Greetings! Please allow me to introduce you to the Plasma Drops site, and some basic instructions on how to use it.
— snowkid
Plasma Drops is an airdrop platform that allows users to deposit and share cryptocurrencies with each other. In order to prevent bogus accounts, the platform employs a mechanism called “Proof of Game” to ensure that unique, human users are in fact receiving their tokens.
The motive behind Plasma Drops is to demonstrate a use case for normal users to begin utilizing layer two to handle transactions. It gives users a way to interact with OMG Networks’ plasma implementation so that they are able to begin to understand and adopt the principles of ethereum scaling.
Site: http://www.snowsignals.com:8080 and soon to be plasma-drops.com
Official telegram support group: https://t.me/plasmadrops
First, a little background..
Recently, everyone has been painfully reminded of how necessary it is to scale Ethereum, as Eth Gas Station was reporting gas prices near 500 gwei during the recent De-Fi craze.
As I began to develop the core concepts of plasma drops, one thought in particular had crossed my mind: How will normal users get a common understanding of ethereum scaling, and begin to adopt these more realistic principles?
With their mainnet release, one of the space’s leading scaling solutions, OMG network, ERC20’s (and tokens following the Human Standard Token specification) are freely able to change hands at a significant discount compared to regular transactions on the ethereum mainnet. These transactions are paid for with OMG token, which pays the network’s operators to add blocks to it’s chain. Then, the network backs itself up to the ethereum main chain every so often, in order to implement the security of ethereum while facilitating these transfers.
Interacting with the OMG Network
While that’s a lot to chew on, there are some common threads that will help a basic user understand what is going on under the hood:
OMG Network uses ethereum accounts. That means that a regular ethereum address can interact with the OMG network easily. In order to utilize the OMG Network, (one of several Layer 2 networks) a user can deposit funds via any of the wallet solutions which are available in the space. For instance, a Bitfinex user may move USDT tokens to their non-custodial wallet by withdrawing from the exchange on the OMG Network. That means that a user can keep their tokens on a regular ethereum address, on layer two, without paying those exorbitant fees of layer 1.
There are still some roadblocks to understanding this, for one, since your funds will move to “layer 2” of your ethereum wallet, you won’t be able to see the balances on your normal “layer 1” wallet on existing tools like ethplorer.io or metamask. (Or at least until they support such things) However, there are tools available to observe your balances. For instance, you can paste your ethereum address into the OMG Network block explorer and see your “layer 2” balances there.
Since OMG Network’s layer 2 solution is based on “Plasma”, you will often see the term plasma instead of layer 2. It refers to the framework the solution is based on, as written by Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin. As such, I began to develop pet projects on this platform using “Plasma” in the name. I released one a couple months ago: “Plasma Whale” and another, I am releasing now, “Plasma Drops”. Both of these products are solutions designed to interact with the plasma network. Plasma Whale is a solution to observe large transactions, Plasma Drops is a solution to distribute ERC-20 tokens on the OMG Network, all while helping onboard users to layer two solutions in order to achieve the greater strategy: Reduce Layer 1 congestion by delegating the easy stuff outward.
About Wallets
The first hurdle a person must overcome while interacting with the plasma network is getting their own non-custodial wallet. It is important to have proof of keys on your stuff. I will try to address a couple questions a user must face:
- Is it safe to link my regular ethereum address to the wallets provided by the OMG network?
- How are transactions facilitated? Can I use MetaMask? or a Ledger?
Cryptocurrency wallets have a few tricks. First you have your mnemonic — which you wrote down which allows you to access the wallets linked to it. Second, That mnemonic gives you access to a public key, which in turn allows you to create any number of new wallet addresses. When you make a transaction you have to “Sign” it, with the private key that relates to that specific address. When you create a new wallet in MetaMask, (the kind where you write down the seed phrase) the software creates an ‘account’ which has it’s own private key linked to it. You can create subsequent accounts which all have different, subsequent, private keys. The public key points to all of them and the mnemonic points to the public key:
Mnemonic > Public Key > Many Possible Accounts > Each has a Private Key
Because of this it is safe to use MetaMask to create a new account (ethereum address) where you can begin to interact with the OMG network, your assets in your other accounts within (addresses) are safe, so long as your computer doesn’t get hacked or whatever…
In MetaMask, one you have created a wallet, all you have to do is use the “Create Account” function to create a new account with it’s own private key. Then you can use that account to sign transactions on the OMG Network, right in MetaMask.
