MetaSkillz -- A Proto-Specification

Skill Trees are expected to become an important aspect of the MetaGame. You can learn more about the vision for Skill Trees in:

It is my goal to support the widest range of real world skills possible with a technical pattern that empowers MetaGame players to create their own skills, issue NFT token contracts with empower those skills to spread throughout the player base, and beyond.

The structure of a skill tree is extremely familiar, it matches with skill trees in RPGs but also with course requirements in a university setting. Unlike in a video game or in a university setting, these skill trees must themselves be growing as the player base identifies, and applies skills. There will be no entrance exams or grades and the registrar is the blockchain. Your metagame profile contains your transcript.

The technical underpinnings of this proposal are conceptual extensions of the Proof of Attendance Protocol.

Specifically, we would need to extend the NFT contracts to handle additional access control (such as who can issue and approve new NFT mints), and dependency information (the tokens the issuers, verifiers and recipients must have in order for the mint transaction to succeed).

Example Schema:

Skill Contract Data
token address: <contract address>
plain text name: “cadCAD Level 2”
additional details: <string> summary text
prequisite skills: <list of token addresses> eg address for “cadCAD Level 1” and “systems engineering Level 1”
initial skill holders: <list of addresses> (must contain at least 2 addresses to issue more)
artwork: <ipfts hash> (helpful for making visual representations of the NFT in various UIs)
additional data: <ipfs hash> eg document details what skills the token holder is expected to have

NFT metadata
issuer address <address> (address initiating the mint of the new non-transferable NFT)
verifier address <address> (address confirming the mint of the new non-transferable NFT)
recipient address <address> (address recieving the new non-transferable NFT)
additional data <ipfs address> (may contain any supporting data, eg a MOOC completion certificate, reports or code, provided by the recipient)

Assertions
issuer and verifier address must already have a token for this skill
recipient address has tokens from each of the prerequisite skills (check against prequisite skill list)

The idea is that Factory contract that produces these skill token contracts would become the basis for a huge network of interconnect credentials with no root authority, but rather an ever growing web of people and skills which individuals and organizations could both issue and consume in order to collectively level up, outfit their raiding parties appropriately, and accomplish the most hardcore of metagame raids: altering “reality” as we know it.

If this technology is developed. I will help build out the sections of the skill tree related to my own skills in systems engineering, algorithm design, token engineering, data science and economics – in collaboration with the token engineering, data science and cadCAD communities.

10 Likes

Another possibility is the W3C’s work in this area: Self-Sovereign Identity. It combines two broad standards: Decentralized IDs which maps a URI to a public keys and Verifiable Credentials which is a JSON-LD format for making statements about DIDs.

3Box, which is in use in MyMeta already, assigns an IDX-based DID to each authenticated user.

SSIs have the advantage of not putting the attestations on-chain. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes it iffy to save anything personally identifying on-chain because there is a requirement that it be removable at the user’s request.

It does sound though like using NFTs would eliminate the need for a backend. Particularly if combined with The Graph.

3 Likes

If I was building this system I would want to build out the skill trees without having to have account holders that have the skills being created.

Maybe a DAO could also mint new skills. DAOhaus supports summoning Moloch DAOs on the xDAI network. Another alternative is Celeste which is a port of Aragon Court to xDAI.

I was watching a video on the game Eco earlier and it has skill development. It has a set of skills that then have levels. By tracking the skill and the level in separate variables, it would let you more easily query for everyone of any level.

I was reading up on NFTs and ran across ERC-1155. It is sort of a mint contract. It has the ability to create new fungible and non-fungible tokens within itself.

The original post seemed to use a single NFT to represent a skill. Progression within a skill then would be represented by different NFTs for levels of the skill. My proposal is to have NFTs representing skill classes and associated with those, FTs representing a number of points accrued within that skill.

I’d like skills to exist within trees where a node can have more than one parent. Some trees could represent contextualization of a skill. Parallel trees could represent requirements for a skill (though I would invert that tree and make the child nodes the requirements for a parent).

Rather than skills being doled out by an authoritative source, points could be earned through the completion of quests. When the quest is created, the creator specifies which skills they expect to pertain, and when the quest is completed new skill points are minted according to the evaluation of the completed work.

This requires some standard for what one point represents… Perhaps in relation to levels being defined as certain quantities of points. 0-15 points is a beginner, 15-45 intermediate, 45-60 experienced, etc. This is problematic though for a quest like retweeting something where several points may be accrued without really enhancing an ability. Unless the skill is specific enough, like Tweeter.

To make it realistic there would need to be a mechanism to earn points for activities outside of MetaGame quests. This could look like traditional token allocations done by a DAO.

2 Likes

Have you seen Purple? https://purpleprotocol.org/ We have been setting up 5 colors to mediate interactions with quests, maybe this could be extended in the model you are looking at?

Have you seen Purple?

It looks like a Proof-of-Stake blockchain with some advances to increase throughput. I’m not seeing anything really specific to this application of NFTs.

I’m currently enamored with xDAI. Its fees are low enough that it ought to be possible to store alot of state on-chain.

An alternative is what Gitcoin Kudos does where if the user pays for it the kudo goes on mainnet or on xDAI for free.

xDAI has an OmniBridge for migrating ERC-20 tokens or an Arbitrary Message Bridge for doing generic cross-chain operations. I don’t know at this point if it would be sufficient to have the skills information solely on xDAI or if it would be needed on mainnnet, but the mechanisms for operating cross-chain are out there.

1 Like

Sorry, hadn’t realized there was already some other Purple… lolz <3 I guess I meant this Purple Paper by our very own @douglasjames at cXc Music https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T2JH9J73WjgZ9-cULJAzrYvZzyPSXEA_fdgt21lHnDc The idea of multiple cryptocurrencies being used to type different kinds of purpose to interaction with content (not sure if this is quite explicitly spelled out as NFTs in the Purple Paper) in an ecosystem… <3

Yes. This. Collective leveling up.

1 Like

Here is my second presentation from Metafest which builds up to meta-skills:

it builds on the earlier presentation, posted in the forum on meta-pubz:

2 Likes