Satoshi's Games and Lightnite

Hi and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today's episode is a really interesting one. It's with Carlos Roldan, CEO and co-founder of Satoshi Games and the team behind Lightnite, kind of like Fortnite but with lightning and Sats. So this episode is brought to you by Kraken, one of the world's leading Bitcoin exchanges offering a high quality platform, they are the place to buy, sell, and trade Bitcoin. Kraken are one of the world's most liquid exchanges as well, which really matters if you're trying to make sure you are getting a good price. They offer low fees, with no minimum or hidden fees. They offer twenty four seven support, it's really easy to get support in the chat, and Kraken are also consistently rated the best from a security standpoint. Kraken have Kraken Pro mobile app and a futures app, delivering all the security and features you love about the Kraken exchange in a beautiful mobile phone. First design. Kraken also offer an OTC desk for those seeking more private and personalized service for large block trades over one hundred thousand USD or more. Check out Kraken Margin up to five times and Kraken Futures up to fifty times leverage. Go and sign up at kraken dot com or search Kraken Pro in the App Store or Google Play. This episode also brought to you by Unchained Capital, a Bitcoin financial services company. Their products are built on the foundation of multisig, so you can set up a vault which uses two or Of three multi-signature, you can use Trezor and Ledger with Coldcard coming soon. You would hold two of those keys, Unchained would hold one of those keys and be the co-signer or the backup option in case you need it. If you need a loan, if you need USD liquidity, as the saying goes, "Friends don't let friends sell Bitcoin. " Unchained offer collateralized loans, you can put up some Bitcoin and receive USD. Your Bitcoin will never be re-hypothecated and it's stored on-chain, dedicated multi-sig addresses. Go and check And also their open source content, Hermit and Caravan. I think you'll enjoy partnering with them. Go and learn more, Unchained Dash Capital dot com. Next, Swan Bitcoin. Bitcoin is better money, and you want to stack it regularly without manual processing, right? If you're in the US, you must look up Swan Bitcoin at swanbitcoin dot com. You can link any major US bank account via ACH and auto buy weekly or monthly. The Bitcoin is delivered to your wallet or stored with a licensed and regulated custodian. Swan Bitcoin's focus is on educating Education and Bitcoin advocacy. Jan Pritzker, the author of Inventing Bitcoin, is their cto and Brady from Citizen Bitcoin is head of education. I'm involved as an advisor with a small equity stake also. So there's GiveBitcoin dot io for your Bitcoin gifting and go to SwannBitcoin dot com for your automated Bitcoin stacking. So if you've got your bitcoins, are you keeping them safe? Check out Cyphersafe at Cyphersafe dot io producing the Cypherwheel product. If you've invested in a Bitcoin hardware wallet, are you keeping your Bitcoin? 39 seed backed up in a way that's fireproof, waterproof, rustproof, petproof, and tamper evident. The cipher wheel is a new product. It's compact, comes in a wheel shape, it masks the words of your seed, and it's got a padlock tamper evident seal. Make sure you or your loved ones have access to your bitcoins if that accident were to occur. Orders are going out now, go and order yours at ciphersafe dot io. Here's the interview. Carlos, welcome to the show.

Hi, I'm very happy to be here. Thank you very much.

So Carlos, I've, I've, had the chance to, meet you recently at the, well, not recently, at the Lightning Conference and, also Baltic Honey Badger. I know you're doing a lot of cool work with, Satoshi's Games and also Lightnite. So love to jump into all of that. and I know obviously you're big into Lightning. So tell us why are you into Lightning?

So when I saw for the first application of Lightning,

You know, I just instantly realized the power of Lightning to make gaming experiences and to create circular economies within games. That, I think, in my opinion, that's the biggest trend that can bring for the, for product development in the gaming area.

Yeah. And did you play a lot of games yourself, and that was why you wanted to work into that field?

Yeah, yeah. I, I was coming from a gaming background. I've always been playing games and I've been into games, and then just when I just jumped in, into, into Lightning and I saw the potential, then everything fit together

Awesome. And, I know you've got a little bit of history in the space as well, that you, you were working on different projects and so on, before, starting Satoshi's Games. So why did you start Satoshi's Games, and when did you start it?

So I also started like back one year and a half ago, and the actual reason was to actually get much more deep with the technology behind Lightning Network, so I could actually learn myself about Lightning, and then also as a test proof, so I could actually benchmark how Lightning was in- So I had some data and results after, after doing it, and, and I wanted to know if there was actually a market behind that. And that was the reason why I actually jumped into a proof of concept, which is basically a mini clip, website of Bitcoin games.

And you've got a range of games there, tell us a little bit about, what you-- listeners will see when they go to Satoshi's Games website.

