AiWar.io is an open-ended project of decentral.ee, currently with no external funding (get in touch if you want to support it!). AiWar’s objective is that of creating a decentralized and peer-to-peer tool to play any turn based game with on-chain validation and real stakes.
AiWar is a full dApp, with 100% of the business logic running as Ethereum smart contracts, and with a simple interface built in react.js that will be stored and served from IPFS. The whole experience will be available on AiWar.io and in a desktop application in the future.
AiWar is a p2p gaming platform, with the capacity of handling any turn-based game. While anyone will be able to create and join matches, the anonymous nature of Ethereum will likely lead users to implement Artificial Intelligence algorithms to play for them, as this will give them higher chances of winning, at least in traditional games, hence the name AiWar.io
The Go challenge between a top player, Ke Jie, and Google’s AlphaGo algorithm last year was covered by news outlets worldwide, and not many know this, but the startup that actually developed this algorithm was found and bought by Google in 2014 for 500 Million dollars.
The development of Ai Algorithms is immensely valuable, and we want to create a platform for engineers in this field to prove their worth, by competing openly in a permissionless, global fashion.
The platform is open to any kind of game, supporting both traditional sequential turn based games, as well as simultaneous turn games (by using a commit-reveal scheme). By design, the platform will allow anyone to contribute by developing new games, simply by coding a smart contract that will act as a “rule enforcer”.
We expect the permissionless nature of the platform to attract a community of developers to code and deploy new games to the platform, pushing further the kind of games (and abstractly the sort of problems) that AI can learn to solve.
In order to bootstrap a competitive challenge between developers, we are planning to launch a special Champion mode, whereby users are encouraged to challenge the champion, in order to be recognized as the best in the category, and also to win an increasingly high pool of prize money.
While lots of games have been developed along the years to try and create more complex puzzles for mathematicians to solve (for example chess on an infinite board), we have implemented an extra element of innovation, available through the introduction of different game modes.
On our platform, users will be able to create new variables in the form of different betting schemes and thus incentive mechanisms.
One of our initial experiments involves open table games, where players can sell their spot at the table to others. Another game mode we are experimenting with is bidding wars, where each move is auctioned to the highest bidder.
While the best AI may win, they may lose money in the process, with a sneaky human player outbidding them in a decisive move.
The objective of all these customizations is that of creating a new and challenging sandbox for developers to design and test new games, algorithms, and situations, with real money at stake.
We envision this platform as leading to the emergence of new games, and a new exciting form of AI engineering, where different teams of developers compete publicly over the Ethereum blockchain, and pitch their algorithms against each other, in an Ai War.
