8.0 - Blockchain Recordkeeping
100% transparent and fair, hosted on the blockchain
The unalterable player histories stored on the blockchain provide many opportunities to incentivize players beyond token prizes. By ensuring fairness and transparency in record keeping for all parties, we can ensure that every prize and every recognition conferred will be honestly attained, and smart contract functionality also provides a far more granular and immediate way to reward players than is currently offered in eSports tournaments today.
For example, a sponsor such as Nike might promise to reward youth tournament success with gift cards or free gear. Where tracking and validating performance, claiming awards, and reimbursing players might have once taken six to eight weeks, the promised rewards can be made available instantly as a player fulfills the terms of the smart contract unique to Nike's sponsored tournament.
We may also incentivize youth league play with scholarship awards offered by sponsors or nonprofit foundations rather than ESTN token prizes. Accredited universities may also offer eSports scholarships to recruit top youth talent to their eSports teams. There will be many opportunities for sponsors, partners, and educational institutions to support ESTN youth leagues with scholarship awards or other educational grants.
"By playing games you can artificially speed up your learning curve to develop the right kind of thought processes". - Nate Silver
As in the prior example with Nike, these scholarships can easily be mediated by smart contracts and awarded immediately on completion of the requisite smart contract terms. Players may also be granted scholarships that renew based on the strength of a player's UPR and their grade point average.
This is no different from the way that high school sports stars are heavily recruited by top university programs today, on the expectation that they maintain both a high quality of play and a certain level of educational achievement, to receive scholarship funds from year to year. The difference in our example is that UPR is a true representation of player skill on a worldwide basis, rather than a narrow indication of skill against a small subset of local or regional players.
We envision an eSports ecosystem that increasingly resembles other sports' youth-to-pro feeder systems. We can easily see a world in which young eSports prodigies, playing on the ESTN platform, attract the same (or greater) attention and scholarship offers as high school football or basketball stars.