Bitcoin Forum

Most recently, I've seen many smart contract-based gambling games which live on the Ethereum blockchain. Some of them are Dice games, while others have a variety of games to choose from like Poker, Lottery, and more. Good examples of gambling games within Ethereum are EtherDice, vDice, and DAO Casino. However, I believe that these are not the only ones in existence right now, as many more are yet to come.

Nevertheless, what do you think about Ethereum-based gambling games? Will they have a future? Will they become adopted at the same level of traditional gambling games or not? I would like to know your thoughts about this. :)

I don’t know if gambling in Bitvest in Ethereum is considered but I don’t think so. That’s what I have tried using gambling in ETH. But I don’t understand what smart contract based gambling is. Probably it’s integrated in the system? Or like decentralised exchanges? If it has certain advantages, it would be awesome.

I think it's the same as we use bitcoin-based gambling games and it only uses a different coin to gamble. I think the other coin can be another option to gamble and the other coin also have a future to being used for a bet. the important is how the site can provide the games to the gambler so they can play without any problem and the coin does not be a problem whether the site using bitcoin, ethereum, dash, litecoin, dogecoin, or reddcoin. and the more coin in the gambling site is good because the gambler can have many options to use any coins that listed on the gambling site.

Those are that uses smart contacts, right? They're okay. I'm not that fan of eth and I still prefer the tradition bitcoin-based games.
One thing that interest me tho is how the players money is secured in the smart contact and does not directly go into the casino/dice owner. This increases the security of the depositor since the money is in the smart contacts and not on the website.

I checked out the sites you mentioned, Etherdice is not operational(they say to try thelottery), DAO is not operational yet. vDice is bet per bet, send, get paid.  I tried playing like that somewhere else, and it's too tedious for me, I think it's better for a few big bets.  If it is a traditional site, where you deposit normal crypto, but the provably fair system is ether contract based, I can't see a massive amount of people switching from giants like prime dice and crypto games.net, just because the system in more provably fair.  Gamblers are a limited group, if they come to one site, they won't come to another, or they will split their business among a few.  I would like to see decentralized gambling, like torrent of gambling, with normal crypto, not ether tokens, but I can't see it happening anytime soon.   

That's the beauty of smart contracts.  You don't have to trust another party, you simply have to trust the code.
These type of contracts have a lot of use if you want to bet against another person instead of a casino.  I don't have any experience with these type of contract bets, I've only used traditional bitcoin gambling casinos but I like to keep up to date on anything new in the crypto world.

I'm interested in pvp applications as well, there's a coin pitch game right now, but its very technical, like one has to create stuff, I don't know enough to understand it.  Would love to see more in this area, maybe with an interface as well.

It will have future if there is demand. The advantage of gambling games based on Ethereum blockchain database is that they aren't powered by one centralized owner, unlike traditional databases for gambling. Centralization is always a threat: it can be hacked, the owner can scam users, it stores records about clients, like their balances, transactions and other information they input that can destroy anonymity and be used to steal assets too. Blockchain-based gambling websites, on the other hand, solve this problem as there are no 3rd parties. However, provably fair algorithm solves these problems too (well most of them, the website still can be hacked, but the chances are reduced), so maybe there's no need in Ethereum. Moreover, due to obligatory Smart contracts involvement bets in this case are processed slower than with a centralised database.

ETH blockchain based gambling games are not much different than the bitcoin or any other crypto currency casino. The only difference is that the provably fairness of the game is based on ETH blockchain and enforced by a smart contract. The smart contract code should be available for public viewing. However, if you overlook this factor, there are a lot of of casinos available who accepts ETH as a payment method and like any other similar casinos, ETH blockchain gambling doesn't bring any super fresh ideas in the market that can trigger mass adaptability. It's just normal online crypto casino.

When people decide to use bitcoin as main currency for their gambling site, it's not easy to convince people to use it.
Meanwhile altcoin become something different that people must adapt because most of their value lower than bitcoin.
I can say that ETH based gambling will have the market but usually it's lower than bitcoin's !

I think in the sphere of the crypto world having other coins based casinos are a bonus because you want to capture as many people as possible and this can be achieved only by making the games more accessible. Also, Primedice is another ETH based casino.

maybe it is something common like Bitcoin and others but it would be great if a very good enthusiast in the world in a short time to immediately attract all gambling lovers if there were not too many movements that would soon be worn out in the public eye, because we believe and have trusting Bitcoin completely because this is safe and has no doubt in its contribution to the world of gambling, I think it will require a high effort to achieve success like a Bitcoin-based game.