So basically, they all have like replicas of famous or popular games that they've been having, you know, a success in the past, but they are now in Bitcoinize. So basically they have some eight-bit, eight-bit style, and they also have some, some game mechanics that they have more incentives to play. So kind of, you know, Sats back or Satoshi's hidden in the game and, and things like that, or you can compete against others, and when you kill another opponent, you get a Satoshi or a part of it. So that's what, what you mostly find. So you find versions of Super Mario, or you find versions of Flappy Crypto, you have games like Lightning Agar, which is- This multiplayer game that

we're talking about? yeah. So Lightning Edgar is a really interesting one as well. That's the one where you kind of walk, walk around and you are, kind of accumulating other pieces and then you all go and fight each other at the end. Really funny game. and, you got Super Bro as well, right? Like a Mario version, where you kind of go along and pick up Sats and so on. So, another interesting thing about Satoshi's games that I noticed is it has an interesting way of setting up your How do you set up your account there?

So basically you have a few ways, none of them ask you for email, passwords, because in this project I wanted to get rid of the actual standard. And there are a few ways, one of it is actually doing a proof of payment. Basically, if you pay an invoice, you actually make it to have an account, and then your, your data gets persistent there, which basically entitles you to have avatars or to, or you know, to customize your account. And, and yeah, the, the actual reason is to actually, it's a quality filter, so I can have an account in Satoshi's Games, also gives you, access to play in Bitcoin games, which is the actual more premium feature of the, of the, of the project, the platform. And the other, and the reason where I- To this system where you can pay an invoice, something as simple as that, it's, it's interesting because it brings a quality filter where I first test the user, their capabilities using Lightning Network, so they, you know, they have an experience and they are gonna have no friction when interacting with Bitcoin Games, too, because they previously know how to do a transaction on Lightning.

I see, so it's a bit of a test, if you can't successfully make a payment for one thousand Sats, then you might not be able to withdraw or deposit Lightning, Bitcoin over Lightning. Lightning into the website when you're playing and withdrawing and so on. Interesting stuff. And so I noticed as well when you do that, so you pay one thousand sats, so at the time of recording, that's around ten cents or whatever, and so then you have to copy that and keep that somewhere because that is your actual account.

Yeah, yeah, you have like a seed, so basically you can import or export your account and play in different devices and, and yeah, so you can have a more interoperability game, experience within the platform. But again, that was the- More like a benchmark because we wanted to do so, a test so we can actually prove that Lightning Games are worth it, not only for the consumer, as well for the provider. If the actual motivation of that test was to actually find it out, so we can actually focus on a bigger, strategy to, to make it happen in a more dynamic and more attractive way with a different game. and yeah, and that, that was it.

Great. And so can you tell us a little bit about how you're thinking more broadly about how Satoshi's games informed your future projects and other ideas around gaming and Lightning Network?

So We, we had like a high demand of, of game developers, that they went, they saw, Satoshi's games, they wanted to add their games, or they wanted to add Bitcoin. So that was one of the cases where we actually, actually had an impact on, on, on our, on our road. So we started to think how to develop products or, or services where, you know, this Facilitate, makes easier on to other game developers to actually implement Lightning into their games or, or put their games into the website. However, due to the core architecture and it was a prototype, it wasn't an actual product to be fully, you know, delivered. It wasn't very easy to or ideal to do that in Satoshi's games. And then we saw as well a high demand of users interacting that what they wanted to do is using, Satoshi as their collateral when playing two other opponents, if that actually results on earning the other opponent's assets, which is the case of Lightning Agar. because that was the hit, that was probably the best game that everyone reported in the platform, then we wanted to focus on a game that had the same strategy and, and actually had a high impact on, on On the ambition of, of creating a different product

out of Satoshi's games. I, I think this is probably just goes without saying, but obviously the Lightning community right now is relatively small. Obviously, you can't make a business that only serves, you know, current-day, you know, Bitcoin Lightning enthusiasts. It's got to be a game that actually appeals to people who aren't necessarily into Bitcoin and Lightning. So how are you thinking about ways to get to those kinds of, or to get to that kind of audience?

Yeah, so first, I think- It has to be progressive from the sense that we want to, I mean, that's the strategy we're following right now, we aren't actually targeting, well, we are, we're working on Lightnite, which is this, this game that is the star product that we put all of, all of, all of our efforts and resources on this at the moment. On this game, it's a battle royale, it's very classic to this kind of games like Fortnite, H1Z1 or PUBG, where, you know, these guys jump into a, into a room and they, you So this kind of is, we're actually taking advantage of this trendy topic, so we're actually play- using a game that is, globally accepted as a suc-as a, as a success, and then we're actually changing kind of the incentives mechanics. To bring, different strategies for the, for the gamer that they actually incentivize more the, the gameplay. So basically we are making, a game that is a global success as, as a standard, and then we're adding the results that they were the, the, the, the most attractive results of Lightning Agar and Satoshi's games into that game. So it's interesting this question because the way we want to onboard traditional gamers and users that they are aside from the crypto community, we first need to give them, we first need to show them the problem that they are actually experiencing, which some of them they, they don't see yet. And that's the actual challenge, trying to onboard them, because you have to demonstrate that currently they're consuming a product that doesn't completely satisfy them until you provide them with something better, something very similar to what happened with Blockbuster and Netflix when they come together and, and, and one, you know, bank.

