I spent the last four years building Asset Layer, a startup in the Web3 gaming space. Even though we ultimately failed, I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to learn some essential startup lessons. Here’s the biggest one.

My high school piano teacher and mentor gave me a lot of great advice, perhaps none wiser than his recommendation to learn from the mistakes of others, since learning from your own is much more painful. In the startup world, there’s perhaps no more common mistake than spending significant time and money building a product or technology that no one actually wants. This is best captured by the now-cliché saying, “Start with the problem, not the solution,” implying that if you start with a solution instead of a problem to solve, you risk building something no one is willing to pay for.

Back in 2020, when my co-founder Dave Mullen-Muhr and I began discussing the venture that would eventually become Asset Layer, “start with the problem, not the solution” was a piece of startup wisdom we would have easily parroted, having spent the preceding two and a half years working in venture capital together. But, like any sage advice handed from one generation to the next, peer pressure provides the perfect context for it to be ignored.

In the blockchain industry in 2020, starting with the problem was the exception, not the rule. This isn’t to say there was no pretext for blockchain solutions being built to solve real problems. Nor is it to say that blockchain solutions couldn’t solve real problems. However, I’d argue that most blockchain solutions were built primarily for blockchain enthusiasts and speculators who value the novelty and intriguingness of blockchain solutions over the degree to which they actually solve the real-world problems they claim to solve.

At Asset Layer, we were aware of this dynamic. We didn’t want to build a product merely to attract blockchain speculators. We wanted to solve real problems. But we still ended up making the exact same mistake. Our mistake was taking for granted that the problems the blockchain world claimed to solve were 1) real problems and 2) best solved by blockchain. We believed that the reason blockchain solutions were seeing more adoption from speculators than the alleged target markets were that existing solutions were too expensive and complex. We thought if we could create blockchain solutions that were simpler and cheaper, we’d be able to solve these stated problems and achieve mass-market adoption.

After a couple of quick pivots and refinements early in Asset Layer’s history, we found ourselves building an NFT gaming platform with the thesis that by creating a simpler, more efficient NFT solution for games, we could truly solve the problems NFTs were supposed to solve for games. At the time, the hype around blockchain gaming centered on two core value propositions. The first was the ability for players to truly own their game assets, with one of the main benefits being the ability to trade those assets with other players for real money. The second was the ability for game assets to move seamlessly between games and apps, opening a world of new creative possibilities through interoperability.

I’m extremely proud to say that through a huge amount of effort, resourcefulness, and innovation, our team accomplished our goals of making an NFT platform that was far simpler and more efficient than competing solutions in the market. We ended up minting over 20 million NFTs at an average mint cost of less than $0.001. We created the first freemium NFT game, showing new possibilities with low-cost NFTs. We developed the first read-write NFT API with zero need for creating smart contracts or managing any other blockchain complexity. Through our platform, we supported the launch of over 15 games and apps.

But, we didn’t gain mass-market adoption. Not even close. And neither has anyone else, at least so far. This isn’t to say no one will. Blockchain gaming companies have raised more than $15 billion and made huge strides over the past few years. I fully expect to see hit games come out of the blockchain gaming world. However, the mainstream gaming industry just hasn’t embraced blockchain solutions. According to the Game Developer Conference’s 2024 State of Gaming Industry survey, only 2% of surveyed game developers are using blockchain, with 4% having used it in the past but then stopped.

I think the main reason blockchain technology has struggled in gaming is that the problems identified by the blockchain industry were actually features. Being able to trade your game assets for real money and move them from game to game are interesting features, but the absence of these features is not a problem. A problem is something you’re willing to pay money to make go away. Empirically, these features don’t fit that bill, and a big reason is the tradeoffs, both from the nature of these features and the associated costs and complexity.

As the cost and complexity of integration come down, I think these features will become more appealing to a subset of games, leading to meaningful adoption of technology that can provide these features, which may or may not include a blockchain component. But, selling features with unclear benefits and clear costs is extremely difficult, and it probably wasn’t the right approach for a seed-stage startup.

Someday — maybe soon, maybe not — I plan to start another venture. There are a lot of things I’ll do differently next time. One thing I can promise is that I’ll start with a clear problem that I know target customers would be willing to pay to solve. If I couldn’t learn that lesson from someone else’s mistake, I can at least learn it from my own.

Prefer to play than to read? No problem, try the demo here!

At Asset Layer, we’ve always been big believers in eating our own dogfood. In addition to building a number of our own games alongside developing the Asset Layer platform, we also try to spend a few weeks every year simply experimenting with our own products. This past year, a lot of that experimentation has involved combining AI tools with Asset Layer’s capabilities to create unique gaming experiences.

A Story-Driven AI Sandbox Game

The generative AI revolution will enable anyone to create games
- Joshua Lu, Investor at A16Z

With his latest project, Jan Veit, our lead game developer and the creator of our Unity integration, set out to explore how he could use Asset Layer to create AI characters that could be dropped into different environments and interact with their surroundings. By using Asset Layer, a player could create a single character that can interact with hundreds or thousands of environments from different creators. Taken as a whole, it represents the start of something like a Story-Driven AI Sandbox Game.

AI-powered, story-driven games are not a new concept. Rimworld is one of the most beloved indie games of all time, with 10/10 stars on 154,000 Steam reviews. It’s described on Steam as “A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.” The game’s beauty comes in part from striking a great balance between what’s in the player’s control vs what isn’t. It’s almost a hybrid between watching a drama and playing a game. Plus, the game is highly moddable, with over 21,000 mods in the Steam workshop.

Unlike Rimworld where the player’s job is to direct the efforts of the colonists and the world is viewed from a top-down perspective, in Jan’s game, the player’s job is to create an avatar and provide a description of their character that is used to program an LLM. Then, the player simply sits back and watches their new character interact with the world.

