Challenges of Scaling Luck

This unprecedented scaling for a blockchain-based ecosystem has brought some interesting challenges with it, which the Federation has been addressing. The Federation is committed to fairness. Luck determination is one area the Federation continues to watch, as algorithms calculate probabilities affecting and resulting in fairness.

Scaling Impacts

One resource intensive usage area has been where the Federation gives NFT game cards to Explorers as part of the rewards for mining efforts. In order to do this, the Random Number Generator oracle (off-chain) feeds random numbers onto the Smart Contract (on-chain). As the smart contracts have been working out the chance per mine, on occasion, the on-chain Smart Contract has not had enough CPU. This has caused some error messages for some Alien Worlds Explorers, such as the “Bag Locked Error.”

Scaling Caused Too Much Luck for Awhile

Another parameter that has been considered by the Federation is that the number of NFT game cards issued accelerated excessively for a time, becoming unsustainable. While the Federation does want to make it worthwhile for Explorers to mine for NFT game cards, the Federation must set limits and dynamic strategies to ensure fairness and possible good fortune for each Miner.

Ensuring Fairness While Scaling

To make the Alien Worlds Metaverse more efficient and scalable, and support our WAX ecosystem to also be efficient and scalable, our technical gurus have designed a new NFT game card drop mechanism.

New Method for Allocations

While Explorers will still get credit for luck on each mine, NFT game card allocations will be decided by a script which will run once an hour and take into account the cumulative amount of luck generated per miner during that hour.

New Method for NFT Game Card Allocation

In the new method for NFT game card allocation being instituted, the Federation will award a set number of NFT game cards of each Rarity per hour. The more luck a Miner generates during that hour, the greater chance the Miner has to get these NFT game cards.

Although these will be changed from time-to-time without notice, the initial drop rates per hour will be as follows:

• Legendary : 1
• Epic : 4
• Rare : 16
• Common : 64
• Abundant : 256

These rates are roughly equivalent, but in some cases, slightly lower than the amounts previously issued. These rates will be subject to continuous review by the Federation and updated, as needed.

Updates Launch

Timing of Launch

Launch time for these changes is planned for the window of 15:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC on Wednesday 16th June 2021.

Anticipated Improvements

The Federation believes that this new approach will greatly improve the efficiency of Alien Worlds mining and anticipates that all Explorers should see fewer issues with respect to CPU usage in the future. In addition, the Federation anticipates that these changes will improve the efficiency of the greater WAX ecosystem, of which Alien Worlds is a part. These changes being instituted will also make it easier for the Federation to add new functionality in the future.

Claiming Reminder

Explorers do not have to make any changes as a result of these updates, but they will still need to claim their NFTs, as described in the recent article.