Maybe this is like the Henry Ford, if I asked them what they wanted, they would have asked for, you know, a faster horse, right? but maybe there's an appeal there for people to play something like Fortnite, but with the, the ability to make money and make sats out of it, and then obviously there's all the in-game items and so on. So can you give us an overview what, what will Lightnite look like when we're playing it?

So the first that I want to emphasize is about the gaming experience, Other than economy of the game or the Bitcoin integration, I mean, it has to get beautiful experience. It has to be as beautiful as possible, and it has to maximize the gaming experience, and it doesn't have to be like currently blockchain games that they are, you know, blockchain all over the place, ninety percent of the game is blockchain, and then they have some gaming experience which is really close. We want to make the game, an entire product that together with the animations, the design, the Easter eggs, the, the game mechanics, and then the Bitcoin integration as, all of them make stiffleness of the game. So, a-and we think this is very important because it doesn't matter where the skins are stored or it doesn't matter where the Bitcoin integration happens, if there isn't an actual incentive to consume the product So the actual issue happens from the scratch, from the architectural, development of the game mechanics. So we actually, we actually got together and designed a game where we prioritize and maximize the circular economies of every single role involved of the, in the games. And just when you actually start gaming, or start playing the game, you, you will see that, it's a normal game, in the sense that this is the, is the classical beautiful game like Fortnite or any other kind of game that is beautiful, but it also brings- Additional capabilities to the consumer, to the, to the gamer that, that, you know, affects directly to the motivation to play due to the incentives that they are integrating.

Yeah, and definitely I was, quite excited when I saw the video and the promotional material that you and the team have put out. Can you tell us a little bit about the, the journey that you're going on and what sort of timelines you're working on? As I understand, there's the pre-sale, I, I, I made an order on the pre-sale, and can you tell us a bit about the We're operating on there.

Yeah, sure. So actually we're gonna go for, announcing, announcing the first single player like a few weeks ago, we get a bit delay, and we are next actually launching this month. So hopefully during this and the next week we are launching a single player, which is basically, basically a, a minimal prototype that puts together all of the core features of the, you know, the user controller that can actually, play around the area, some shadowing, some design, some lightning integrations about the visual effects. then we, we're actually going for the next month to launch the first prototype of the multiplier where we can, can actually allow, that is in April, and we can actually allow users to play, you know, in a real-time multiplier. And then over the summer, we're gonna keep working on the, on the game policy and adding more Bitcoin, metagame features on, on the game. So we, we will be doing more iterations of the user interface, and we'll be creating, better systems for, for the HUD, which is actually the, the, the screen that the user, sees in the game, and improving basically what, what, what is, is based on the community feedback, because we are releasing early, we are focusing on our early release, and then we are gonna go through an open Development, strategy where we are gonna build based on what the community asks or, or demands. And then by the end of the, year, we'll be actually doing a global launch in the sense that we are actually, adding support for- A mobile and for, and for, consoles that, that we are gonna, aim for. As well as the next iterations of the game will include, support for, virtual reality and, and other things that we like and we would like to explore, but that will be way for For, you know, second Q or third quarter of twenty twenty-one.

Will it be primarily a PC game, but then you'll also have a mobile version with it, or what's the thinking around cross-platform?

Yeah, the strategy is to have a desktop game where it's in the PC and you play, in order that, that once the game is in high quality standards due to the old iterations of the development and it goes out of the beta, then it will come out as an official game on mobile, PlayStation and Nintendo and all of these, You know, devices that they are also attractive for traditional gamers.

Yeah. And is it gonna be like, you know, you're a PC gamer, but you can also be playing with someone on mobile?

Yeah. I mean, we want to make it as, as much interactive, interoperable as possible, and, and we are going to, to work to maximize that. So that, that's our focus to do that, that's our target, that's

the end goal to make it possible. Cool, cool. And so, okay, so I mean, it's a shooting game. Can Or capture the flag, or last man standing, like what's the thinking there?

