Hash Rush is a world first combining gaming with crypto mining. It’s a novel concept to bring together real-time strategy as well as genuine hashing, and I spoke to leads Kristaps Vaivods and Maris Ziedonis about this genuinely original project. Enjoy this interview, conducted just hours before their presale went live.
Note: Hash Rush has just entered Pre-ICO, and details of how to participate can be found here, with much more information in the discussion below.
Hey! How’s it going there?
Kris: Awesome – but busy. Things are really going crazy with the pre-ICO coming up!
Well, thanks for taking the time so close to this going live. To kick this off, I read your whitepaper and it would be great if you could clarify what the project is, as it appears you’re making a game, an ERC20 token and a mining pool.
Kris: Sure. What we’re doing is we’re creating a real-time strategy game, and while you’re playing, you will have a chance to mine mineable cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, ZCash and Monero. To get all of this functionality out of the game, we will have our own mining pool which people can join and mine with Hash Rush.
They will distribute a percentage of their hashing power to the players, and players can buy hashing power from them. The economy of Hash Rush is powered by our own ERC20 standard token called Rush Coin. Every transaction that will be made in the game or between players and the Hash Rush mining pool will happen in Rush Coins.
Hash Rush has a great - and unique - graphical style thanks to excellent art direction.
Which of you is more on the gaming side and which of you is more on the mining side?
Kris: I am more on the mining side – that’s how I started out in this.
Maris: And I am more of a game designer and coming up with concepts and ideas.
Watch the first alpha footage of Hash Rush gameplay with commentary from Maris Ziedonis .
OK – so the game is a browser-based game, right? Does the act of playing the game actively mine currencies?
Kris: Yes, you will be mining, but you don’t have to be at your PC.
Maris: You don’t need to be there 24/7 – it will continue to mine even while you’re asleep.
And is it actually using the player’s PC hardware to mine? For instance, if I’m firing up Claymore, for example, to mine Ethereum, it uses my graphics card and PC resources to hash. Does playing Hash Rush do the same?
Kris: No - we’ve had a few people asking this question, actually. The game isn’t mining on your computer. It’s not using any of your hardware. The game brings cloud mining – basically, what you do is get the hashing power from people who have mining farms or special rigs for them, but not your own computer hardware in any way.
Early in-game footage - and it's shaping up beautifully.
So are you going to be running your own pool as with any other standard mining pool, such as Suprnova or MiningPoolHub? Will it be the case that anyone in the public can just join in and mine and contribute a small % as normal?
Kris: Yeah, that’s what we are introducing in Q1 2018 – we are introducing an open mining pool that anyone can join. They can then decide if they want to mine Ethereum or Ethereum Classic in the beginning, or they can sell their hashing power to the gamers who are playing.
To sell hashing power, is that going to be operating like NiceHash or something like that? How will that work?
Kris: It’s similar to NiceHash as a platform where you rent out your hashing power, only NiceHash doesn’t have the interactive elements to it.
Right – that makes sense. It does make me wonder how much a user can expect to earn, then.
Kris: Well, when you go to a cloud mining platform and you pay to rent some hashing power to make some money, it will be the same in Hash Rush. You will buy in-game miners that are equal to 100kh/sec of mining power. You can calculate how much you will make at whatever price the cryptocurrencies have at the time.
When I started mining, I didn’t really earn that much until after a few months when Ether really started hitting $50 for one, and then upwards. The same goes for mining: people need to understand that it’s a little bit of investment into the long run.
The Space Pirates - I've got a feeling they're going to be a popular faction.
So each mining character in the game equates to 100kh/sec of real-world mining power?
Kris: Yes, exactly.
OK cool. Who then is the target here – is it gamers, is it established miners… who in your mind is Hash Rush going to appeal to?
Kris: I think that at first we’ll be appealing to gamers who have heard of cryptocurrencies but haven’t really taken any steps to get into it. Hash Rush brings this to the table, allowing them to mine currencies and understand how this is happening.
They will be able to get Ethereum and Ethereum Classic to your wallet, and then opens up a whole new world you can explore after that. That’s our main goal – reaching gamers who have not yet really gotten involved in cryptocurrencies yet.
