Gambling and who will profit.

This is an idea on how we can take gambling/casinos and allow the same odds, but put the proceeds go to good uses.

To my best knowledge......

Ethereum would be the perfect environment to set up a casino. (Although I see a million other better uses)

There WILL be contracts for every type of betting there is out there today, and many we haven't thought of.

The big problem (for the person creating the contract) is that anyone can come and undercut you and become more popular and you will make no money (wei).....

There has been a recent discussion of certain contracts (sha256, sha4, etc) being coded as ES and having a lower fee because they optimized and used often. By these characteristics I see a gambling (etherdice, blackjack, lottery) contract easily gaining a lower fee and being widely used to become a standard.

Now here comes the good part of this idea. The house ALWAYS (need I repeat), ALWAYS wins. Obviously there is a variable number of "wei" that the contract will need to have to cover all bets, but in the long run there will always be a surplus. Where do the profits go......(please respond with ideas on how to handle this)

At this point I don't know where the profits go, but here are some ideas. (this will be a community choice since ether will allow us to vote on such topics)
Donate it to a voted on charity
Reinvest in cryptocurrency projects
Other ideas are welcome

Who do we want to profit from this and how as a community are we to ensure that the surplus money will go to something that will benefit humanity and not to 1 persons ether address. Gambling is not a new idea and i bet at least 100 people right now are thinking of making contracts to make casinos with ES.

Comments

  • mlacortemlacorte Los AngelesMember Posts: 27 ✭✭
    One of the unique aspects of Ethereum is that contracts don't need to have a person attached to them. This means that you could potentially build a "casino" where the odds of winning/losing are 50%. You could also have more traditional "casinos" that win money over time, but why would a gambler want to go to a casino with worse odds?

    Typically, casinos maintain an oligopoly by requiring that individuals/corporations are licensed by their state, and they have back room deals with the state to make sure that the only people who get licensed would benefit their casinos.

    Ethereum could potentially shift this paradigm. Casinos will no doubt want to maintain control over their oligopoly, so they will probably try to push legislation that would outlaw gambling through use of Ethereum contracts, but I'd imagine that they'd have a harder time being able to make these arguments since they are typically built on, "These industries need to be regulated to make sure that its customers aren't getting screwed". With Ethereum contracts, you can mathematically prove that a customer isn't getting screwed, so they'd have to fall back on significantly weaker arguments.

    I'm not much for gambling, but I'm all for decentralizing power, and this seems like a perfect example of using technology to go about that.
  • Jam10oJam10o Member Posts: 61 ✭✭
    I see the scenario unfolding as follows ->

    1) Someone inevitably releases a casino on the blockchain.
    2) Someone else inevitably reads his code (since it's on the blockchain...)
    3) Someone inevitably makes a "fairer" version, in order to take market share.
    N) There is a perfectly "fair" casino on the blockchain, no profit whatsoever aside from fees.
    N+1) People realize the fairest gambling in the world is on the ethereum blockchain (miners benefit immensely, DICEasic are making devices by the boatload). The casino industry off-chain suffers.
    N+2) There is a surge of people joining the blockchain, value of ether surges.
    N+3) Early adopters, miners, and developers, get filthy rich off of person no.1's casino idea.