So all of those things you described, we call them like missions, and, and there's a wide variety of, of missions that we can include. And the interesting thing is that users can claim and demand missions that they actually can propose, and then we're open to hear that and, and we are open to see if actually, you know, if they vote for other missions, then we can develop them and make it happen. But all of these kind of challenges or missions like, you know, capture the flag or, or go to this point or kill one, one, one open specific guy of the game, they, they are into something we call the casual mode, which is something that is not competitive at all, and you just go there, play, and maybe if you complete some set of missions, then you get rewarded with either skins or such. that's cool, that's, but that's, this isn't new, we're not making something new here, it's the same as happens in, in Fortnite or other games, where, where basically you, you know, you just play in a deathmatch in a room and then you can either go and follow the missions or just have fun playing that. that's cool, but that's something that we actually think that is gonna be a high demand for that, but, but we're bringing something new and, and this is what I ac- actually want to emphasize because I think it's, in my opinion, the TNT, it's like the, the, like the bomb of the game, something that is, something that hasn't been done before. And, and let me explain the, the concept. So, in order to explain the concept, first I need to, to settle down, you know, to set, set up some, some differences between Fortnite or PUBG or all of these games and, and Lightnite. Since our mission, since the company mission is bringing, circular economies within gaming experiences, we, we, the actually standard that we are following to make this happen is that as well as you can buy items in the store, you can sell those items, and as well as you can sell those items to any other user, you can actually withdraw your profit using Lightning. And, and this actually, you know, close the circle, because in other platforms like Steam with, with their games or, or Fortnite, you can't actually sell the items to any other platform. And in case you can, like Counter-Strike, you can release a community marketplace, you can't actually withdraw the, the, the profits because basically you get the Steam balance, which is the Steam Coin that is, is basically a database coin that you can't actually withdraw. So the money is, is stays there, so it's like a linear economy go, going from the, you know, consumer to the provider, and that's the end of the story. we, we, we don't want to do that, and we aren't actually doing it. We are actually closing the circle. Economy within the game, then we'll explore it and, a, a brilliant mode that can catch up with esports, because, battle royale haven't actually catch up very much with esports, in the sense that they, they go for a more social aspect, which includes going influencers and streamers, put them together in a room and make something social, but not something very, very competitive or skill-based. And probably this is because the skill mechanics or the, or the actual skill-based mechanics of the game. The, the way we're actually overcoming this is, is doing a game mode where you, we call it arena, basically you jump into this arena with guys and And when this, when you're jumping with the matchmaking process pairs you with guys of the same level, so there's a rack system and the same value of the items you currently are wearing. So this is interesting to analyze because if you, for this arena game, I bring my, my skin that cost x and my hat that cost y, then I get Pair with other players that they have same values bringing to the game and the same level, same rank. So then we, we are all together in this room, we're in the map playing, either me if I'm playing solo or, or with a squad, and if I get killed, my actually items drop to the floor? And, and I've lost them. I mean, I, I actually brought them at the beginning as collateral, but now I, I lost my game and, and I'm there in the floor. And if any other player comes and, and grabs the loot of their user and make it to win, they actually have now in the inventory, so now they can actually play for a reason, but it's very skill-based strategies because In a fraction of a second where you are actually grabbing the loot of a dead player, you have to choose because you have a backpack and it has a limited amount of slots, and then you have to take the wise decision whether you want to have a better upgrade of gun that the user may have or ammo or a skin that is so valuable, because maybe the, the biggest, the, the, the most greedy option isn't the most strategic option. And something very interesting making a point on scarcity here is that if no one grabs that loot and stays in the game, and the game is end, you know, the game is finished, then that actually unit is disappeared. Affecting the total supply of that specific asset and making, m-m-making the market and the, you know, the demand and the supply to decide about that price, making a behavior where, where the actual first- Assets of the first season passes, they get more, more rewarded, they, they, they increase in value over time.

Then basically you go into this death match, and obviously that's like an opt-in style, and if you lose your gear, then basically you've just, you've lost your gear, and it's kind of like a winner takes all system, but as you were saying, there's still a strategic element of what items that person would pick up because they've only got limited space, and they still wanna be able to win the match. so does that mean it'll be Expensive to play each round or like how, how would that work?

No, no, no. Well, first, I didn't mention this, but this is up to the user. I mean, I'm not, I, I'm, I'm not making this aggressive. So users can either go and play the casual mode where missions, challenges, and it's basically like a Fortnite-style game, there are nothing to lose, nothing to win. Maybe, so what if you get Easter eggs and maybe, you get some missions, you win things. But, but It's not a high reward. It's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an incentive reward. It's a symbolic reward. Here, no, here you know what, that, that you're gonna play, and you can choose the actual value of your skins because those are in the market, and market decides what cost. So maybe you can bring maybe a few assets that they, maybe in total are five dollars worth, or maybe you can actually bring your, your one hundred dollar assets that they are, High, high demanded assets. For example, each asset has a different type. We have three types of assets. we have the normal assets, basically those assets that doesn't have any value at all, in the sense that they are unlimited. So they have an unlimited stock. and then their assets are their premium, that they are five hundred units, and once the assets are one hundred and below, they are, rare. And then there, you have the other exceptional case where I said can be legendary, which means that because it happened for me rare from one state, and there was so many, so many guys playing in a matter royal Up to the exceptional case that there is only one guy standing with that asset, making only one unit and making le-leaving the space to, to that guy to decide what, what's the price of that asset. But there is no, I, I mean, we're, we're, we're making this as a frictionless experience, so users doesn't feel that they need to actually put a lot of, of money, because you can scale up. There are, there are scaling systems for this. For example, if you have ten unlimited assets, ten normal assets that they actually worth barely anything, you can all put them together and then you get a premium asset. Around the limited market, so you're gonna scale up in terms of assets without necessarily having to compete against each other.

