The Baseball Game as Proof of Concept

Imagine holding a small deck of cards—the kind you might shuffle before a family game night. At first glance, it looks simple. But this deck is also a test of a new way for independent creators to publish physical work with verifiable credentials.

It is the first edition of Bedard’s Universal Baseball: 100 decks based on a game my great-grandfather designed nearly a century ago.

For me, the game is more than nostalgia. It is LiTPOW’s first published product and its first working proof of concept.

A family story and a modern problem

When I set out to revise my great-grandfather’s game, I was preserving a piece of family history. I was also confronting the same risk faced by other small creators: how do you share something meaningful while protecting the connection between your name and the authentic product?

Artists, printmakers, and independent publishers can put years into their work, only to see a knockoff appear online. The immediate loss is not limited to sales. When customers cannot tell which product is official, trust in the creator can begin to erode.

With this baseball game, I wanted to demonstrate another path. Each deck in the first edition includes credentials that correspond to a record published by LiTPOW.

Verification without an app or account

A customer does not need to download an app, provide an email address, or own Bitcoin.

The customer enters the deck’s edition, serial number, and passphrase into the verification tool. LiTPOW converts that information into a cryptographic fingerprint and checks for a matching fingerprint in the edition’s public blockchain records.

If a match is found, the customer has evidence that the credential was issued for an authentic deck in that edition.

This does not prove who currently owns the deck, and credentials must still be protected from copying or disclosure. But it gives the official product a checkable connection to its issuer—something an imitation cannot create merely by copying the artwork, logo, or packaging.

Imperfect, but working

The first edition is not a big-box commercial release. Its production reflects the scale of an independent project, and some advanced game mechanics may return in later editions.

But it is real, playable, and published. The verification system is also real. The game makes it possible to test LiTPOW with a physical object instead of discussing authentication only in theory.

That test matters because LiTPOW’s potential extends beyond a deck of cards. A print, sculpture, handmade item, collectible, or limited-run publication could use the same underlying approach.

The first edition marks the beginning of that experiment. The game will evolve, and LiTPOW will evolve with what its users teach me.

Explore Bedard’s Universal Baseball or try the sample verification.