Voxelus, a virtual reality content creation platform startup, has announced that its “app store for VR content” marketplace is now live and that its Voxel (VOX) in-game cryptocurrency will begin trading on the Bittrex with other cryptocurrency exchanges set to follow. In addition, Voxels will be listed on ShapeShift by the end of April. ShapeShift founder/CEO Erik Voorhees was responsible for naming the in-game cryptocurrency token and ShapeShift was an early investor in Voxels and facilitated its $500,000 crowdsale in December.
Voxelus claims its marketplace is the world’s largest source of virtual reality content right now, with more than 500 original assets, 50 fully working games, and more than 7,000 pieces of additional content through partnerships. All its content will be compatible with Samsung VR and Oculus Rift, with support for other VR environments slated for 2016. Payments will be available exclusively through the Voxelus appstore and may only be purchased using the Voxel cryptocurrrency. It chose to issue its own Blockchain to facilitate in-game payments for all assets, so no credit cards or bank accounts are required, there’s never a chargeback, and voxels are an asset-backed currency, with each voxel always being able to purchase digital assets on the marketplace and elsewhere.
The company explains that unlike bitcoin, voxels are not affected by block size scaling issues, as its consensus mechanism is majority controlled by Voxelus stakeholders and its core development team. It is written in a variation of litecoin code, with all recent security patches and performance updates, then customized to add a checkpoint server that prevents double spending, as well as a dynamic difficulty adjustment that minimizes the impact of any hostile attacks. This is the first proof-of-work coin to include a checkpoint server, a technology first introduced by Peercoin, a hybrid proof-of-stake coin in 2013.
“Having the Voxelus marketplace use its own cryptocurrency, which freely trades on exchanges globally, allows the 2.5 billion people in the world who have no bank account but have a mobile phone to create, buy and sell virtual reality content,” said Martin Repetto, CEO and founder of Voxelus. “This explosion of inexpensive, globally accessible content will help speed the adoption of VR globally, and the Voxel, through its variety of wallets, including a Web wallet and Android wallet, will be the first exposure many gamers and content creators throughout the world have with a cryptocurrency.”
