The District Monthly — March/April 2023
News and updates from the district0x Network
It’s that time of the month again! We’re back after a short break with the latest updates from our developers, the latest news from our community game Aqua Prime, as well as some curated reads about the most important developments in web3!
TL;DR of what we will cover this month:
- Spotlight: Bitcoin Ordinals
- Updates from Aqua Prime
- Latest DappStream Episodes
- This month’s Dev Updates
If you missed the last update, check it out here.
Don’t forget, we’re still hiring! We continue growing our bullpen of developers in 2023 to build out the tools of the future! If you have any experience developing smart contracts or web3 dApps, please email talent@district0x.io with a resume and an overview of your experience. We’d love to have you on board!
Now, let’s dive right in!
Spotlight: Bitcoin Ordinals, an overhyped technicality or a new asset class about to reset the NFT space? — by Henri.M
In our latest Spotlight article, we take a closer look at the concept of bitcoin ordinals, looking into what they are and how they are calculated, what they can tell us about the value of bitcoin, and how they are used in practice.
What Are Bitcoin Ordinals? Are they NFTs as we know them from other chains? Or are Ordinals the latest massive discovery in the Bitcoin space ready to ignite the next bull run? Or are they an attack on Bitcoin’s fungibility seeking to devalue the most liquid asset of all?
Bitcoin ordinals are a way of comparing the value of bitcoin to other assets, based on its scarcity and the number of units available.
In a nutshell, Bitcoin Ordinals are “ sats ” or satoshis (the lowest unit of Bitcoin with a value of 0.00000001 BTC), that have been ordered and inscribed with a piece of information, such as a hash or an image. This piece of information makes the sat unique and turns it into a de-facto NFT…
Want to learn more about Bitcoin Ordinal? Read the full article: Bitcoin Ordinals, an overhyped technicality or a new asset class about to reset the NFT space?
Bringing Crypto to the Masses
Aqua Prime, the Minimum Viable Metaverse
Are you curious about crypto but intimidated by its technicalities? If you missed our last update and with it, the launch of our game, fear no more: District0x is excited to introduce Aqua Prime, a game that makes it easy to experience web3 and crypto in a fun and low-barrier way.
Aqua Prime is a minimum viable metaverse that merges Discord, Twitch, and Web3, offering players an immersive, story-driven game that introduces them to the world of cryptocurrency and decentralized apps.
Aqua Prime is an open-source game that allows players to take control of newly sentient NFTs that have just discovered they’re part of a low-effort rug-pull scam project called “Tide Pool Platypus.” Trapped in a virtual world created by a Twitch streamer named Brady McKenna, the NFTs must fend off the memes that are corrupting their world by creating their own memes to fight back.
The game has a satirical edge, poking fun at the crypto industry’s jargon and culture.
Players can experience Aqua Prime in two ways. They can join Twitch and participate in the game as game masters, initiating boss battles using channel points. They can also join Discord and engage with the game’s content using AI-generated boss fights, leveling, and an economy bot that gives players who own various NFTs ownership over the game’s economy and income opportunities. The game has a TTRPG-inspired format that encourages role-playing, and players can earn rewards for nominating others for the best role-play.
The game’s Web3 aspect comes into play when players link their MetaMask wallet to Discord, unlocking special roles that give them new income opportunities and features in the game. Players can earn the TIDE token through gameplay, and NFTs can also be earned, giving players ownership over the economy in various ways.
Aqua Prime is a proof-of-concept game that shows what’s possible with Web3 and AI. The game offers a fun, safe, and lighthearted way to introduce the crypto-curious to Web3, and in a low-barrier way acts as an onboarding portal, so people can use the Dapps we build at District0x, and it gives creative ways to establish a wallet simply by playing a game. It pushes the boundaries of Web3 AI for storytelling and the meta aspect of connecting everything together.
At District0x, we believe in “Earn it, don’t buy it.”
We’re dedicated to building a community that rewards engagement, creativity, and hard work. Aqua Prime is just one example of how we’re making that happen. We’re using a mix of no-code solutions, open-source tools, hosted bots like Mee6, Start.it, Collabland and others, and our own tools to create a game that’s accessible to everyone.
We’ve built Aqua Prime on a public Replit-hosted instance of the bot, which means it can be freely forked by anyone. You can check out the code here: https://replit.com/@StreamTide/Aqua-Prime-or-GPT3-Testing#index.js.
