Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

It's been several months since our team is thinking  about opening Bitsler.com for investments.  The goal is to be able to provide a much higher max bet than 10 or 20 BTC, something like 100-150 BTC.  However, our major concern  is  the FAIRNESS.  Indeed, it is easy for people with an access to the server to create an account and make it win. I don't tell that other online casinos who are opened for investments already did it , not at all.   I am just trying to say that it could be done by them, so  the investors will never find out about it.
I could give my money to people like Dooglus or Dean without any hesitation or fear. But even if your investment was profitable,  you will never know if the owner cheated on you (Let's take an example of the casino that made :  +100 BTC profit .  Its' owner may create an account and win 25 BTC.  Even if you are still in profit : +75 BTC, you have been cheated on and your profit has been decreased). And this is a big problem for us, especially when we are talking about a big amount of money.

We all know, that Provably Fair System exists for relations between players and casino. But after doing some research, we didn't find a provably fair system for relations between  the investors and casino.  I know that Dooglus thought about a system like that in the past (someone wrote it in a topic).

Is there someone who has an idea of how to provide (create) a provably fair system for relations between the investors and casino ?

Thanks

There was site which tried to implement provably fair for investors, but they didn't last long. Here is their old ann thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=920704.0
NlNico started thread on same topic back in 2014 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=774458.0
Seems hard to release such independent system which is fair for both players and investors, in this case I would trust Bitsler with investment.

Short answer: not really.

With Bitcoin alone, it's just not possible. There's no mathematically sound solution that doesn't involve severely hindering the casino. However, Ethereum is looking promising for this kind of stuff.

I wrote a blog post about it here:

https://thebitcoinstrip.com/blog/the-next-chapter-of-crypto-gambling.html

if youre write example about profit 100 bitcoin, and investor can get 75 bitcoin
so share profit to investor 75%, how investor can get calculation profit from website

Thanks for the vouch there.

There's not really any great solution to the problem. Dooglus, NLNico, me and some other people in the forum have proposed or looked in to methods before but nothing was really great. Most ideas involve extra servers and would make betting a lot slower for players.

The best option investors have is to invest only what they can afford to lose in people/sites they feel won't cheat them. Options are usually slim :)

An investment option could be good for you as you get to cater to whales who bet big.

I've actually just divested from a bunch of sites because I like to have total control of my coins and don't want the stress of worrying if a player on a site has found a way to cheat of if the owners are just winning themselves. Note that I'm not accusing any sites of doing this, but I just prefer to not have to worry about it.

Yeah, i can think of a few ways.

The simplest is the one I developed before, you can check out pevpot's thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1243970.0) which is now defunct, but it had a provably fair scheme that was totally fair for both investors and players, and used the blockchain in a way that was robust against miners too. But since the method requires waiting on blocks, the UX is going to suck pretty hugely. But it might be worth it for huge bets (e.g. >100 btc). Maybe?


The other way to make it provably fair for investors, the workflow could be something like this:

1) User sends bet to the server
2) Server publishes that bet to investors
3) Investor with at least $BETPROFIT BTC in theier account accepts the bet, and sends a hash of a random number and seed they generated
4) Server locks user/investor balance for the amount and sends the server hash to the user
5) User records the hash, and then sends a client seed to the server
6) Server sends client seed to investor
7) Investor uses the client seed to know if they they won or lost, records it, and reveals their original random number and seed
8) Server validates the investor random number and seed, and resolves the bet in favor of the investor or client


That should be provably fair for both investors and users.


With a bit of scripting magic, I'm reasonably sure it's possible to make the above procedure not just provably fair, but actually completely trustless. I'll avoid saying too much, incase I stumble upon a bottle of amphetamines and get the energy to try commercialize it =)

That's similar to the way Contingency (the ETH platform BitcoinStrip linked to), kind of.
It would definitely work but I think it could be too slow for the players that are used to 10+ bets a second.

