Prototype software allows players to earn bitcoins by playing retro games.
Play to Win Retro Games with Bitcoin
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According to Zebedee founder Christian Moss in his Feb. 12 tweet, payments could be made to nearby bars, conferences and meetups. The software is tentatively called “Bit-tendo”.
The tweet includes a video of someone playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on a small old school tube his TV. The TV shows his QR code on startup and asks for a bitcoin payment. The game will start running only after the payment has been submitted.
During gameplay, a “sats” counter is displayed that apparently counts how many Satoshi the player has earned as rewards so far. A satoshi, or sat, is the smallest divisible unit of Bitcoin, each representing 0.00000001 BTC. The display also shows a timer that counts down from 90 seconds to zero. When the timer hits zero, the game ends and your new QR code is displayed. Statements at the bottom and top of the image mean that the player can use his QR code to withdraw the village.
In the post, Moss said the software would eventually become a “free retro Bitcoin infuser for bars, conferences, meetups, and more.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Moss about how the software works. He said it runs on a computer or other device that can accept video streams. The game itself is he produced on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console, but the video is modified to show the village’s counters and timers along the way. The software tracks the movement of the video his stream to determine if the player has collected coins and updates the sathi counter each time a coin is collected.
Moss said the bar or club would require him to sign up for a custodial wallet with Zebedee or LNbits in order to fund the payment wallet. The wallet is connected to the Lightning He network, which allows for low transaction fees and fast payouts.
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Zebedee App is available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The screenshot shows that there are ‘load’ (deposit) and ‘withdraw’ (withdrawal) functions that the user can access after completing the Know Your Customer verification process.
Moss also explained how he came up with the idea for “Bit-tendo.” He tried to get people interested in playing and earning bitcoins at the Bitcoin conference, but he said attendees were more likely to play games they already knew rather than games designed “in-house.” Moss says he wants the software to work with any game, not just Super Mario Bros. 3.
“We also want users to be able to train the software to recognize events in any game they own so that it is ultimately game-agnostic.”
In a tweet showcasing the software, Moss said he would integrate Sonic The Hedgehog 2 into the software if the post received 200 retweets.
Moss has been an innovator since the inception of his game on blockchain. In 2014, he created Sarutobi, a game that allows players to control a monkey swinging through a jungle landscape and collect bitcoins. Moss’ Sarutobi is believed to be his first blockchain game, as it preceded the beta release of EverdreamSoft’s Spells of Genesis by about a year.