Ethereum transaction is very quick as well as far as I'm concern so there's no difference. Perhaps we gamblers have options to whether play with bitcoin or ethereum so its a win-win for us. So it might be a good idea for big online casinos to offer it if they haven't done so.

I mean I would understand the using of ETH during times where Bitcoin TX fees are high, and the volatility with Bitcoin is higher. But that right now, just isn't the case in the least. As ETH is on a long ways down, and the bitcoin TX fees are dirt cheap right now.

Don't know why'd you want to use ETH when you're going to get access to more sites when you're using bitcoin. I don't see a difference (at all) in the gambling sites that offer the two as well. Why not just use the REAL coin and not have to work with some BS alts.

There could definitely be some sort of "who will be the champions" type of games based on the contract of ethereum blockchain. You can bet on a team to win and all that will be tied to blockchain with the teams the bets the results and so forth.

When the team you bet wins, the contract is over and you get your winnings, when the team you root for doesn't win the money stays with the website. I think that is the only way I can think of that can win. Olympics could be another use for the similar stuff like who will get the gold or whatever but aside from that its really hard to manage daily on each game, would require some great coder to achieve that each day.

It looks like you didn't understand OP post. OP is taking about ETH smart contract-based gambling games not about which coin to use for gambling.

Some of the bitcoin casinos can be rigged and players can be cheated but I'm not wrong these ETH contract based games can't be rigged so those games can be trusted more.

So far I didn't play these ETH contract based games. Mostly I played on bitcoin casinos like dice games and sports betting.

I think ETH-based gambling games are pretty much underrated, I haven't tried it out, but one of my friends have tried it out and they are now encouraging me to try it out, because in my very own opinion about it is that it is or might be just the same as BTC-based games, but I will still try it out and will see for myself.

You're definitely right with what you said because the Ethereum block chain base gamble will follow the steps of the traditional bitcoin base gamble site and the only thing is see which might create some different is that there is possibility for the Ethereum base game not to be adopted as bitcoin if they don't post their code for public viewing.

to be honest I hate everything related to Ethereum cause I'm not a fan of Ethereum overall
the idea of smart contract gambling is good actually , but do we really need that ? I mean there are plenty of trusted bitcoin sites that paid out millions of dollars over time so that eliminates the need of a smart contract IMO

the thing is that I don't trust any crypto coin beside bitcoin , I feel not safe holding anything else even Ethereum which is considered the safest alt

Gambling industry in general can benefit from Etherum smart contracts as they provide safety and credit ability to the website using it and eliminate any sort of fear a gambler has regarding this website can take his/her money or not .However,i don't think they can offer paying with different coins (non ETH based ones) which can be a bummer to some whales !

Ethereum couldn't even handle cryptokitties. When these smart contracts become massive they will slow down the network much more. Eth is a failed project. Bitcoin devs knew that would happen that's why they didn't add smart contracts to bitcoin. Have you seen the db size of eth? It is out of control. Vitalik isn't as smart as many of you think.

I think they can work so long as the users value being able to gamble from their own wallet rather then being bound to a centralised site.   I think thats quite likely so long as its convenient and easy to do so for each bet made.  If the fees become excessive then this model type would suffer disproportionately I guess


ETH is still evolving as likely every crypto protocol must do to be successful going forward.   I still think they will do better with the casper initiative

I agree with you, last time when BTC was also facing same problem of not able to handle high transaction traffic due to that the transaction fees gone and the confirmation got delay and same problem now ETH is facing. Vitalik is least bother about it as he got profit long back and now he is not interested in developing more as once he itself committed that he is not having faith on crypto currency and he will invest his profit in real world like property, gold, etc., So till this problems are not solved i dont think that ETH gambling will flourish.

I think if there are indeed many gambling sites that can provide lots of coins in it to be risked, it can certainly make it easier and provide many choices for people who want to play gambling and determine the type of coin they will choose. the more coins provided in it the greater the interest of many people who want to play because it can make it easier for gamblers to be able to choose coins that will be at stake

The first time I ran into an ETH based crypto gambling site was somewhere around January. Never tried it though except for the Beta version, I am curious about the experiences

Agree. Smart contract-based gambling games are much better, IMO than traditional online gambling games, because they provide greater security and transparency over the player's funds and the bankroll. There's no human intervention needed, as everything is governed by the blockchain. If gambling games running under smart contracts become a big hit, then you could expect for them to replace traditional gambling games in the future.

