(13) My experience of using and my understanding of Ronin chain

      I wrote in the first article in the first month of playing Axie Infinity, I was scammed. On Discord a scammer pretended to be official technical support and tricked me into filling out the form, and took advantage of my misunderstanding of the Secret Recovery Phrase. After he got my Secret Recovery Phrase, all the assets in my account were transferred away, and I could not retrieve them, my loss was heavy. (The scammer uses social engineering attacks).This thing happens a lot of times in Discord.A lot of players have been scammed.We all can't get back our Axies even if they are just on Ronin chain.

I also mentioned that trades should be prohibited for a period of time when NFTs are transferred as gifts ,because this action could limit the next action of scammers. I suggest using emails, mobile phones and other secondary confirmations. However, these confirmation with the help of email and mobile phone verification code is considered to be a centralized method and can't be applied to blockchain projects. Then why not consider using Smart Contracts on the Ronin chain?

Smart contract is a scripting language on the blockchain. If/then conditions are added to the script, the transaction on the blockchain can mirror and simulate the contract in the real world.

I have three kinds of Smart Contract for the security and use of Axie assets:

1. After being given as a gift, the transaction time limit Smart Contract, that is, when Axie or other NFTs are given to others as a gift, they can't be traded in the market for a period of time (24 hours, 48 ​​hours).This kind of Smart Contract will give players to retrieve NFT after be scammed. For example, if Axie or Items are lost,now they can only be banned and can't be retrieved. This kind of Time Limit Smart Contract can be opened or cloesed by the player using Ronin wallet.

2. Use transaction password in smart contract. The Secret Recovery Phrase is not well understood by many blockchain new comers. Make new smart contract for them to enter a 6 numbers password will be good. In Ronin wallet, Players can decide to use transaction password or not.

Firstly, users should activate the transaction password function in his account, enter and confirm the transaction password and remind words, then send this smart contract to Ronin Chain. After that, every time a player needs to trade a pet, he/she needs to enter password and then confirm it on the Ronin wallet. Finally, when executed, the transaction will be automatically compared with the password in the smart contract, if password is right then transaction can finish, if wrong, the transaction will be cancelled.

Although this smart contract takes more steps, it is more in line with the habits of players and will greatly reduce the risk of asset loss after players are cheated by fraudsters of Secret Recovery Phase.

If the transaction password is forgotten, players can check the remind words on the chain. If a person can't remember the transaction password after got remind words on Ronin Chain, then I think he/she may also have problems in daily life. With bad memory and low IQ , those people are really not good to enter block-chain projects, because they will easily lose everything!

According to my software work experience, there is not technical problem to implement Password Smart Contract on Ronin chain. I don't know why this security measure has not been adopted. Indeed, the SLP consumption plan I mentioned may have been prepared by the project team but not adopted it. However, as there are so many cases that Secret Recovery Phase were defrauded by scammers and players have suffered property losses, the project team remained no prevention and don't have any safety improvement measures. This really disappoints me.

3. Rent NFT Contract. Owners can set rental Axie, land, items and other things for a period of time, or set breed times of Axie, set the rental fee, send the rental contract to the chain, there should be a Rent Market ,it will show all rent contracts. The NFT rent contract has been applied to some other projects, so I suggest Axie Infinity use rent smart contract as soon as possible.

I still insist on my view that before Meta-universe, we must work hard on the security of digital assets. Otherwise, the scammers on the blockchain project will continue to be active and the number of victims will continue to increase. Axie Infinity and other blockchain projects should consider security of digital assets first.

Besides Security, let me share my understanding of the Ronin chain. This is actually my blind spot. There may be some theoretical errors. After all, I have not studied the core technology or use the blockchain dedicated programming language Solidity , I only know that it is similar to Javascript; I also don't have a way to obtain the composition and structure of the Ronin chain network, but I will continue to learn and summarize the content of blockchain technology.

As the side chain of Ethereum, Ronin chain should also need at least a few or even a dozen super computers to form a computing chain network. Recently, the American VC company A16Z invested in Axie Infinity. According to the news, this funding will be used to purchase hardware, I understand that it should be invested in super computers.

Bitcoin and Ethereum mining are based on exhaustive calculations of all mining machines in the mining pool. It is a high-energy-consuming solution. On the Ronin chain, RON is a POS (Proof of Stake) crypto currency. The chain is currently used for smart contract processing, it is a clean one, that is its advantage. As for technology maturity, it needs time to verify.

It currently supports the transactions of millions of player accounts on its chain, but there are also some functions and effects that affect the experience of use. I try to explain from my personal experience and understanding. If there is any wrong content, please correct me.

      1. SLP Claim. After a player purchases Axie and creates a team,he/she will play the game through the client of the mobile phone or computer to obtain the SLP, the first step is to process the interactive data with the Axie Infinity centralized server. At this time, the SLP that a player see in Inventory is in the central server database. If the net is OK, after playing a battle, players then go to see his/her Inventory, SLP number will update immediately, but these SLP has not been on Roninchain yet. They only exist in centralized server database. Only when the player authorizes to claim SLP, the SLP initiates a request from the centralized server for processing on the chain. This part of the operation is executing an ERC20 smart contracts, increase the number of SLP, the smallest unit is single one.

