What can the newly launched Enjin platform bring to blockchain games? Understanding its architecture and user experience.

The Enjin platform is suitable for issuing blockchain assets and supporting asset trading games, but not suitable for DApps that require game logic to be on-chain.

Original title: "Is there any substance behind the 'news-driven' coin Enjin?"
Author: DR Xiao Huoban

Based on past experiences, every time Enjin releases major news, it is bound to engage in pump-and-dump activities. Last year, after the news of Enjin's partnership with Samsung was announced, the price surged by 70%, a scene still vivid in memory. On the evening of February 4, Enjin once again demonstrated what it means to pump based on news, as the official announcement of the Enjin Platform led to a price increase of nearly 40% within 2 hours. And this was just the announcement of the platform launch; by the time it officially launched on February 18, the price surged over 30%. Projects like Enjin, which not only engage in pump-and-dump but also deliver results, are rare in the industry. Today, let's take a closer look at this newly released Enjin platform to see what it's all about.

Prior to the release of the Enjin platform, one of Enjin's most notable moves was the development of a new token standard. On June 17, 2018, their CTO Witek Radomski submitted a new token standard - ERC-1155, to the Ethereum Github repository. After a year of continuous improvement, this standard finally evolved into its final form. On June 18, 2019, Witek announced that ERC-1155 had become the official token standard of Ethereum.

As the driving force behind ERC-1155, Enjin's ambition goes far beyond this. Enjin's vision is to truly give players ownership of in-game assets. Within Enjin's product matrix are features such as the Enjin Wallet for viewing game items anytime, anywhere, the EnjinX blockchain explorer for easy access to transaction data, the Enjin SDK for developers to seamlessly integrate game items on-chain, a decentralized game asset trading platform to prevent middlemen from profiting, and the Enjin Multiverse for reusing single game assets... Of course, the implementation of these features heavily relies on the support of the ERC-1155 standard.

ERC-1155's item standard is the most widely used NFT standard after ERC-721, with more and more relatively large blockchain games adopting Enjin's multiverse gameplay and using ERC-1155 as their NFT standard.

Previously, crypto influencer Linda Xie also tweeted about the current usage of ERC-1155 and compared it with ERC-721.

In addition to game assets, many NFT collectibles focusing on attributes have also attempted to issue based on ERC-1155. At the end of last year, Binance collaborated on a market operation activity to issue a total of 6 themes with 3718 NFTs for users to claim for free, with the rarest EXCHANGE THE WORLD 2019 theme NFT having only 10 units issued, trading at a price of up to $2400 on NFT exchanges (as of January 1, 2020).

DappReview has written several articles on the features and characteristics of ERC-1155:

1. Enjin ERC-1155 and the game multiverse
2. Parallel universes of blockchain games and the Enjin Wallet born for it
3. The value of on-chain game items - Unity+Enjin

Now, let's get back to discussing the Enjin platform in this article.

Architectural Concept of the Enjin Platform

Essentially, Enjin aims to assist traditional game developers in minting assets directly on the Ethereum blockchain in a more efficient way and interact with games.

Running blockchain games not only requires a robust ecosystem but also continuous communication with the Ethereum network. Enjin has specifically designed a comprehensive architecture for blockchain game developers, consisting of five parts: smart contracts, Trusted Cloud, Platform API GraphQL, Enjin Wallet, and Wallet Daemon, to reduce the burden on developers.

If a player wants to sell a sword, how does the Enjin platform assist blockchain games in implementing the item trading function? Take a look at the diagram below for a clear understanding:

The entire interaction can be divided into six parts:

1. Player interacts with the game, informing the game that they want to sell a sword.
2. The game sends a request to Enjin's Trusted Cloud to remove the sword from the player's inventory.
3. The Trusted Cloud sends a request to the player's Enjin Wallet App to remove the sword.
4. Upon receiving the request, the player can choose to accept or reject it.
5. If the player accepts, the request is broadcasted to the Ethereum network. Enjin's smart contract will handle all relevant operations on the Ethereum chain.
6. The Trusted Cloud listens for transaction results on Ethereum and relays them back to the game. If all goes well, the player's sword will be removed, and they will receive the corresponding amount of coins.

Clearly, the Trusted Cloud service used to handle interaction requests between the game client and Ethereum is the core of the entire architecture, acting as the central hub of the interaction process. The following explains in detail the roles of each part in the interaction.

Smart Contracts:

Enjin's smart contracts can process Ethereum chain operations based on user behavior. They are the core department responsible for handling blockchain operations in games, focusing on tasks such as minting, decomposing, and trading items. Key functions include:

1. Minting blockchain assets (Tokens)
2. Decomposing blockchain assets
3. Customizing token data and metadata
4. Sending tokens between lands (developers and users)

Trusted Cloud:

Trusted Cloud is the main backend service of the Enjin Platform. It is a cloud-based service used to connect games with the Ethereum network.

