OVR Using Chainlink to Connect the Metaverse to Real World Data and Events

2021-06-10

OVR is happy to announce our live and ongoing integration with Chainlink, the marketing-leading decentralized oracle network that provides smart contracts with secure and reliable off-chain data and computation. Our current integration involves the use of Chainlink Verifiable Randomness Function (VRF) to fairly and transparently select a special grant fund winner from the list of participants taking part in our upcoming OVRLand Treasure Hunt. Additionally, we plan to leverage Chainlink oracles throughout the platform to connect the physical world to OVRLand’s digital metaverse, enabling a virtual experience that’s impacted by the real world.

OVR is a decentralized platform for geolocalized Augmented Reality (AR) / Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, with a vision to merge the physical and the virtual world through AR. OVR allows users to build, host, and visualize AR/VR experiences that are customized to specific geographic locations.

This is accomplished by OVR dividing the digital world into 300 sqm hexagons called OVRLands, which each represent actual physical geographic locations. Each OVRLand is tokenized using the ERC-721 NFT standard on the Ethereum blockchain. The owner of each OVRLand NFT can assign the AR visual experience for the specific geographic location that their NFT represents.

But what if we could embed decentralized logic into OVRLand NFTs? What if we could take off-chain/geographic data and use it on the blockchain to supercharge interactions within the OVR decentralized metaverse?

Here is where Chainlink comes to play, allowing OVR to securely and reliably connect real-world events to blockchains in order to trigger smart contract executions. Data such as randomness, geolocation, weather, and more can all be fetched from off-chain sources and supplied on-chain via Chainlink-powered decentralized oracle networks.

The most immediate use case for OVR is leveraging randomness to determine metaverse events. However, the source of randomness must contain high assurances that it can’t be manipulated or predicted to gain unfair advantages, especially when the randomness is responsible for the movement of real economic value. This is why we selected Chainlink VRF to determine the winner of our 15k OVR token final extraction prize, which serves as a community reward to treasure hunters and to participate in our wider 50k grant for OVRLand buyers. The extraction process will be done through a public and deterministic algorithm that will iterate through the ordered list of OVRLand IDs, with Chainlink VRF used to generate and supply the random number used to fairly and transparently select a winner from the list.

Chainlink VRF works by combining block data that is still unknown when the request is made with the oracle node’s pre-committed private key to generate both a random number and a cryptographic proof. The OVR smart contract will only accept the random number input if it has a valid cryptographic proof, and the cryptographic proof can only be generated if the VRF process is tamper-proof. This provides users with automated and publicly verifiable assurances directly on-chain that selection using Chainlink VRF is provably fair and cannot be tampered with or predicted by the oracle, outside entities, or the OVR.ai team.

In the future, we also anticipate using a variety of Chainlink Data Feeds beyond VRF. Let’s break down some concrete examples on how Chainlink Data Feeds can supercharge blockchain metaverses and OVR.

Imagine having AR/VR experiences that are not only geolocalized but also “aware” of real world conditions:

AR game logic modified by the result of a football match or an election
AR location information modified by weather conditions
AR in-game tokens unlocked if a threshold amount of people are present in a location
AR/VR experiences unlocked if an artist wins a Grammy award

But these are just a few examples—any real world data source that can be streamed with an API can be reliably delivered on-chain by Chainlink oracles. The data can be integrated in smart contracts to create infinite types of interaction logic within the OVR metaverse—imagination is the only limit!

According to OVR.ai CEO Davide Cuttini, “Using Chainlink VRF for fair selection in the OVRLand distribution event is only the first step in a much wider set of Chainlink-OVR integration possibilities that can redefine the entire AR/VR industry. We are excited to showcase the potential of combining reliable off-chain data with decentralized metaverses to create vibrant and interactive virtual worlds that users can trust to function as intended.”

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the most widely used and secure way to power universally connected smart contracts. With Chainlink, developers can connect any blockchain with high-quality data sources from other blockchains as well as real-world data. Managed by a global, decentralized community of hundreds of thousands of people, Chainlink is introducing a fairer model for contracts. Its network currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across the decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance and gaming ecosystems, among others.

Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable data feeds. To learn more, visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter.