Flying to Bangkok with a suitcase packed with THC | Albi (October 2024)

okay so tonight I'm here to share some some bad news and uh I mean it's a bit weird because the news I'm about to share hasn't happened yet and I'm not asking you to trust me but uh what I'm asking you is to uh give me some time so you can understand the context of my talk and then maybe let's see if you can work together on that so I took some screen shots of some news outlets from the year 2040 2045 Jeff Bezos is the president of the USA that has been renamed United States states of amazon.com and uh the same year uh Elon Musk uh promised to move like people to to Mars actually happened but only for 1% the other 99% is Left Behind with nothing but Blunts and Broken Dreams and uh Also regarding our community the eum community uh Devcon 41 happened and there was this huge event called The Singularity that was a merged between blockchain and AI what happened was this huge ethereum logo four-dimensional logo appeared on NE Tokyo 3 on the sky we don't know yet if it's good or not for us but it's quite terrifying I was looking for for a quote to start this talk in a positive way I didn't find any so here you have George Orwell if you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever I don't know why he's smiling but I mean it is what it is anyway in this context STP was born and STP stands for Social Distortion protocol where the first o in Distortion is a zero it's very important and STP is a collective intelligence spawned in the waste products of social media viral realities and psychic drugs what does it mean I have no idea that's why I have another slide for you guys because I think we were a bit High while we right in this so the other one is what we actually do I think it's a bit easier to understand uh STP distorts the present to humans about the future they will face if they don't fight okay I think this is a bit easier to understand what we do is we manipulate space and time and create alternative realities so you can experience what the future is or will be if you don't fight so that's our mission basically and this is what we do I I always mix mission and vision so don't don't call me on that over the last years we made some we call them Distortion operations as you can see we have a really decent track record with we have seven operations plus one that is coming this year and that's a reason why I'm giving this talk today uh I just want to start with the very first one that is called Han Zuckerberg that's the very first operation we did in 2018 and we played this game at the Congress at the CCC Congress it was not sponsored by CCC just our initiative to bring something to the to the event and it was a geocaching game so we put uh in the V menu a bunch of QR codes that you had to find and uh why what was the reason behind that because uh Zuckerberg was uh like the centralize himself into 27 different pieces to escape the authorities and we need to the mission that we asked people to participate in was about collecting these 27 Zucker bits and putting Mark Zuckerberg back together so we can bring him to the authorities this game is a evm based game so it means that every time someone would find a QR code would send the proof to the to a Smart contract and the game uh you had to play the game through uh the browser of of a mobile wallet we used trust at the time I mean this is what we end up doing and we also distributed some funds uh to the user to actually been able to transact on on testet and uh the set was a bit punk I would say uh so we in our table we had this nice screen with all the zgar bits coming together and you can see the evolution like from I I guess you saw you know this photo right Max zaker at the Congress drinking like a robot if not that's actually very cool uh so you can see the game developing here this was in a way the dashboard with the information but people just went crazy they went around the Congress looking for QR codes we gave hints on where the QR codes were and they were looking for them just for fun we also uh put some codes inside floppy disc and we asked people to find someone with a floppy dis drive so they can access the data in there uh then we made another game I don't want to talk too much actually we'll skip these slides because I don't have a lot of time but if you remember Planet A8 the tragedy of the commons is another game based on the tragedy of the commons that is a another thing and uh we play this game here at base e Berlin CCC camp and it was also exhibited as a artwork at during the dev zaka after that we decided to focus our operations on THC I don't know why you're laughing who knows what THC stands for yes another one treasure hun Tetra hyd oh no I don't know what you're talking about Tetra can I have no idea I don't know how to pronounce it even anyway uh s for uh treasure hunt challenges so we focused only on treasure hunts what is a treasure hunt challenge uh it's like a scavenger hunt but we like the name treasure hun challenge more uh and uh it's a game that you play in a physical space can be a building neighborhood a city uh it's built around a narrative so usually there is a backstory or at least this is how we want to we like to do it it's organized into levels uh so you progress over the game from level one two and so on or if you start counting from zero from zero then one and two and so on and the goal is to solve like physical and logical puzzles in order to be able to progress to the next uh level