Will you be creating wallets for the different currencies within the browser interface so that newcomers don’t have to set up separate wallets for themselves?
Kris: Well, we’ve been giving this a lot of thought and are not certain yet. Having an in-game wallet will be much easier than sending the user to MyEtherWallet and having them go through all the steps themselves, but then of course there’s always the security concerns. We will have to see how that turns out, but we’re thinking about it.
The Highborn elves - adding a fantasy flair to the sci-fi vibe.
So as a gamer, what can I enjoy as a benefit of participating in the ICO?
Kris: First, you will get a bonus on payouts – a 25% bonus if you act fast. Second, you will get unique tradeable content such as a unique mining card that is going to be equal to 2MH/sec mining power. You will also get unique skins and titles in the game too.
People who participate in the presale and ICO can choose between the three factions we start with: Ernacks, Highborn Elves and Space Pirates. You can join the game early, and because we’re expecting a really high turnout early, we understand that every colony needs to be backed by real hashing power, so there’s a chance that people will have to queue up for the game. Thus, people who join the presale and ICO first will get to play the game first.
When will the game first be playable?
Maris: We’re finishing up the MVP now, and we’re expecting the MVP with Ernacks to be finished on the 1st of October. The two other factions will be finished in December right before Christmas. Pre-ICO participants will have the chance to try out the beta version and tell us their thoughts on it. That’s going to be even earlier – we hope to have it ready in the middle of September.
OK, so let’s say I am a newcomer and I am interested and I want to get involved in the ICO. Let’s say I send you my Ether… what then? I’ve shipped off my money to you – how do I get my tokens?
Kris: If you participate with Ethereum, you send your ETH to our smart contract which will automatically, when it receives the funds, will generate the Rush Coins and send them to your wallet. So you will get them right around the time we receive the money – it will happen automatically.
If you choose to participate with Ethereum Classic or Bitcoin, then when you go to our ICO page you will accept the terms and conditions and input your email address. We’ll then contact you about the Ethereum address we’ll send the Rush Coins to.
The Ernacks will be the first playable faction.
So are you going to create an Ethereum address, or will people have to have created one for themselves?
Kris: Everybody who participates and wants to hold Rush Coins should have an Ethereum address.
Which wallet would you recommend is the easiest for setting up and getting that address?
Kris: I would use an online wallet called MyEtherWallet. It’s the best out there. It’s really secure and it’s very easy – you just go to the page, enter a password and you get your Ethereum wallet file. After that you can easily go to the same web page and open it up with the same passwords, and you then have a wallet.
You also don’t have to download the whole blockchain, so that’s the easiest way. I don’t use any other wallets – I don’t trust mobile phone wallets and stuff like that. MyEtherWallet isn’t really an online wallet. They have created a great way to help people create wallets and easily see your tokens too.
Am I correct that at this point, anyone who wants to participate must send 50 ETH, 5 BTC, 1000 ETC or 1000QTUM at a minimum - but after September 13th, people can get in for as little as 0.1 ETH? Kris: Yes, that is right. We are having a pre-sale now. The funds will be send back if you send less then that
OK, well thanks very much – I’m definitely keen to discuss the gameplay side more once the pre-ICO has launched. Good luck with that, guys!
Kris: Thanks, it was nice talking to you!
Maris: Let’s keep in touch.
You can learn more about Hash Rush on the official site, as well as check out their Steemit presence by following @nume. I'll soon be posting a follow-up interview that goes into more details into the the gameplay itself. Thanks for reading!
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thanks for the interview!
Pre-sale is too expensive for me, but I'll try to get in with one or two ETH in ICO. just want to see where this is going... I doubt there is much ROI to be expected though
Well I'm keen to see - so much of this depends on the execution of the game itself, I think, as having mining farms and mining pools is nothing new, but their take on having this kind of front end and gamification of mining certainly is a pretty novel concept (maybe done, albeit slightly differently, by one or two others that have come to my attention since publishing this). Thanks for the comment.
