The security-focused blockchain protocol Namada is kicking off its incentivized testnet next month with an initiative dubbed as the Namada Shielded Expedition. Unlike other testnets, it employs a novel concept, with validators required to participate in a massively multiplayer role-playing game, or MMORPG, competing against one another to collect asteroids and win points to facilitate private blockchain transactions.
The Shielded Expedition is said to be the final quest for Namada’s community ahead of its mainnet launch next year.
With the gamified and incentivized testnet, participants can request to join as one of 100 pilots, who perform the role of validators, or crew members, who assist the validators. The game is essentially an asteroid mining race, with participants required to collect as many asteroids as they can and mine them, before their competitors do the same. While some of the asteroids can be found easily, the most difficult ones are located in the furthest reaches of Namada’s “shielded universe” and require more skill to mine. To make life easier, pilots and crew members can team up with one another and work collaboratively to gain more points.
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Namada explained that, once the game starts, participants are only limited by the laws of physics, the natural constraints of its CometBFT and sybil-resistance consensus algorithms. Players are required to collect as many ROIDs, or points, as they can by mining asteroids in the fastest time possible. The game provides a strong incentive, with Namada earmarking a prize pool of 30 million NAM tokens, or three percent of the total supply, for the best performers.
The gamified testnet provides a fun way for validators to compete against one another to perform shielded transfers of crypto assets across almost any blockchain. The Namada protocol is really a Layer-1 privacy network, which enables any asset to be transferred anonymously with the transaction amount obscured. It uses zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic technique that was first popularized by Zcash, the privacy-focused cryptocurrency.
With Namada, transactions are performed securely without revealing any information about the amount or type of funds sent. The transactions are nonetheless recorded on the blockchain and verified by validators in a way that’s demonstrably provable, without revealing any details. Although other protocols perform a similar role, Namada claims that it’s distinguished by its ability to shield the transfer of any kind of digital asset, including crypto and non-fungible tokens or NFTs, across both Ethereum, EVM- and IBC-compatible networks. It relies on the implementation of a trustless, two-way blockchain bridge, and can perform cross-chain transfers at low costs and rapid speeds, its creators say.
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Those who want to participate in Namada’s MMORPG testnet are invited to sign up now. The pre-genesis registration period runs from now until January 2, with the testnet itself set to go live on January 15. Once it commences, Namada said the experiment will last for two-to-three weeks.
Namada promised that the most capable pilots and crew members will earn significant rewards from their participation, while simultaneously becoming accustomed to the unique capabilities and features of its asset-agnostic privacy protocol.