Gotcha. And I presume there'd be like an in-game store and things. How would that work? Like the user goes and buys the items from, either from the store or from other players?

Exactly. I mean, the initially the store is, right now currently the store is in production, you can go there and buy assets. Currently what it is is basically is, is, is a linear store, a linear economy store based on that currently users are buying assets from us and We'll, in the meantime, we are finishing the development of providing the marketplace for them to sell them and, and we, and our company to provide, you know, the, the tool to do that, to making, community trades, and then they, they can actually sell and trade their assets there.

So you mentioned how there's the casual version that has no Bitcoin at stake, and then you might have a version where there is Bitcoin at stake. Is that going to be also a kind of thing where it's kind of like, people put Bitcoins or Lightning Sats In the game itself, other than the items?

Yeah. So initially we were thinking about doing that as a mission. So you go to the castle way, and then there is, during this period of time, from this week to this week, you can play the, the, the Bitcoin stake mode, and which is in the castle mode, and it is, isn't it comparable? It's comparable from the sense that You're playing with, with ranges of Satoshi that you can either pick up or, or lose. And, yeah, actually this, this, this mode, we, we started to do in, the development and the design thinking of this, and basically your sats that you put up front, they're actually your Your, your, your health bar. So basically, when they're killing you, they're, they're killing you, they're, they're like sucking your, your, your health and adding the other opponent as a, as a shield bar. So the more you're killing other players, you're sticking more stats and you have more shields, so you have, you're harder to, to kill. And that's the, the actually game mechanics that we, we did for this specific mission, from the, from the casual mode.

Got it. And so as you're mentioning, the single player version will be out relatively soon, and then, you know, you'll start with like progressively more and more, have like a multiplayer and so on. when are you anticipating the final version ready for just mainstream use?

The mainstream one, I would anticipate between first quarter, second quarter of twenty twenty-one, and that's So it actually is kind of more fun to play the game. And this is interesting because right now the single pla- player we are releasing isn't actually to, isn't designed to be fun at all. It's just designed to receive feedback to make the game fun. And the sense that we want to improve, heavily on the game style, the game sound effects, all of the game aspects, because we already are heavy on the Lightning integration and we already are prepared for what we want to do. However, we want to, again, you know, maximize the gaming experience to make not for Bitcoiners or for crypto, communities, i's, i's a game that for non-Bitcoiners and traditional gamers to more them into Bitcoin, and that's the actual reason, that's why we have to maximize the gaming experience.

Yeah. And, as you were talking about the idea of getting people in who are not necessarily Bitcoin people, how, how are you envisioning that? is it, is it just basically on the strength of the game that you see people basically telling their friends, and also, I guess one- And other component is kids, kids might wanna play these games, and then they can start getting used to using Bitcoin as well. So do you see that as an angle?

Yeah, and I also think that a game or this game can become the next trigger up for Bitcoin mass adoption because of this, because gamers, they are the, have the perfect behavior consuming services in games that they already know how to do transactions. I mean, they already have balances in their game, and they also have a store, and they are committed to do transactions within the game. The only thing that you are switching between the Bitcoin and that specific game with a Bitcoin is you're also giving the option that as well as you can do a transaction in, you can do a transaction out, and then you also actually have to teach them that in order to do a transaction out, they need to have a Bitcoin wallet and they need to do all of the procedures. But they are In the game. That's what I think that, you know, the switch has to be minimal in the sense of the user experience. So they don't need to know what's a, a Satoshi or what's a, a channel, nothing at all. They only need to see the numbers going out and going in. And actually in the background, that's what the technology has to make all of the frictionless experience.

Are there any apps that you are foreseeing people will use with Lightnite? I, I mean, are you thinking like, you know, Phoenix or Wallet of Satoshi or Blue

In general, we are gonna recommend, a curated list of all my wallets that we, we think that is, they're, they're focused on, on UX experience rather than, than privacy or security, which, in my opinion, I think should be the high standard. But currently, we, we live in a, in a, in a world where, where first you need to go for the UX in order to realize that you need privacy. but yeah, so we'll focus for UX based, wallets like Zap, Blue Wallets.

Awesome. And then, I guess getting more into the technical aspects of it, are you, I presume you're also going to look at things like LNURL for withdrawal and so on to make it fast?

