0xΩ: The Ethereum blockchain is now also to transform religions / Interview with Sergey Sevidov from Game Stars: How blockchain can change eSports

The blockchain, it is said, changes everything. An Ethereum developer takes this motto seriously by trying to subordinate the beliefs of religions to a smart contract on Ethereum. The idea is not so dumb as it sounds at first.

Currently, a religion or a framework for religions is formed on the Ethereum blockchain. The "founder of the religion" is Matt Liston, the former CEO of Augur, a startup trying to form a decentralized prediction market on Ethereum. Liston has dropped out of the dispute over Augur and is currently seeking $ 152 million in judicial redress. At the same time, he is working on a project that does not really know if it's meant seriously or as a joke.

On May 19th, Liston, who is a self-confessed atheist, introduced his blockchain religion in New York's New Museum, which he calls 0xΩ. Observers are not sure whether to pronounce this as "Nothing of Omega" or "Zero Omega". It does not make sense either way. Liston distributed 40 printouts of a document among the attendees of the event, which he calls the "Flame Paper" of 0xΩ. What exactly is in this scripture is probably not completely known, but at least there are second hand reports about it.

Forbes was at the event and reported about it. The inspiration or enlightenment underlying 0xΩ, the reporter says, is the way the blockchain allows a group of people or machines to consensus. Liston's aim is to build a "religious framework" that allows religions to more quickly update their beliefs and democratize the relationships between members and the consensus they all believe in.

The magazine Futurism recognizes in Liston's project the fundamental idea "that the blockchain releases a denomination from needing a governing authority." Most religions of the present have leaders like the Pope, the Dalai Lama from their environment the religious truths to the crowd the believer trickles down. These themselves have virtually no influence on what the core beliefs of a religion are.

You could imagine that the Ethereum Full Node running in the basement becomes a shrine. Through him, the believer knows what everyone in his religious community believes, and through him, he has a voice when it comes to changing parts of the sacred texts on the blockchain - even the flame paper - or the money the believers donated to distribute. Needless to say, a blockchain would make the use of donations much more transparent than is possible under current church organizations.

The blockchain can thus receive the beliefs of the religion for a very long time in such a way that changes are possible, but comprehensible. If the community of believers can not agree, they can split into different religions via hardfork, as demonstrated by Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash as well as Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. The comparison is less limping than you might think, as the hardforks of Bitcoin and Ethereum have also been about fundamental beliefs. Whether this means that the heretics emigrate from the Ethereum blockchain, such as the Ethereum Classic Chain, or that only a religious token splits, is not yet clear.

From a follower Liston was already called on the event "Cryptsiah" and "Cryptophet", but Liston rejects. In general, it is much less his intention to found a new religion or to become its guru, but to provide its framework to the already established world religions. He believes that these could benefit from the blockchain by further developing their theological framework with the feedback of the faithful or administering the donations more democratically.

Liston seems to take the idea seriously. It may be argued that he simply does not understand that people in their practice of religion are less concerned with self-determined beliefs, but that they recite the sacred phrases written down by people who have a more direct connection with God. But at the same time, one could also mention that religions have always grown from new media, such as the wine on his cane, and that finding a consensus through a blockchain could actually help some churches to bring their beliefs to a common denominator and possibly evolve. Perhaps the 0xΩ framework could also become a useful tool to create new religions, churches or denominations.

As amusing as the whole idea seems at first glance, it has a much more profound content that can hold a mirror to many members of the scene: a blockchain is an infallible documentation of a history that puts it near a scripture, and what might explain why the digital communities around a block chain often look like cults or religions. There is probably an inner relationship between religions and blockchains, and cryptocurrencies are not only an instrument of financial activity but also store worldviews. A project like Liston's could help make that implicit, underlying connection more explicit - and perhaps actually use it for real religions.

The eSports industry is developing very fast. Tournaments in the most important disciplines gather more and more viewers every year. Young players perform on stage and become real stars in no time.

Many cyber athletes participate in several tournaments and become real superstars in no time. Several countries have gone further and given official status for eSports, equating cyber athletes with ordinary visa-issuers and simplified controls.

Nevertheless, the industry has many unsolved problems. Players do not receive their payments from tournament organizers. The relationships do not have a clear structure between the players: players, organizers, sponsors.

eSports needs a complex solution that makes the industry transparent, allowing cyber athletes to raise money for professional development and enable investors to achieve the achievements of both novice and professional cyber athletes.

The multifunctional platform Game Stars is a new ambitious project that offers such opportunities to eSport market participants. In an interview with CEO Sergey Sevidov, he talked about the solutions he and his team can offer to the eSports market.

Sergey, how did the idea of Game Stars come about?

eSports competitions are mainly shows with their own organizers, sponsors and audience. As with many other high-profile events, e-sports pay is extremely good. On the other hand, if the organizers are wrong in the counting and exceed the budget limits, this will be felt throughout the industry - I will explain why.

eSports has a real organization and cashout problem. It's not about salaries, it's about the prize fund - money to be trapped in a safe and waiting for the winners. The industry has been rocked in recent years by major scandals as players waited months, sometimes years, for payment.

A prominent example: The media released news in April that Vega Squadron members in Dota 2 have not yet received $ 75,000 for their victory in the China Top 2017 Shenzhen Tournament, which took place in November 2017. Six months! Can you imagine that? In recent years, many players have been in the same situation.

From which price range, amateur, semi-pro and pro-level, can we speak when teams from the top league no longer receive their winnings?

These things have been happening for years: less is happening now, but in the beginning the delays in making payouts were often seen. The smaller the tournament and the name of the team, the more frequently they are cheated by the organizers.