How about a third party website which then relies on multiple third party websites which all generate a seed and is combined at each stage, and then added a final seed ?

I know this could mean slowing down the speed of the site, but should be completely doable.

Yeah, although you could pretty easily have two different schemes: one for micro-bets which are fast and bankrolled by the site. And the second for the larger bets which get bankrolled by a provably fair investor scheme. I'm not totally convinced that if someone is betting 10s of thousands of dollars, they care about waiting a second or two. Hell, it's just good suspense at that point  ;D

Since its not just the people who bet those single large bets who contribute to the total wagered, it is equally slow for the small bettors who add up to wager a large amount. I am sure any site which implements a slow algorithm/method are going to lose on a lot of the small bettors .

Interesting. Although:

You make it sound like they ran off with money or something. What happened, as I recall was rather uneventful. Someone had their large withdrawal (1300 btc?) manually processed, but before their account had the funds deducted they gambled with the "fake" money and lost it to investors. So instead of the money getting deducted from his account like normal, it was taken from the bankroll.

All things considered, I believe it went pretty smoothly and no one lost any money or was harmed

Oh, I might have got the facts wrong on that one. I'll correct it -- thanks.

The problem with this is that, as you said, the player would have to wait for a block between each bet. That really kills the experience; so much so that I don't think people would play on it. Definitely not enough for bitSler anyway, as their "auto-betting" thing (martingale script) boasts 300 bets per second.

However, block time on Ethereum is only 12 seconds which is far more reasonable. I think your solution is much better applied there.

Also, I'd still like to see an off-blockchain solution if one exists. That would be awesome.

I don't think it's possible though.

I don't think there is any great way. However if people invest just invest what they don't mind losing. I would personally invest in bitsler as opposed to gambling since i can't win :). So investing is a better option. Its nice that you are worried about what the investors would be thinking about. Might be why Bitsler is one of the top dice sites.

i think VDlice platform might help you to solve the problem, Just take a at them, they have a nice dividend sharing and have a profit container for all share holders of their VSlice token, i think this will work on bitsler if you try to implement it. just suggesting.

Yeh, my idea (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=774458.0) was only "fair by audit" and not "provably fair" (so it only works if investors trust that the auditor is not colluding with the site owner.) I actually made a diagram of that too some time ago:

https://i.imgur.com/Klf0urz.png

The obvious disadvantage is performance. It is a bit like MP apps (they also make a "Make bet HTTP request" for each bet to MP) - they do work reasonable fast AFAIK, but it is still a disadvantage.



Most ETH dapps will probably still have low limits if truly provably fair for investors too. Some might use ETH blockhashes but that limits the bets to 0.05 BTC (due to block withholding.) Some use BTC bridge to use BTC blockhashes but that limits bets to 12.5 BTC (unless long calculation like PevPot) and I am not sure how those ETH sites handle BTC block orphans. Something like vDice is not really provably fair (even for players) as it uses third-parties for the RNG (random.org with some audit), probably "good enough" for 100 ETH bets, but for 100 BTC bets that seems too risky.

A P2P game like Contingency does solve the problem, but it is relevant to say that every bet is only connected to 1 investor/individual. So this still limits the max profit of each bet (way) more than "traditional crowd-funded sites" (since only 1 investor will need to cover the whole bet profit) and will result into some investors having a profit and some others a loss (more randomly than normal = more variance not very attractive for investors.)



Overall, definitely no real good way IMO :P :(

I don't mean to derail the conversation, but just FYI they're not even provably fair for gamblers, let alone for investors. They just blindly trust random.org (and oracalze). My conversations with them lead me to believe they are dishonest (e.g. tacitly admitting they aren't provably fair, or fully decentralized but wanting to leave it on their site for marketing reasons) , and the only thing going for them is they spent tens of thousands of dollars buying advertising and paid media coverage.   I'm not sure how much money their investors have lost so far, but I have trouble imagine it'll be long before it's all.