this is a uh um overview like on how it looks like on our side so there is a m blot that is in a way surrounding the whole story and then we have chapter zero and that has a quest that is something that you read in order to uh look look for the puzzle then if you if you're good enough you find the puzzle and then when you solve the puzzle you find a solution the solution has a key is not yeah you can almost see there that you use to move to the next chapter and this story is linear okay so if you're getting if you're block at chapter three and you canot move forward I mean it is what it is of course like okay then there is a final chapter but that's not very interesting now let's see how the game looks like actually because right now I've been quite abstract uh stage one is onboarding new users so we want to in a way get the attention of the people at the conference or at an event and we want them to convert to Ping custo uh sorry to to playing users not ping customers next time we started with at CCC with a super simple approach that was that was putting these sheets of paper around the congress with a very like not very curated message like oh we need your help please help us uh hurry up and all this kind of stuff but the most important part is this anchor that is a website okay URL over the years we improved it a bit do you know what this letter is for it's for yeah right it's what I mean if you get this in your mailbox is a bit of an annoyance I mean you did something wrong or something like this so we just bought a bunch of them over Amazon and uh that was the new like invite letter for another story and we did this at the Congress then for E bin uh we pumped it up a bit we also bought some uh nice paper and uh uh we pack we package the letters like this that is I would say kind of goodlooking and so yeah we're trying to improve over years how we onboard people okay after you onboard a player the game starts and the flow is actually really simple you read the chapter you locate the puzzle you solve the puzzle and you submit the Sol the solution and then if the solution is correct you progress to the next chapter and it looks like this this is just a stupid demo on the left side and you can put a password and in this case is incorrect so you get a message and through the app that you load again via the URL that is specified in the letter or somewhere else you access the website that is a fully fledged uh burner wallet so you don't even need to load your wallet and you don't even need to have funds we'll see in a second how it works the side effects of this game Flow that is again read locate solve submit progress uh they have I mean there are quite some interesting side effects first you explore the venue because the puzzles are placed around as I said before the venue so you need to move your you move your uh to do some leg work and go from A to B and so on then another thing is as I said before sometimes you you cannot solve some puzzles so you stop but uh given that is physical you will meet other people maybe stuck at the same puzzle so they're trying to solve the same one and it's so easy to connect with others we saw it all the times like people start alone or in a group of two and then they end up in a group of five or six that's actually pretty nice and of course like learning things because we had a people doing lock picking for the first time or hacking a website we created for the first time some puzzles are also only digital to be honest not only physical some other people learned or wrote the the first solidity contract just to try to hack another contract and some people experience L2 networks for the first time and one key thing that um I I think we will agree on this but it's not always easy to focus only on this kind of known features it's like there is no registration in this game um there is like no need to use uh you don't need to have balance on your on your wallet so you just scan something or open a URL and you start using it that's all okay and this is the experience we want to give like zero friction on boarding we don't care about your data just open the website and start playing and have fun and uh the two pillars anyway of this THC are this one is called edutainment that is education plus entertainment and the second pillar that is very crucial is f stration that is having fun but also being frustrated and uh who played the game at it's Berlin uh okay okay um I don't want to go too much into details but uh there were like this um couple plane and uh uh apparently they weren't able to um let's say Enjoy the conference that much because one of the two was really busy try to solve a puzzle that was extremely annoying and uh like I don't know like we have a lot of people that are doing things or another example is no show it now I'll show it later come on I have some props anyway yeah it was like uh frustration is it's really difficult to find this balance for real because if it's too difficult people are just frustrated if it's too easy there is no fun and balancing the two I I I'm not sure if we can do it but still like uh I think some people enjoy it let's go to the puzzles uh this is at um e Berlin there is this nice bll pit and uh we put I don't know I think 10 transparent bolts in here with the password inside and this was one of the extremely frustrating games okay we have some people that got frustrated very nice then oh you don't see it very well but these are two multimeters or Vol Vol yeah multimeters and you