We encourage everyone to contribute to the development of Aqua Prime. Anyone can add features, integrate their own favorite NFTs, and even earn bounties for contributing to the code.
Some players have already earned NFTs and become “owners” of the in-game Meme Factory and its in-game store. New players can also earn NFTs by joining the chat and using their creativity to negotiate with NPCs and game characters. One of our community members, GraspOnCrypto, held an NPC captive with a ransom and talked them out of a Meme Factory Medallion NFT, which gave them part-ownership over all in-game sales from the Meme Factory. Others have earned the ‘License to steal NFT’ and joined the thieves guild giving them access to the criminal side of the game economy.
We will continue to build out Aqua Prime and reward our most engaged community members with StreamTide & Meme Factory NFTs, memberships, and other perks, so stay tuned!
If you have any questions about the current developments, or if you simply want to join the fun and start playing, join our official Discord and get started now!
It’s Aqua Prime Time on the DappStream
After Aqua Prime’s successful launch in February, and @BradyMck_’s major overhaul of our official Discord server, the last episodes of the DappStream have been dedicated to navigate this new “minimum viable metaverse” and onboard our community to join the fight against the evil Boss.
In the latest DappStream episodes, Brady guides our community through this new gameplay, giving updates on new developments, future steps, and community rewards. To learn more about Aqua Prime, you can now rewatch the episodes:
You can also dive back into previous episodes on our Youtube Channel. 📺
A quick reminder that our DappStream schedule is once a week, focusing on quality over quantity:
- Tuesdays at 5 PM PT / Wednesdays at 2 AM UTC
Monthly Dev Updates
Ethlance
Our developers finished the Proposals list and tested adding/removing proposals on the Job-details page. We also started doing ui & back-end integration on the Job-contract page, and finished most of the profile pages for all user types. We then proceeded with implementing the Job-search page.
Furthermore:
- Implemented pulling token data (name, symbol) to show on profile pages.
- Cleaned up the database schema using addresses for jobs & users as ID columns.
- Implemented the Job-contract page, namely showing message history of proposals, invitations, arbitrations and direct messages. Some of those messages include smart contract interaction.
- Implemented querying and showing (candidate, employer, arbiter) messages, and got more requirement details for feedback and dispute messages.
- Implemented creating new invoices (ui, server, smart contract)
- Implemented raising & resolving disputes, along with UI improvements when certain actions can’t be taken. Continuing with the Invoice-detail page, after that accepting proposals, and inviting candidates by employers.
- Migrated district-server-config to monorepo: https://github.com/district0x/district-server-config/pull/1 — https://github.com/district0x/d0x-libs/pull/60
- Resolving small fixes in the end-to-end workflows — job creation, invoice creation, disputes & payment.
StreamTide
We recently moved some extra hands to focus on StreamTide’s development. We started looking into the Gitcoin Passport to see how we can integrate something similar in Streamtide, so that the users gain some reputation points by validating their social networks or ETH interactions. We also fixed a couple of small bugs in the ui component library.
We’re now putting all pieces together to push the initial implementation of Streamtide to Github. Still WIP as many functionalities are currently missing, and many things require polishing. Additionally, as part of this, we pushed some minor changes for some of our libraries, such as cljs-web3-next or district-web3-ui, in our monorepo.
In other news, last month Brady McKenna was invited to speak on Roll’s Token Tuesday Twitter Spaces. In this interview, Brady gives a good overview of Stream Tide, why he is building this, his recent implementation of AI, and the game for onboarding people to crypto.
You can listen to the recording of the spaces by following the link in the tweet below:
Transparency is a core value of district0x. You can find up-to-date disclosures on our overall progress in our GitHub Repository: https://github.com/district0x
District Proposals
Take these opportunities to earn more DNT and vote to either keep or get rid of the challenged districts. If you are on the winning side of the challenge, you will earn DNT from the Token-Curated Registry’s built-in incentives.
For more information on how proposals are now being migrated, please check out the District Proposal Rewards topic in this article.
Joining the district0x DAO
For more information about the district0x network,
• Head to our Onboarding Terminal for all links at a glance
• Check out our Education Portal for all things #web3
• Join the official Discord server or Telegram channel
• Watch the DappStream live or on our Youtube Channel
• Subscribe to email updates or to our Subreddit forum