Here’s what an MVP version of the concept looks like. The character is named Jack Harlow, and the description given to the LLM is “Exudes confidence with a dash of arrogance and quite frankly being very rude. He’s the guy who never backs down from a challenge, especially if it involves hunting treasures or battling monsters.“

How It Works

Jan built this MVP version in a couple of days using GPT-4 Vision, Unity, and Asset Layer. For assets, he used avatars from Ready Player Me, some free assets from Unity, and some assets from our game Rolltopia. Again, you can try it for yourself here!

To play, you start by logging in and creating an avatar. When you press “Save Avatar”, we add your avatar’s 3D model to an Asset Layer asset and transfer that asset to your account so it is associated with you as a player.

The next step is to choose your avatar’s voice and give your avatar a description. You can either enter a manual description, or have the AI generate a description. To generate the description, the AI takes a snapshot of your avatar and uses its appearance as inspiration. Below is a description generated for the avatar pictured above.

“Gerald Gearloose, 45, an eccentric inventor from the steampunk realm who wears a distinctive plague doctor mask and top hat adorned with tiny gears and cogs. His speech is a humorous mix of archaic phrases and technological jargon, often baffling listeners. He’s perpetually afraid of being outdone by modern technology, driving him to concoct bizarre gadgets. His ultimate goal is to invent a device that can brew the perfect cup of tea instantly”

Once you are happy with your avatar and its description, you press play and then sit back and watch. Your avatar is dropped into a scene Jan created in Unity. The scene includes a number of NPCs with their own LLM prompts as well as objects that the player character can interact with. You can follow along with the log of all decisions your player makes and the dialog from your avatar and the NPCs it interacts with. The whole scene is coordinated by a controller script that communicates with GPT-4 in order to determine what the player character will say and do, and how the NPCs will respond. The controller script has the ability to move the player character and trigger animations as well.

What’s the Point?

Ok, yes, a few days’ work has probably not yielded a story-generator that can quite compete with Netflix or Twitch, but it’s easy to see how with a little TLC, this concept could start generating some extremely compelling storylines. Some might argue that an AI-generated story is never going to compete with content from trained writers with lived experience, but I think that overlooks what’s really happening here. AI is what’s controlling the actual gameplay, but the setting for the story was created jointly by the player who designed their character, as well as the environment builder who created the seeds of conflict and intrigue (e.g. Sarah, who’s afraid of spiders, potentially encountering a giant spider). So, the story is being generated by two human agents and one AI-agent — a hybrid similar to Rimworld.

With Asset Layer’s ability to make rich game assets ownable and portable, this type of concept has the potential to be supercharged by UGC and a creator economy. By enabling a player’s characters to be ported from game to game, players can enjoy an ever-growing, evolving, dynamic ecosystem of environments and stories. Further, by enabling apps to communicate between one another through a portable asset, a rich history of a character developed across many different applications can emerge, providing a unique form of character development unlike what you can get from scripted entertainment. Finally, by sharing more than just characters, but also equipables, consumables, and game currencies between games, these generated stories can take advantage of more than just the character’s look and prompt description, but also the items, traits, and anything else a character has acquired on its journey.

If you’re interested in this concept, please get in touch. For us, this is just an experiment for now, but for a creative developer, we believe this could be an intriguing opportunity to leverage the latest in both UGC and AI technologies. And, if you want to learn more about how Asset Layer can help turn your hit game into a creator driven ecosystem, please reach out using this contact form.

Building A Story-Driven AI Sandbox Game was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are proud to be launching a number of game-changing products today — Asset Layer 2.0, our Unity integration, our new game, Rolltopia, and Asset Layer GPT. We are also happy to announce that Asset Layer 1.0 will live on, rebranded to Asset Layer OnChain. If you want to dive right into the new and improved Asset Layer, head to assetlayer.com/dashboard and start playing Rolltopia at rolltopia.games.

Introducing Asset Layer 2.0

Asset Layer is a backend solution for games and apps. In addition to providing basic features like digital asset and account management, Asset Layer makes it simple to add powerful creator economy features like application interoperability, user generated content, and player-to-player marketplaces to games for studios of any size.

With Asset Layer 2.0, our goal was to make Asset Layer a more complete and accessible solution for game developers. Asset Layer 2.0 includes the following new features and upgrades to help us accomplish this.

Switching to Magic Auth

In Asset Layer 2.0, we are using Magic to power a universal login solution for games that allows users to take their assets across applications seamlessly. All users need is their email address. By logging in with the same email, they can access their in-game assets and currencies across apps. Games and apps can share assets using Asset Layer’s permissioned platform, and users are able to access these assets by signing into apps with a one-time-password or social logins. It’s the easiest possible way to enable interoperability for users across apps.

Magic also comes with Web3 features which can be used to create blockchain integrations across multiple ecosystems. Right now, we are using these features to add additional security to our API, and in the future we can use this to create a signed blockchain record of all digital asset transactions on Asset Layer.

Now Powering In-App Currencies

Asset Layer now allows games and apps to create new currencies which can be used across applications and in marketplaces. Using our no-code tools, SDK, or API, games and apps can create new currencies, manage user balances, initiate transfers, and allow players to use their currencies in player-to-player marketplaces to trade assets. Apps stay in control, as they are able to make currencies fully transferable and tradable between players, or use currencies as a resource bound to a specific player.

We are also offering real money currencies in the marketplace which apps can choose to use as well. Right now, we are offering BSV through an integration with HandCash. We are excited to be able to offer additional real money solutions soon. If you are building a game and are interested in an integration with a specific Web3 wallet and crypto currency, please let us know and we will work with you to explore integrating that wallet and crypto into Asset Layer.

New SDKs + Asset Layer GPT

In addition to offering a REST JSON-based API, Asset Layer now also has an NPM JavaScript SDK as well as a C# SDK for Unity developers. Integrating Asset Layer into apps has never been easier.