Not the first... Huntercoin has been around for years. but unlike RushCoin they didn't give super unfair advantages to the rich (gold cards + 25%).... might be the worst pay to win ever at a min of 14k USD to get in. I liked the GUI and was interested in playing... but RushCoin Devs can't be Gamers or they would have known to not give advantages like that for dollars... should have just done a presale and opened the beta to investors. Game can never be fair now..... I hear these "gold" cards give you permanent hash for free so.... who pays for that?? oh the little guy does of course. if you have 14k to burn send it to me and atleast you will get a couple rigs that hash at roughly 720Mhs together and we can just go play league.
Well from my understanding, because it is not directly competitive in the 1-1 sense, and they're planning to even out faction allocation once the game launches, they're actively trying to make it more fair and even to avoid exactly what you're describing. Plus once you're in control of characters (units) you have that hashing power for yourself.
Thanks for letting me know about Huntercoin - I had never heard of it. Someone else mentioned Beyond the Void as well, which I am looking into it. They seem a LITTLE different in that with Hash Rush you're actually mining Ethereum etc, not just the in-game currency/tokens, which seems the case with Huntercoin and Beyond the Void... but I am new to the other two and may be wrong. Will definitely investigate further.
I think you're wrong that "the little guy does of course" - the Hash Rush team are establishing their own mining farm and have raised a fair amount of money from the whales who get in early (presale/pre-ICO), who ultimately are the real funders of the game's development... think of the big ticket rewards on a Kickstarter - that's all they've secured for now.
Smaller investments are possible from September 13th onwards (from as little as 0.1 ETH) where everyone can get a slice. They need to incentivise the big investors now so that they can secure the funds to get this game out there.
I know it sounds like I'm straight up defending them, so I just want to be clear:
I am in no way affiliated with Hash Rush or the team, I don't get anything from them for publishing this article or writing these comments, and this is not in any way official.
Huntercoin is a legit coin that is mined in the game and traded on polo.
I do like the idea that it is a GUI cloud mining operation.
I do not like the bonuses for the whales... if you are marketing it to gamers not whales then rushcoin will have to be traded like any other coin its value should be the incentive... it is a unfair advantage that they will get a permanent hashrate regardless of difficulty on top of the 25% bonus coins they will get. I think it is naive to think that no matter what they will not pass on the cost of maintaining that permanent hashrate on to other users.
As far as the game development even crap coins like EROS raise over 10 million... they did not have to go down this road.. they are just money hungry and average users will end up having a paying for the permanent mining cost and hardware to maintain that hashrate.
As far as big ticket rewards on kickstarter those are usually symbolic if they are unattainable in the future such as meet and greets or launch parties ect.. I have never seen a kickstarter that offered a product to the rich that was never to going be obtainable by regular people, which is what rush coin is doing. By giving out gold cards that I would never have a chance of getting... so no matter how much money I would spend through the course of doing business with Rush even if it is 100k over time... these whales will always be better then me...
total turn off for me and probably many gamers.... I was mid filling out ico stuff before I realized it and now I probably will never participate in the game. I will wait for china or someone to clone the game and play on a level field with everyone else.
These are some really interesting points - thanks for sharing. I am in touch with the developers and likely have another interview coming up next week, and will ask them about these concerns you raise. Thanks for engaging and for the serious thoughts here!
So I wanted to post this for full disclosure - less than a month after posting this article I entered into discussion with the Hash Rush project leads and have been on the team for the last 2 weeks, in a marketing capacity (which also explains my lack of Steemit posts during this time). So now I am affiliated with the Hash Rush team, but was not at the time of writing either the interview or the comments before this one.
A new playground begins! its great . thankyou @badastroza
You're welcome - glad you enjoyed it!
You are welcome too @badastroza
I do think they have a lot of work cut out for them if they plan on attracting the farming sim market. People play these types of games because they are highly immersive and varied in what you can do...I don't see that at all yet.
Maybe I don't understand the market, but I would imagine an indie feel with sprites would be 10x faster to develop and would make it far easier to create a full feature game. Furthermore I think there is a strong crossover with retro/indie gaming audience in the crypto space.
