Traditional online card games often face trust issues where players suspect unfair practices due to the centralized nature of platforms. Some of the common issues include:
Lack of Transparency: Centralized platforms have control over game logic, making it prone to manipulation and unfair practices.
Privacy Risks: Players' hands and decks can be exposed, leading to possible cheating.
Security Issues: Players' funds and actions may not be secure, causing concerns in terms of fairness and trust.
Our decentralized UNO card game, built on Polygon zkEVM with a privacy layer, solves these issues by:
Ensuring Transparency: All game actions and states are recorded on the blockchain, making them verifiable and tamper-proof.
Preserving Privacy: Players' hands and the deck are encrypted, ensuring that sensitive information remains hidden.
Secure Staking: Players must stake coins before joining the game, ensuring fair participation with a financial commitment.
This combination of blockchain technology and privacy guarantees creates a trustworthy and fun experience for players, where fairness is ensured at every step.
Challenge 1: Integrating the Privacy Layer
One of the key challenges was implementing the privacy layer to ensure players' hands and the deck remained hidden while maintaining the transparency of game actions. This required using cryptographic techniques like encryption and hashing to ensure no player could view another player's cards.
Solution: We used a combination of client-side encryption and smart contract-driven state management to ensure that sensitive data remained hidden while allowing for verifiable game actions on the blockchain. The commit-and-reveal mechanism was critical to this approach.
Challenge 2: Staking System Integration
Implementing a custom staking mechanism using the Coinbase CDP SDK posed some challenges in terms of understanding how to properly handle user deposits and rewards through smart contracts, especially on the Polygon zkEVM chain.
Solution: Extensive testing and development were done to ensure smooth interactions between the staking system and the game. We fine-tuned the smart contracts to handle staking and ensure users could stake coins before joining the game, with rewards distributed correctly upon game completion.
Challenge 3: Real-Time State Synchronization
Real-time synchronization of game states across players was critical for the gameplay experience. We faced difficulties ensuring that all players saw the same state without relying too heavily on the blockchain for frequent updates, which could be slow and expensive.
Solution: We integrated Socket.io to handle real-time communication between clients, which allowed for seamless updates of game states, such as card plays, turns, and remaining cards, in a fast and efficient manner.
Tracks Applied (3)
Coinbase Developer Platform
Coinbase Developer Platform
Polygon
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