had to find for example uh in the venue there was a box with batteries and you need to find the battery with the lowest power that has and then transcribed the code to the to find the password and uh again learning something new honestly uh not everyone used the multim multimeter but uh maybe with a bit of help from someone else is actually an interesting thing to do if you never play with that or we have this other friend that is an artist this is Amanda uh created by Julia shiker that is an artist friend of ours and she was like this character was like moving her lips saying something and he had to do like lip reading to understand the password we also uh you can see it very well from here but we also put some other props in the room just to make it look a bit nicer this one was also fun if you look at the right hand of the guy you see some knobs that was a tiny keyboard and you had to play a specific tune to unlock the password that would have uh and if you would uh and with the right combination of notes you would hear the password for example so we like to play with this kind of games this one is another one so this is a box with a lock pad lock and we put it in there and what you had to do I mean if you see this with a lock and you see lock picks on the side what you do you take the lock picks and you start lock picking when you open it inside there was a piece of paper saying uh look below me and the password was here so this is Again part of the funtion you know it's like you're really focusing opening this but you're missing like you're not even turning it around and I don't know I find it quite fun at least building it uh this is one from datal Industries I will talk about them uh in a bit and they created this chessboard where in order to open the chessboard you had to put the pieces um in the right place and then it would open and the password will be inside so have to solve this kind of Chess puzzle or another one is a vibrator or vibor connected to optimism I think it was the first one the first vibrator connected to optimism and uh that is here [Music] so you had to find the box and then if you open the box you would find the vibrator connected to the Wi-Fi and of course to optimism because there is a smart contract connected to this guy and you had to basically understand when to send the transaction in order to activate it because the government controls you when you masturbate that was the idea behind it because a dystopian future right if you want to read instructions and the address is here and the still of course I mean it's still it's immutable it's a blockchain so I think it will stay there for a while or another one is this one is a QR code and is a part if I remember correctly of um Shamir secret sharing um scheme and he had to collect some of them I was an N Out of M so if he would collect enough then would you you would unlock the password or another one uh from deal indes as well is this crazy phone that was deployed at Devcon in bot and if I remember correctly you had to uh dial the right number and then the cabinet below would open then I don't know if I can place sound here does it work yeah should wow or I mean maybe you need to change to okay to Black Box it's called like the okay give me a second and you go to your oh yes Magic yeah okay I have no control over the audio who has control over the audio no you can just play ah no no because I cannot put it uh like I mean I cannot put volume up or volume down so I hope I'm not like destroying people's years yeah I mean I also couldn't so it was okay it's not my responsibility guys I I love your attitude better safe than sorry uh so one second let's go back here and then uh this is at eth [Music] Berlin so that was a puzzle we put it in the yellow Corridor and people had really f it was like this kind of voice looping messages like for hours and hours and each message had a uh sounds at the beginning at the end that you had to analyze to in order to find the password so we had this kind of voice that was actually really annoying and repetitive you know the Tik Tok voice so we use that one uh with AI generated messages it was actually quite fun another one uh is this we programed this Game Boy and you will see in a second why it's an annoying puzzle if you check the size and you had to put the key in the other key thingy shape and uh yeah this was the uh telephone and uh yeah we like to play with this kind of things anyway um how much time do I have indefinite sorry guys no okay okay we'll just be a bit faster because I think the puzzles are fun so anyway uh what sdp does it it builds THC uh that is the most advanced evm based framework for creating THC so uh we love t a TLA is a three-letter acronym we love we love to reuse them because upcycling is important so in the first case TSC stands for Treasure hand creator that is the framework and in the second case it stands for challenges okay uh it's the most advanced evm based framework because I think it's the only one worst case is the second best one and uh everything is open source you can check the link below and uh just super quickly I will talk about do you care about how it works like from a technical side I can also skip it if you don't want I yeah okay thanks so when you create the game there is a setup phase and if you remember we had uh chapters and each chapter has uh its own solution right and so we take all these Solutions and what we do is using this is a set of phase so when we deploy the game the first time