Keeping up pace with the level of detail they have now doesn't seem likely. Right now it is just a barebones cute graphical representation of cloud mining power.
Have you seen Huntercoin? It is a lot more like what you describe (thanks to @taaveti for telling me about it).
I'm very keen to see where the devs go. It's certainly an ambitious project and the whitepaper/game design document (they're kinda combined) has some amazing ideas which they need the team at Tractor, Set, GO to pull off. I'm hoping they can do it, as it has so much potential!
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Great interview and amazingly new concept.
If it becomes successful, then people can mine cryptocurrencies while playing games. It's incredible!
Entertainment will give us earning. Wow.
It will really become very much popular if it comes in mainstream and becomes available to common people for free, just like steemit.
Thanks @badastroza for informing us about it through this great post. :)
Thanks @nitesh9 - glad you liked it. I'm pretty interested in getting involved with this project more seriously, and will likely join the ICO on 13 September. This is a very interesting concept indeed.
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This is truly a great concept! I hope it is a huge success! Thanks for sharing, upvoted and resteemed... Followed as well, please give me a follow!
Awesome, thanks for the vote and the resteem. Glad you liked the post!
Thanks for sharing the interview, it would be awesome to get more honest and simple interviews like this from other gaming focused ICO's in this space.
Thanks for the feedback. I agree - and really have to thank Kris and Maris for being so open to talking even at such a busy time (they took 30 minutes out of their schedule on the exact same day that they were launching their presale!) - but having the project leads on something like this accessible on Slack and what not just adds a much-needed level of transparency one doesn't get from every ICO out there.
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I must say this is quite revolutionary idea and a very nice interview mate covers everything.
Sadly, this is little too much for me so waiting for 13th September it is.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to post a follow-up a little more focused on the gameplay soon. Yep, 50 ETH / 5 BTC is a pretty huge ask! 13th September for me too!
Yeah, that's all pretty nuts. For more-or-less the whole time since this was posted, BTC was around $4000. So A 5 BTC price tag is worth about $20,000. That's rather excessive for a game. Maybe I missed the point where the game has a better value than a car?
Then, it'll go down a lot on 9/13. 50 ETH down to 0.1 ETH? That's 99.8% off. Comparatively, I'd assume it'll go down to 0.01 BTC, which will be about $40.
That aside, it looks very interesting, and I might try it out after 9/13. And after I get $40 in steembucks...
Oh, you're not paying 5 BTC for the game - that is for investment, as with any other ICO or presale. You would go in for these large amounts as a result of believing in the team and their project, in the same way any investor or large Kickstarter backer would be.
The money doesn't just disappear to them either - you will receive rewards as stated on the ICO page, with the most obvious being the RushCoins (their own token) which if past ICOs are anything to go by, could absolutely skyrocket in value.
The game itself will be free - but the RushCoin tokens will have a real world value, tradeable on exchanges etc.
So this is very much about an investment more so than a 'purchase' of the game - hope that makes sense. :)
OH! Well don't I feel silly.
Yes, that makes more sense. Thank you for the clarification.
No worries - a valid concern! :)
As a Gamer i can't really wait to try at least one Video Game based on CC and i think this can be another real job for a gamer, in the past we had esport and we will still have but now this, oh boy, how great is that.
Awesome, glad you're excited about it! This could be quite something. It really is a revolutionary idea and I'm very keen to see what the team makes of it in the coming months. I'll likely get on board with the ICO on 13 September and want to get in early and try it out.
Really forward-thinking stuff, in my opinion.
and is not just this ico, i've seen at least 2 or 3 icos like this "Video Games based on CC" :D now our kids will really have an excuse to play video games not like us :)) "But Mmmmmooomm i'm making money here" :))
Oh really? I'd love to see those as I've not heard of them at all. Not sure how strongly marketed they are or where they are in the lifecycles - but I'd love to hear more if you have the names?
What i remember now is https://beyond-the-void.net/ , if you wanna talk more we can use discord :)
Cool - I have the same name on there :)
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