Actually started working last night on a similar idea las Ryan posted and wondered if I should integrate into BetKing.

Was excited about the fact that:
1) Provably fair for investrs, but also
2) Your site could be legal in every country as you can have the investors be the ones who process the bets. You are just match making. Like BitTtorrent.
3) Possible to have reduced server costs but this isn't much anyway.
4) Investors can't cheat players as BetKing still acts as escrow of funds.

However after some thought I don't think it's really worth doing.
I personally don't need any extra trust from investors.
Poker would need to be processed on my own server so that can still be a legal issue in some places.
Poker needs no investors and isn't provably fair anyway.

Also in long run if you wanted big FIAT site to buy me out then I doubt they would buy a platform that relies on investors being distributed like that.
I wonder though if it means you could allow FIAT deposits legally if you're only acting as escrow?

That is an important issue. However, as long as you do not try to cheat the system, I think it is still provably fair enough for the investors to put their money in your bankroll
However, when will you decide to open the investing system. I have been waiting for this announcement for a long time. BItsler is a potential casino

This is true, but not really... I don't think it will limit the max profit.

At the moment the reason whale holders aren't willing to invest a large amount in regular crowdfunded Bitcoin casinos is because trusting an anonymous source with 6 figures isn't safe. However, with Contingency, it kinda is -- no chance of the owner running off. The only real risk involved is the variance, which is negligible. There are plenty of early hoarders who have a couple mil that they wouldn't mind putting towards + EV.

I predict the maximum bet on Contingency will be very high because of whale investors.

Further, I think a "pooling" option in Contingency would be pretty cool. Maybe it could be done outside of Contingency, with a third Ethereum contract as the holder of CTY, kind of like a trust account between multiple investors. Haven't thought a lot about the technical side of this, but definitely interesting.

It's not provably fair though, on the investor's side. And it's not trustless.

It would be very cool if it was.

I think the coolest part about it, is you don't necessarily have to match an investor with a gambler. But you can match gamblers with gamblers. For example if I was willing to bet 1 BTC @ 2x and Bob was willing to bet 1 BTC @ 2x, and both willing to pay a 1% house edge. The casino could match the two bets, and take a risk-free expected value of 0.02 BTC.

Or someone could put in "order" to do a 100 BTC gamble with 0 house edge, etc. I think it'd be pretty cool to just operate it like a bet exchange, taking and matching orders.

The part I don't like, and is dealing with the edge cases around disconnecting. e.g. where one party doesn't or can't or won't reveal the seed that created their hash. You'd probably have to do something like they have X period of time to reconnect and provide it, or the bet is decided against them. But it's going to be a pretty bad user experience for anyone when that happens, and you'd likely need a ban or reputation system to ban gamblers/investors who did that too often.

Hi Baryom.


Are you gonna be doing the same "kelly" as Dean of Betking.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=910134.msg10012831#msg10012831

It should be a gentlemen's agreement. And have midmans, not just one.


Auditors would be better don't you think?

I see it looks good, hopefully in the future will continue like this and it looks even better. :)

I think the key point is the server. You must somehow create a program that is running on the server and send everything to an outside recording device.

There is usually no control what happens on the server and the operator can easily manipulate. A good example is Satoshidice:

Satoshidice scam, 500+ Bitcoins defrauded and disappeared! (https://game-protect.com/satoshidice-scam/)

THIS POST IS ABSOLUTE PROOF THAT PROVABLY FAIR IS A SCAM
THE SERVER HAS CONTROL OVER WINS AND LOSSES NOT THE DICE  or any random num gen. thank you for confirming you are a crook

Thank you for proving that you're an idiot that can not read.
1) necropost
2) Baryom is asking for a provably fair system between investors and the casino, not between gamblers & the casino. The provably fair system on their site is functional and existent but he is asking for a way to prove that the site is not fooling future investors by manipulating the bankroll.

You have a real problem with provably fair mechanisms, don't you?