    I'm currently working on skipping to N by writing a fair dice contract. we don't need the drama of everything before that.
  • splizmosplizmo Member Posts: 12
    Jam20o we may still see contracts which are not perfectly "fair" based on superior client software. Otherwise we won't see DAO's which actually make a profit.
  • mlacortemlacorte Los AngelesMember Posts: 27 ✭✭
    There's nothing to stop someone from writing a contract designed to make profit, but given the open nature of Ethereum, it seems highly unlikely that someone won't make a "fairer" copy of it. And once those are both publicly known, I can't imagine anybody would want to go with the contract that will hurt their odds.
  • splizmosplizmo Member Posts: 12
  • ctindallctindall Member Posts: 18
    It does seem that the differentiator on a lot of projects will be in the client code. You would think that, rationally, people would want to only use open source code to interact with Ethereum, since otherwise the trust claims it can make are largely cancelled out, but I bet that people will still flock to whichever casino has a better front-end, and there's no reason this can't be a closed source Windows client that only connects to contracts with a healthy vigorish built in for the developers.
  • hughht5hughht5 Member Posts: 9
    I think a lot of people assume the casino with the best rates (0% fee) will be the most popular. This is simply not true - the casino that is best advertised will be most used. Obviously the fees need to be kept to a reasonable level, but best / cheapest service is not always the winner. (I wish it was)
  • HellRazorHellRazor BerlinMember Posts: 99 ✭✭
    Yeah the cashino idea is pretty sweet, but what I couldn't figure out is how to make a provable fair random number generator? Any ideas? I mean there is no mechanism to create a random number or is there? Or could a contract mash like 100 external sources, hash them and do a mod on the hash???
  • sjenkinssjenkins Member Posts: 28
    @HellRazor? in a thread on p2p poker here I outlined a scheme where each player brings their own supply of randomness to the table.

    Each random number required is created from a hash of random numbers supplied as needed by both sides.

    You secure it by having each side send a hash of the random numbers they're *going* to be using to a contract which can later - but before payouts - verify that those numbers were actually used in the game. (A player using less than random numbers leaves themselves open to exploits here, but can't exploit others with them).

  • HellRazorHellRazor BerlinMember Posts: 99 ✭✭
    @sjenkins I like that approach, it's similiar to the one thats used on those online btc bet sites. Okay let's assume I want to create a roulette table. What I as the dealer(and contract creator) would need to do would be to create a contract with the typical roulette rules and lets say I would pre generate like 100000 random numbers hashes and save them inside the contract. So when a player makes a bet, I as the dealer would post the value of the next hash. That would work I guess, right? Still I the dealer could refuse to post the value and the player would not receive his maneyz. Nice idea for a random number generator! Thanks bro!
  • sjenkinssjenkins Member Posts: 28
    In the poker proposal I had to include a returnable deposit just to stop the loser from kicking the table over at the end.
  • JasperJasper Eindhoven, the NetherlandsMember Posts: 514 ✭✭✭
    Yes, profitable casinos dependent on irrationality will win. Moreover having an 'official' set of scripts would send the message that ethereum is for gambling in particular.

    About random numbers, see this thread: https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/546/lll-question-random-number-function
  • jambttjambtt Member Posts: 6
    edited February 2016
    I am the creator and founder of etheroll.com

    We offer 50/50 Ethereum gambling games where you can bet Ether and receive instant payouts. Easy user interface, try us out, we are still only in pre-alpha release stage and are about to announce a Seed investment round.

    Have fun and good luck! Remember just for now I only put the Dapp up on the testnet so people are not playing with real money right now, until we 'go-live'.

    For now though, you can try your luck at winning some testnet Ether with our online gambling games! Enjoy :D

    Our Etherum online gambling Dapp:
    http://etheroll.com

    You can view our blog here:
    https://etheroll.wordpress.com/

    Twitter:
    https://twitter.com/etheroll
  • vdicevdice Member Posts: 2
    Hi y'all,

    We have a Classic SatoshiDICE clone, implemented as an Ethereum Smart Contract.

    The Gambling Dapp is here: https://www.vdice.io

    Also, our blog is here: https://blog.vdice.io

    It's working, on the live. Feedback is most welcome.

    Thanks
  • CryptoSportzCryptoSportz Member Posts: 26
    We have a pretty cool project that touches on some of the aspects you listed in the original post. We're a P2P sports betting platform called Crypto Sportz. We're the first functioning decentralized platform powering wagers between sports fans using blockchain technology.

    We built is so that everyone can have an easy and secure way to make bets on their favourite teams. Using smart contracts that live on the Ethereum network, your experience is free of external controls. No one can deny you entry, change the rules, or most importantly refuse to pay you your winnings if you guess correctly.

    It's simple. Pick your team, pick your game, pick the outcome and collect Ether when you guess correctly.

    We're looking to launch our beta in the next day or so just in time for the SuperBowl and we would love to hear what feedback you have on our platform: http://cryptosportz.com/
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