Of course, of course, of course, that's, that's a must, but in the sense that it has to be technology implemented and, and the user doesn't even have to know this, they, they, they need to know that this is, is part of But of course, in the tech-- in the technical side, we're gonna implement, LNURL as well as any other type of implementation that they're gonna result on a minimal, friction for the game,

yeah,

for the user experience in

the game. Right. And I guess, so obviously this my show is more for the Bitcoin and Lightning enthusiasts, so we can go a little bit more into that stuff as well. Tell us a little bit more about your thoughts in terms of which Lightning implementation you're using and any other, you know, Bitcoin and Lightning specific

Yeah, currently we are using LND, and due to the modular flexibility of using authenticated macarons is, is, is my first priority. I, I, I, I like the way it's designed, and I'm actually interacting with, with, with the community, and, and that's why I'm choosing that, as well because it's, it's very, easy for me since that's where most of my experience has been since the beginning of Satoshi's games, I've been using LND, and that's why I, that's why we are so interested in L

Yeah. and I presume then, y-you will have like your own node, and you can sort of tell people, "Hey, set up a channel with me and stuff like that." And, Yeah. Also, are, are you looking forward to anything in terms of Lightning development coming up? Is there anything that you're really keen to see, come into the protocol or come into the, the wallets?

Yeah, of course. I mean, I'm very, very hyped, and I'm very, I, I'm looking closely to the, to the next, you know, to the newest in so, yeah, yeah, I'm very excited about the newest, upgrades, about the invoicing systems that they are doing different strategies to, you know, to have subscription invoices. And push payments are also in my radar. So, so those kind of integrations, they are gonna give us so many, opportunities using cre-creative ways to make more enhanced gaming experiences where we can maximize, the game incentives, you know, to, to play. That's what I'm actually watching closely because I think that push payments and subscription invoices are very, very attractive and we can do many interact-interactive things with that, with, within the game.

So you mentioned subscription invoices, is that using, a Huddle invoice format or what, what's that, what would that be using?

So, well, initially, I'm not very well concerned about, about the way it's, it's structured in the sense that if it's using a Huddle invoice, I remember it was, introduced by

by Rust, by Rusty, on the Lightning Conference, when he was also mentioning about, this type of other invoices he introduced that they were for For, for, for charity, for charity, for, for the nation. I see, I see.

Yeah, I think, if I recall correctly, and maybe Rusty can tell us if we got that wrong, but, Rusty was talking about a more advanced form of ordering, and so I think he, I think in his mind, he was looking at LNURL and saying, "Hey, why don't we get something like that, a little bit more like that, at the protocol level and have more advanced ways of doing these ordering, s-such that, you and also, as you mentioned LND, I think another interesting concept might be TLV, right? So, you might have seen recently, Yoast and, Gugero, I think Oliver is his first name, and Desiree Dickerson from Lightning Labs have recently set up, and I think it's kind of like a proof of concept, it's a TLV store where literally you, paste, you copy-paste the command with, and that command actually has your, some other information encrypted into it. Good as well, like the address to ship the stickers to. So that's another idea as well that, you know, potentially going forward, you know, it depends if you were going to do, you know, have, the address or have like stickers sent out to the users or the customers, then maybe that's like another idea as well. Do you have any thoughts on that kind of idea?

yeah, I think that's interesting as well, but I don't, but I will see, I will need to explore more in deep, the technological,

To do brainstorming about how this can impact the gaming experience. Of course. But, also an-other, adding another point to, to this topic, something that I'm also watching very closely as well, and I'm trying to see, more and more, updates and, and news about this, this Lightning iteration is running, Lightning Network within a Liquid Network. That is something that we have here and I, I, and I've seen, tests and, and results, but it is still pretty early, and I'm actually very excited to see how this is coming along and if this brings us more flexibility, about using this, you know, in order for, you know, for creating assets more interactive and

I see, yeah. So, as I understand, I know, I think Christian Decker was doing some work around making light, see Lightning work with Liquid, and, and I presume as well, you're mentioning Liquid, the Liquid has this concept of tokenized assets. And so the most well known obviously is LBTC, which is like the liquid version of Bitcoin, but obviously you can also create other forms of assets, and they could represent potentially game items, and then people might be able to potentially trade those around on the li- Liquid. Network using Blockstream Green or some other software, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's correct, that's correct. So that's, that's, that's, that's actually interesting, that's actually interesting because for games, they may, they may have a plus on that. But it's also that I'm not very, I mean, i-it's interesting because at the beginning, the, the users that they will claim that, in our case, for example, Lightnite, we have many claims about where are gonna be those skins as a store we're actually now looking for, for an integration that we are actually, doing at the moment, where we actually, you know, playing with Liquid. It's interesting because, I mean, it makes sense I would appreciate that all of the users demand this feature, but I don't see that this is gonna be a critical feature. I mean, it is now because our certain car community and users are Bitcoin users and or crypto users that they are, you know, they are privacy sensible, which is how everyone should be. However, my actual target, which are gamers, no coiners, again, to move them into Bitcoin, don't give up, didn't occur. They don't really care at all about if that asset is stored in a database or, or not, because they don't even care about making profits or making Satoshi's out of the game. They just play a game and they, they don't know that they have other possibilities. So it's, it's gonna be a hard way to actually educate them in the sense that they, they are interacting with value where they can actually obtain some value.