we do this that is we calculate the hash using K 256 of the solution so we get a solution hash the solution is just a string because you need to type it on the UI okay so we get a hash that is 256 bits then from that we create an HD wallet that is a solution wallet let's call let's call it and as you know a wallet has an address and a private key basic the address is then stored in the smart contract that is the public proof in a way that you will need to provide later and we'll see how then uh after the set of phase is done the smart contract knows all the addresses of all solutions okay and by knowing the address is not revealing anything about this solution also if you have question or stop me as if you want now we go to the submission phase so the smart contract is populated with all the solutions actually with all the addresses of the solutions and we go to step two that is submission I think skeletons are cool that's why I put it there I don't know if you like it it's pink so uh the user the player finds the solution X that is again a string and goes through the same process so hashing creating an HD wallet you have a solution wallet with a an address in a private key the user also has its own wallet right because it's playing the game and the user also has an address and the private key so by finding the correct solution the player is able to recreate the same wallet that was first put in this used in the setup phase right so me as a user when I type the right password that is whatever one 12 three I generate a wallet I generate a solution uh sorry I generate a solution wallet and then with that wallet what I do is I sign my own address okay and then I get the signature that is uh RSV classic stuff and then using my wallet what I do is I send the transaction to send the proof and now I lock everything together that is I locked um the uh defect that I know the solution and I also lock the fact that the solution was discovered by this wallet by this public key or address sorry and then is sent to the esart contract on the other side what happens is that in the verific verification phase the with the contract will uh run a easy recover on the RSV and we'll check if the signature is coming from a known address uh that is one of the solution and if it's correct so if if there is a match then it's a valid solution otherwise it's invalid if you have questions you can ask them later or now uh so the very first game we we run with this framework is called planetscape but then in 2020 um we discovered theps that are Devcon Improvement proposals if you don't know what it is go and check it out because it's quite amazing thanks liy um and we wrote uh the4 that is um a proposal for a treasure hunt game I don't know why I didn't put challenge or whatever I feel really sorry about this Ley cannot change title to the dip or is it too late what can I change title to my dip or not yeah you can okay great anyway we created this DP uh telling basically we we said hey dcon we're doing this kind of games I think it's interesting for you to check it out and maybe we can do game for you that's the proposal then a bit later there was another dip called a crypto on boarding escape room uh by datal Industries and that's when we created our joint venture Social Distortion protocol and that Deo Industries together and our goal is to roll out THC for the messes so we improved I need to to move a bit faster uh we create U we added some other features so now when you have a treasure hunt you can also have you have the story but you also have side quests and uh just one more thing uh it's very important you know never roll your own crypto but we also say never roll your own THC should trust us we developed a framework for doing thcs so if you want to create your own treasure hunt game uh you should really use ours and today we're introducing a new product to our family of products that is called CBD CBD is the THC companion and uh it's cloud-based demo we need to find a better acronym by the way uh and uh it's a G reper right now that you can clone I mean is it's not that easy but we need to work a bit more on it um sorry I'm looking at you uh anyway it's a gaab repo with a buil-in tools so you can create and deploy your own uh treasure hun challenges it has an some amazing GitHub actions that took me too much time to write so please use it and uh it's AB uh CH GPT told me to write this on this slide because I was running out of time and I had to come here so abstra complexity BL blah blah blah only one solution still in progress yes anyway uh so we're progressing uh and CBD is the missing uh piece of the puzzle and I would like to thank every all the employees of the month of social stion protocol and industries that are participating in creating an amazing THC for Bangkok and uh that's all see you in Bangkok dish seeds on us guys and for questions you can use uh the QR code that just disappeared of course yeah but we already have a couple of questions oh nice um that we can probably just go through yes okay highest upward is what was the most ridiculous ridiculous human behavior you observed okay um nicoa sorry I'm also asking my my friend the other employee of the month I think it was the player that uh was a bit annoyed no uh when uh I Congress when the the reverse password yes yes so we had this player uh uh that basically did everything and at the last chapter there was this again you remember F stration right is an important keyword it's important concept and uh the