The idea of our platform is based on two qualities: We want everything to be fair and give small teams and beginner cyber athletes the opportunity to focus on their passion and earn money right from the beginning of their careers. This means that sponsors must receive their advertising and that organizers pay out the prize money on time and fairly to the participants, even if it is just a small tournament for $ 100.

The blockchain offers great security and can not be manipulated.

Why did you choose blockchain technology for your platform?

Obviously, the blockchain is inviolable and a smart contract can not be faked. Many beginner cyber athletes only have an oral assurance that they have not signed any actual contracts. As a result, victims of fraud can become the organizers and their own manager who spends those few months on the beach of Thailand and keeps the profits to himself.

It means lack of responsibility on the part of the team owners and almost impossible conditions for changing to another team. Blockchain technology allows all operations to be transparent and logical: Transactions are made in tokens; the platform issues Smart Contracs whose reliability has already been proven.

If I was a newcomer to eSports, what does your platform offer me and how does it differ from other projects?

As I have already mentioned, the problem of this industry is that the unsafe conditions cast a bad light on this industry, e.g. Payments are not made punctually or at all.

The platform solves this problem with the help of Smart Contracts. Another problem is the financial side. Only a small number of players receive a constant income from the tournaments. The rest has to engage eSports with an extra job, parent support, or look for sponsors who believe in them.

Our specially developed feature "cyber athlete ICO functionality" simplifies the search for financial support to advance career development, all details are captured in a smart contract. The whole system is very similar to Patreon.

It's important to understand that eSports does not just include athletes. Besides them there are also managers, sponsors and advertisers. These relationships usually have no clear structure. The communication between eSports tournament players on the Game Stars platform is simple and clear.

There is an opinion that it is almost impossible to organize a tournament without much support. That's partly true, because even a local tournament organization requires a lot of investment and effort. The solution is our Game Stars platform, which provides work-through scenarios for organizing eSports events.

The official Game Stars website gives everyone the opportunity to become a Game Star professional. Is this another feature of the project?

Let's take a closer look at the distribution of tokens. The platform has its own token, the Gamestart Token (GST). GST - this is the platform token of a cyber athlete.

In total, a maximum of 500 million tokens will be in circulation. All tokens are sold in token sale. Tokens that could not be sold are burned immediately.

At the same time, the GST token as a means of payment is firmly integrated into the platform. As mentioned in our whitepaper, it is used for the following purposes:

1. Smart Contracts for cyber athletes.
2. Purchase of personal chips from cyber athletes through the CICO.
3. Prize money transactions.
4. Entry fees for the tournament
5. Payment of cyber athletes earned on the platform.

If you take a closer look at the list, you'll find that 4 out of 5 purposes cause a lack of tokens. Tokens are only given to exchanges by players who decide to transfer part of their revenue to cryptocurrencies or fiat money. Thus, the number of available tokens is constantly reduced and the price on the stock exchanges will rise.

Tokens issued within CICO are issued in limited editions: 100 tokens per player. Their goal is to provide financial support to cyber athletes and then profit from their profits.

Challenges make us stronger. What are the difficulties of your project?

Fortunately, we currently have no acute problems. The main goal is to tell everyone about the platform and its solutions, and get as much attention as possible.

A clear definition of success does not exist, you have to constantly work on the result.

But there are hundreds of new projects that enter the crypto market on a weekly basis and each of them promotes his ideas and speaks of the uniqueness ...

A good project is not afraid of the competition. We are sure that people who are interested in eSports and have the problems mentioned above will join us and evaluate the opportunities we offer.

We have big plans for the future, but we can not reveal them yet. In the initial phase of the project development, we have partnerships with large crypto exchanges, we present our platform to the key players in the crypto world.

The entire Game Stars development team is not people gathered to "launch an ICO quickly and then get away with the money," but a full-fledged, specially-recruited team whose members work full-time on the project.

As you remember, we will not keep tokens for our team, everything will be sold through the ICO. We have clear and far-reaching plans for project development and support.

The ICO market is currently in crisis: people treat new projects with caution and only invest a small amount of money because there are too many fraud projects on the market. Were you afraid to start the token sale during such a complicated period?

Every start carries a certain risk. I have participated in many projects and know the feeling of starting in a market where there is sometimes unfair competition. New projects bring me to life, giving me the chance to move forward and enjoy the results.

When we talk about the ICO market, we certainly see and know how investors are currently handling new projects. As Winston Churchill said: "Never waste a good crisis." The pre-sale phase was completed very quickly and we noticed that people are interested in and believe in the project, just as we do. The token sale is now in full swing and the interim results are positive. My team and I are sure that our project is very good, and investors are sure to notice.

It's clever that you used Churchill's quote. Do you have a credo that you follow in your personal and professional life?

Yes, I have one. People who work with us on our project share it. It is a quote from famous American writer, entrepreneur and coach Anthony Robbins: "The road to success is always under construction. It is a progressive course, not an end to be reached ".

In my opinion, there is no clear definition of success. To be honest when doing business is very important. It is this lack of honesty in the eSports industry that more and more players are facing. I think our platform will support those who do not find a professional player to help them or who are lucky enough to find a sponsor themselves. Surely they all know this situation: When a talented but unknown player works as a salesman in an electronics store and is unhappy for his entire life. His vocation, however, is to take part in a big tournament on the big stage and to enjoy the support of the whole audience. We want to help with our platform.

Image Sources:

• Article headers created by myself
• www.coindesk.com
• https://journalducoin.com
• https://twitter.com/0xOmega
• https://w12.io/project-card/gamestars/
• https://gamers.gamestars.io/

Have a nice day!

LOVE&LIGHT