Introducing the Phoenix Prime Leaderboard - Demonstrating the Proof-Of-Burn++ (PoB++) concept

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the article, Proof of Burn++: Turning Every Block into a Bidding War. The basic concept that can be harnessed by any game or app on the Steem blockchain is this:

Burn transactions can form the foundation for many competitive ecosystems: each block becomes a self-contained auction, with the highest burn in that block declared the winner. The prize is whatever the developer wants to attach: in-game currency, collectible digital cards, game-based properties or services, or access to a leveling challenge.

As a proof of concept for POB++, I created the Open Source Phoenix Prime application (source, demo). Phoenix Prime awards badges to the "BurnMaxxer" for each block. Being a BurnMaxxer simply means the account that burned the most STEEM or SBD in the block by sending it to the @null account.

The badges issued are based upon properties of the block numbers, but of course they could have been based on anything that the block contains. Some of these properties include whether the number is even/odd, whether it's a prime number (hence, the name), whether it contains interesting numerical patterns like 5 or more of a kind or ending with 6-zeroes. In total it currently awards 41 different badges with varying levels of scarcity.

After that post, I made some revisions to the program including one change that displays the type of badges that can be obtained from block numbers that are expected in the next four hours and a new page that shows a leaderboard over 1 hour, 1 day, 7 days, or 30 days. Here's an example from the top of the page on the 30 day leaderboard.

You can visit the demo page to see the leaders of the additional categories.

Note how most of these players weren't competing to get on the leaderboard, but they're there anyway. The BurnMaxxer titles were awarded retroactively. This establishes the possibility for apps and games to attract users and players by offering something like an in-app airdrop that's determine by a player's historical burn activity.

And to the right is a snapshot from the panel of upcoming block types.

We can see that block number 108,113,452 contains 5 and 6 digit unordered straights (0-4 and 0-5) and that block number 108,113,454 is both a Harshad Number and a Happy Number. Also, there are a good number of "full house" numbers with 3 digits of one number and 2 digits of another.

I've been running an experiment over the last week or so, and even when we know that a scarce target block is coming, so far it still seems fairly challenging to get a transaction to land on that exact block.

In addition to adding the upcoming "special blocks" list and the leaderboard, I also made some updates to categories and displays for the individual account search.

As an example of an individual account search, here are BurnMaxxer badges that the @burndao.burn account won during the last 90 days, including the tail-end of proposal #117.

This account once again highlights the point that games and apps can even grant awards & capabilities based on historical activities as a method for attracting players or users.

At present, most blocks can be won by burning 0.001 STEEM or 0.001 SBD - almost nothing. In practice, someone could win the BurnMaxxer title once an hour for almost 42 days while burning just a single STEEM. And of course, they might even get that back by blogging about their activity in the demo.

As new games start making use of this capability, however, we might expect that amount to grow. Every new game that implements the PoB++ concept increases the incentive for Steem account owners to burn STEEM and/or SBDs in exchange for some in-app good or service - giving the blockchain a solid and growing utility mechanism. The competitive nature of the per-block auction should then drive up the amount that people will need to burn in order to win a block for any/all of the games.

And remember: A key point here is that Phoenix Prime is just a proof of concept. I invite you to play around with it and to compete for some BurnMaxxer titles. But, the real opportunity is for developers to use PoB++ as a reusable game mechanism that transforms token burning into a competitive resource that can power application economies, rankings, collectibles, or entirely new gameplay systems across the Steem ecosystem.

Thank you for your attention!