that's what I mean that I want, I'm, I'm very optimistic about implementing a system like this, however, it's not gonna be a high priority, even though that right now there is a demand, because my most amount of users they are privacy sensitive and I am also priva-privacy oriented too, but I see that, that Most of the users will care more about the gaming experiences because they are gamers, other than the privacy structure about the skins in the game. And that's interesting as well.

Of course, of course. I wouldn't, yeah, definitely keep it simple is, the right approach on this kind of thing. And although, you know, you and me and the listeners of the show might be really interested in the technical aspects of, oh, could we have lightning and liquid and so on, definitely you've got to consider your actual market and your actual market here is gamers. Gam care about, you know, that, that idea, maybe they will in the future, but you have to build for what, you have to build for short to medium term, not necessarily forgetting, the aspect of bringing them in. another interesting area I was interested to discuss with you is around community, right? So community maps, community plugins, community, et cetera. What's your plan around that and having, say, community developed maps and whatever else?

Yeah, yeah, we actually want to follow This open development strategy and creating mods for other users, designers and game developers where they can integrate the actual ideas and thoughts. Not, not an open so-- not an open source development, but it's an open software development where we bring these tools to do that. yeah, they can actually be part of, of, of, of the map developers. They can create things for the map, they can design Easter eggs, in-integrate Easter eggs in the community, in the community list where other users can vote if that's a good Easter egg or that's a bad Easter egg. And they're voting each other's work and, and ideas, like proposals, and then the most voted, proposal, proposals either for game design or for, or for style or for music effects, they can vote everything, and then those gets implemented in a, in a democratic way. not only that, we also want to maximize the role of the signers. So in the sense that, let's say you buy a scheme, right now all of the schemes are being purchased, from us, from our designers. And this is something cool, you know, so we can start at the beginning, we can do some metrics, and that's cool. But we, we want to actually, delegate this task on our community market, a community group of designers where they actually can do the signs, add them to the store, people vote on them, they mostly vote and And now that when they're buying a skin from our store to any user or to, or to us or to whoever, the, this designer now can have a commission out of this, trade. and this also incentivizes a competition aga-- within these developers or designers because now they're going to be focused on the community demand, so they're gonna be supplying The signs and skins that the actual community is demanding, no matter if currently what, what they have demand is Bitcoin designs or they are gonna be, I don't know, trending topics, things like, like, you know Things that may, may be interesting in that specific period of time.

Yeah, and I saw recently you showed you have a T F T C, Tales from the Crypt skin, gun. Tell us about that and how that came about.

Yeah, yeah, that, that, that's actually how it all started. We, that's why I actually make it to, to be here too, because, we jumped with, with Maro Lel, which is actually one of the first guys that, that made possible this Lightning game, because then I remember being in, in Riga. In this conference, and where, where he actually suggested to, hey, why, why don't you do guys like a, like a, like a battle royale that's gonna be awesome for it, so he actually put the, the, the seed on that. And since then, he's actually been so supportive, up to the point where we actually things started to get more solid, and then we started to bring this skin system where we started to do some collaborations with, with, you know, podcasters, my wallets, and, and so on. And then, then we decided to do a skin with him, so we, we started to propose some ideas, and then he, he suggested to, to, to the final, the final skin to be, the, the, this gun and, and this style, and it was, it was kind of They gone, and then we put it there and people started to love it, and then people started to do, hey, I want more of this, I want, I want, I, I'm, I'm, I'm following this guy, and I want to have this skin of this more guy. So this is started to create a high demand because of the social aspect of the, of the skin. More than attractive or the visual design. So people started to request, skins from many guys and many, and many entities, and, and then we started to have so many, demand for that, that actually kind of m-makes us to work so much, but, but it's beautiful because people love it, and I love that the people likes it, so, so it's, it's very interesting.

Right. Yeah. And it might be, funny because I guess during the initial periods they might have, okay, some, you know, a podcaster-themed gun or whatever Audience, they're not gonna understand that, right? Like they're not necessarily gonna be listeners of, you know, Tales from the Crypt or my, my podcast or whatever, but it'll just be funny to see that happen.