After the SLP Claim operation, the computer in the computing power network spends a certain amount of time to calculate, and at least half of the computers confirm (consensus algorithm), and the result may fail, because more than half of the computers need to get feedback confirmation results within a certain time period , the main reason for the failure may be caused by network delay.

For a distributed computing network, the number of computers is not positively related to the ability to process smart contract instructions on the chain. The reason is below: when it needs to process a large number of smart contracts, it is better to have more computers, then each computer can do less work, the time-consuming of all contracts will be shortened after parallel execution. However, because it is a distributed ledger (database), when the computers are mutually confirming the execution results of the smart contract, the large number of computers causes the time-consuming mutual confirmation of the execution results, and more than half of the results are not obtained over a certain period of time. The computer confirms that the execution result of this smart contract will be considered invalid. Therefore, it is not that the more computers in Ronin chain, the better! It should be related to the number of smart contracts to be processed.The detailed mathematical model calculation will not be discussed here.

2.Trade pets. I know many players want to buy lowest price pets in the market. After all, all of us can see these Axies on the market. But no one can buy them, because they have been bought or been taken off, what we see is just a piece of outdated data on Ronin chain! When a player wants to sell Axie, he actually initiate a smart contract on the Ronin chain. I don't care the source code. Maybe source code can be seen on the Ronin chain. I care about the logical content and execution of this smart contract. In this smart contract, the object of the transaction and the price are specified. This smart contract needs more than half of the computers in the Ronin chain to confirm before it can be eventually seen by the players in the market. And when I want to buy a pet, I actually finish a query operation and browse a certain number of goods in smart contracts.

      Since the ledger is distributed, the contract object I currently see is actually only the ledger recorded by one or some computers in the Ronin-chain, and the contents of other ledger may have been completed in the contract, but Synchronization (sync) is not implemented in all distributed ledgers. So we can see but can't complete such a contract. Trading pets is the same. Purchasing pets is actually executing a smart contract on the Ronin chain. The execution result must be confirmed by more than half of the computers in the chain to succeed, instead of interacting with a centralized server for a few milliseconds. That's easy in Centralized games. So buying a pet often takes a long time, unlike centralized games, which can be completed in less than a second. We have to learn to understand that the basic unit of smart contract execution time is seconds, not milliseconds for ordinary centralized online games to process requests.

3. Withdraw from Ronin to Metamask Wallet. When a user wants to withdraw from Ronin wallet to Metamask wallet, once the transaction is initiated, it can't be cancelled. I understand that this request has been submitted by the side chain to the public chain Ethereum, and the operation of Ethereum consumes Gas fees. In order to avoid a large amount of input on the chain and infinite loops, Ethereum processes transactions and smart contracts. A certain amount of Gas is consumed in one step, and when the Gas is consumed, this content will not be executed again. After the transaction request of the side chain is submitted to the public chain, the user can’t cancel it, this can prevent Ethereum from encountering the attack of some side chains continuously sending requests, similar to the DoS or DDoS attacks on the network, because if the side chain wants to do a large number of invalidation and When a harmful request is made, a large amount of cost needs to be invested, I mean the cost is determined by a protection of Ethereum. If you complain about the gas fee of withdraw from Ronin chain, it is wrong ,I think.

4.     Query the transaction status of assets such as AXS. 

     After I stake AXS in website, I can do a restake operation every 24 hours. After clicking the button and authorizing the Ronin Wallet, a pop-up window will tell you to view it on explorer, but the page is often empty when you click it.

At this time, the asset transaction process should still be in the process of being executed or confirmed by the chain computers, and the conditions for show on the Ronin chain have not been met. What we all are accustomed to is that the requests submitted by ourselves are processed immediately.

But in block chains, the time consumption of smart contract processing and the centralized server processing request may be several orders of magnitude difference. It is also the same when deposit from metamask wallet to Ronin wallet. 

5. Retrieve the digital asset after it is lost. All transaction information on Ronin chain can be queried on the chain, but the work load is an important constraint. On November 2, 2021, after official personnel were attacked by scammers using social engineering on Discord, causing some user asset losses, the official announced compensation for players and performed block scanning operations, but this must be related Technical staff devote a certain amount of time and energy. For players who are usually deceived by scammers, if their assets are also lost, the official has no manpower and resources to scan the blocks for them one by one, and they can only make the players themselves responsible.

As a newcomer in blockchain world, by playing the Axie Infinity game, I have learned a lot of blockchain knowledge and made many new friends in the past three months. I also hope that more people like Axie Infinity. More people are willing to learn about the good projects in blockchain, learn blockchain knowledge, and contribute to the development of blockchain. Through hard work, they can make more money in blockchain world.

However difficult it might seem, the challenge will be overcome.

We need to Learn more, communicate more, Summarize more. LFG!!!