Also, gambling games based on such model will be provably fair than traditional gambling games. Soon, traditional online gambling sites might migrate to the Ethereum blockchain, for greater security, transparency, and eliminating the middleman once and for all. The benefit of smart contract-based gambling games is too hard to ignore within the gambling industry. ;)



Exactly. I was talking about gambling games which rely on smart contracts to function as intended. Right now, the most popular ones are in the Ethereum blockchain, as it's the number one smart contract platform in the world. However, as other smart contract platforms like NEO and Cardano grow over time, I believe that other gambling games will emerge on them.

The biggest benefit of playing in smart contract-based gambling games is that you as a gambler will feel confident that the game is provably fair, and your funds are safe. There's no risk of the owner running away with the bankroll, and the chances of cheating within such games are nearly impossible. Because smart contracts eliminate the middleman, I believe that they're the future of the online gambling industry. :)



That's certainly true, mate. At its current state, Ethereum cannot handle large TPS for a wealth of smart contracts available on its blockchain. However, I believe that Ethereum will become better over time as it adopts scalability upgrades like the Plasma Framework, the Raiden Network, and even the Casper PoS consensus algorithm. The potential is there for ETH to become a full-fledged platform for smart contracts handling nearly everything in its path.

Since Ethereum is still in its early stages of development, I cannot say that it's a failed project yet. There are still a lot of things to be improved over time, which I believe that will make ETH better. AFAIK, there's already a scalable solution which smart contract devs can use, and it’s called the Loom Network. This is sort of a sidechain, which allows smart contracts to scale within the Ethereum blockchain. Its Plasma Cash technology is already functional and it's only a matter of time before devs make use of such feature to avoid the bottlenecks within the main ETH chain.

Once this happens, then we could expect many more dApps to emerge on the Ethereum blockchain. Gambling games based on such technology will be a big hit, IMO, as they become fairer, transparent, and much secure than traditional online gambling. Therefore, this could have a huge impact in the gambling industry over the long term. Just my opinion :)

The first such website I ever encountered was Vdice. It is not just based on ethereum, but also operates fully on smart contracts, so using it is very safe in terms of money. But the game was very primitive, minimum bet a couple of dozens of dollars in eth at that time plus rather high withdrawal fees. I guess for some reason it is a general problem with smart contracts. They require high fees, so people pay more for the scam-free guanrantee. I hope this field will improve with time and I do believe that this way of performing transactions will win eventually anyway, so yeah, I guess we'll see people playing the usual games in such casinos in the future. It's just that maube it won't be the eth contracts after all.

The real question is, do they have even 2% of the bitcoin gambling market? How many people even play on these sites? From what I have seen, there projects are more into ICO funding than actual gambling. I wouldn't take them as serious gambling projects.

They don't have a market now? I don't see them going anywhere in the future either.

That's the real issue with smart contracts, mate. They may be fairer and more transparent than traditional online applications, but as their usage increases over time, so will their fees. Unless Ethereum scales to handle a large amount of TPS, I don't think that gambling games based on smart contracts will become popular. Traditional online gambling games have taken the lead (despite that most are unfair and not extremely secure) because they can handle many bets without ever slowing down or charging high fees to its players.

However, if Ethereum does scale and becomes highly successful, then I believe that gambling games based on smart contracts would take the gambling industry by storm. Since there's no middleman involved, costs would be cheaper than running a traditional gambling site with a central operator. Costs are reduced, as well as risks, in a highly secure environment for gamblers around the world to enjoy. I believe that vDice is only the beginning as several other gambling games are yet to come. ;)



That's certainly true, mate. Such gambling games are not as popular as traditional gambling games which rely on a central operator. People tend to use traditional online gambling over smart contract-based games because they don't have to pay high fees or wait hours for transactions to settle on the blockchain. Most ETH gambling games that I know of, are still in beta phase and are raising money to become a reality in the future. Since our options to play smart contract-based gambling games are limited, the only choice nowadays would be to choose regular gambling sites (like the one under my signature).

Hopefully, the field of smart contracts would improve over time, adding greater speeds at lower costs to help transform the gambling industry for the better. So far, EOS has good potential of becoming a widely adopted smart contract platform for gambling games or nearly anything you could think of because of its zero fees and high transaction throughput.

However, time will tell us what lies ahead with the future of gambling games which rely on blockchain technology. Just my thoughts ;D

As per usual with anything that is decentralized, it probably isn't as prevalent as anything that is centralized -- people don't want to just 'trust the code' and people would much rather have the ability to have trust in a reputation. It's much easier to seek recourse with a company and with the government rather then there being an issue in a decentralized marketplace.

I would much rather have a centralized one for gambling until I find out that the decentralized one has no issues at all.