Phase 1 - Design

November 2021-January 2022

Step one in this long process is making philosophical and design decisions about the project.

First such decision simply centered around what casino game to build. Ultimately we decided for the first product to be built for playing No Limit Texas Hold Em! There are many other types of games you could build. Even if you narrow it down to Poker there are still many other variants such as draw poker, Omaha, 7-Card Stud, and more! We decided on No Limit Texas Hold Em due to the beauty of the game, its global player base, and its #1 ranking in popularity amongst poker variants.

Beyond deciding that we're focused on No Limit Texas Hold Em, there also is the fundamental design decision to build out technology based on Ethereum, versus a competing technology like Solana, Cardano, Polygon, or Avalanche.

Ethereum has a lot of things going for it. As the largest of all smart contract platforms, the most decentralized, most immune to censorship, with the largest number of active users and largest market cap - Ethereum was, in our minds, the top choice for the smart contract platform to choose.

Then there was the decision to launch an NFT collection around the Dapp, and many decisions about the the nature and theme of the NFTs. As part of our discord community at Crypto Outlaws you can join that community and learn more about that. Also includes the illustration work itself!!

Last big design decision was our strategy for solving the Ethereum gas fees (transaction costs) and settlement time issues so the game could be played practically but still be secured on-chain. After a thorough analysis here we have decided to use an implementation of a Layer 2 scaling technology called ZK rollups. Based off the cryptographic breakthrough of "Zero Knowledge" proofs. Through our use of ZK rollups we have identified a way to reduce gas fees to pennies (or less) per transaction. Allowing a practical implantation of poker to exist on-chain!