To take things even further, we are releasing Asset Layer GPT. This custom GPT is trained on Asset Layer documentation. It’s able to answer questions about how to integrate Asset Layer into your application and how to use the Asset Layer no-code tools. We’ll be continuing to add more resources to Asset Layer GPT to make it the ultimate resource for building your apps with Asset Layer.

Unity Integration

We want Asset Layer to be accessible for game developers, and the best place to meet game developers where they are already at is Unity, the most used game engine in the world. Our Unity integration allows developers and creators to create new Asset Layer assets directly from the Unity editor. This allows assets to contain all types of different 3d models, meshes, textures, shaders, scripts, and other components. Asset Layer then acts like a glue between Unity apps, enabling them to easily share assets that can be imported into games at run-time and work out of the box.

Our Unity Integration also offers tools to import assets into games using our AssetlayerGameObject. We also offer an inventory prefab to make it easy for your players to select the assets they want to use. There is also a C# SDK which allows you to build any custom Asset Layer logic into your game.

Our Unity integration is expanding quickly. We are interested in working hands-on with Unity developers and we can offer you extra support and other goodies. If you are a Unity developer interested in building with Asset Layer, please reach out to us at info@assetlayer.com.

Introducing Rolltopia

To help us show the world what is possible with Asset Layer, we built a new game called Rolltopia, a hyper-casual gaming universe powered by Asset Layer and built with our Unity integration. Rolltopia combines the gameplay and feature set of several category defining games including Roblox, Neopets, Helix Jump, and more to deliver a rich and immersive gaming experience previously impossible for small to medium size game studios like Asset Layer.

If you want to see Asset Layer in action, we recommend trying out the game for yourself. Also, we are offering cash prizes and other goodies for alpha testers. To learn more about the Rolltopia Alpha Challenge rules and prizes, check out this blog post.

Asset Layer OnChain

There’s a lot to be excited about with the Asset Layer 2.0 launch, but building all these new features as rapidly as we have comes with a cost. In this case, Asset Layer 2.0 does not have the same level of blockchain integration as Asset Layer 1.0. Specifically, unlike Asset Layer 1.0, the assets created in Asset Layer 2.0 do not have a blockchain based record.

We are extremely proud of Asset Layer 1.0. It’s arguably the world’s most efficient and reliable blockchain-based digital asset solution. It supports some of the world’s largest digital asset collections such as Duro Dogs which boasts millions of assets including over 1 million in a single collection.

Asset Layer 2.0 is designed to make adoption for game developers simple. It’s also an easier architecture for us to iterate quickly to better and better achieve product market fit. But, we still want developers who are interested in building directly on chain to be able to do so using Asset Layer. So, we are keeping Asset Layer 1.0 online, rebranded as Asset Layer OnChain. If you are interested in using Asset Layer to build powerful blockchain-based digital asset applications, check out onchain.assetlayer.com.

Over time, we hope to reunify Asset Layer with Asset Layer OnChain. And, when we do so, we plan to have millions of players and thousands of game developers coming with us to put their assets on-chain where they ultimately belong.

Asset Layer 2.0 Is Live and Ready to Change the Game was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

TLDR; we are developing a kick-ass new version of our API which will launch in August, but without a blockchain integration. We will continue supporting the existing API, and the new API will still support blockchain payments. The timing of the development of a blockchain integration for the new API will be dependent on factors like customer demand, available resources, and ease of implementation.

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Today, we are announcing that we have begun developing an updated version of the Asset Layer API containing changes designed to help us to provide the ultimate platform for creating and managing interoperable digital assets. The most important, but also bittersweet change is that we will be replacing HandCash with a service called Magic as the foundation of Asset Layer’s login method and wallet solution.

The initial release is planned for this August and will include the updated API, SDK, and a demo app which will serve as the foundation of an integration with Unity, the world’s most used game development platform. We will continue to support the current version of our API after the release of the new API. Below, we are sharing the details of these changes as well as some of the factors behind our decision process.

Asset Layer API Changes

Our current API has two limitations which are deal breakers for most customers.

1. To use an Asset Layer app, you must have a HandCash wallet
2. To buy an NFT in an Asset Layer powered marketplace, you must use BSV

Neither of these are HandCash’s fault, and their team is already addressing these challenges. But, as we sought the right solution for Asset Layer, we decided to go in a different direction.

To address problem one, we are turning to Magic, one of the most widely adopted Web3-auth solutions. They provide a passwordless, email-based login method where an authenticated user has secure access to a public-private keypair, enabling the user to sign API requests and Bitcoin transactions. This fantastic combination of Web3 security and Web2 UX provides the right foundation for us to build a login and wallet solution for Asset Layer.

We are solving our second problem in two ways — in-app currencies and payment wallets. In-app currencies will have no max supply, with apps able to issue new units at their discretion. While there is no supply cap, well-designed games and apps will give these currencies real utility and value, providing an easy way to bootstrap an in-app economy with zero crypto onboarding. Through Asset Layer, these in-app currencies will also be shareable across apps, enabling cross-app economies.

We will also allow apps to add payment wallets to a user’s account, enabling assets to be traded for crypto in Asset Layer powered marketplaces. To start, we will support HandCash and BSV payments. Based on customer demand, we can add support for other popular wallets like Metamask, Phantom, or Ordinals Wallet, and the cryptos they support.

What’s the catch?

Hopefully these sound like fantastic changes delivered on a swift timeline! We agree, but there is an important catch.

Asset Layer’s goal is to provide the ultimate platform for creating and managing interoperable digital assets. In order to do so, we’ve strived to do each of the following:

1. Develop a framework for digital assets that maximizes utility
2. Provide unparalleled simplicity for users, devs, and creators
3. Create a blockchain record for all assets to maximize transparency, security, and interoperability

These are all important, but in the short term they conflict. Expanding our framework can add complexity for devs. Blockchain can make delivering new features expensive.

