Blockchain gaming startup Blockade Games has reportedly said that it has successfully managed to bridge the Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and the Ethereum network by sending a Bitcoin Lightning transaction in a way that it can cause trigger an Ethereum smart contract.
Blockade Games was co-founded by Marguerite Decourcelle, who is the company’s CEO, and Ben Heidorn, the company’s CTO. Its investors include HODL Capital, Techstars, and BlockTower Capital.
The startup has “produced some of the longest-running experiences blending blockchain with interactive entertainment,” with their games using cryptoassets “in a way that pulls together today’s largest communities of players in the blockchain space.”
According to a report on Coindesk published on Friday (August 2), Blockade Games’s CTO told them that his company had “run its code on the Rinkeby testnet and plans to deploy it on mainnet (using real ether) in the next couple of weeks.”
Thie upcoming flagship title is Neon District, a role-playing game that is being built on Ethereum. This game will offer support for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
That’s why the company has been testing this code on Ethereum’s Rinkeby testnet. Apparently, according to Heidorn, the company is planning to deploy its code on the Ethereum mainnet within the next couple of weeks.
In a Medium blog post published on Thursday (August 1), Heidorn says that Blockade Games has “a long history of experimenting with new technology and ideas, spanning from creating the first crypto-puzzles, to deploying a Twitter bot powered by machine learning, to launching one of the first mainstream blockchain games on the Loom Network.
He goes on to say that their team has been recently “experimenting with different payment methods for purchasing in-game items and interacting with smart contracts.” Although they believe that Bitcoin “is the future of money,” they also believe that Ethereum “will be integral to the future of non-fungible assets and blockchain gaming.”
What they would like to do is to use the infrastructure of Ethereum (or some other blockchain) but allow their customers (gamers) to pay using the cryptoasset that they usually prefer to hold their funds in, i.e. Bitcoin.
Supporting Bitcoin’s Lightning Network means that they will be to accept in their games instant Bitcoin payments and “instantaneously kick off a series of events on any other chain, such as minting a brand new Neon District asset to a buyer’s Ethereum or Loom Network wallet.”
Heidorn also told Coindesk that although “the code for this unique type of lightning transaction is not yet public,” they will “open it up” when “it’s ready and secure for people to pull down and use.”
Featured Image Courtesy of Blockade Games
