Jack Recider

The fact that Steam allows this is kind of breaking my brain, honestly. I bet there are a million teenagers today who are very fluent at understanding the market intricacies of V-Bucks or Robux, the virtual currencies for their favorite games. And the thing about Steam credits or V-Bucks or Robux is you can only buy it. You can never sell it.

It's against the terms of service to trade that for real money. And that kind of frustrates me. It's kind of like... When you go to an arcade and they make you buy tokens to play the video games there. Video games can operate just fine on quarters. There's no need to invent a whole new currency just to play them. And the currency can only be bought, never sold.

It's against the terms of service to trade that for real money. And that kind of frustrates me. It's kind of like... When you go to an arcade and they make you buy tokens to play the video games there. Video games can operate just fine on quarters. There's no need to invent a whole new currency just to play them. And the currency can only be bought, never sold.

And it stinks when I come home from an arcade and there are a few extra tokens in my pocket. These things are worthless except for one place in the entire world. So Axie Infinity was built directly on the Ethereum cryptocurrency, utilizing smart contracts. but they soon hit a problem. When you play video games, you want it to be fast.

And it stinks when I come home from an arcade and there are a few extra tokens in my pocket. These things are worthless except for one place in the entire world. So Axie Infinity was built directly on the Ethereum cryptocurrency, utilizing smart contracts. but they soon hit a problem. When you play video games, you want it to be fast.

Ethereum transactions were slow, sometimes taking a few minutes to complete, and the fees on Ethereum were high, like often costing $30 in fees just to buy an Axie from another player. So to fix that, Sky Mavis, the creators of Axie Infinity, created a side chain of Ethereum called the Ronin network.

Ethereum transactions were slow, sometimes taking a few minutes to complete, and the fees on Ethereum were high, like often costing $30 in fees just to buy an Axie from another player. So to fix that, Sky Mavis, the creators of Axie Infinity, created a side chain of Ethereum called the Ronin network.

This side chain was very compatible with Ethereum, so players could move their money in and out between the Ronin network and the Ethereum network easily. And that mechanism of moving money between the two, they named that the Ronin bridge. The Ronin network was much faster and had very low fees, like less than a cent, making it much more ideal for a video game to be played on this blockchain.

This side chain was very compatible with Ethereum, so players could move their money in and out between the Ronin network and the Ethereum network easily. And that mechanism of moving money between the two, they named that the Ronin bridge. The Ronin network was much faster and had very low fees, like less than a cent, making it much more ideal for a video game to be played on this blockchain.

But for this Ronin network to operate, there needed to be nodes and validators. Sky Mavis didn't want to be the only one controlling those nodes and validators, because if they were, they could theoretically control the whole network. I guess if you have a majority control of the validators, you could manipulate the system if you wanted.

But for this Ronin network to operate, there needed to be nodes and validators. Sky Mavis didn't want to be the only one controlling those nodes and validators, because if they were, they could theoretically control the whole network. I guess if you have a majority control of the validators, you could manipulate the system if you wanted.

The idea of a decentralized network is that nobody should ever have a majority of the validators so that it can't be manipulated. So they made sure to have people outside their control also running nodes and validators.

The idea of a decentralized network is that nobody should ever have a majority of the validators so that it can't be manipulated. So they made sure to have people outside their control also running nodes and validators.

So there's this very valuable company with millions and maybe billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency assets running through it, swapping around, moving fast, moving a lot. This will attract somebody who wants to steal that money.

So there's this very valuable company with millions and maybe billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency assets running through it, swapping around, moving fast, moving a lot. This will attract somebody who wants to steal that money.

A lot of scammers and thieves flocked to this game, trying to steal things from other players. Some players' crypto wallets were loaded with tens of thousands of dollars of Axie Infinity assets, and scammers were trying hard to steal stuff from players' wallets.

A lot of scammers and thieves flocked to this game, trying to steal things from other players. Some players' crypto wallets were loaded with tens of thousands of dollars of Axie Infinity assets, and scammers were trying hard to steal stuff from players' wallets.

One common tactic is to get an Axie Infinity player to connect their crypto wallet to the scammer's website, maybe by saying something like, oh, we're giving away a free rare Axie. With some cleverly crafted message, they can trick a person into giving them access into their wallet. which then the thief can drain everything from it.

One common tactic is to get an Axie Infinity player to connect their crypto wallet to the scammer's website, maybe by saying something like, oh, we're giving away a free rare Axie. With some cleverly crafted message, they can trick a person into giving them access into their wallet. which then the thief can drain everything from it.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Axie Infinity players were victim to this type of attack. And I should say that even though attacks on players and cryptocurrency-based games is very common, it's not unique to only crypto-based games.