Gambling, Tuxedos and Blockchain

Throughout history, people have always been in hot pursuit of luck. Hence its not difficult to see where gambling emerged from, that desire to cheat hard work and reap maximum rewards. With new technology, however, came new opportunities where now, it’s blockchain’s turn to have a go and help people out. Can this decentralized and transparent nature of technology completely change the landscape of gambling? Blockchain can solve main problems of the online gaming industry, allowing to some extent, literally look inside a game, to make sure that no deception is taking place.

Online gambling was first launched in 1994 when Antigua and Barbuda passed a law that legalized online gambling. In 1996, there were already at least 10 websites offering roulette or poker games. But the problem of fair play arose almost instantaneously with the appearance of online casinos. For example, when you play a physical slot machine, its owners can not discreetly switch machines in front of a person. In online games however, all the user sees is an image. It's enough for the owners to rewrite a few lines of code to make the game display anything they want.

Therefore, the main problem of the online gambling industry is opacity. Blockchain technology is one of the most obvious ways to put an end to this shortcoming. To win people's trust, online gambling should show more transparency, especially with respect to transactions. The immutability and verifiability of blockchain, make it an ideal solution to ensure the complete honesty of any online platform, be it a casino or a bookmaker.

Blockchain technology can break this circle of distrust and create a new gambling ideology. All online casinos, lotteries and other gambling platforms, based on the distributed ledger technology, tend to use their transparency and accountability to prove that everything is fair and that there is no dishonest interference. This technology is a competitive advantage for more modest gambling services over their centralized rivals.

Other advantages of blockchain:

Developers can also find a profitable use of this technology. Usually, they face two problems: price and transparency, often having problems with receiving payments from players, confirming their identity, etc. Blockchain helps to solve these issues too.

The relative shortage of cryptocurrencies in this sphere can be attributed to the fact that not so many potential customers are using cryptocurrencies. Therefore, mostly crypto enthusiasts use blockchain-based online casinos. However, digital assets are rapidly gaining popularity around the world, so the blockchain technology is becoming more attractive for large-scale gambling platforms.

VDice became the first gambling game based on ethereum blockchain. This is not only the first commercial gambling project based on ethereum, but also the first working decentralized gambling application. The main difference between vDice and all other existing gambling projects is the lack of servers, accounts, and deposits. Since gameplay takes place on the ethereum blockchain it cannot be controlled by the developers or other, third parties. In order to provide maximum transparency regarding platform security issues, the project team alsopublished the results of an independent audit of the current decentralized applications code (Dapps).

Edgeless Casino is another decentralized casino implemented on etherium smart-contracts. The project strives to make online gambling absolutely transparent to all clients. Players are given information about how much profit was earned at every stage. There is no loss due to commissions since Edgeless is the first casino with a 0% commission. Another feature of this project is that 40% of the casino profits go to the "Edgeless Lounge Pot", which can be won by anyone. As creators say, for the first time in the history of gambling you can win a percentage of casino’s profits.

True Flip is an international anonymous block lottery with instant payments, an open source code and a transparent prize fund. The goal of the project is to become the most popular and transparent blockchain lottery with the biggest jackpots in the world. "In order to fulfill our mission in the best possible way, we are making the whole game", the website of the project says.

The world's first blockchain gambling machine for offline casinos. SmartPlay.tech has developed a futuristic style terminal, which is a hardware implementation of the classic roulette. In its basic configuration, SmartBox machine includes a table with touch screen games, a terminal for depositing money and a QR scanner for connecting with cryptocurrency wallets. The software for gambling was developed using blockchain technology. The project team that developed the new slot machine has already announced its intention to launch a full line of SmartBox gaming machines for blackjack, bingo, poker etc.

By Ekaterina Ulyanova