Egretia

The Egretia platform and its EGT token are the frontline technologies in their developers’ effort to combine the HTML5 and blockchain to create an all-in-one engine for the easier and faster development of blockchain games and other apps.

What Is Egretia?

While 2019 brought many twists and turns to the crypto scene, one of the arguably major events taking place in its first half was the meteoric rise of the Egretia platform which certainly raised many eyebrows among its supporters and detractors alike. The reason for this was its somewhat unexpected inclusion in the top 50 coin club in which the project, which its developers describe as “the world’s first HTML5 blockchain engine and platform”, managed to jump over many of its better-known competitors. The project was launched with a mission goal of bringing together 200,000 developers and 1 billion HTML5 devices to the blockchain world. The team claims to be already engaged in blockchain game development, with plans to release a blockchain-based football game Football King as one of the initial projects showcasing the strength of this model.

The rise of Egretia went hand-in-hand with the work on its testnet release which saw the light in June 2019, some 11 months after its initial coin offering (ICO) took place. The project is supported by Egretia Foundation, an organization based in Singapore. Yet, most of its developers come from China in which the majority of trading with EGT token actually takes place. Egretia is helmed by Peter Huang and Dirk Meyer who have backgrounds in project management and game development. The project is also linked to Egret Technology, a company claiming to have more than 200,000 developers who are already working on perfecting HTML5 workflow which has reportedly covered 1 billion mobile devices.

What is Egretia Attempting to Achieve?

The Egretia project was launched in an attempt to overcome various challenges which its developers identified as main obstacles on the path to fusing blockchain with HTML5 techology:

• Egretia aims to complement the rise of HTML5 technology and its applications in the gaming market, by providing it with a native set of tools required to create fully functional blockchain games. The rise of the HTML5 programming language (HyperText Markup Language) for serving content on the internet followed in the footsteps of the evolution of smartphones, instant messaging applications and mobile gaming. HTML5 offers cross-platform operability, meaning that the users do not have to actually download HTML5 games or applications since they can start playing just by clicking on the appropriate link. The same link can be easily shared with other users, which guarantees their easy circulation and virality on social media. With an estimated 4 billion users running HTML5-based games, Egretia hopes to tap into a lucrative market and streamline the development of content whose audience is already familiar with the technology and well-experienced in using gaming apps.
• The use of dedicated tools for the development of blockchain games will make it easier for prospective developers to do their work without having specialist technical knowledge. Based on this, the work on game development will no longer be burdened by the need to understand all of its technical underpinnings. At the same time, this will open the door for those whose creative vision is their stronger suit compared to their technological experience. Egretia will feature a blockchain software development kit (SDK) for easy linking between HTML5 games and a dedicated blockchain development suite. Egretia has a blockchain interface layer capable of supporting not only Egretia’s public chain, but also Ethereum, EOS and other chains down the line.
• Blockchain functionality of Egretia should allow developers to scale better in line with the increasing public demand for HTML5 apps and deliver greater transparency to the entire process. As Egretia aims to minimize bottlenecks in the interaction between developers and users, its focus on transparency is promoted as the actual shortcut to achieving this goal. For starters, it aims to integrate well-known blockchain functionalities such as integral digital wallets and smart contracts, which are supposed to streamline the process of making transactions between various games. In-game items, for example, can be recorded on the blockchain and the platform will keep track of an entire process involving their creation as well. Thus, there should be no confusion regarding the true ownership over the in-game digital assets.
• Egretia’s ecosystem will keep its cogs running with the help of EGT token which ensures decentralized circulation of virtual assets. EGT token is the main currency of the Egretia ecosystem and is mainly used to allow users to trade with virtual assets between various games developed in it. The token offers an opportunity for advertisers and developers to use it to reward the players’ engagement with their creations and help the content creators monetize in-game traffic in an easier manner. Once the system reaches maturity, the tokens should offer value outside games themselves. Egretia team also hopes to see the token become a shield against asset inflation as well as a tool which will minimize the risks associated with the use of credit cards when purchasing stuff related to games.

How Does Egretia Work?

As the above issues often go beyond the domain of gaming, the Egretia platform is being fashioned to offer features which will allow it to handle more general tasks as well. So far, the main promised functionalities include:

• Blockchain game development component, which consists of a complete HTML5 blockchain engine and development kit. It is home to Egret Engine, Egretia Server, and Egretia SmartIDE systems. Egret Engine is an open-source HTML5 engine that helps developers create 2D or 3D games, with strong support for cross-platform functionality. SmartIDE is a dedicated cloud-based tool for smart contract editing, debugging and publishing. It is supposed to help developers write Solidity contracts directly from the browser.
• Game distribution platform. This segment allows users to gain access to HTML5 and blockchain games and play them. It functions as the main decentralized application (dApp) on the Egretia, allowing the players to obtain the platform’s EGT tokens via the app and make payments with them. This component operates with the help of the Proof-of-Game (POG) mechanism which provides incentives for the users who get access to tokens by playing or sharing their games. The POG requires the players to actively participate in the gaming activities to become eligible to receive appropriate rewards.
• Closely related to the above is Egretia’s virtual asset exchange component. It allows players to trade their digital assets across numerous games. It is supposed to be released in late 2019.
• Egretia’s distributed communications and storage platform. This component will allow the platform’s node-based blockchain model to support decentralized communication between various types of data and provide storage of virtual items and other assets.
• Egretia’s advertising platform. This platform component is the home to various smart contracts and the engine for electronic payments. Its main task is to allow users to buy advertising slots for various products developed with Egretia.
• Egretia Incubator is supposed to help the developer teams and individuals, serving as the bridge which connects them with the gaming and other user communities which are parts of the Egretia ecosystem.

What Are the Egretia Blockchain’s Features?

Starting out from its Ethereum-based origins, Egretia moved on to the development of its own blockchain. While the platform’s testnet is currently online, the team is moving ahead with the planned launch of Egretia mainnet which is scheduled to take place over the course of the next year. Once launched, the mainnet should offer the following features:

• Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism, similar to the one used by EOS.
• Initially, the transaction speeds offered by the platform should reach some 2,000 TPS. The platform’s use of the DPoS should make it possible to deliver better performance as the platform becomes more mature.
• Egretia’s blockchain is big on the flexible introduction of various modifications to it, ranging from the block sizes and generation times to the applicable fees. No changes are planned to be implemented prior to securing the voting support among the nodes.
• Egretia’s development toolset is planned to offer support for the majority of popular programming languages which are supposed to streamline the development process. In addition, Egretia will feature Smart Coding Assistance system which should provide supported languages with advanced features such as intelligent code completion, real-time error feedback, reference search, jump to definitions, etc.

EGT Token Availability

The EGT token infuses the Egretia platform with a required blood flow needed to keep all of its components up and running. It is an ERC-20 token which is supposed to perform a stand-in role prior to the launch of the Egretia’s native token sometime in 2020. Once this happens, these tokens will be migrated to the tokens featured on the Egretia blockchain.

EGT is found at the heart of the Egretia’s payment and settlement system which provides a financial backbone for all interactions taking place among the participants in the network. In addition to enabling the trading with virtual goods, the token should be easy to integrate with any game developed on the Egretia.

As of August 2019, the currency’s market cap stood at USD 203 million, down from its all-time high amounting to USD 387 million in July 2019. Out of the total supply which is capped at 8 billion units, more than 4 billion tokens are found in circulation in August 2019. EGT is available for trading on cryptocurrency exchanges such as KuCoin and others. Acquired tokens can be stored in any ERC-20 compatible wallet, at least until the developers launch the currency’s official wallet which is in the works.