An abstract representation of a digital item not tied to the app/platform has some benefits:
- It can allow a market for them without me having to implement the market itself;
- That in turn makes the items themselves more valuable
But it also has many downsides and some significant:
- I don't have to implement the market but I have to conform all my app to work with that particular way of representing the item and I have to make interfaces to it all. If then I want to implement an internal market it has to be fully integrated with the outside.
- For ownership verifications it's much more heavy to assert ownership. As a practical example, in order to allow users an incentive to play when you signup you get a set of item "packs", with random contents generated when they're opened, the items in that pack can be used in tournaments/matches that require ownership of the items but in order to remove any benefit from creating multiple accounts to hoard items and resell them, the items in those packs are "owner_only". They can be used but not traded or sold. To do verifications for selling for instance, it's a simple db query, to do verifications of ownership before a match is started it's a simple db query. I would imagine it would become easily much heavier to do any of these simple things, or you might need to wait until your "purchases" are settled so that they show up, and etc.
- Then the blockchain itself. Is it connected to the outside world and managed by multiple parties? Can those multiple parties get together in a 51% party and rewrite the story of the blockain in which the assets used in my game are stored? Is it an internal blockchain? If it's internal why use it at all instead of a db with backups and consolidation?
I'm sure there's other considerations. The idea of a market for items that is larger than your app items is certainly interesting but not sure the logistics play out. Would love to see some ideas explored in that field though.
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