Tonk Is Building a Provability-Focused Onchain Nintendo Emulator

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Tonk, a programming collective focusing on onchain gaming, has announced a blockchain-based Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator called Dappicom. The app, being coded using Noir, a smart contract-enabled privacy-focused language, will allow players to prove they have achieved in-game milestones without showing how.

Tonk Announces Dappicom, a Provability-Focused NES Emulator

Tonk, a gaming-oriented programming team, has announced it is working on Dappicom, a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator that will allow users to play and enjoy old gaming classics onchain. Furthermore, Tonk focuses on the probability part of the gaming equation, using mathematical proofs to power this part of its functionality.

Dappicom is being coded using Noir, a language that uses zero-knowledge (ZK) technology for its objective. The emulator is designed to appeal to the retro gaming community, which will be able to prove they completed various challenges and quests without having to screencap the whole ordeal, as it is currently done.

For this, the app leverages an NES state machine that sends information to a server, which uses the info to construct a proof of the gameplay executed by the players, certifying the validity of their claims without giving away the techniques used for their accomplishments. Tonk explained this would be a world first, helping players to prove they completed tasks in a certain amount of time without a doubt.

Tonk stated:

Proving speedruns with hidden strategies has never been done before. Speedruns are often contested … You can’t argue with maths, though.

Such gameplay can be rewarded by companies or third parties with badges or other awards.

Origin and Motivation

Tonk stated that the idea of building an on-chain-powered NES emulator came after the creation of “Snarky Monsters,” a Pokemon-inspired game where non-playable characters have “secret psychology,” meaning that there is no way of knowing the stats of any character beforehand.

A battle server utility coded for this game was used to create a virtual machine for holding gaming secrets. This prototype morphed into what Dappicom is today.

Tonk stresses that Dappicom is being built to widen the audience of blockchain games and move away from crypto-focused gamers who only care about earning tokens, explaining that the app doesn’t “require a token and nor does it fit the play-to-earn model, which has a controversial reputation in gaming.” Dappicom’s target is the retro gaming scene, which is outside of the crypto realm.

Dappicom is still in its pre-alpha stages, and Tonk is establishing a community to shape the project and deliver a live demo.

What do you think about Tonk and Dappicom? Tell us in the comments section below.