Yeah, and, and, and I think it, it will be like a, like an interesting footstep, like that is there. People may-- some of them don't understand it, but the people that understand it, they're worth understand because they were there from the beginning. So, so that, that's actually the good effect that I like about that. And that

Livera. So it's gonna be like a melee weapon where you can actually, it's, it's, it has, it has a combination of both. It's like a super, I mean, I, I will send the link so you can, you can share it, but it's a melee and a, and at the same time like a gun that is also mid-range, it's like an Like a virtual reality sword that is also a pistol at the

same time. Yeah, that sounds really cool, man. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing that, when I play the game. so, is there anything else you wanted to talk about? we could also talk about wish lists for Bitcoin and Lightning. some people might think, okay, well, look, there's all this development coming and so on, but even now, Lightning works today, right? You can use it right now. So, is there anything that you think, you know, Or do you basically think we've basically got what we need to, to make this game happen?

I think right now we basically have what we need to make this game happen, what we need is time to actually put all of this All of this mesh together and m-m-make it like, you know, a, a beautiful gaming experience. I think probably there are more things that we need in the non-Bitcoin stuff than, than the Bitcoin stuff because in our team, we're stronger in Bitcoin, and we, and we also have a strong point in, in, in, in the game development. However, implementing a Bitcoin integration within a game, in our case, is way more easy than implementing a, well, implementing a beautiful game, it, it, it requires a, a, a huge amount of time and, and, and And resources, that's why, I don't know, Fortnite has thousand of, thousand of guys working, eight hours per day, and, and we are still a startup, we are making this happen, from a different, point of, of, of strength because we are good at, at, at the game development and we're good at the Bitcoin integration, but Now the, the game development is way heavier than the Bitcoin integration, and currently what we need from the Bitcoin or Lightning staff is just, creating all of the internal economy of the game, which we can already start implementing that very easily, and since we already run our own nodes and we already have our own internal infrastructure, it's not something that, that we need to request more from the protocol staff. But at the same time, I'm very happy to see the newest updates about different types of invoicing systems or architectural different, you know, or different things that they can actually- Bring more creativity options to implement Lightning in the game.

Fantastic. So, tell us, where we're going from here? Where do you see it going? Do you see it like the typical customer might be a kid, and then that kid might have their first exposure to Bitcoin and Lightning by playing the game?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's something that I think is gonna be first, the one of the most fulfilling things that about this product, in my, in my personal opinion. Secondly, this, this is something that is already happening. I mean, I, I received dire-direct messages from, from dad, you know, from parents that they are saying, "Hey, my kid is so addicted to Fortnite, and I want to bring this game so he can actually make money out of it." And when this happens, I mean, I feel so, so, so, so satisfied that sometimes I, I get even, you know, I give them an access for free or, or so I want to keep incentivizing this, this behavior of, of young adopters, kids, like, like very, very young people playing this game because they're Eager to interact with this technology and, and, and make it easier so than any other guy. So I see that the potential, there's a potential with this group of, of, of people, especially because we are designing the game with a very cartoony design, which is You know, it's, it's oriented for, for kids, in, in the sense that, that kids will understand it, and that's why we are using this kind of, of, of visual design. and yeah, so that's basically one of the behaviors that we are spreading. We also have something similar in Satoshi's games. There were so many dads that they were bringing their kids to play the games, just because some of the games they were from a very old time, like Super Mario, and, and they see that, that it's the same game as always, but

Like very, very satisfied and they bring their kids

to play. Yeah, that'll be really cool to see. And I think it is true when we're talking about social change in general, oftentimes it is, it is, it happens just from change of generations, right? And because Bitcoin has been around, especially for kids, it's basically been around for their whole lives, by the time, you know, the games kind of come out and so on, that's a, a good angle for people to have some exposure to Bitcoin, to, to the, non-hardcore says, maybe you and I are. so look, Carlos, is there anything else you wanted to mention? Any, parting thoughts for the listeners?

I think, I think this has been a good conversation, but yeah, the only thing is like what I mentioned before about the skin. So for all of your audience, they have their skin there, they can grab it and- And if they buy the game, using that link that it, it gives them for free the, the skin, and it also gives them a twenty percent discount that if they don't go through a, a link like this, they cannot obtain. So That's a, a gift for, for your audience.

Fantastic, well, thank you, and, Carlos, make sure you let the listeners know where they can find you.

Sure, they can find me, on Twitter, like nyt harder, and they can follow Satoshi's Games, which is at satoshigames or straight on the actual game product. The for- the li- the Lightning product is Lightning Game. and yeah, that's, that's where everyone can find

me. Fantastic, thank you for joining me, Carlos. Thank you, it's

been a pleasure,

Stephen. Hope you enjoyed the show. If you wanna support the show, you can go to my website stephanlivera dot com. There's a support page there. If you want to join my Patreon group, you basically get ad-free early access to these episodes, and you also get access to a private key-based chat group for me and my supporting listeners. And you can find the show notes at stephanlivera dot com