In the blockchain world, blockchain is almost always given priority. It’s either “on-chain”, or it’s pointless. We don’t look at Asset Layer this way. We believe Asset Layer is a game-changing digital asset platform with or without blockchain.

Along with our partners, we’ve built a blockchain integration with unparalleled efficiency and reliability. But, even a blockchain integration as successful as ours creates risks and limitations. For example, our token protocol RUN is no longer supported by the team that created it. 1Sat Ordinals is a promising alternative, but it is still new and unproven, and switching has a high cost.

We’ve decided to release the new version of Asset Layer without a blockchain integration. This will allow us to prioritize new features like in-app currencies, integrations with Unity and Discord, and improving UX. We think these features are what will create the most immediate value for customers. In the future, we will reintroduce blockchain. The timing will be determined by customer demand, ease of implementation, and available resources.

Additionally, we will be migrating Duro Dogs to our updated API, allowing us to remove onboarding friction, to turn “Treats” into an interoperable in-app currency, and to utilize our Unity integration to accelerate game development. However, this also means that Duro Dogs users, as well as the users of other apps that decide to migrate to the new API, will see their assets go off-chain temporarily. The function of these assets within apps will be unchanged, but they won’t have a blockchain record.

This decision strikes at the heart of an essential question — what makes an NFT valuable, the blockchain or the apps? Of course, the answer is both, but we’ve always felt that apps play the primary role. This gave us clarity when deciding which features to prioritize. For anyone who has additional questions about these changes, we recommend jumping into the Asset Layer or Duro Dogs discord to ask our team directly.

The Blockchain Builders Dilemma

Web3 is both a feature-set and a tech stack. The features include P2P marketplaces, application interoperability, and “data-ownership”. The tech stack is blockchain, layer two protocols, wallets, etc. While these features and technology are promising, if we set the standard for a killer app to things like Google search, Netflix, or Chat-GPT, then there is no blockchain equivalent. Web3 is still looking for product market fit.

This means blockchain builders are sandwiched between two moving targets: finding product market fit, and building on the right blockchain architecture. Finding product market fit is always hard, but what makes building on blockchain extremely challenging is the volatility of the underlying infrastructure.

Innovation in blockchain technology is great, but the constant pressure to build on an ever-shifting “current thing” can be crippling for builders. This pressure comes from the prevalence of speculators in today’s blockchain user-base. Speculators are very future oriented rather than present oriented. It’s all about what could be instead of what is.

We’ve experienced this dynamic firsthand at Asset Layer. When we initially built Asset Layer, RUN was the most adopted token solution on BSV, a blockchain with the feature-set we were seeking. We used RUN to build an extremely high-functioning token platform which now powers dozens of apps and millions of NFTs. Even so, our use of RUN has turned into a liability. We began losing customers who otherwise preferred our product simply because we were on “the wrong protocol”. Ultimately, some of our closest partners ended or diminished their relationships with us because we wouldn’t switch to the new, hot thing fast enough.

This experience, while frustrating, helped us to consider new possibilities. We were forced to ask ourselves whether we need blockchain at all? Could we deliver Web3 features without its tech stack? Our experience abstracting blockchain’s complexity placed us in a unique position to see that we could deliver features like P2P marketplaces, application interoperability, and data ownership without blockchain.

Our team are still blockchain believers, but we realized that we need to prioritize the things that get us product market fit first, and then figure out the blockchain integration once we have a product we know our customers love. We know this is the right choice for Asset Layer. We can’t say how other builders should deal with the challenges that come from simultaneously trying to use blockchain and also bring Web3 features to market. But, we hope our perspective will help builders better consider their options.

Major Asset Layer Update Coming This Summer was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

NFT Photo Contest is an app we created for the London Blockchain Conference (LBC) to help demonstrate NFTs ability to drive engagement. In this post, we will show how we were able to build this app in just two days leveraging Asset Layer’s existing toolset.

In this post we will describe the process of creating NFT Photo Contest in detail, but first, here is a quick overview of how we used Asset Layer to build the app in a few simple steps.

1. Created a new Asset Layer app using our no-code creator tool at assetlayer.com/dashboard
2. Configured Asset Layer’s sample app with the new app details and deployed locally
3. Created example entries (NFT collections) for testing using the no-code creator tool
4. Modified the sample app to achieve the desired functionality
5. Bought a domain and deployed the modified sample app using GitHub + Netlify
6. Created collections and minted NFTs for new entries on-site at the conference using the no-code creator tool

The only step that required writing code was step 4. With the help of ChatGPT, our team’s worst engineer, CEO Jack Laskey, was able to complete all 6 steps in just about 20 hours of development time across a single work week.

If you want to create your own powerful NFT application in days or less, check out the rest of this post, our docs, or just head to assetlayer.com/dashboard and get started today!

What is NFT Photo Contest?

As the name suggests, the app was created to facilitate a contest. LBC attendees can enter by taking a picture at the conference, and then minting the picture as an NFT at the Asset Layer booth. Once an entry is minted, it can be viewed at nftphotocontest.com. There, anyone, whether they are a conference attendee or not, can vote on their favorite entries through the app.

The entries with the most votes receive prizes, and those prizes are distributed to the holders of the NFTs containing the winning entries. The entrants receive all of the NFTs to start, and they can share with friends, trade, or sell the NFTs at their discretion by sending them through the app. Entrants are encouraged to share links to their entries on social media, helping drive interest in the conference and in Asset Layer.

Building NFT Photo Contest

Step One: Set up a new Asset Layer app using our no-code creator tool at assetlayer.com/dashboard

In order to build a new Web3 app using Asset Layer, the first step is to create a new Asset Layer app. Apps on Asset Layer are used to create NFTs and manage access to NFTs. Each app has its own API credentials which determine which resources can be accessed through the Asset Layer API.

