Bitcoin Forum

In another thread I've been asked about what I thought about "gaming on the blockchain" and an idea struck me, namely, is it possible to turn the Bitcoin blockchain (or any other blockchain, for that matter) into an online casino, like real dice site existing on the Net (latency issues aside)?

I am not really sure what you mean.  Do you mean using the blockchain as some type of rng?  Or do you mean an actual game based on the blockchain?  I am intrigued, this could get interesting.

Sounds like an on-chain gambling? that existed btw . Sorry if that is not what you mean

Actually, I don't have anything to tell yet (because I don't know the gory details behind the blockchain protocol), but since the time between tx confirmations seems to be pretty damn random, then yes, the blockchain could be used as an RNG. I think about (the possibility of) implementing something like a dice site in a fully decentralized manner which would be absolutely fair with a zero "house edge" (or small, to add up to a bankroll)...

but usually people know busy hours and that the time between mined blocks is large, isn't this easy to guess ?

To be honest, I don't know, but I'm sure that there are metrics in the protocol which values are truly random and which could be used for "rolling", as it were. And you needn't use actual time spans between confirmations, you could use, say, seconds or milliseconds (throwing away the number of full minutes)...

There would have to be someone on the other side who will be handling the funds, and someone will be there would wold control the private keys . Almost impossible for it to be decentralized. There was a new site recently which offered On-Chain Dice , I think it was called Chain Roll.

I guess the private keys could be generated by and saved inside the blockchain itself (or, rather, distributed across it), so that the winner could see them and thereby take the reward. So I don't think that "the other side" is actually necessary...