last uh you would expect probably that the last uh puzzle is something difficult but we played something extreme we played it super dump it was just to say a sentence in reverse and it was actually written in the instructions and the player uh had to call us on the phone and tell us the password but they failed few times and they got a bit mad and they didn't finish the game and said didn't say like [ __ ] you but I think no they came there actually asking what's the password yeah sorry go Nia they just had to read this thing reverse they came to our desk because they were frustrated they couldn't give it get it through via the phone and it wases what's the password yeah you need to read it and they kept reading it reverse not um sorry the other way around and after like five or six times he freaked out and left he said this a stupid game or something like this and it was literally the last time to win yes so that was probably really interesting but would this person have been the first to win or just uh no I don't think the first one to win right the first one actually really it was the first one it was the first one Nia that has better memory than me saying yeah I think you're right they just have to read it the other way around yeah that's such a shame uh I think the degree of funtion is exactly right I mean I played the last CCC one which was a lot of fun but also didn't finish but I didn't scream at you so thanks okay we have another question uh are you working based on Brands and how is it funded that's a very good question so um let's say for Devcon we have a bit of a budget from the organizers uh for anything else it's just self-funded and uh one thing I can tell you is that the amount of work needed to create a story uh de develop it around a venue also and all the specific things about that venue creating the puzzles fixing box and everything it's like I don't know how much it would cost but would be like probably too expensive to actually build for the full amount it's really like we're doing it because it's fun but it's really also fustration also for us I think in terms of money so if I mean if there are grants that you think we can apply to why not okay um how can I involve Social Distortion protocol protocol uh I I guess you you should talk to one of them yes like uh speaking from experience I usually just talk to you guys and then they come toland because they are very nice people okay uh then maybe the last one how many percent of people playing your games have gone mad uh three% 3% I would also like to add something really about this this question it's fun because our group uh our Collective STP like has grown also H because we we had people playing the game and at the end now they are like so stupid that they join us great I think that's it uh do we have more questions in the room that are not submitted bya the app okay oh there is one there sorry but just was interesting how you solve a certain nerdness because Mario and his pal solved everything super fast and they were kind of like oh we sto everything I don't know first first day or something how you prevent this sort of hijacking so that's a very good question because it's talking about the balance uh if I can reframe it in a way it's more like the balance between difficulty and how many people you want to finish the game these kind of things right this is a huge pain point that uh it's something that also we failed several times because try to balance the like right difficulty for puzzles uh like it's I I wouldn't say impossible but it's like I don't know extremely difficult because what is in my context is something that maybe simple or easy to to solve for someone else maybe it's totally like out of the out of the blue and uh so what we're doing this time we're changing uh things a bit for dcon um that was also the plan for the previous treasure hunt but uh I mean we're going there that is we would like to keep uh I will just show you this once again I mean look at this none of this though can you guess that I I just started using keynote um so the new version of uh THC supports uh side quests so now like the basic idea is to do something like this we have the main story that is linear and you need to again solve everything uh like all chapters one after the other we want to keep this relatively I wouldn't say simple but still like something that a human would solve in a without getting too much frustrated because the goal is to explore the venue learn new things and um yeah and have a and have a have a fun activity also would be cool oh by the way forgot we also added a new feature that when you finish the game it also releases an nft and we're also talking with artists um to basically develop these nfts as uh at prices but anyway apart from that um going back to how you balance difficulty and all these kind of things we are keeping again the main thread quite okay in terms of difficulty and we're going nuts on the side quests and side quests uh you don't have to solve them to finish the game so I would say that we move the for super pro players we move the game to another level that is collecting all the badges because each side quest has an emoji connected and once you collect all the Emojis you have another price so we're in a way of loading super hardcore stuff to Side Quests so you don't need to know something extremely obscure about elliptic curve to solve something and we can like use all matters time great okay well another round of applause for a please thank you