Products you can sign OMG Network transactions using MetaMask available today:
crickets
Once you’ve created a landing pad for your OMG transactions you will want to test it to see if it works. There’s a couple ways to do this:
- On the ethereum side, send the address some OMG or other asset, and then deposit it to the OMG Network using the aforementioned products.
- Go to the unofficial telegram group and ask the users in there to send you something as a test transaction.
As for the plasma drops application, you won’t be able to receive any plasma drops until you have proven you understand (at least partially) how to create transactions on your wallet. Plasma Drops checks for either deposits or transactions from your wallet and only allows initialized wallets to play through.
Should you complete the previous steps, you have now created and used your “Non-Custodial” wallet, and will be able to qualify to receive “Sponsored Plasma Drops”.
Plasma Drops: Registration
Looking at the Plasma Drops page, there is a login link to the upper right corner, if you click on it, near the bottom you can see a registration link. There you will be asked to add the following:
- Your Email: It is important to have an email address for many reasons. Don’t worry I won’t sell it off to spam banks.
- Nickname: I plan to implement a leaderboard so I figured it would be a good way to get that rolling. Tip: Don’t use your real name as it may end up in public view when you score all those juicy Plasma Drops.
- ethereum address: This is the OMG Network enabled ethereum address I described creating above. When you receive a plasma drop, it will be sent here.
- password: You know, the same ol’ yada yada
Register, and then check your email for the email verification. Click on the onerously long link to sendgrid and then your account will be activated. At that point you can log in, and will be asked to sign a simple terms of service agreement. At that point you will be well on your way to using the platform.
Tip: Once logged in, click on the account number in the upper right corner to see where your account stands, and what it is currently qualified to do.
Note: Because the site is so new and relatively untested, If there are any buggy things happening, just reload the page. But please tell me about it in the telegram group so I can be aware of and fix the issue.
Custodial vs Non Custodial accounts
It is important to understand what “Non-Custodial” means: When you create your own wallet, and you have the private keys to that address, you can sign for your own transactions, you have a non-custodial wallet. A “Custodial” wallet is when you go to some exchange or other online service, they create an account for you where they control the private keys. With a custodial wallet, your funds are somewhere else, and in someone else’s custody. That pretty much means that if they get hacked, your funds could be in deep chutney, depending on the amount of insurance they are providing to customers.
Another way to look at it is — if someone has custody of a wallet, meaning they posses the private keys, they are the custodian of that wallet. If it’s your funds, and you are the “custodian” of the private keys, there is in effect no custodian, so it’s considered “Non Custodial”.
Sponsored Plasma Drops
When someone wishes to distribute tokens through the Plasma Drops platform, they have some options to set, among which, whether or not they wish to pay the transaction fee on the outgoing drop. Should they decide to cover that fee, they also get a 50% discount on the markup of the outgoing transaction. The drop gets listed as a “Sponsored Plasma Drop” and any user with an initialized OMG Network address will qualify to collect the drops.
In order for a user to collect the drop, there are some requirements which they may run into along the way.
- non custodial wallet is initialized: the platform cannot see any deposits or transactions on the non-custodial wallet you supplied.
- user has exceeded maximum payout for the token: The token producer sets the maximum amount of games and payouts per games.
- Lack of fees: There has to be enough OMG in the producers account to pay outgoing transaction plus fee on a sponsored drop.
- User must provide Proof of Game…
Proof of game
In order to make a fun use case and also prove to token producers that Plasma Drops are comprised of unique users, I have taken some time on the platform developing my own captcha mechanism, aka PoG: Proof of game.
When you collect a “drop”, you play a short game I developed with the intent to verify the user is an actual human being. It also adds a little fun and strategy to the mix.
