Following up on our “January 2022 News Update!”, we have created a Spaceships Article Series to provide further details surrounding the upcoming Spaceships launch. Part 1 begins with an overview and explanation of On-Chain and Off-Chain features.

Note: The original publication date of this article was March 9, 2022.

Hello Sipherians!

We are only a few weeks away from the Spaceships launch! In the meantime, we wanted to release as much information as we can about Spaceships.

So get your space suits ready, because we’re about to blast off with a weekly Spaceships Article Series that will release every Wednesday, until the launch of the Spaceships

For the first part of our Spaceships Article Series, we would like to begin with a brief overview of the Spaceship building process and share some details about how SIPHER will integrate a mixture of Off-Chain and On-Chain features. We hope you stay with us and enjoy the read! Are you ready to build your very own Sipherian Spaceship?

Here’s a brief overview of how you will be able to build your very own Spaceship

First, you will need to receive and open your Loot box.

Do you have too many Loot boxes you don’t need, or you don’t want to open them and would prefer to sell them? You can choose to mint them and trade those extra loot boxes away on OpenSea (more info on this process will be revealed later).

So you’ve decided to open up your Loot box. Now what? First thing’s first, you will notice that you have now obtained five (5) different Spaceship parts, which you can use to assemble your very own Spaceship!

The five (5) Spaceship parts you receive will each be of a random rarity (aim for Legendary ), and will be composed of the following:

• One (1) Wing (Right)
• One (1) Wing (Left)
• One (1) Main Carrier
• One (1) Set of Weapons System
• One (1) Set of Thrusters

Have the five (5) parts of your desired rarity? Take them to the Spaceship Yard and assemble the Spaceship that will carry you around the world in Sipheria!

Remember, each spaceship has unique in-game benefits (to be shared in another article)!

Now imagine that all of these functions happened within the Blockchain. That means that each action you perform — claiming a loot box, opening the loot box, assembling your spaceship, etc. — will require you to pay gas fees. If you’ve been in the crypto or NFT space for some time, you’ve probably experienced having to pay high gas fees just to perform one simple transaction. Plus, it is very likely that you perform multiple transactions and not just one (and boy do those fees really add up!)

Additionally, in order to deploy smart contracts on the blockchain, we must also incur fees for deploying, and there are added costs for certain actions performed via the smart contract.

This is why, for our Spaceships launch, we will take the actions necessary to reduce these fees as much as possible, primarily via two mechanisms:

1. Mixing Off-chain and On-chain functions
2. The use of a Layer 2 Solution: Polygon (MATIC) Network

Let’s talk about how each of these mechanisms will help reduce gas, all while maintaining a user-friendly experience for our Genesis Sipher NFT Holders.

Mixing Off-Chain and On-Chain

As previously stated, we will make use of Off-Chain and On-Chain functions to further reduce gas costs.

Cool, but what do you mean Off-Chain and On-Chain?

Great question! To keep it simple, you will be able to perform the important actions related to Spaceships Off-Chain, and if you want to trade or transfer your Loot boxes, Spaceships, or Parts, you can mint them into NFTs On-Chain. See below for our definition of these terms, and also more details of each of the functions that fall into each category.

Off-Chain Functions

To keep it simple, whenever we make mention of the term ‘Off-Chain’, it means that the information and data are stored OUTSIDE of the Blockchain, but still kept within a centralized storage such as a server.

In our case, that means that certain features of the Spaceships will need to be performed within our own servers, and Loot boxes, Parts, and Spaceships could also be stored in your account’s (Off-chain) Inventory. For instance, claiming your Spaceship Loot boxes, building your Spaceships, scrapping parts, and dismantling your Spaceships will all be features that will be handled in our internal servers. To view and edit your Spaceships, you could also decide to keep your parts and Spaceships stored on our databases for as long as you want, although we recommend that you mint them (On-Chain feature), for true ownership. More details on each of these functions are included below.

⇒ Claiming Spaceship Parts → Loot box System [Off-Chain]

The first step within your journey of finally being in possession of your very own Spaceship! To claim these Spaceship parts you will need to open up Loot boxes. You will receive one (1) Loot box per Genesis Sipher NFT, per week; and each Loot box contains all the parts needed to build a Spaceship.

To help save on gas, this Loot box System, whereby you claim your parts, will be handled completely Off-Chain. So let’s say you have 20 Genesis Sipher NFTs, this means that you don’t need to pay gas fees at the moment of claiming or opening 20 Loot boxes each week. Additionally, it would be as simple as logging in to our website’s Spaceships page and clicking on ‘Open Loot boxes’ to automatically view your juicy drops — without needing to wait for transactions to complete.

⇒ Building your Spaceship [Off-Chain]

So you claimed your parts gas-free, now what? Time to build your Spaceship!

Normally, converting five (5) Spaceship part NFTs into one (1) Spaceship NFT On-Chain would require you to burn the former to create/mint the latter, all of which require at least one gas-incurring transaction. Technically, you could do this with our system, but we’re giving you the flexibility to do this gas-free as well.