Trusted Cloud plays a pivotal role, collecting requests from clients, game servers, and Enjin Wallet, then interacting with Enjin's smart contracts, ultimately returning data to the game. It also manages the mapping between a player's game account (such as SteamID) and their blockchain identity (blockchain wallet address).

Enjin also provides an API for developers, making it easier for them to interact with Enjin's smart contracts or wallet without hassle. Compared to direct interaction with Enjin's smart contracts, Trusted Cloud offers better error handling and input validation. Additionally, it pushes transaction status updates to games.

Trusted Cloud includes two servers: Ethereum testnet and mainnet. The ETH and Enjin Coin on the testnet have no value, allowing developers to conduct low-cost testing. Transactions on the mainnet involve real value, and projects can only go live on the mainnet after testing on the testnet.

Platform API GraphQL:

GraphQL is an API query language that developers can use to establish communication between games and Trusted Cloud. GraphQL provides a clear and comprehensive description of the data in the API, enabling clients to accurately describe their needs.

Enjin Wallet:

Each user has a unique blockchain address, and all transactions on the blockchain need to be authorized by the user's private key. Enjin Wallet offers a seamless signing solution, making it easy for users to execute complex commands through Enjin's smart contracts.

Wallet Daemon:

Wallet Daemon is an automatic authorization tool that helps developers automatically authorize transactions from Trusted Cloud or sent to Trusted Cloud. Without it, each blockchain transaction in the game would require sequential authorization. Wallet Daemon also manages the connection between Ethereum addresses and their corresponding Trusted Cloud identities. When a request is submitted to Trusted Cloud, Wallet Daemon receives the request, signs it, and returns it to Trusted Cloud. Currently, only a console version of Wallet Daemon is available, with a graphical interface version to be released in the future.

Enjin Platform User Experience

Address: https://cloud.enjin.io/

DappReview tested the full functionality of the Enjin platform at the first opportunity, and the first thing they did was ask for money... There is nothing in the free package, making it impossible to create any projects, with currently two paid options available.

• Independent Developer - $29 per month, can only build 1 project, with 1 team member, and 500 API requests per day
• Professional Version - $99 per month, can build up to 3 projects, with 5 team members, and 5000 API requests per day

Personally, this pricing seems a bit tricky, and it is likely to be adjusted soon. After payment, during the project creation process, it is necessary to bind an Enjin wallet first, and subsequently authorize some operations in the wallet.

After the setup is complete, let's see what can be done on the Enjin Platform. Currently, the main capabilities of this web platform are within the Assets section on the left side, with other sections having minimal content. In the Asset section, users can easily customize FT or NFT based on ERC-1155, completing one-click asset creation.

As shown in the above image, an asset named DappReviewTest was created, with various parameters that can be defined, including asset type, supply model, tradability, ENJ token amount for staking, initial circulation, and more.

After clicking to create the asset, authorization for creation needs to be done in the bound Enjin wallet. This will initiate a transaction to send the ENJ tokens staked during minting to Enjin's contract. Shortly after, the newly minted DappReviewTest asset can be viewed on the Assets page, indicating that the on-chain asset creation is complete. Other users can already find this newly created NFT asset via the Enjin wallet or EnjinX browser.

The above is the basic functionality of the current web-based Enjin platform, mainly revolving around asset creation and management. For interactions with assets in games, developers need to refer to the Enjin SDK documentation, use GraphQL to interact with Trusted Cloud, and send requests to complete operations.

Conclusion

The entire concept of Enjin is to use the Trusted Cloud as middleware for developers to interact with smart contracts. For developers, they do not need to worry about how games interact with Ethereum or how NFT asset contracts are built. With the Enjin platform as a bridge, developers can use APIs for game interaction with Trusted Cloud, manage and create assets through a graphical interface, and all interactions related to blockchain are handled by Enjin's Trusted Cloud.

At the same time, this poses a significant challenge to the high availability and performance of Enjin's Trusted Cloud. If Enjin's ambition is realized, and the Enjin Platform truly has dozens of "blockchain hit" games with daily active users reaching tens of thousands, will the interaction between Trusted Cloud and Ethereum be stable enough to support a good user experience for these games? After all, if the Trusted Cloud goes down, the dozens of games using the service will face issues with interacting with Ethereum.

Finally, we believe that the logic of the Enjin platform is not suitable for all DApps. It is more suitable for games that only issue blockchain assets within the game, support blockchain asset trading, and provide a quick "blockchain asset+" solution with low operational and learning costs for such games. If developers need to put game logic on the chain, they will have to build smart contracts themselves and interact directly with Ethereum. Even if the game uses the Enjin platform to issue NFTs, Enjin's Trusted Cloud can only handle operations related to NFTs, and the game logic smart contract cannot reduce any workload through the Enjin platform.

This article is authorized for republication by ChainNews, article source: ChainNews (ID: chainnewscom)

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