Fun: You are a farm animal knocking balls out of your pen.
Strategy: Knock enough balls out of the pen and you get the entire drop for that round, less than enough and you get less.
Don’t worry — the max score is 125 and its easy to get there, but you might end up with slightly less with a not so good game.
The application observes your game performance, measures your points and along the way, reports the results to the web server. The server will then award you Proof of Game should you fall within the requirements, the PoG will be compressed and stored to provide proof to the token producers that an actual human received their Plasma Drop. When Proof of game has been awarded, an outgoing transaction of the associated plasma drop will move the tokens to your non-custodial wallet.
Unsponsored Plasma Drops
Another option a token producer has, is to distribute tokens without paying for the transaction fee while the tokens are being collected by users. In this case, a “Producer” will send tokens to the platform and choose not to deposit OMG alongside to cover the transaction fee. The Tokens will then appear under the “Available Drops” section.
In order to collect these tokens, a user must pay the network fees and a small markup in order to receive the tokens. To retrieve “Unsponsored” aka “Available” tokens, a users “Online Vault” must be created, and an amount of OMG must be deposited in order to pay the fees.
Once you have deposited OMG into your vault on the platform, you will qualify to play the Plasma Pen game in order to collect those available tokens, so long as the vault contains enough OMG to cover fees, you can continue playing rounds to collect from various producers until their respective “max games playable” is reached.
For Online Vaults, there are a few policies in place for various reasons:
- The payouts will be sent directly to your Non Custodial wallet.
- Once you create a vault, you will not be able to change your non-custodial address, nor create a new vault.
- If you wish to withdraw from your vault, the withdraw will be 100% of your unspent funds for what you selected to take out; It will be sent to your original non-custodial address.
Producing a Plasma Drop
An interesting fact about the Plasma Drops platform is that all users may produce, sponsor and distribute tokens. In order to become a producer, all you have to do is send some ERC20 to your Online Vault. The platform will check for new balances and display a menu in your accounts page to select options for distribution.
You can set a description, set a maximum payout per game, and maximum number of games a user may play, and set a sponsor name to show people who is the nicest guy on the platform!
A couple rules apply:
- You can only run one plasma drop at a time. This is selected by checking the box that says “Begin the plasma drop!”. If you check this box your tokens will be immediately available on the platform.
- If you do “Arm” a plasma drop, any other armed plasma drop will be immediately disarmed.
- Any OMG in the account will be used to distribute your plasma drop automatically.
In order to run a sponsored plasma drop, deposit OMG to your Vault address. In order to be listed as an “Available Drop” you don’t need to do anything else. That’s really all there is to it!
Available Drops
All of that said, there are a couple tokens I have produced myself recently and will be distributing on the OMG network. I will describe them briefly here:
P — plasmaToken: supply 25,000,000
plasmaToken is the first ERC20 token that can only exclusively be transferred on the OMG Network. If you try to exit the network with this token, the transaction will fail. Among use cases, I thought that I would make a statement insinuating that the price of bitcoin affects all token prices - because of how it is intrinsically wired up to the system. But while the plasma network is small and gaining traction, plasmaToken will remain unscathed in value by bitcoins price. Partially because no one knows about it, but also because finding bitcoin on the ethereum network is kind of rare. Since it’s inception, I have observed wBTC on the plasma network, an indicator that it’s influence will be able to also reach inside the network. While this isn’t great for plasmaToken’s initial use case idea, it is great for the OMG Network, as if there is BTC onboard, opportunities exist and, liquidity will follow. Secondary use case ideas are based around marketing and providing an avenue to onboard new users to the Plasma Network.
OG — Omise Gangster token: supply 10,000
As a separate adage to plasma, the OG token was created to mark the accounts of the early adopters for future rewards and a token expressing the feeling of pride in participating in a worldwide movement that will change the future of money. Several Airdrops have been distributed, and a small amount of public OG token remains, and will be distributed on the Plasma Drops Network in the following weeks.
I wrote and published an article on OG Token here on Medium. The final airdrop will be occurring through the plasma drops platform…
