Blockchain the Way Forward for the Booming Skin Trade Industry

Millions of gamers currently face issues like loss of real-money when dealing with third party websites for skin trades. This has led to a level of distrust among the gamers, even though the Skins trade is thriving. The problems associated with dealing with Skins have compelled a group of developers for game projects in eSports to come up with a solution called SkinCoin.

SkinCoin token could be used for trading in-game skins and clearing transactions at third-party platforms. The project develops an exchange service with an API so that third-party websites could integrate it.

Skins

Skins can be described as in-game alterations of visual appearance of items of characters that don’t influence actual gameplay. First introduced at Steam platform as rewards, they soon became an economic phenomenon.

It is now a billion-dollar gaming niche with a turnover of over $7 billion in 2016 alone, according to Bloomberg and analytics by Eliers Krejcik Gaming. While some rare skins become collector’s items and can cost up to $15,000 apiece; there are also websites which let users to employ skins as chips when making eSports bets or in online gambling.

Betting with Skins gives gamers a chance to make their inventory even more plentiful and increase its cost. But there are risks associated with Skins betting, which include Skins theft.

The first Skins marketplace was launched by Valve, known as the Steam Community Market. The players could trade skins here for various popular games like Counter Strike: Global Offense or Team Fortress 2. It was complete with an API that third parties could use to integrate the service at their platforms.

The Steam Community Market spawned many other third-party websites offering skin trades, but without the harsh restrictions imposed by the official Steam’s administration. As a result of this, the market expanded uncontrollably, inevitably leading to certain elements of risk.

Users have lost real money, lawsuits have been filed against Valve for letting third parties do what they do and indirectly benefitting from their operations. Still, no real solution has been achieved yet.

SkinCoin

SkinCoin team believes that introducing blockchain to this chaotic and hardly regulated industry could provide security and transparency to all players involved in skin trades.

SkinCoin aims to provide security to players’ in-game assets and protect skin trade platforms from Valve’s claims by replacing actual skins as a means of payment. SkinCoin can be used for payments by third party sites and still perfectly conform to Steam policies, according to SkinCoin CEO Igor Solomatin.

The idea is fairly simple, players could use SkinCoins to trade skins for any game they like, and use the same tokens as chips or bets. The sale of tokens is currently in progress, and will end on July 22.