Setting up a new app only takes a few minutes. For a more detailed explanation of how to set up a new app on Asset Layer, check out this section from our docs.

Step Two: Configured Asset Layer’s Sample App with the new app details and deployed locally

Once our new app was created, we deployed the app locally using Asset Layer’s Sample App. Sample App is a ready-to-deploy next.js app that provides out of the box functionality for Web3 apps. It does so by having Asset Layer’s API already integrated. Further, it is designed to work without needing to manage a server or a database, making it easy to launch scalable apps fast. You can check out a live version of the Sample App here.

Today, Sample App comes already equipped with a NFT explorer and inventory manager. Soon, it will also come with a built-in marketplace out of the box as well as a storefront which can integrate with existing ecommerce solutions.

All you have to do to use Sample App is to fork the open-source repository on GitHub, and then input your API credentials. We have an entire video tutorial on how to create a new app and deploy it locally using Sample App which you can check out below. You can also get the same information directly from our docs.

Step Three: Create example entries (NFT collections) using Asset Layer’s no-code creator tool

After steps one and two, we had a working Web3 app already set up able to access our app’s NFTs. However, we still didn’t have any NFTs in our app after steps 1 and 2, and we’d need some to help us build out the rest of our app’s functionality in step 4. So, we used our no-code tool to create a few example collections for testing. These test collections were then deactivated before launch.

Before creating new collections, we had to define slots for our app. Slots are used to help organize NFTs within apps. They do so by grouping NFTs by functionality. You can read more about slots in the core concepts section in our docs.

For NFT Photo Contest, we only needed one slot, entries. The entries slot would contain collections, with each collection representing a specific entry into the contest. We also needed to define expressions for our slot. Expressions are used to add files to NFTs contained within a slot. By default, every slot in Asset Layer comes with a “Menu View” expression which accepts 500x500 image used within marketplaces and other menus. For the entries slot, we created an additional expression called “Full Image” which will be used to store the full sized, high-resolution image for the entry. You can read more about expressions in the core concepts section in our docs.

Once our slot and its expressions were defined, we were able to mint the test collections we needed. I decided to use an awesome picture of a gecko that I snapped on a recent trip to St. Simon’s Island in Georgia’s Golden Isles. Asset Layer has an easy no-code tool for creating collections and minting NFTs.

As soon as the collections are created and NFTs are minted, they are accessible inside of our deployment of Sample App. This is because these NFTs are a part of our Asset Layer app, and we are using our app’s API credentials to access Asset Layer. Asset Layer is designed to provide all of and only the NFTs relevant to your app based on your application’s set up through the no-code creator tool.

Step Four: Modified Sample App to achieve the desired functionality

Admittedly, this step took the longest and is the only step that required actual development work. Sample App provided a lot of the needed functionality out of the box, but there were a few things that needed to be changed.

• Needed a voting mechanism
• Added the ability to send NFTs to other users through the app
• Made the entries viewable even if a user isn’t logged in
• Changed navigation links to go directly to entries

Some of these features are things that we will take and add into the existing Sample App so future projects won’t have to redo this work. Adding these features may have been able to turn NFT Photo Contest into a one day project. Other features, such as voting are more specific to NFT Photo Contest, and there will almost always be at least some development work for creating a new app.

One feature worth highlighting is the voting mechanism. One of the great things about Sample App is that it is designed to work without a server or a database. By recording votes within the collections themselves, NFT Photo Contest could keep track of how many votes a collection had and who voted for what without needing to record that information in a database or running a server.

Step 5: Buy a domain and deploy the modified sample app using GitHub + Netlify

To be fully transparent, buying nftphotocontest.com was actually the first thing we did. But, deploying NFT Photo Contest to nftphotocontest.com was the last step in the process.

To do so, we utilized Netlify and GitHub. Netlify works extremely well with next.js apps like Sample App. All you have to do to deploy your app to your domain is to create a Netlify site, link it to your domain by adding a few nameservers to your domain, and then link your GitHub repository to your Netlify site. You can also add the app to an existing site with the same process by using a subdomain.

Netlify handles the scaling of your site, making it extremely easy to go live fast without managing servers. And, by storing information inside of NFTs, you don’t need a database either. We think that leveraging Asset Layer, Sample App, and Netlify together is the easiest way to create powerful Web3 applications like NFT Photo Contest. Here’s a section from our docs about how to deploy with Netlify.

Step 6: Create collections and mint NFTs for new entries using the no-code creator tool

Now, this step hasn’t actually happened yet, but once the contest begins, we will be creating collections and minting NFTs on-site at the conference using the no-code creator tool. Contestants will come to the booth, send us their picture over email, and then we will show them how to create a new collection and mint NFTs using Asset Layer. The collection creation and minting process only takes a few minutes, so everyone who wants to enter will be able to.

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We only developed the idea for NFT Photo Contest a few weeks ago. It was extremely exciting for us to see how all of the work we’ve done building the Asset Layer platform made it unbelievably easy to implement this idea and turn it into a reality.

If you are at the London Blockchain Conference, please come say hi at our booth and take an awesome photo to enter the contest. For those of you not in person with us in London, check out the entries at nftphotocontest.com to get a better feel for the conference and vote on your favorites.

Interested in creating your own NFT application? Make sure you check out our docs, and then head to assetlayer.com/dashboard to get started. If you want to get in touch with us to learn more and get support, you can also join our discord.

How We Built NFT Photo Contest in Under a Week was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the late 2010s, the business world began to see the potential of blockchain to provide transformative efficiency, transparency, and interoperability to business processes across a wide range of verticals. But, blockchain’s newness and complexity introduced significant costs and risks to businesses that would want to try to leverage its benefits.

