Technical overview

Shaga - Decentralized Gaming Ecosystem: Architecture & Specifications

Overview

Shaga operates as a peer-to-peer (P2P) gaming server lending platform, anchored on the Solana blockchain. It establishes direct connections between gamers and server lenders, creating an innovative and dynamic ecosystem. Users' identities are associated with their Solana public key addresses, facilitating a decentralized and secure way of managing identities. The system employs smart contracts for service level agreements (SLAs) and uses Solana's decentralized storage for storing non-sensitive data related to the Shaga system. Moreover, each gaming session is represented as a compressed NFT, providing a transparent and immutable record for dispute resolution.

Mobile App - Moonlight Client Integration

The Shaga mobile application integrates the Moonlight client, providing an efficient server discovery mechanism and facilitating direct user-to-user communication. It's not merely a user interface, but a comprehensive gateway into the gaming server ecosystem. The Moonlight client manages payments for gaming sessions and handles the renting of compressed NFTs minted by the Shaga-Sunshine hosts. It also allows users to rate their experience with the Shaga-Sunshine host, contributing to an immutable and transparent reputation system.

Key Features:

• User Authentication: Users authenticate using their Solana wallet public key addresses, ensuring secure and decentralized identity management.

• Game Discovery: Enables users to find and select available games hosted on Shaga-Sunshine nodes.

• Connection to Shaga-Sunshine Hosts: Establishes a secure connection to the corresponding Shaga-Sunshine host once a game is selected.

• Payment Transactions: Manages payments for gaming sessions by creating and signing transactions on the Solana blockchain.

• Renting of Compressed NFTs: Handles the renting of compressed NFTs that represent gaming sessions.

• Reputation and Rating System: Allows users to rate their experience with the Shaga-Sunshine host, with ratings recorded on the Solana blockchain.

• Interaction with Staking Mechanism: Interacts with Solana's staking mechanism, allowing users to stake tokens as a guarantee for quality of service.

Server Lending - Sunshine Hosts

Shaga's backbone is the robust network of Sunshine hosts. These hosts run the game software, render the game graphics, manage the gaming sessions, and mint the compressed NFTs representing the gaming sessions. They receive payments for gaming sessions from Moonlight clients and contribute to an immutable and transparent reputation system by receiving ratings.

Key Features:

• Game Hosting: Provides a platform for hosting games.

• User Session Management: Manages the gaming sessions for the connected Shaga-Moonlight clients.

• Minting Compressed NFTs: Creates compressed NFTs that represent the gaming sessions.

• Payment Transactions: Receives payments for the gaming sessions from the Shaga-Moonlight clients.

• Managing Ratings and Reputation: Receives and responds to ratings from the Shaga-Moonlight clients, which are recorded on the Solana blockchain.

• Interaction with Staking Mechanism: Interacts with Solana's staking mechanism, allowing hosts to stake tokens as a guarantee for quality of service.

Blockchain - Solana

The Solana blockchain serves as Shaga's central transactional and operational hub. It facilitates transaction processing, hosts our dispute resolution system, and stores user reviews as part of the immutable and transparent reputation system. Solana also handles the creation, updating, and termination of rental agreements, and stores game metadata, high scores, or other gaming data.

Key Features:

• Transaction Management: Handles payments from borrowers to lenders.

• Dispute Resolution: Provides a mechanism for resolving disputes between users.

• User Reviews: Hosts user ratings and reviews as part of the reputation system, contributing to a robust and fair ecosystem.

• Rental Management: Handles the creation, updating, and termination of rental agreements.

• Data Storage: Utilizes Solana's decentralized storage to store non-sensitive data related to the Shaga system, like game metadata, high scores, or other gaming data.

• Compressed NFT Management: Handles the creation, transfer, and management of compressed NFTs that represent gaming sessions.

• Staking and Rewards: Solana's staking mechanism is utilized as an incentive for maintaining high-quality service, allowing users to stake tokens which could be slashed if they fail to meet the agreed-upon service quality.

Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs)

DHTs in the Shaga system facilitate node discovery and routing, decentralization, load balancing, scalability, data persistence, and network resilience. They serve a critical function in ensuring the smooth functioning of the Shaga system by effectively handling node arrivals and departures.

Key Features:

• Node Discovery and Routing: Facilitates the discovery of suitable Shaga-Sunshine hosts by querying the DHT with the host's identifier.

• Decentralization: Each node in the DHT network stores a small portion of the hash table, distributing the responsibility of maintaining the network among all participating nodes.

• Load Balancing: Inherently provides load balancing by evenly distributing the load among all nodes.

• Scalability: Highly scalable, allowing the Shaga system to support a large number of hosts and clients.

• Data Persistence: Ensures data availability even if some nodes leave the network by replicating data across multiple nodes.

• Network Resilience: Enhances the resilience of the Shaga system by efficiently handling frequent node arrivals and departures.

Scalability - Independent Operations

Shaga's architecture is designed for scalability, leveraging the inherently parallel nature of P2P connections. Each lender-borrower pair operates independently, ensuring that the activities of one pair do not impact the performance of another. Additionally, the transactional settlement of server rentals is efficiently parallelized on Solana, eliminating potential bottlenecks and paving the way for robust scalability.

We are actively refining our architecture and working closely with experts in blockchain, networking, and software development. If you're interested in contributing to Shaga, please reach out to us at [contact information]. Stay tuned as we work to turn this vision into a reality.