The VP Monthly #4: Jan. 2019
Much of the Virtue Poker team was on holiday for most of the end of December, so we have consolidated the December and January reports. From here forward until our mainnet launch, we will publish this update the last week of each month.
The VP Monthly #3 was quite lengthy, detailing a significant change in strategy for our development team. This update assumes you have reviewed the previous update — click here to read it.
Development Update
We previously had concerns about Ethereum network performance for our production system. As a result, the Dev Team made a major architectural change, incorporating a sidechain to process many transactions off the Ethereum network. The sidechain is an Ethereum EVM Chain using the Proof of Authority consensus mechanism. This has allowed us to make huge progress, as we no longer have to wait for developments on the Ethereum network (Plasma, for example) to build a production-quality system.
Since the last update, the Dev Team has fully implemented the sidechain, and we have successfully played games in the sidechain. This is huge news for us, as it resolves one of the most critical issues that Ethereum developers ever have to confront. The system should now support a full player load without experiencing performance issues on the Ethereum network.
In another major milestone, the team implemented the first Justice in a running Virtue Poker system. If you aren’t familiar with the Virtue Poker Justice System, you can find details in our White Paper. The short version: Justices (which are software running on designated client computers) observe play on all tables, confirming action and filling in missing encryption keys for players who leave the table during a hand. Before the team added running Justices, a hand aborted if one or more players dropped out/disconnected during the hand.
Now that Justices have been implemented, hands play to completion regardless of the connection state of players. As a result, we were able to run a short Alpha v3 test in mid-December that incorporated a leaderboard. Over the four days of testing, we gave away a total of 37 ETH and had over 100 players thoroughly exercise the software. Development of the full Justice System is ongoing, and is expected to be complete and ready for testing in March.
The new player registration is now functional. The team is working on the mechanisms for making deposits and withdrawals within the user interface (UI) of the game rather than using an external web page. The team expects deposits and withdrawals to be fully functional on the sidechain in the next few days.
The Game Security team spent a significant amount of time developing the technical infrastructure to track in-game play data. This information will be used for analysis of game play to prevent fraudulent activity and keep games safe and secure.
Token Listing/Trading Capability
We are looking to enable trading and list our token 30 days prior to our mainnet MVP launch, we will provide an update with regards to this next month.
Regulatory
We have incorporated two business entities in Malta, and are incorporating a third entity in Spain for our Spanish employees. We have signed WH Partners, the top law firm in Malta, to handle our gaming license application. We are targeting mid-February to submit our application, and expect to be one of the first blockchain-based poker platforms to receive a license.
Team
We have added two new developers to the Dev Team, both of whom will start work in February. These developers will be helping us build new games, including Sit & Go and Spin & Go tournaments.
Marketing
The marketing team built and implemented the Alpha v3 promotion that we ran right before the holidays. The team is now working on promotions for upcoming Alpha and Beta tests and is building out the company’s launch strategy.
Conclusion
We are very pleased with the progress we have made in the past two months, particularly with the new sidechain architecture. We have gathered a lot of valuable feedback from our players’ participation in the first three Alpha releases, and will continue to do so in our upcoming test releases. We will continue to update you monthly, and are happy to hear from you — please email our CEO, Ryan (ryan@virtue.poker) or our CMO, Dan (dan@virtue.poker) with any concerns or issues.