Blockchain-as-a-Service was quickly adopted as the answer for gun-shy enterprises seeking to take their first steps into the blockchain world. By wrapping blockchain essentials into an API and throwing in significant technical support resources, businesses were sure to be building their own dApps in no time. Not only were blockchain startups throwing their hats into the BaaS ring, but major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Oracle, Alibaba, and more joined in on the party, launching their own hosted BaaS solutions, often leveraging the newer, private blockchain technologies like IBM’s Hyperledger. Five years later, blockchain is adopted by businesses worldwide bringing significant cost savings and new features across an increasingly connected global economy. Just kidding!

Why BaaS Hasn’t Worked

BaaS has failed to make much of a dent in the business world. AWS, Oracle, and others are languishing with few customers in general and even fewer to no truly successful applications. Azure actually called it quits and closed shop on its blockchain offerings. Blockchain startups haven’t fared much better. Plenty of promising proofs of concepts have been announced, ceremonially bringing a number of enterprise names into the “blockchain era”, but very few if any non-blockchain native businesses are using blockchain at scale today.

Why hasn’t BaaS worked? We’ve identified three main reasons. First, BaaS solutions are often not well designed and lack essential blockchain functionality or can’t scale in a cost effective manner. Second, BaaS is still far too complex. Generally speaking, BaaS solutions don’t actually tackle the problem of making blockchain simpler — they just host services like node infrastructure on behalf of clients and then wrap the node’s API which is usually extremely low-level and complex. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, BaaS is simply the wrong product. BaaS assumes that enterprises want to build blockchain applications. At Asset Layer, we have a different view. We don’t think enterprises want to build blockchain applications. What they need are better digital assets.

Better Digital Assets are what Businesses are Seeking from Blockchain

Blockchain technology is often referred to as DLT, distributed ledger technology. The key word there is ledger. Blockchain is basically the world’s most advanced ledger technology. And what do ledgers do? They track assets. So, if blockchain is the tool, digital assets are what that tool is used for. Better digital assets which are secure, efficient, auditable, programmable, and interoperable is the real benefit of blockchain to enterprise.

Blockchain use cases further corroborate the centrality of better digital assets. Supply-chain is one of the most touted and explored blockchain use cases. The key benefit being sought is greater interoperability and transparency to bring efficiency to the supply-chain and provide visibility to the consumer. This is achieved by creating digital assets to represent goods in a supply-chain. By having better digital assets, we can get better supply-chains.

Commercial records are another enterprise (and Government) use case which depends on better digital assets. Records for things like licenses, deeds, stock certificates, and even concert tickets can all benefit through the use of better digital assets to provide greater transparency, more efficient transfer, and easy interoperability across applications where these records are needed. Even more complex records like legal documents, invoices, and more can start to benefit from greater automation due to the security, efficiency, and transparency of digital assets on a blockchain.

Payments are just a special case of digital asset transfers, something at which blockchain excels. Not only are blockchain payments more efficient, but by being on a central ledger with other digital assets, automating payments across a supply chain, as part of a legal contract, and more can help bring a huge amount of efficiency to the business world.

Gaming and the Metaverse are other verticals which have recognized the power of better digital assets, in particular for their interoperability. Billions of dollars in venture capital as well as major in-house investments at companies like Meta have been directed at making everything from characters, skins, and weapons down to lower level features like sprites, animations, and sounds interoperable between games. Better digital assets make their contents interoperable, and they can become the basis of next-gen applications like the Metaverse.

Digital-Assets-as-a-Service is what Businesses Need

At Asset Layer, we saw the failure of BaaS companies and realized a new approach was needed. Businesses don’t need to build blockchain apps. They need better digital assets. Accordingly, we have built the first Digital-Assets-as-a-Service product to make it fast, easy, and affordable to create and manage better digital assets. Asset Layer’s API and no-code tools truly remove the complexity of blockchain for business. Because our customers are creating and managing digital assets, not building blockchain apps, the complexity of blockchain is truly irrelevant. We use blockchain so our customers don’t have to.

Unlike BaaS companies, we don’t ask our customers to build their own private blockchain, write smart contracts, create blockchain transactions, run nodes, learn new coding languages, manage cryptocurrency, choose a blockchain, query blockchains, deploy blockchain applications, learn about sidechains, layer-twos or zero-knowledge proofs, manage keys and addresses, or make their customers manage keys and addresses. Instead, we make it simple for our customers to create the digital assets they need, and use them how they want.

While we don’t want our customers dealing with blockchain, we do recognize that it’s blockchain’s ability to securely and efficiently manage better digital assets that has allowed us to build a product which we think can ultimately unify the world’s digital assets. The blockchain revolution so many have predicted will come to pass, but it won’t be from businesses building blockchain apps. It will be from businesses leveraging better digital assets.

Digital-Assets-as-a-Service Delivers What Blockchain-as-a-Service Started was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Asset Layer is a platform that empowers bold creators and app developers to build amazing new experiences leveraging digital assets. Digital assets combine files and data with a mechanism for ownership, and Asset Layer is the simplest, most affordable way to create and manage digital assets. Asset Layer uses blockchain to manage the ownership of digital assets. Blockchain is an amazing tool for digital assets, enabling far greater security, ownability, transferability, auditability, programmability, and interoperability of digital assets. Asset Layer is unique in that it is the first product which truly handles all of the blockchain complexity for our customers, making it simple and affordable to create applications which leverage these better, blockchain-powered digital assets.

What is the Asset Layer platform?

Our platform is a complete solution to create and manage digital assets, containing the following components

API + SDK: The foundation of the platform is our digital asset API. This API handles the creation and management of digital assets. What makes the API special is that it removes ALL of the blockchain complexity. No dealing smart contracts, paying fees, managing keys or transactions — we take care of all of that so builders can focus on creating apps.

No-code tool: Our dashboard + no-code tool will make it easy for builders, technical or non-technical, to create and manage digital assets. Whether you are creating digital assets for a game or app, or just want to sell collectibles in our marketplace, you can do so without writing a line of code.

