Blockchain + Glide

I guess I wasn’t speaking from the perspective of a developer building Glide apps for others… more as a developer leveraging different tech (Glide included) to build a single product. If I was building apps for others, I would almost certainly steer clear of this mine field… and since these forums are public, I see your point about responsibility and accountability.

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Yep, @chado! This is exactly the kinds of endeavors I’m trying to figure out, and whether any of it could integrate (even clumsily) with Glide. At the least an interesting adventure.

Currently, I’m thinking a game asset could have one of three states at any time:

  1. a non-crypto playable state - acquired within the game either by earning it as a reward in the game or by buying it (with fiat, in-game currency, or both). Simply represented as a record in your app’s sheet. Associated with users just like any other form of data is associated with users. My app has a few of these kinds of assets, both Fungible and Non-Fungible. But only “owned” by the user cause I say it is. Not actually on a blockchain.

  2. a crypto playable state The user wants to tokenize the asset so that it has an immutable blockchain record outside of the game. They do so at a companion site outside of the app specifically designed for users to tokenize their in game assets. The companion site leverages Web3 browsers to let the user sign and execute the transaction (including paying any associated gas). However, to avoid problems like you described with negative balances and to make sure that asset doesn’t change ownership during gameplay, the token is transferred to a special game wallet controlled by the platform. While it is in that wallet, the token is technically “owned” by the platform because it’s in the platform’s wallet. So this state is actually similar to state #1 in that the asset is only really “owned” by the user because the game says so.

  3. a crypto non-playable state The user now wants the token to live in their own private wallet. Perhaps they fear leaving the token in the game wallet for too long is a security risk. Or perhaps they simply want to sell it or trade it on the open market. At the same companion site mentioned in state 2, they press another button within their account dashboard, execute another transaction, pay the gas, and minutes later, the token is in their own private wallet. However, now in the game, their account no longer has that asset. If they want to use it in the game again, they simply go back to that companion site and make another secure transfer back into the game wallet and voila, it’s back again. Similarly, if someone buys this 3rd-state game item from another player on the open market (perhaps even from the app developer through a token sale), this companion site would allow them to transfer it into their game account (state 2).

Right now we can all do State 1 with Glide… a sheets record rather than a blockchain record. And yes, creating your own NFTs for a State 3 has gotten much easier over the past year or so. An abundance of tutorials on the subject.

But I’d love to crack State 2… which would require a relation between the blockchain record and the sheet record representing that same in-game item/currency. In fact, figuring that out might eliminate the need for State 1. You could sell game assets as tokens on that sister site, or even through Stripe (yes simply using a blockchain address rather than a mailing address as you said). Then the token owner simply transfers them to the game wallet to play with them. Or maybe that first purchase puts it in the game wallet.

Looking for others who are interested in exploring ways to achieve this. Happy to take the conversation private. I realize blockchain is young and @Drearystate is right that it could lead some folks down a risky path.

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Hello @John_Cabrera , I just founded this old topic. I interest in Blockchain too. Are there any news about this subject since last May?

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Hi @Olga_A I am still working on this project, but I realized that Glide isn’t really there yet with blockchain integration. So I am treating my work on Glide more as a non-blockchain MVP for a non-Glide blockchain version of the product down the line.

If you are working in Blockchain and are interested in chatting about mobile game development with Blockchain bones, send me a private message. I’d love to discuss more.

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Hey John,

I have built a community-focused crypto research & tracking app and I’m also really keen to build in payments and a section for users to browse their NFT collection! I can think of a few ways these could be done but I’ve shied away for now, I have a feeling it won’t be easy…

A couple tools that could be very helpful:

I did play around and synced my balance to a google sheet but I decided against offering it as an option for users as it would add a lot of bulk and there are better solutions out there.

Drop me a DMs if you want, would love to share ideas and chat crypto!

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I’m not an expert, but … I think I more or less have the idea.

A little off purpose … There is a possibility that (with backend web development) you can do a “blockchain” and using a POST request you can send the encrypted data to your sheet via Google API.
This is an idea, however, it is not a very good option. Since it requires more time and money investments.

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