You will simply need to have opened one Loot Box and have all the necessary components to build a ship. Afterward, you can build your Spaceship and see what it would look like in real-time by selecting the various parts you have at your disposal. Messed up, don’t like how it looks, or want to use a newly acquired part? Just edit your Spaceship and change it up again. No transaction wait times or payment of transaction fees during this whole process.

⇒ Scrapping Spaceship Parts [Off-Chain]

Scrapping essentially allows you to combine three (3) parts of a lower rarity into one of the next higher rarity tier. This allows you to obtain a part of a higher rarity if you weren’t lucky enough to get one from a Loot box. So if you have multiple of the same part, or want to get rid of some? Easy, scrap your parts to upgrade them into a higher rarity. Again, this will be completely Off-Chain so you can be worry-free about transaction fees or transaction confirmation wait times

⇒ Dismantling your Spaceship [Off-Chain]

Dismantling allows you to turn your Spaceship back into its original five (5) parts. This will be useful if you determine that you do not want to keep your ship as-is and would like to start it from scratch.

More details and steps for Claiming, Building Spaceships, Scrapping parts, and Dismantling Spaceships will be shared in another article on our Spaceships Article Series.

On-Chain Functions

As for ‘On-Chain’, this simply refers to taking actions or storing data on the Blockchain (Polygon). For our intents and purposes, On-Chain features include anything whereby you need to pay transaction fees (again, in MATIC), such as: minting the parts or Spaceships as NFTs, trading these NFTs, or bringing the NFTs back into their original Off-Chain form so that you can perform any of the Off-Chain functions. More details on each of these functions are included below.

⇒ Minting Loot boxes, Spaceships or Parts [On-Chain]

If you would like to trade your Loot boxes, Spaceships, or Spaceship parts, then you must MINT to bring them onto the blockchain as NFTs. Although you will still own these Spaceships and Parts even if you leave them in your SIPHER account’s Inventory (Off-Chain), you can claim full ownership and bring them to the blockchain by minting them into NFTs. This would also allow you to sell, trade, or transfer them to other individuals.

⇒ Trading NFTs [On-Chain]

After you’ve MINTED your Ship or your Ship parts, these will be removed from your SIPHER account’s Inventory (Off-Chain) and will be viewable in the NFTs tab of your SIPHER account’s portfolio. That means that these are NFTs fully-owned by you and you can transfer or trade them on marketplaces such as the upcoming SIPHER marketplace, or on OpenSea!

⇒ Bridging from On-Chain to Off-Chain (Temporary ”Burning”) [On-Chain]

To actually be able to use your ships or parts and perform all of the Off-Chain functionalities (i.e. Dismantling Ship, Scrapping, Building Ship), you MUST bridge them back to our SIPHER servers (Off-Chain) via our website.

More information on minting, trading, or bridging back Off-Chain to be included in one of the other upcoming articles on our Spaceships Article Series.

Using an L2 Solution: Polygon (MATIC) Network

For those of you who are not aware, there are many networks that run on the Ethereum Blockchain — also known as Layer 2 (L2) scaling solutions — which makes it cheaper for users transacting within the Ethereum Blockchain. One of these L2 solutions is Polygon (MATIC).

To transact in the ‘Matic Mainnet’ (Polygon’s Network), users must pay fees in their native token “MATIC”. Many times you can just obtain a small amount of MATIC for free from “faucets”, and it should be enough to cover a transaction the majority of the time. If you have Ethereum and would like to use it on the Polygon Network, you will also incur bridging fees and convert it into ‘WETH’ (Wrapped Ether token; pretty much Ethereum on Polygon). However, this is fairly cheap when compared to all the transaction costs on Ethereum.

On-chain features such as minting your Spaceships or trading parts will be much cheaper via the use of this L2 scaling solution.

We will be sharing a tutorial on how to bridge your ETH into Polygon closer to the date of the launch of the Spaceships.

If you would like to learn how to bridge your ETH into Polygon, we’ve created a tutorial, linked below:

Getting Ready for Minting NFTs via the SIPHER Dashboard

Closing Remarks

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this article and that it provides some insight as to what our system will be like when mixing Off-Chain and On-Chain features, and their benefits. Additionally, we hope that you have ease of mind as we are ensuring that the user experience is friendly and easy enough whereby you can easily perform the majority of these actions straight within our website.

Spaceship Article Series

Part 1 (You are here):

Spaceships Overview and Mixing Off-chain & On-chain

Part 2:

Spaceships: Types, In-Game Utility and the Effects of Rarity

Part 3:

Spaceships: Claiming Loot Boxes, Minting, and Bringing NFTs to Account Inventory (Off-Chain)

Sipher Website: https://sipher.xyz
Sipher Links: https://linktr.ee/sipherxyz
We are actively hiring! If you ♥ gaming and making great games, Join us at Sipher: https://careers.sipher.xyz/

Spaceships Overview and Mixing Off-chain & On-chain was originally published in SIPHER on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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