Marketplace: In addition to providing a marketplace which apps and creators can use to sell digital assets and allow their users to trade those assets, our API also provides tools for apps to build their own marketplace and to connect that marketplace to other marketplaces connected to our API in order to share listings and get maximum reach for your tradable digital assets.

Cloud storage: Digital assets for games and other apps can involve a lot of data. Apps can store files for digital assets using Asset Layer to make them easily accessible to other apps that want to use those digital assets.

Wallet: Together with our partner HandCash, we’ve created a fantastic wallet solution for digital assets. The HandCash wallet makes it easy for your customers to sign into apps and be able to access their digital assets wherever they go. The wallet is the best feature of Web3, and Asset Layer is delivering the best wallet experience in the business.

Who is Asset Layer for?

Verticals from gaming, to supply chain, to healthcare all make use of digital assets, and Asset Layer is for any business leveraging digital assets. But, we really created Asset Layer for apps and creators that are looking to take advantage of the types of features made uniquely possible by blockchain-powered digital assets which are easily tradable and interoperable.

In particular, Asset Layer today is a solution that is especially well suited to games and other B2C apps that are seeking to create tradable digital assets or form creator economies. We built Asset Layer as a solution to the problems we were having building games which leveraged blockchain-based digital assets. Our game Duro Dogs has used over 2,000,000 digital assets and been responsible for over 5,000,000 digital asset transactions. We built Asset Layer to be applicable across verticals, but we know firsthand how powerful Asset Layer is to help creator economies form around interoperable digital assets in games.

Speaking of creators, Asset Layer is built for you too. We know how important non-technical creators are to making beautiful games and apps across the web. Asset Layer is a great place for non-technical creators to contribute assets to games or other apps, or sell digital art or collectibles directly to your audience using our no-code tools and marketplace.

If you aren’t sure if Asset Layer is a fit for your goals as an app or as a creator, reach out to us here and we can help you evaluate whether or not Asset Layer is a good fit and help you get the most out of Asset Layer.

What is Asset Layer? was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After almost a year and a half of smooth operation, Duro Dogs went offline for over a week for a major upgrade. When players returned to the game, they may not have noticed much of a difference. That’s a good thing! Even though the game looks the same, under the hood everything has changed.

This weeklong overhaul placed Duro Dogs onto an entirely new architecture and backend infrastructure. As a part of this process, we reminted every NFT in the game, resulting in almost 4 million NFT mints and 10 million NFT transactions. A big shout out to the Asset Layer + HandCash dev teams for their roles in creating + processing this many NFT transactions in rapid fashion. This is also a testament to the advantages of building on a network as affordable as Bitcoin SV, since the total transaction fees paid for this transition were under $1,000, making these types of architectural improvements far more affordable than they would be on other chains.

What is different about Duro Dogs now? When we launched Duro Dogs in December of 2021, we did so with the first version of the Asset Layer API. We always wanted Asset Layer to be a solution that would enable applications to interoperate with one another by sharing NFTs, but this MVP version of the Asset Layer API wasn’t a sufficient solution to enable this type of interoperability by itself.

Duro Dogs was always intended to support a creator economy where creators could contribute both new NFT and application content for Duro Dogs players. We built Ruff Runner in order to simulate the experience of being a third party developer using Duro Dogs NFTs. What we found is that in order to build Ruff Runner, Ruff Runner needed to communicate with both Asset Layer and also Duro Dogs directly. This was a major problem, because if apps have to not only integrate Asset Layer, but also create and maintain their own APIs in order to share NFTs, then interoperability becomes much more difficult to achieve. Things only get worse as the number of apps communicating with each other increases.

The solution was to expand the Asset Layer API to be able to become a one-stop shop for apps like Duro Dogs and Ruff Runner. Rather than have to integrate both the Asset Layer API and also a Duro Dogs API, Ruff Runner could just integrate the Asset Layer API. Additionally, we wanted Duro Dogs to be able to leverage Asset Layer in a much more robust way such that Duro Dogs could no longer need an API or even a database.

In order to facilitate this, we greatly expanded the Asset Layer data model and added an easy to use permissioning layer. This expansion has enabled Duro Dogs to almost entirely eliminate its need for its own backend, and most importantly, Ruff Runner no longer needs to communicate directly with Duro Dogs to get the information it needs to serve Duro Dogs players. All of this communication is done through the NFTs powered by Asset Layer. You can learn more about how Duro Dogs uses the new Asset Layer data model in this article within the Asset Layer docs.

We also used this overhaul as an opportunity to improve the simplicity, scalability, and reliability of the Asset Layer API in general. We launched this new version of our API in December of 2022, one year after the launch of Duro Dogs. We now have over 50 teams in our private beta building new games and apps including apps which repurpose Duro Dogs NFTs.

By simultaneously making the Asset Layer API a far richer source of NFT data + a much simpler tool to use, we are far better positioned to execute on our original goal for Duro Dogs, to support a vibrant creator economy of third party created NFTs and games. And, by building on a more scalable and reliable foundation, we can greatly accelerate our own internal pace of developing Duro Dogs and creating new features.

To learn more about Asset Layer or building new apps that use Duro Dogs NFTs, sign up for Asset Layer today!

What’s the Big Deal With the New Duro Dogs? was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are extremely excited to announce that we are changing our name to Asset Layer! This is part of a larger rebranding effort to help us better tell our story as we get closer to launching the platform we’ve been working on for over a year now. We’ve got answers to all of your questions below, and we want to thank everyone who has supported us including HandCash, RUN, Haste Arcade, and the unbelievable Duro Dogs community! We are just getting started, and if it wasn’t for all of you, we would not still be going.

Why did we change our name from NFTY Jigs to Asset Layer?

