written mini-game Trump Dice as a POC (Proof of Concept) to test our smart contracts and the function of using distributed prophets to send data to smart contracts. We currently predict that we will open support for the first game as our beta test in January or February next year, and then officially launch it in the second quarter.

8btc: What specific functions do tokens have in the system?

Joe: FirstBlood wants to build a highly sticky ecosystem in this 12.6 billion e-sports industry. With FirstBlood's application tokens, you can not only play e-sports with your game friends and make money, but also use it as a witness (running witness nodes) or as a member of the jury to get a certain fee dividend as salary (voting in a jury). In the end, you have to have a very awesome e-sports team to play with, or create your own e-sports league and e-sports team.

8btc: After the crowdfunding is completed, what are the recent development plans?

Joe: First Blood will focus our energy in the short term on 1. product development 2. community architecture and platform building around a game. By leveraging the support of crowdfunding supporters and early hardcore users, First Blood will achieve a dominant position in this focused market in the short term. Then, we will use the same operating method to expand to other games by coordinating market development and hosting e-sports leagues.