When we created the NFTY Jigs product, it was just a collection of NFTs. We did not know we would be creating an entire platform to support our vision for interoperability through digital assets. Throughout the process of building a product, you discover a lot of things about the opportunity you are pursuing. With the scope of the opportunity we are pursuing with digital assets, we came to see the need for a more encompassing name, and we think Asset Layer is a name that helps us tell our story and will allow us to grow into the company we think we can become.

What is Asset Layer?

Put simply, we think Asset Layer is the simplest, most affordable way to create and manage digital assets. Digital assets combine files and data with an ownership mechanism. They are how we manage ownership on the internet. On Asset Layer, that ownership mechanism is a token on BSV. Today, we are focused on digital assets for games, and the tools we will be delivering are exceptionally well suited for this purpose. But, digital assets have many applications outside of gaming, and if we are successful in gaming, we think Asset Layer is a product and a brand can grow to serve verticals across the internet economy.

What is the Asset Layer platform?

The platform we’ve been developing for over a year is a complete solution to create and manage digital assets. Our initial toolset is especially well suited for games focused on interoperability and creator economies. When we launch soon(tm), we will release the following components:

API + SDK: The foundation of the platform is our digital asset API. This API handles the creation and management of digital assets. What makes the API special is that it removes ALL of the blockchain complexity. No dealing smart contracts, paying fees, managing keys or transactions — we take care of all of that so builders can focus on creating apps.

No-code tool: Our dashboard + no-code tool will make it easy for builders, technical or non-technical, to create and manage digital assets. Whether you are creating digital assets for a game or app, or just want to sell collectibles in our marketplace, you can do so without writing a line of code.

Marketplace: We will be releasing a marketplace which apps and creators can use to sell digital assets and allow their users to trade those assets. You can also build your own marketplace and connect it to other marketplaces using our API.

Cloud Storage: Digital assets for games and other apps can involve a lot of data. Duro Dogs, for example, uses almost a Terabyte worth of storage already just for the files used to represent these digital assets in applications. Apps can store files for digital assets using Asset Layer to make them easily accessible to other apps that want to use those digital assets. You can still store things on-chain too.

Wallet: Most of the credit here goes to HandCash, but together we’ve created a fantastic wallet solution for digital assets. If you are a Duro Dogs or Haste Arcade player, you may already be familiar with how easy it is to use your NFTs in apps. When we launch the platform, you will see even more improvements to what is already a great experience.

When can I start building?

We aren’t going to announce a launch date yet. We are a small team and software releases are inherently difficult to predict. But, we are getting close, and for apps and creators who are willing to build with software that is still in development, we will be able to start accepting people into our private beta soon. If you are interested, please reach out to info@assetlayer.com and we can share more details with you.

What will Asset Layer cost?

While we are waiting to release the details of our pricing closer to launch, we can share today that we will be using SaaS-style pricing. We will have a robust free-tier so that apps can be developed and launched without having to pay a monthly fee. Once usage levels reach paid tiers, there will be an affordable monthly fee with overage pricing which reflects our blockchain and cloud costs. Finally, we will take a marketplace fee for sales or trades that happen in marketplaces which use our shared marketplace infrastructure.

What does this mean for Duro Dogs, Hash War, and my Gamedrop Jigs?

In short, nothing has changed for any of these apps or digital assets. Duro Dogs is still a big focus for us, and Gamedrop Jigs will still be a featured part of the Asset Layer platform. Hash War is still on our roadmap, and launching our new platform won’t just enable others to start building with Asset Layer — it will also help expedite our own development on games like Hash War, Duro Dogs, and more.

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Again, we want to thank you all for your ongoing support. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to info@assetlayer.com, or just shoot us a message to @assetlayer on Twitter.

Sincerely,

The Asset Layer Team

Introducing Asset Layer was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Note: This blog was published prior to our rebrand to Asset Layer, the new name for the NFTY Jigs platform and related products.

Last April, when we did a presale for NFTY Jigs, we outlined a simple experiment. Could we create an extremely simple, but unique, NFT which any number of games could interpret in their own, creative ways? Could one NFT be a digital pet dog in one game and a trading card in another game at the same time — an NFT with dynamic, always-evolving utility? It was a zany premise for an NFT product, and we were thrilled that so many of our supporters decided to take the leap with us by participating in our presale.

We are almost a year later, and we are happy to announce that we are just a few weeks away from delivering these presold NFTs, the gamedrop jigs. We haven’t spent the last year sitting on our hands. In order to give our gamedrop jig experiment its best shot at success, we partnered with HandCash to bring tokens to their best-in-class wallet, we built the most scalable NFT platform in history to support the gamedrop jigs and other games, and we launched the first game built using the gamedrop jigs, Duro Dogs, which has quickly become the most popular game in BSV. We think this gives us a great shot at delivering our original vision, a vibrant NFT gaming community taking advantage of real, and in some cases very unique, forms of NFT interoperability.

Over the next few weeks, we will send out information about how to redeem the tickets purchased in the presale for gamedrop jigs. Each of these gamedrop jigs will have a unique serial number which will be assigned in a fair and transparent manner according to the terms of the presale. When you claim your gamedrop jigs, you will see your new Duro Dogs in the game immediately. As an extra thanks to the presale participants, we are giving away limited edition NFTs which can be used inside of Duro Dogs. These NFTs will only be received by presale participants. We are still a ways away from releasing Hash War, but we are still extremely excited to bring you all that game later in 2022.

We are also releasing a new hub to manage all of the NFTs you own connected to NFTY Jigs. This includes your duro dogs, duro dogs accessories, gamedrop jigs, Hash War cards, and much more. Here, you will be able to transfer your gamedrop jigs to other users. Trading will also be available through our discord-based alpha marketplace.

Please stay tuned and make sure to check your email for more updates and instructions over the next few weeks. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter or Discord.

Thank you all for your continued support and for believing in our team. We are just getting started, and we know you will enjoy joining us for this adventure.

Get Ready for your Gamedrop Jigs was originally published in Asset Layer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.